THE NEW REALISM MULTILATERALISM AND THE UN SYSTEM

Programme Coordinator for the United Nations University Robert W. Cox, Professor Emeritus of Political Science, York University, Ontario

Titles in the subseries include:

Robert W. Cox (editor) THE NEW REALISM: Perspectives on Multilateralism and World Order

Stephen Gill (editor) , AND MULTILATERALISM

Published within the International Series. General Editor: Timothy M. Shaw, Professor of Political Science and International Development Studies, and Director of the Centre for Foreign Policy Studies, Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia The New Realism Perspectives on Multilateralism and World Order

Edited by

Robert W. Cox Professor Emeritus of Political Science, York University, Ontario

Q~ United Nations ~ University Press

TOKYO • NEW YORK • PARIS First published in Great Britain 1997 by MACMILLAN PRESS LTD Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 978-0-333-66584-8 ISBN 978-1-349-25303-6 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-25303-6

First published in the United States of America 1997 by ST. MARTIN'S PRESS, INC., Scholarly and Reference Division, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 ISBN 978-0-312-16234-4 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The new realism : perspectives on multilateral ism and world order I edited by Robert W. Cox. p. em. - (International political economy series) Papers presented at a symposium held at the European University Institute in Fiesole, Italy, in the autumn of 1992. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-312-16234-4 I. Economics. 2. Political science. 3. . I. Cox, Robert W., 1926- . II. Series. JX1395.N43 1996 337-dc21 96-17550 CIP ©The United Nations University 1997 The United Nations University 53-70, Jingumae 5--chorne, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo 150, Japan Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1997 978-0-333-66583-1 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 WIP 9HE.

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This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 I 06 05 04 03 02 01 00 99 98 97 Contents

Preface vii

List of Abbreviations ix

Notes on the Contributors xi

Introduction by Robert W. Cox XV

PART I REALITIES

Territory, State, Authority and Economy: a new realist ontology of global political economy 3 Susan Strange 2 Peoples' Movements: the antisystemic challenge 20 Rodolfo Stavenhagen

3 Seeking World Order Beyond the Gendered Order of Global Hierarchies 38 V. Spike Peterson 4 The Person, the Household, the Community, and the Globe: notes for a theory of multilateralism in a turbulent world 57 James N. Rosenau

PART II PERSPECTIVES

5 Multilateralism in a Multicultural World: notes for a theory of occultation 83 Kinhide Mushakoji

6 An Islamic Approach to Multilateralism 109 Hassan Hanafi

7 The Indian Perspective 124 Satish Chandra

8 Chinese Culture and Multilateralism 145 Hongying Wang

v vi Contents

PART m DYNAMICS 9 The United States and the UN System: the hegemon's ambivalence about its appurtenances 165 Harold K. Jacobson 10 Multilateral Co-operation and Systemic Changes: implications of the breakup of the Soviet bloc 186 Mihdly Simai 11 and the Challenge to Civil Society: Africa in the transformation of world order 205 Fantu Cheru 12 The Double Movement: global market versus regionalism 223 Bjorn Hettne

PART IV RECONSIDERATIONS 13 Reconsiderations 245 Robert W. Cox

Books and Articles Published (or to be Published) through MUNS 263 Tables of Contents of Titles in MUNS Mini-Series 264 Index of Names 268 Index of Subjects 269 Preface

The origin of this book was a symposium held at the European University Institute in Fiesole, Italy, in the autumn of 1992. It was organised within the framework of the programme on multilateralism and the United Na• tions system (MUNS) sponsored by the United Nations University (UNU). This programme has taken a broad view of multilateralism. It asks what entities - states and other - will constitute the multilateralism of the fu• ture. It considers a future multilateralism as both shaped by and shaping structural change in and politics. And its goal is a new multilateralism built from the bottom up on the foundations of a broadly participative global society. Of course, the views expressed in this book, as in other publications of the MUNS programme, are those of the authors and do not represent the UNU as an institution. The programme, which ran from 1991 to 1995, evolved through a series of symposia that brought together scholars from all parts of the world. The first one, dealing with aspects of global structural change, took place in Yokohama in March 1992 and resulted in a book edited by Yoshikazu Sakamoto, Global Transformation: Challenges to the State System (Tokyo: UNU Press, 1994). Another took place the same month in Toronto on the relationship of the UN system with a number of state/society complexes (a term used to express something broader than the formal govemment-to• UN relationship). It led to a book edited by Keith Krause and W. Andy Knight, State, Society, and the United Nations System: Changing Perspec• tives on Multilateralism (Tokyo: UNU Press, 1995). The symposium that led to the present book was the third in the series. A fourth symposium was held near Oslo in August 1993 on issues in global political economy; and a book edited by Stephen Gill, Globalization, Democratization and Multilateralism is in process of publication by Macmillan for the UNU Press. Two further symposia, held in Lausanne, May 1994, and San Jose, Costa Rica, December 1995, respectively, have resulted in two books edited by Michael Schechter: Innovation in Multilateralism and Future Multilateralism: The Political and Social Framework both to be published also by Macmillan for the UNU Press. (See list of MUNS publications and tables of contents at the end of this book.) Another MUNS programme activity has been directed at bringing in younger scholars, mainly graduate students researching in fields related to the programme. Conferences were organised at the University of Amster• dam and York University, Toronto, which discussed papers presented

vii viii Preface

by students from different countries, including Third World countries. Arrangements are being made to disseminate some of this work. Perhaps the most lasting result of the MUNS programme is in building a network of scholars which will outlive the formal conclusion of the MUNS programme to constitute an 'invisible college' of global dimen• sions. It comprises senior and junior scholars, women and men, intellec• tuals from South and North. Special thanks are due to Professor Susan Strange of the European University Institute, Fiesole, Italy, who, in addition to her participation, arranged for the site and provided the logistical support for the symposium on which this book is based; and to Dr Takeo Uchida whose consistent and committed support sustained all aspects of the MUNS programme while he served as Senior Academic Officer of the United Nations Univer• sity. Thanks also are due to Professor Timothy M. Shaw, general editor of the Macmillan international political economy series, whose interest in this book and in the MUNS programme greatly facilitated the arrangement for co-publication with the UNU; and to Heather Chestnut for her skill and commitment in the preparation of the manuscript for press.

