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Resolving Problems and Overcoming Contradictions through Global Law and Institutions: A Post-Deutschian Perspective
Abstract
Examining the gridlock and decline of global governance in the 2000s–2020s, I show its deeper political economy underpinnings. Apart from attempts to lock in particular institutional arrangements, the prevailing disintegrative tendencies co-explain the gridlock. However, I qualify some of the earlier claims concerning complexity, law, and institutions. For example, the achievement of some closure and thus regularity can be compatible with increased complexity. Nonetheless, closure can also reduce complexity, perhaps on purpose, as uncertainty may be undesirable and forms of complexity harmful. Moreover, the extent to which law and institutions are compatible with Deutschian security community co-depends on the constitution of agency. I analyse reflexive agency in terms of four overlapping and nested orders of purposes, three axes of self-other relations, and virtuous circle of non-violence.
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Climate emergency is fast becoming the overriding problem of our times and rapid reductions in carbon emissions a primary policy focus that is liable to affect all aspects of society and economy. A key component in climate science is the “climate sensitivity” measure and there has been a recent attempt using Bayesian updating to narrow this measure in the interests of “firming up the science”. We explore a two stage argument in this regard. First, despite good intentions, use of Bayes sits awkwardly with uncertainty in the form of known unknowns and surprise. Second, narrowing the range may have counterproductive consequences, since the problem is anthropogenic climate change, and there are asymmetric effects from under-response in the face of irreversible and ampliative effects. As such, narrowing the range using Bayes may inadvertently violate the precautionary principle. We take from this that there is a case to be made for scenario focused decision frameworks.
Can the rise of nationalist-authoritarian populism be explained in terms of neoliberalism and its effects? The frst half of this paper is about conceptual underlabouring: in spite of signifcant overlap, there are relatively clear demarcation criteria for identifying neoliberalism and nationalist-authoritarian populism as distinct entities. Neoliberalism has succeeded in transforming social contexts through agency, practices and institutions, with far-reaching efects. The prevailing economic and social policies have also had various causal efects such as rising inequalities, progressively more insecure terms of employment, and recurring economic crises. I argue that these have led to discontent with globalization and various political responses, including those of nationalist and authoritarian populisms. Finally, by juxtaposing constitutive and causal explanations, and by stressing the history of national-authoritarian populism, I raise questions about geo-historical specifcity of diferent formations. The standard Karl Polanyian interpretation of Trump, Brexit and such like phenomena is misleading, yet a partial historical analogy especially to the interwar era populism is valid if understood in a subtle, processual, and suffciently contextual way. The Polanyi-inspired historical analogy can be explored further. While the 19th and 20th century working class movement emerged from a variety of socio-economic conditions, socialists who believed in its world-historical role actively made it. Since the 1970s the working class has been largely unmade both as a result of impersonal processes and deliberate attempts to undermine it. Only a learning process towards qualitatively higher levels of refexivity can help develop global transformative agency for the 21st century.
While there is no consensus about the definition of complexity, it is widely accepted that the ability to produce uncertainty is the most prominent characteristic of complex systems. We introduce new metrics that purport to quantify the complexity of living organisms and social organizations based on their levels of uncertainty. We consider three major dimensions regarding complexity: diversity based on the number of system elements and the number of categories of these elements; flexibility which bears upon variations in the elements; and combinability which refers to the patterns of connection between elements. These three dimensions are quantified using Shannon's uncertainty formula, and they can be integrated to provide a tripartite complexity index. We provide a calculation example that illustrates the use of these indices for comparing the complexity of different social systems. These indices distinguish themselves by a theoretical basis grounded on the amount of uncertainty, and the requirement that several aspects of the systems be accounted for to compare their degree of complexity. We expect that these new complexity indices will encourage research programmes aiming to compare the complexity levels of systems belonging to different realms.
The question I raise is whether the basic features of mind, social categories, and society are unchanging or changing. Some understandings of ontology would seem to suggest that social ontology is a branch of metaphysics. However, as the history of concepts such as metaphysical and ontology indicate, our concepts and knowledge are historical. It is widely held that society is concept‐ and activity‐dependent. I examine critically two strands of social ontology in terms of their answers to this problematic: (1) John Searle’s theory of the construction of social reality and (2) critical realist theory of mind and society as interlaced emergent layers of reality. Apart from emergence in natural systems, there is also emergence beyond nature as consciousness, agency and society cannot be completely explained in terms of biological realities; but how and when did this emergence occur? We need an account of the emergent order of language, reflectively conscious mind, and institutions not only for its own sake, but also because the process whereby new objects and properties emerge may be on‐going, path‐dependent, diverse, and open‐ended. The main argument is that the object of study of social theorists is geo‐historically specific, liable to diversity within any given world‐historical epoch, and open to further changes and new forms of emergence in the future.