Toronto RoBERT W. Cox List of Abbreviations

AIDS acquired immune deficiency syndrome APEC Asia Pacific Economic Conference ASEAN Association of South East Asian Nations Brandt Commission Independent Commission on International Develop• ment Issues. Produced the report North-South: A Program for Suroival (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1980) Cairns Group group of governments convened on the initiative of Australia to concert policies on trade in agricultural commodities in Uruguay Round CENTO Central Treaty Organisation CIS Commonwealth of Independent States CNN Cable Network News EAEC East Asian Economic Caucus (initially called a 'Grouping', EAEG) EC European Community (subsequently EU) ECOWAS Economic Community of West African States EFTA European Association EU European Union FBI Federal Bureau of Investigation (US) FDI foreign direct investment FOF foreign owned firm GATT General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade G7 Group of Seven most wealthy countries: Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, United Kingdom, and United States G77 group of least developed countries formed initially as a caucus in UNCTAD. The numbers of countries included has since grown beyond the initial 77. IFDA International Foundation for Development Alterna• tives (Nyon, Switzerland) IGO intergovernmental organisation ILO International Labour Office/Organisation IMF International Monetary Fund INGO international nongovernmental organisation IPE international political economy IPRA International Peace Research Association

ix X List of Abbreviations

IWGIA International Working Group on Indigenous Affairs MUNS programme on multilateralism and the United Nations system (sponsored by the United Nations University) NAFfA North American Free Trade Agreement NAM Nonaligned Movement NGO nongovernmental organisation NIC newly industrialising country NIE newly industrialising economy (the use of 'economy' rather than 'country' is to avoid implying independ• ent status to contested sovereignties; for example Taiwan) OAS Organization of American States OAU Organisation for African Unity OECD Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Devel• opment OPEC Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries PRC People's Republic of China ROC Republic of China (Taiwan) SAARC South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation SADCC Southern African Development Coordination Con• ference (subsequently renamed SADC) SEATO South East Asia Treaty Organization TNC transnational corporation TRIM trade related investment measure TRIP trade related aspect of intellectual property UNCED United Nations Conference on Environment and Development UNCTAD United Nations Conference on Trade and Develop• ment UNDP United Nations Development Programme UNECA United Nations Economic Commission for Africa UNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation UNRISD United Nations Research Institute for Social Devel• opment UNU United Nations University VCR video cassette recorder World Bank common usage for International Bank for Recon• struction and Development (ffiRD) WTO World Trade Organisation Notes on the Contributors

Satish Chandra, an Indian historian, is Executive Chairman the Maulana Abdul Kalam Azad Institute of Asian Studies; Professor emeritus of Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi; former Chairman of the Univer• sity Grants Commission; and former member of the Council of the United Nations University. A specialist in medieval Indian social and economic history, he is author, among other books, of Mughal Religious Policies, the Rajputs and the Deccan (1993)

Fantu Cheru is Associate Professor in the School of International Ser• vice, The American University, Washington, D.C. He is the author of The Silent Revolution in Africa: Debt, Development and Democracy (1989); Dependence, Underdevelopment and Unemployment in Kenya (1987); and co-editor, Ethiopia: Options for Rural Development (1990) with Siegfried Pauswang, Eshetu Chole and Stefan Brune.

Robert W. Cox is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at York Uni• versity, Toronto. A former official of the International Labour Office, he was Professor of International Organization at Columbia University before moving to York University. His books include The Anatomy of Influence. Decision Making in International Organization (with Harold K. Jacobson and others, 1972), and Production, Power, and World Order: Social Forces in the Making of History (1987).

Hassan Hanafi is Professor of Philosophy, Cairo University, an expert on hermeneutics, philosophy of religion, founder of the Islamic Left, and author among other books of Tradition and Modernism, From Dogma to Revolution, From Transfer to Creativity, Introduction to Occidentalism.

Bjorn Hettne, Professor, Department of Peace and Development Research at the University of Goteborg (PADRIGU), has written on colonial history in India, European integration, ethnic conflicts, international relations and development theory. His most recent publication is Development Theory and the Three Worlds (1995) and he has contributed to and edited Inter• national Political Economy. Understanding Global Disorder (1995).

Harold K. Jacobson is Jesse Siddal Reeves Professor of Political Sci• ence and Director of the Center for Political Studies at the University of

xi xii Notes on the Contributors

Michigan. He is the author or co-author of numerous books and articles about international organisation and international politics, including Net• works of Interdependence: International Organizations and the Global Political System (1979,1984).

Kinhide Mushakoji is Professor in the Faculty of International Studies and associate of the International Peace Research Institute (PRIME) at Meiji Gakuin University, Yokohama, and was formerly Vice-Rector (Aca• demic) of the United Nations University, Tokyo.

V. Spike Peterson teaches political science at the University of Arizona in Tucson. She has taken an innovative role in the development of feminist approaches in international studies and is editor of Gendered States: Femin• ist (Re)Visions of International Relations Theory (1992).

James N. Rosenau is University Professor of International Affairs at The George Washington University. His books include Turbulence in World Politics: A Theory of Change and Continuity (1990) and Thinking Theory Thoroughly: Coherent Approaches to an Incoherent World (1995).

Mihaiy Simai is currently Director of the World Institute for Develop• ment Economics Research of the United Nations University (UNU/WIDER) based in Helsinki. He was a co-founder of the Institute for World Econom• ics of the Hungarian Academy and served as its Director General, 1987- 1991. His professional experience includes teaching, research and scientific management and he has been a staff member in several UN bodies. His most recent books are The Future of (1994) and Power, Technology and the World Economy (1990).

Rodolfo Stavenhagen, Mexican social scientist, is Research Professor at El Colegio de Mexico, and former Assistant Director-General of UNESCO for social sciences. He has written on issues of agrarian development, ethnic conflicts, indigenous peoples and human rights. His most recent book is Ethnic Conflict and Development.

Susan Strange taught for ten years at the London School of Economics, retiring in 1988 to take up a chair at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. In 1993, she retired for the second time to teach at the University of Warwick in England, where she is now based. She is one of the European pioneers in the study of international political economy. She is author, among many books, of States and Markets (1988), and more Notes on the Contributors xiii recently (with John M. Stopford) of Rival States, Rival Firms. Competition for World Market Shares (1991).

Hongying Wang has a BA in international politics from Beijing Univer• sity and an MAin history from Ohio University. Currently a Ph.D. can• didate in politics at Princeton University, she is interested in and has done research on the cultural element of international relations and international political economy. She is writing a thesis on the politics of foreign direct investment in China. Introduction Robert W. Cox

Realists understand world politics as power relations. They understand institutionalisation in world politics, such as the United Nations system, as resting upon a specific form of power relations. What these power rela• tions are is the first question a realist would ask. Where does power lie? What forces are changing or may change power relations? These questions have to be answered today in the context of some very profound changes in political, economic, social, and ideological structures. The answers come often as a shock to well established theories - a shock that provokes both denial and confusion. When realism was first put forward as the basis for a theory of interna• tional relations it focussed naturally upon states. The world faced by the classical realists in the early twentieth century was a world of nation states some of which were also . The new study of international relations grew out of diplomatic history. Diplomatic history, transformed into the study of international relations, emancipated itself from both international law and international economics. The political power factor could now be seen as the determining factor with law and economics following in its track. The story of the great powers, their alliances and cleavages, the emergence of new powerful states, and the disruptive and realigning con• sequences of wars was the stuff of classical realist theorising. Of course, the early realists understood that economic, social, and ideological forces shaped the forms of states and the power relations among states.1 Classical realists thought in historical terms. Later, this historically conditioned approach to the understanding of inter-state relations was transformed by some theorists into what has been called 'neorealism'. Neorealism struck out in a different direction in search of a timeless 'science' - a simplified set of propositions assumed to be valid for all time. 2 States were the units. Each had calculable power and specific interests to pursue. The balance of power and its variants were the mechanisms governing their relationships. Other things could be ignored so as to attain elegance and parsimony in theorising world politics. The neorealists aspired to a technology of power. They thought in universalistic ahistorical terms. According to them, the basic principles of politics had been understood by Thucydides and remained unchanged. History was just a store of data illustrating an unchanging game. Neorealism grew up during

XV xvi Introduction the Cold War and reflected the rigidity that came to characterise mental structures during that era.

MULTILATERALISM AND THE 'NEW REALISM'

The 'new realism' that inspires this book differs both from the early or classical realism and from neorealism. It differs from classical realism in broadening the range of determining forces beyond state power. It differs from neo-realism in its concern with structural change and in understand• ing this change in historical terms. The new realism develops the old realism, using its historical approach, so as to understand the realities of power in the present and emerging world. This approach will be demonstrated in considering the future of multilateralism. We can take the concept of global governance as a start• ing point for thinking about multilateralism. 'Global governance' means the procedures and practices which exist at the world (or regional) level for the management of political, economic and social affairs. One hypo• thetical form of governance (world government or world ) can be conceived as having a hierarchical form of coordination, whether central• ised (unitary) or decentralised (federal). The other form of coordination would be non-hierarchical. and this we would call multilateral.3 Multilat• eral governance establishes rules and procedures for interaction among the various forces that become involved in world (or regional) political issues. I am using 'political' here in a broadly inclusive sense meaning any con• test of power. Of course, these are ideal types or limits. World government is a most unlikely outcome, although strong elements of hierarchy will continue to exist. Multilateralism in form is non-hierarchical but in reality cloaks and obscures the reality of dominant-subordinate relationships. Nevertheless, the form has importance, being a possible criterion of protest against abuse of hierarchical power. There are, broadly speaking, two approaches to thinking about the fu• ture of institutionalised forms of multilateralism. One is to take existing international and regional organisations as givens and consider how these might be changed so as to improve their functioning. This assumes a certain basic stability in the inter-state system and sees the problem of multilateralism as one of incremental change in the way the inter-state system works. The other approach opens the question as to the normative basis of an Robert W. Cox xvii