Whether we talk about human learning and unlearning, securitization, or political economy, the forces and mechanisms generating both globalization and disintegration are causally efficacious across the world. Thus, the processes that led to the victory of the ‘Leave’ campaign in the June 2016 referendum on UK European Union membership are not simply confined to the United Kingdom, or even Europe. Similarly, conflict in Ukraine and the presidency of Donald Trump hold implications for a stage much wider than EU-Russia or the United States alone.
Patomäki explores the world-historical mechanisms and processes that have created the conditions for the world’s current predicaments and, arguably, involve potential for better futures. Operationally, he relies on the philosophy of dialectical critical realism and on the methods of contemporary social sciences, exploring how crises, learning and politics are interwoven through uneven wealth-accumulation and problematical growth-dynamics. Seeking to illuminate the causes of the currently prevailing tendencies towards disintegration, antagonism and – ultimately – war, he also shows how these developments are in fact embedded in deeper processes of human learning. The book embraces a Wellsian warning about the increasingly likely possibility of a military disaster, but its central objective is to further enlightenment and holoreflexivity within the current world-historical conjuncture.
Table of Contents
1.Introduction: the world falling apart
2.Brexit and the causes of European disintegration
3.EU, Russia and the conflict in Ukraine
4.Trumponomics and the dynamics of global disintegration
5.Piketty’s fundamental inequality r > g: the key to understanding and overcoming the causes of disintegration
6.Conclusion: holoreflexivity and the shape of things to come
The world economic order has been upended by the rise of the BRICS nations and the attendant decline of the United States' international influence. In Breaking the WTO, Kristen Hopewell provides a groundbreaking analysis of how these power shifts have played out in one of the most important theaters of global governance: the World Trade Organization. Hopewell argues that the collapse of the Doha Round negotiations signals a crisis in the American-led project of neoliberal globalization. The U.S. has historically pressured other countries to open their markets, while maintaining its own protectionist policies. Over the course of the Doha negotiations, however, China, India, and Brazil challenged American hypocrisy in the realm of trade. They did so not because they rejected the multilateral trading system, but because they embraced neoliberal rhetoric and sought to lay claim to its benefits. By demanding that members of the WTO live up to the principles of "free trade," these developing states caused the negotiations to collapse under their own contradictions. Breaking the WTO probes the tensions between the WTO's liberal principles and the underlying reality of power politics, exploring what the Doha conflict tells us about the current and coming balance of power in the global economy.
Globalization as a coming-together of humanity requires an open-ended dialogue about philosophical and religious fundamentals. Have the Western philosophers who have turned to the East worked out any useful conceptual resources? I assess Roy Bhaskar's Eastern turn in the light of earlier attempts by Friedrich Nietzsche, Jacques Derrida and Johan Galtung. Nietzsche suggested an interestingly ambiguous global identity, but remained trapped within the positivist problematic. Among Derrida's contributions are karma as radical interconnectedness and 'democracy-to-come', which recognizes the aporia of global being. However, limits are set by his tendentially disempowering meta-theory and preoccupation with an abstract notion of violence. Galtung has actually studied Eastern systems and, in some respects, goes beyond Derrida with his conceptions of positive peace and global democracy, but also lacks realist causal analysis, which has tended to detach his blueprints from reality and made them excessively normative. Although Bhaskar has failed to take on board many of these lessons, he has also moved the discussion a small step forward by proposing novel conceptions of dialectical logic and theology. Moreover, critical realist emancipation is needed to tackle the political economy underpinnings of a genuine, post-colonial global dialogue.
The current era of neo-liberal globalisation is in some important ways similar to the era of new imperialism from the early 1870s to 1914. In The Political Economy of Global Security (Patomäki, 2008), I suggest that we can learn from the study of the causes of the late nineteenth-century neoimperial competition that led to the Great War — an outcome that was not necessary but possible and likely. However, as history does not repeat itself, only limited aspects of historical processes may prove sufficiently similar to provide insights into future possibilities. The point is not to look for exactly similar episodes or sequences, but for comparable structural liabilities and tendencies that may yield in some ways analogical outcomes, albeit in a non-deterministic way. Moreover, what is needed is a causal analysis of the existing structures and ongoing processes, on which scenarios of possible futures can be built.