alternative world order. This could be called the structural-critical approach because it directs attention to changes in the structures underlying world order and stands back from the present in order to examine critically how the existing structures came into being, the forces that could be changing them, and the potential for a more broadly defined multilateralism. The difference between the two approaches is in part one of time frame. The incremental approach has a medium term time frame and the structural• critical approach a long term time frame. The two are are different but not mutually exclusive. In considering strategy, some combination may be appropriate. Two views about the meaning of multilateralism correspond to the two approaches indicated above. One sees multilateralism as derivative from the existing inter-state system. , for instance, defines multi• lateralism as 'the practice of co-ordinating national policies in groups of three or more states, through ad hoc arrangements or by means of insti• tutions. ' 4 John Ruggie has introduced a limiting factor to this nominalistic definition, a requirement of shared norms or purposes. 5 The approach which derives from the existing world order assumes that states are the basic entities. The critical approach makes no such assumption but asks what the basic forces may be. Applying the new realism to the problem of multilateralism means attempting to link two dynamics: the dynamic of structural change in world order, and the dynamic of development of multilateral practices. Structural change is producing a complex, multilevel pattern of forces that challenges us to discard the oversimplified state-centric vision of world order and to replace it with a modified vision of reality. The existing international institutions (the conventional picture of multilateralism) grant formal status to only a limited range of the existing forces although this range has been broadening; for example, in the participation of many non• governmental organisations in the World Summit on Environment and Development held in Rio de Janeiro in June 1992. Realism contains a normative element.6 Few social scientists will now maintain that research can be value free. There is always a perspective, including some purposive assumptions, in which studies are made. A 'mainstream' school of international organisation studies has privileged the analysis of 'regimes' .7 Regimes are the ways in which multilateral processes in specific issue areas are conventionally organised, whether through formal organisation and regulation or informal norms and expec• tations of international behaviour. The study of regimes in practice views multilateralism from the top down. It tends to be policy driven in the short xviii Introduction

and medium term. It takes on the perspective of those forces with the most influence on outcomes- the G7, the principal trading powers in the GAIT and its successor the WTO, and the agencies of the world economy domi• nated by the richer countries, that is, the IMF and the World Bank. Re• gimes in other issue areas also define the issues in the perspective of the dominant powers. Regimes analysis is status quo oriented and aims at problem solving in this context. The work of the symposium which led to this book, by contrast, focuses on long term structural change, is critical rather than problem-solving in its approach, 8 and takes a bottom up view, privileging the concerns and interests of the less powerful while not ignoring the constraints imposed by the more powerful. The value preferences in which the symposium was conceived can also be stated explicitly: greater social equity, greater dif• fusion of power among countries and social groups, protection of the biosphere, moderation and non-violence in dealing with conflict, and mutual recognition of civilisations. There is no single authoritative answer to the question as to the basic structure of contemporary world order. The 'mainstream' view has focussed upon the prospects of a reconstructed hegemony, in the sense of maintain• ing the purported benefits of 'hegemonic stability' in a world conjuncture when the United States, the founder of the post- II hegemonic order, no longer has the global economic power to sustain it alone.9 Au• thors contributing to the present work have envisaged a post-hegemonic order that will no longer be the global reach of one particular form of civilisation but rather consist of a plurality of visions of world order with the challenge of achieving some common ground as the basis for dynamic coexistence among them. Approaches to the future of the UN system differ as between the 'main• stream' view and that represented in this book. Institutional adjustment is the primary approach of the mainstream towards 'reform' of the UN sys• tem. The approach in this study is cautious towards specific piecemeal 'reforms' which could consolidate existing power and impede the diffu• sion of power to those social forces marginalised or excluded in the ex• isting order. The longer-term prospect, driven by a popular-based reaction to the inequities· produced in the present order, envisages the possibility of a new configuration of power, social forces generating new forms of state, and broader participation at the base of society. This approach focuses on strategies for transforming the present power structure. It could have the effect of democratising the United Nations by broadening participation at the base - a substantive and not merely formal democratisation. Robert W. Cox xix

TOWARDS A 'NEW MULTILATERALISM'

One of the principal results of the symposium was to redefine multilateralism as a 'new multilateralism' (the term was proposed by Bjorn Hettne), distinct from existing institutionalised forms. 10 A 'new multilateralism' is potential, not actual. It would be built from the bottom up on the basis of a broadly articulated global society. The task of thinking towards a new multilateralism falls into the three parts which correspond to the divisions of this book. Part I, Realities, examines the forces that constitute world order in the late twentieth cen• tury and how this configuration of forces differs from conventional pic• tures of the power structure of international relations. The essays included here address the question: Where does power lie? Part II, Perspectives, enquires into the images of world order that derive from different tradi• tions of civilisation. These essays attempt to reflect the affirmation, more and more forceful in the late twentieth century, of points of view missing from an erstwhile Western hegemonic perspective on world order. Part III, Dynamics, is concerned with currently observable tendencies in world politics that have implications both for the shaping of world order and for multilateralism. The three parts have different time-frames. Realities is concerned with the contemporary evidence of a long term and continuing process of glo• bal structural change. 11 Perspectives draws attention to the revival of long• obscured world views from non-Western civilisations and their potential relevance to the shaping of future world order and multilateralism. Dy• namics deals with medium-term trends and current developments.

Realities

Susan Strange's work, placing markets alongside states in the global po• litical economy, has highlighted the independent influence of firms in world politics. 12 Her essay in this book looks at the separation between the concepts of territory, state, authority and economy, once assumed to be morphologically identical but now to be considered as distinct and separ• able. Power based on territory coexists with power inherent in deterritorial• ised spheres of finance and production. Authority takes both state and private forms. The problem now is to understand the interrelatedness and the relative weight in different circumstances of these distinct bases of power. Susan Strange's chapter deals with dominant forces rooted in states and markets which constitute an evolving system of global political economy. XX Introduction