Both positivists and post-positivists have misunderstood causation. By explaining why there are no stable and uncontested empirical invariances in IR, critical realism (CR) has pushed theoreticians and practitioners to reflect critically upon the conception of causation they have so far taken for granted. However, the original CR claim about radical asymmetry between explanation and prediction has turned out to be misleading. Not everything is irregular. Policy and action are future-oriented and require at least some predictive capacities. In this paper, I explore ways in which practically adequate knowledge can draw on historical analogies, social organisation of time and space, contrastive demi-regularities and explanatory theories and models. Anticipations of future possibilities — that may concern even the global system as a whole — must be made systematically revisable and be reflexively aware of their own involvement in shaping the course of history. The concept of probability, too, can and must be rethought from this perspective. Finally, I argue that the notion of reflexive self-regulation of social systems has interesting parallels in the theory of history, ethics and politics of dialectical CR, understood as a theory of freedom.
Despite declaring the ASEAN Community to come into effect on 31 December 2015, ASEAN is not a security community. This article
demonstrates this by firstly identifying three models of the security community, the Deutschian, the constructivist, and the
instrumental models and subsequently applying these to ASEAN. Although the paradox of the ‘long peace’ of ASEAN seems to be
validated by the latter, such is mistaking effect for cause. Through a process of critique, the shortfalls of the models are
highlighted and consequently addressed through conjoining Critical Security Studies to the ‘security community’ concept in
a Model IV critical security community formulation to achieve a holistic and comprehensive concept relevant to the world today.
Employing this to assess ASEAN, the puzzle of whether ASEAN is a security community is laid to rest; its security is not truly
comprehensive, its people are not emancipated, and its various domestic and transnational instabilities affect it adversely.
First I make a case for the possibility of defining neoliberalism in a sufficiently evident and coherent way as a programme of resolving problems of, and developing, human society by means of competitive markets. Second, I argue that the more narrow, technical and short-term one's definition of Keynesianism is, the more plausible the claim about a new era of Keynesianism may seem. A multidimensional comparison between ideal-typical models of social democracy and neoliberalism shows, however, that the ongoing global economic crisis has so far prompted responses that are leaving neoliberalisation intact in most dimensions and may even elicit further neoliberalisation. I conclude by discussing the limits of thinking about ideologies in territorial-statist terms. The current era may well be replaced by an era of green global Keynesianism; but a full-scale return to mere national social democracy is unlikely, especially given the discrepancy between the reaches of territorial states and private capital operating in competitive, liberalised world markets.
As Harle shows, identity politics are nothing new. Post-Cold War ethnic conflicts and genocides are mere examples in a tradition where political conflicts are seen as struggles between good and evil. This tradition extends from ancient Iranian Zoroastrianism and classical Greek political theory up to present day American, Russian, and European politics.
Harle examines how conflicts between us and them are oftenrepresentedas the struggle between the representatives of good and representatives of evil. The origin of this tradition—the struggle between good and evil—is found in ancient Iranian Zoroastrianism, soon adopted by Judaism, Christianity, and finally, Islam.
The political doctrine was born in ancient Greece, where power struggles between the Greek city states, especially Athens and Sparta, were represented by Athenians as the struggle between democracy and tyranny. In the Middle Ages the tradition was applied to, for example, Antichrists, rival faiths, witches, Jews, Russians, and Muslims. In the modern world, examples of the tradition in American and Russian political cultures and politics, as well as Carl Schmitt's distinction between friend and enemy and its international implications, especially the EU, are examined. Finally, identity politics in Finland, Karelia, and Lapland are presented as a problem of the definition of Europe. Harle claims that phenomena like ethnic conflicts, political extremism, neo-Nazism, and anti-Semitism are nothing new and are not independent of one another; instead, as Harle shows, they are examples in a long chain of tradition and interconnected through that tradition. A provocative analysis for scholars and researchers in international relations, political history, and the history of ideas.
Fundamentalism: A Very Short Introduction investigates its historical, social, religious, political, and ideological roots, and tackles the polemic and stereotypes surrounding this complex phenomenon — one that eludes simple definition, yet urgently needs to be understood. Since it was coined by American Protestant evangelicals in the 1920s, the use of the term ‘fundamentalist’ has expanded to include a diverse range of radical conservatives and ideological purists, not all religious. Fundamentalism could now mean both militant Israeli settlers as well as the Islamist radicals who oppose them, it can mean Christians, Hindus, animal liberationists, and even Buddhist nationalists.
This book provides a distinctive and rich conception of methodology within international studies. From a rereading of the works of leading Western thinkers about international studies, Hayward Alker rediscovers a 'neo-Classical' conception of international relations which is both humanistic and scientific. He draws on the work of classical authors such as Aristotle and Thucydides; modern writers like Machiavelli, Vico, Marx, Weber, Deutsch and Bull; and post-modern writers like Havel, Connolly and Toulmin. The central challenge addressed is how to integrate 'positivist' or 'falsificationist' research styles within humanistic or interpretive ones. The author argues that appropriate, philosophically informed reformulations of conventional statistical and game-theoretic analyses are possible, and describes a number of humanistic methodologies for international relations, including argumentation analysis, narrative modeling, computational models of political understanding and reconstructive analysis.