This system generates its antithesis, expressed in antisystemic movements. Some of the resistance to the forces of states and markets, or of political and economic authorities, takes place within the system through accepted and conventional processes like the institutionalised conflict between trade unions and employers and the activities of opposition political parties. Increasingly, however, the challenge to systemic forces comes from move• ments in civil society that are of a more radical antisystemic kind. 13 Rodolfo Stavenhagen's essay, juxtaposed to Susan Strange's, deals with some of these. He takes peoples as relevant units of a new world order alongside states and examines movements deriving from popular sources. He illus• trates a dialectical response to economic globalisation; and he outlines the lineaments in social movements of a potential alternative to a fading Westphalianism. Spike Peterson looks at power through the lens of gender. Gender, in her analysis, is not something innate like biology, but is a socially con• structed subordination of women to men. She sees the state and the inter• national system as having institutionalised this particular hierarchy. 14 What has been socially constructed can be socially reconstructed. Part of the challenge of a n~w multilateralism is to pursue such a reconstruction. Beyond the gender question, feminist scholarship has opened the way towards analysis of global hierarchies of different kinds, such as those affecting races, cultures and civilisations. James Rosenau depicts world politics as bifurcated. 1s One world con• sists of the state system and world economy (the top) while a second world is generated by movements at the base of society (the bottom). In the latter respect, he incorporates movements of the kind Stavenhagen discusses into a theorising of world politics. The shape of the future world will be determined by the relative strength of bottom-up and top-down pressures. This representation is particularly apposite to the conception of a new multilateralism in which the forces emanating from the base of societies would have greater representation and influence. These four essays move away from the classic Westphalian view of world politics, 16 directing attention to the social basis of both state power and world order. Bottom-up forces not only counteract top-down pressures from established political authorities. They also legitimate or delegitimate authority in the state and would constitute the basis for a new multilateralism in the world system. Part I by implication directs attention to the condition of civil society. We can use the term 'civil society' to represent the way societies are articulated apart from the state, that is, the various interests and identity groups that self-consciously coexist. These interests and groups may be Robert W. Cox xxi

thought of as existing among a more amorphous agglomeration of people who do not seem to be articulated into specific interests or groups, some• times referred to as 'the people' or 'the masses'. The balance between articulated civil society and the amorphous mass is a key criterion of the quality of a society. There is a kind of populist or caesarist authority that can be based on a direct relationship between a charismatic leader and an unarticulated mass, but such a formation is not conducive to durable au• thority in the state, let alone in the world system. A new multilateralism as envisaged here would depend upon a functioning relationship with an articulated global civil society. The symposium did not directly address this question of the current state of the social basis of authority. It remains a theme to be explored. A process of decomposition and recomposition of civil society is at work throughout the world. It would have to be mapped as a starting point towards understanding the conditions for building new authorities. People have become alienated from existing regimes, states, and political pro• cesses. This has taken various forms. It has led to widespread apathy and depolitisation, manifested for example in low electoral participation. It has taken more extreme forms in active and often armed hostility to public authority among small but psychologically significant minorities. 17 In a more constructive vein, it is manifested by some people beginning to seek their survival apart from the state in self-governing communities. 18 A new multilateralism would ultimately encompass movements in the depths of societies which are ready to enter into a constructive dialogue. The nor• mative content of a 'new multilateralism' would aim to build up pressure from below towards a broadening of participation and a greater equalising of opportunities in multilateral processes. This complex mutation of human organisation has to be inserted within the biosphere: the interaction of human organisation with other forms of life in the finite system of the planet. Only recently have we begun to understand the ways in which human life is circumscribed by ecological forces and the capacity of the biosphere to become an actor in the human drama. Who speaks for the biosphere in multilateral discourse? The bio• sphere, of course, speaks for itself; but how shall we understand and respond to what it says? A major gap in the work of the Fiesole sympo• sium was the absence of discussion on this point.

Perspectives

The nature of the world is viewed differently in the perspectives of civil• isations, social strata, gender, ethnicity, religion, nationality, and perhaps xxii Introduction

other forms of identity. These different perspectives shape the way people understand and interpret their world. The late twentieth century has wit• nessed an affirmation of distinct, self-conscious identities, alongside an erosion of the political and ideological alignments of preceeding decades. This in itself can be taken as a symptom of declining hegemony. On the world scale, the assertion of the identities of civilisations, long consigned to the realms of archeology and specialised historical scholarship, now calls for recognition as an essential component in world politics. Ontology and epistemology are words that most people never use; but most do share a 'common sense' understanding of the basic entities in their environment, the institutions and forces that surround them and con• dition what they can do as persons and as members of a group. They also know instinctively what they know, a knowledge that is limited by cus• tomary forms of awareness of the world about them. In practical terms, an ontology is the set of intersubjective meanings that a people holds collec• tively. lntersubjective meanings are those ideas people share about the nature of their world - the institutions and relationships they take for granted as constituting the world, their sense of reality. These intersubjective ideas hold so long as they appear to make sense of the material realities people confront collectively .19 Ontologies predetermine what is to be regarded as relevant. No ontol• ogy or epistemology is privileged in an absolute sense as being superior to all others in terms of logic, reason, or ethical position. Some, however, are definitely privileged in terms of power. The ontology and the episte• mology of the powerful become what is 'natural' for their societies. Per• spectives of the less powerful are derided as irrational, ultimately forgotten, 'occulted' (the term used by Kinhide Mushakoji in Chapter 5), whether they are those of subordinated social groups or civilisations. There is an issue of empowerment in knowledge - a politics of knowledge. The four essays included in Part II of this book represent a prelimin• ary attempt to reintroduce the study of civilisations into world politics. Collectively, they challenge the emphasis in 'mainstream' thought on 'globalisation' as the dominant tendency in world order.20 Globalisation implies a progressive integration of all peoples into the world economy, allowing market forces to break through the restraints heretofore imposed by states and the state system. It implies, in consequence, an increasing homogenisation of global culture, with the development of common pat• terns of consumption and common aspirations as to the nature of the 'good life'. With globalisation, cultural diversity would ultimately be assimilated as folklore in a global entertainment industry. The study of civilisations shifts the emphasis from homogenisation to Robert W. Cox xxiii

diversification. It draws attention to a latent negation of globalisation. Even though globalisation remains at present the dominant tendency, the diversity of civilisations represents a countertendency, a challenge from below. The study of civilisations had a place in Western scholarship up to World War II, notably in the work of Oswald Spengler1 and Arnold Toynbee,22 but it fell victim to the Cold War. The rigidities of Cold War thinking reduced all distinctions in thought to a Manichean dualism in order to focus on strategies of conflict between capitalism and communism. Awareness of the encounters of civilisations survived in the work of some Third World scholars from K.M. Pannikar's, Asia and Western Dom• inance,23 to Edward Said's Orientalism. 24 From this source, and from some heterodox undercurrents in Western thought,25 civilisations now reemerge in the study of world politics. The diversity of perceived 'realities' that followed the dissipation of Cold War dualism has been the stimulus to this revival.26 Kinhide Mushakoji's essay argues that Western modernism has 'occulted' the values and mental habits of non-Western civilisations, and that the language of modernism has monopolised discourse in international affairs. However, he argues, the reality of distinct perspectives has not been ob• literated but merely obscured and submerged by the gap between the way people of non-Western civilisations feel and their capacity to express it through modernist discourse. The essays that follow by Hassan Hanafi, Satish Chandra, and Hongying Wang express respectively Islamic, Indian, and Chinese images of the world. A notable absence from this list is Africa. Fantu Cheru's essay in Part ill conveys a sense of how Africa has been marginalised in the world political economy, having suffered histor• ically the most extreme form of occultation. Scholarship has, however, begun to recover an understanding of the roots of African civilisations and their encounters with other civilisations prior to the era of Western dominance.27 An obvious omission in this book's revival of emphasis on civilisations as a major theme of world politics is a discussion of how to define the concept of civilisation. Another omission, which follows from the first, is an inventory of coexisting civilisations. These are matters that demand more thought and will no doubt result in more books. A very preliminary definition of civilisations given above is that they are realms of inter• subjective meanings. This imputes to civilisations a unity in thought which is not necessarily linked to a geographical zone or even with a specific religion. The chapters by Hanafi, Chandra, and Wang do seem to suggest geographical identity although not confined to any specific state or com• bination of states. The mingling of peoples in today's world, however, xxiv Introduction

makes for encounters of civilisations within all geographic zones. Susan Strange's use of the term 'business civilisation' ,28 a perfectly legitimate usage in my view, divorces the realm of intersubjective meanings from any specific geographical zone (even if its roots are traced to the United States) to make that civilisation an overlay upon other historically differ• entiated civilisations. 29 The symposium gave emphasis (especially in Chandra, Chern, Hanafi, Mushakoji, and Stavenhagen) to a concept of multilateralism as pluralism. Pluralism poses the problem of the means of coexistence among civilisa• tions or cultures with different ideas as to the nature of the real world, different values, and different conceptions of the 'good life'. Such a plu• ralistic conception is only possible on the basis of a mutual recognition of the integrity and equality of different value systems. At the same time, those who held normatively to this pluralistic perspective recognised the force behind the homogenising tendency of globalisation. Their call is to awaken consciousness to the choice peoples have to make. The guidelines set out for the symposium sought to avoid any disposi• tion to stereotype or represent civilisations or cultures in static monolithic terms. 30 They envisaged pluralism as dynamic. These guidelines stated:

No cultural tradition is entirely monolithic. All the great cultural traditions have generated competing, often conflicting, world views. Indeed, the tensions within a particular cultural tradition may be re• garded as sources of creativity and adaptation to the changing con• stellations of problems confronting the culture. Traditions of civilisation evolve also in reaction to challenges from other civilisations. They react partly by intemalising aspects of alien civilisation, partly by redefining the authenticity of their own tradi• tion to meet new circumstances. In a global perspective, a balance is to be struck between the distinc• tiveness of different traditions of culture or civilisation, and values that can become the common basis for coexistence and mutual en• richment of these traditions. Previous hegemonic orders have derived their universals from the dominant society. A post-hegemonic order will have to derive its universals in a search for common ground among constituent traditions of civilisation.

The alternative to the 'globalisation' vision, which the symposium set out to explore, envisages an ontology which is post-Westphalian, post• hegemonic, and post-globalisation. The state system would remain but no longer as the exclusive centre-piece. Hegemony would no longer exist in Robert W. Cox XXV

the form of a single dominant regime of power, mode of economic organ• isation, structure of social relations, pattern of consumption, and form of knowledge. Alternative modes of development and economic and social organisation would displace the unique centrality of a neo-liberal capitalist world economy. A new multilateralism will have to begin by elucidating and making more explicit the diverse coexisting ontologies - the competing interpre• tations of the world. This consists, in the first place, in an exercise in empathetic understanding, the ability to get inside the mind of the 'other' while retaining one's own identity. The method whereby this can be done is hermeneutic rather than positivist. The next step is a search for common ground among the various intersubjectivities which would constitute the grounds for defining at least a minimum ethical content of a new multilateralism. Some 'postmodern' thinkers are inclined to leave the matter at an assessment of diversity and a rejection of any claims to ontological priority. This does not go far enough to found a new posthegemonic multilateralism. Intersubjective meanings are creations of history and there is no closure to history's possibilities. The search for common ground leads to the creation of the elements of a supra-intersubjectivity that can link the diverse existing and suppressed intersubjectivities without invalidating or eliminating any of them. Common material concerns will sustain these common grounds of world order - concern for ecological sustainability, for physical security in the handling of conflict, for greater social equity and greater diffusion of power among peoples, social classes, and genders. What can be the basis for this common ground? There is a risk that mere affirmation of the equality of civilisations will provide no ethical basis for limiting expansionary and exclusionary propensities of any one form of civilisation. In the course of the symposium, Professor Sakamoto expressed a concern that to affirm that there are no criteria to distinguish good and evil opens the way to acquiescence in imperialism. Respect for the human being can be thought of as a common root of ethical principle. However, insofar as this may be interpreted as basing world order on the individual, it could be seen as excluding traditions that have emphasised group and collectivity identities rather than individualism. The set of intersubjective meanings that constitute the world for particu• lar historical communities is never fixed and rigid. Within each people or civilisation there is a dialectic of intersubjectivity. For example, the in• digenous peoples of Canada (the First Nations) have gained substantial recognition of their rights to self-government. As this has happened, some groups representing indigenous women have expressed concern about the xxvi Introduction

patriarchal attitude of some male band leaders and expressed a desire to retain the protection the Canadian charter of rights provides for equality of women. Other indigenous women leaders, expressing the same concern, have taken the position that self-government is the primary goal and in• digenous women should act to secure their rights within the new self• governing communities. Either way, it seems that the notion of equality of women, a principle applicable to all forms of community, is affirmed in the dialectic of development of indigenous peoples.

Dynamics

The first two parts of this book are directed to long term change in realities and in perspectives on power relations. Part ill is directed to medium-term changes now happening. It opens consideration of the interaction of the short and medium-term with the long-term in the shaping of an always unpredictable future. Yet while the future is unpredictable, choices are to be made in the present; and those choices, always with unforeseeable consequences, are made with a view to desired futures. There is a common theme running through the chapters in this part. They are framed by the major structural problems of the contemporary world: social polarisation,31 threats to the maintenance of the biosphere, mass migrations, ethnic and cultural conflicts, erosion of confidence in political leadership and loss of legitimacy in political institutions. Move• ments responsive to these challenges take a variety of forms: attempts to reform the United Nations so as to deal with immediate challenges, the construction of a multilevel pattern of global governance, movements of social forces shaping or reshaping civil society. Harold Jacobson's analysis of the ambiguities of US policy can be read as a portrayal of the 'last Westphalian', the one state in the world political economy that seems to retain the principal characteristics of sovereignty in its ability to act forcefully and independently and to protect itself from external intervention. Yet even the United States cannot be taken as a proper exemplar of the Westphalian era, since the Westphalian state system assumed a number of such sovereign independent states. The formal aspect of conventional thought maintains this assumption, but reality does not fully bear it out. Other states lack the degree of control over global condit• ions possessed by the United States; and the US government itself is con• strained both by domestic forces and by the global political economy of which it is the principal support. Its sphere of initiative is circumscribed. Mihaly Simai's analysis of the implications of the break-up of the former Robert W. Cox xxvii

Soviet empire and Yugoslavia confronts the ethnic conflicts and economic collapse that flowed from perestroika. The events discussed here are coun• terpoint to the longer-term effects of economic globalisation - an initial enthusiasm for radical marketisation becomes transformed into a sharp negative response. The multiplication of new political entities claiming political and cultural independence acts like a Gresham's law of statehood. The numerical increase in formally constituted states makes ever more evident the gap between formal Westphalian assumptions and the realities of dependence upon and manipulation by external forces which generates instability in the whole world system. Fantu Cheru's review of the current African scene gives another in• stance of the negative consequences of economic globalisation - this time through Western development programs and the structural adjustment policies promoted by the UN system. He suggests that the dialectical response to these external interventions is provoking a 'silent revolution' in which people tum their backs on formal state structures and interna• tional organisations, perceived as the sources of their problems, to seek solutions at the local level. This movement, he argues, has potential for the emergence of civil societies and a basis for hitherto elusive democratisation. Finally, Bjorn Hettne projects a vision of a 'new regionalism' as the most likely route along which peoples may build or reconstruct civil so• cieties and political authorities. This, he suggests, could be a preparatory stage towards the 'new multilateralism' at the global level. This optimistic prospect balks before the question: is there a sufficient level of multilateral culture to sustain such an initiative and where is such multilateral culture to be found? Up to now, this culture has often been rooted in so-called middle powers- 'middle' not so much in the sense of military and economic capabilities, but rather in the sense of commitment to working 'in the middle' towards cooperative internationalism. Can it also be found among the 'epistemic communities' and people's organisa• tions that articulate ideas and interests in the milieu of existing multilateral institutions? Can it become part of the process of regenerating civil soci• eties? How can this culture spread? These chapters offer no panacea for the current global predicament. They point to spaces that open opportunities for initiatives and to activities that could be generative of change. They underline the proposition that the new multilateralism will not be born from constitutional amendments to existing multilateral institutions but rather from a reconstitution of civil societies and political authorities on a global scale, building a system of global governance from the bottom up. xxviii Introduction

Notes

1. See, for example, E.H. Carr, Nationalism and After (London: Macmillan, 1945). 2. See, for example, Robert 0. Keohane (ed.), Neorealism and its Critics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986). A principal exponent of neorealism is . 3. For a more complete discussion of multilateralism, see Robert W. Cox, 'Multilateralism and world order', Review ofInternational Studies 18 (1992). This article is an adaptation of a paper prepared as background for the Fiesole symposium on which the present book is based. 4. In 'Multilateralism: an agenda for research', International Journal xlv (4) autumn 1990. 5. See Ruggie, 'Multilateralism: the anatomy of an institution', International Organization 46 (3) summer 1992; and also Friedrich Kratochwil and John Gerard Ruggie, 'International organization: a state of the art on an art of the state', International Organization 40 (4) autumn 1986. The latter article gives an overview of work in the incrementalist perspective up to 1986. 6. This was recognised by E.H. Carr in his classic The Twenty Years' Crisis, 1919-1939 (London: Macmillan, 1946), esp. Ch. 9, although the normative content of realism has become obscured in more recent 'scientistic' neorealist writings. 7. See especially the special issue of International Organization 36 (2) spring 1982, edited by Stephen D. Krasner. 8. The distinction between critical and problem-solving theories is developed in R.W. Cox, 'Social forces, states and world orders: beyond international relations theory', Millennium. Journal of International Studies 10 (2) sum• mer 1981, pp. 126-55. 9. For example, Robert 0. Keohane, . Cooperation and Dis• cord in the World Political Economy (Princeton, 1984); and JosephS. Nye, Jr., Bound to Lead. The Changing Nature of American Power (New York, 1990). 10. The term 'new multilateralism' was used by Miriam Camps and William Diebold, Jr. in a booklet published several years ago. (The New Multi• latera/ism. Can the World Trading System be Saved?, New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1986.) They applied it to changes of the 'old eco• nomic multilateralism', that is, the trade and payments system envisaged at Bretton Woods. Our usage here is obviously quite different, broader in scope than the economic meaning of the term, and directed to the future development of both state system and global society. 11. The reader is referred here to the first book published in the MUNS pro• gramme, Yoshikazu Sakamoto (ed.), Global Transformation. Challenges to the State System (Tokyo: United Nations University Press, 1994). 12. Strange, States and Markets (London: Pinter, 1988); and John M. Stopford and Susan Strange, Rival States, Rival Firms, Competition for World Market Shares (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). 13. The concept of antisystemic movements is developed in , Terence K. Hopkins, and , Antisystemic Movements (London: Verso, 1989). Robert W. Cox xxix

14. See her edited book Gendered States. Feminist (Re)Visions of International Relations Theory (Boulder and London: Lynne Rienner, 1992). 15. See Rosenau, Turbulence in World Politics. A Theory of Change and Con• tinuity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990). His essay in the present book is drawn from this major work with more specific application to multilateralism. 16. The term Westphalian, after the European settlement consecrated in the Treaty of Westphalia of 1648, has been used by international relations scholars to refer to recognition of the exclusive sovereignty of states within their boundaries and an inter-state system in which sovereign states are the exclusive actors. On the stresses and strains affecting this concept see Mark W. Zacher, 'The decaying pillars of the Westphalian temple: Implications for international order and governance' in James N. Rosenau and Ernst-Otto Czempiel (eds), Governance Without Government: Order and Change in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). 17. There is evidence of anti-government virulence in various militias and millenarian cults in the United States whose existence became more widely known with the bombing of the federal government building in Oklahoma City in April 1995. Gary Wills, 'The new revolutionaries', The New York Review of Books, XLll (13) 10 August 1995. Another instance of extremist rejection of state authority is the millenarian Aum Shinriko cult in Japan whose leader predicted that the universe would come to an end in 1997. The cult's efforts to make this prophesy become self-fulfilling were revealed in terrorist acts in 1995. The cult has apparently attracted a number of highly educated Japanese, especially in scientific fields. 18. This phenomenon in Africa is analysed by Fantu Cheru in The Silent Revo• lution in Africa. Debt, Development and Democracy (London: Zed Books, 1989). See also Chapter 11 below. 19. Charles Taylor made a useful distinction between intersubjective meanings and common meanings. Intersubjective meanings define the world as real whether or not this reality is approved or disapproved. Common meanings are closer to ideology as providing a bond of solidarity or coherence among people sharing a common goal. Charles Taylor, 'Hermeneutics and Politics' in Paul Connerton (ed.), Critical Sociology (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978) pp. 153-93. 20. On globalisation, see James H. Mittelman (ed.),lntemational Political Eco• nomy Yearbook, volume 9 (Boulder, Colorado: Lynne Rienner, 1996). 21. Spengler's Der Untergang des Abendlandes appeared in July 1918. It ap• peared in English in two volumes as The Decline of the West (New York: Knopf, 1926 [vol. 1] and 1928 [vol. 2]). 22. The first three volumes of Toynbee's ten volume A Study of History were published in 1933. Two volumes by D.C. Somervell summarising the com• plete work were published in 1947 (London: Oxford University Press). 23. K.M. Pannikar,Asia and Western Dominance (New York: John Day, 1954). 24. Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1979). 25. I have in mind the work of Harold Innis in the years before his death. See Robert W. Cox, 'Civilizations: encounters and transformations', Studies in Political Economy 41, summer 1995. 26. Evidence of this revival is the debate in Foreign Affairs provoked by Samuel XXX Introduction

Huntington's article (summer 1993) 'The clash of civilizations?'. Hunting• ton's article and the debate that followed still bear the marks of the Cold War mentality. The article adapts Cold War dualism to the perception of a new enemy. The 'other' is now 'Islamic fundamentalism', or, even more threatening, the Islamic-Confucian nuclear bomb. By contrast, the approach taken in the Fiesole symposium seeks to understand civilisations from within, to explore encounters of civilisations, and to look for common ground among them. 27. See Martin Bernal, Black Athena. The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civil• ization, two volumes (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1987). 28. Susan Strange, 'The name of the game' in Nicholas X. Rizopoulos (ed.), Sea-changes: American foreign policy in a world transformed (New York: Council on Foreign Relations Press, 1990). 29. One flaw in Samuel Huntington's discussion of a clash of civilisations is in his attempt to define the 'fault lines' separating them. This suggests that civilisations are like states writ large and therefore appropriately subject to the analytical constructs of neorealism. 30. Here another problem of definition arises: how to distinguish civilisations from cultures. Spengler said culture was the initial creative phase and civil• isation the mature and more institutionalised phase of a single developmen• tal process. Others use 'culture' to refer to the mentalities and practices of relatively small groups of people, for example those studied by anthropolo• gists, or to segments of societies; for example, culture of poverty, whereas civilisation would apply to a larger or more powerful historical grouping. 31. Another symposium in the MUNS programme gave special attention to the socially polarising effects of globalisation. See Stephen Gill (ed.), Globaliza• tion, Democratization and Multilateralism (London: Macmillan and UNU Press, 1997). See also United Nations Research Institute for Social Devel• opment, States of Disarray. The Social Effects of Globalization (London: UNRISD, 1995).