Cambridge Core - International Trade Law - Global Business Regulation - by John Braithwaite
Dark Skies is the first work to assess the full impacts of space expansion, past, present, and future. Thinking about space, and the visions fervently promoted by the global space movement, is dominated by geographic misperceptions and utopian illusions. The parts of space where almost all activity has occurred are part of the planet Earth, its astrosphere, and, in practical terms, are smaller than the atmosphere. Contrary to frontier visions, orbital space is already congested and degraded with dangerous space debris. The largest impact of actual space activities is an increased likelihood of catastrophic nuclear war stemming from the use of orbital space and space technology to lob nuclear weapons at intercontinental distances. Building large-scale orbital infrastructures will probably require or produce world government. The ultimate goal of space advocates, the colonization of Mars and asteroids, is promoted to guarantee the survival of humanity if major catastrophes strike Earth. But the spread of humanity into a multiplanet species will likely produce an interstate anarchy highly prone to total war, with Earth having many disadvantages. Altering the orbits of asteroids, a readily achievable technology vital for space colonization, also makes possible “planetoid bombs” with destructive potentials millions of times greater than all nuclear weapons. The biological diversification of humanity into multiple species, anticipated by space advocates, will further stoke interworld wars. Astrocide—the extinction of humanity resulting from significant space expansion—must join the lengthening list of potential threats to human survival. Large-scale space expansion should be relinquished in favor of an Earth-oriented space program of arms control and planetary security.
In response to an article by Steve Fleetwood on the critical realist conception of open and closed system, this paper argues that we should differentiate non-closed systems according to their degree of openness or closure, rather than applying a dichotomy between closed and open system. Societies should be conceptualized in terms of partly closed (or partly open) systems, in addition to any fully open systems that might exist in the social world. The paper furthermore argues that demi-regularities represent probability distributions existing in the real world, as distinct from occurring merely in some epistemic domain. Such partial regularities at one level of the stratified reality are necessary for the emergence of new structures at a higher stratum, for example, the social structures of a given society. Finally, implications for social science research of accepting vs. rejecting the existence of probabilities and partly closed systems in the social world are discussed.
Habermas outlines three aspects of advanced capitalist societies: the economic system, the administrative system, and the legitimation system. The economic system consists of the market-regulated systems of production and consumption within the private sector and the support of military and space-travel in the public sector. The administrative system consists primarily of the state apparatus as it regulates the economic and social order. Finally, the legitimation system becomes necessary to support the other two stystems when their logical support is no longer self-evident. When flaws in the political system are revealed, advanced capitalism must contend with what Habermas calls a "legitimation crisis," in which the legitimizing system does not succeed in keeping an acceptible amount of loyalty from the populace.
This seventh edition of an investment classic has been thoroughly revised and expanded following the latest crises to hit international markets. Renowned economist Robert Z. Aliber introduces the concept that global financial crises in recent years are not independent events, but symptomatic of an inherent instability in the international system. © Charles P. Kindleberger and Robert Z. Aliber 2005, 2011, 2015 and Charles P. Kindleberger 1978, 1989, 1996, 2000 Foreword and Robert M. Solow 2015 Afterword and Robert Skidelsky 2015.
This book offers an accessible introduction to post-Keynesian economics, showing that there is an alternative to neoclassical economics and its free-market economic policies. Post-Keynesian economics is founded on realistic assumptions, such as interest targeting by central banks or constant average variable costs in manufacturing and services.
The current international payments system does not serve the emerging global economy well. The Financial Times and The Economist, both previously strong advocates of the existing floating rate system, have acknowledged that the system is a failure and was sold to the public and the politicians under false advertising claims.1 Can we not do better?
Dialectic: The Pulse of Freedom is now widely regarded as a classic of contemporary philosophy. This book, first published in 1993, sets itself three main aims: the development of a general theory of dialectic, of which Hegelian dialectic can be seen to be a special case; the dialectical enrichment and deepening of critical realism, viz. into the system of dialectical critical realism; and the outline of the elements of a totalizing critique of Western philosophy. The first chapter clarifies the rational core of Hegelian dialectic. Chapter 2 then proceeds to develop a general theory of dialectic. Isolating the fallacy of "ontological monovalence", i.e. a purely positive account of being, Roy Bhaskar then shows how absence and other negating concepts such as contradiction have a legitimate and necessary ontological employment. He then goes on to give a synoptic account of key dialectical concepts such as the concrete universal; to sketch the further dialectical development of critical naturalism through an account of what he calls four-planar social being; and following consideration of the dialectical critique of analytical reason, he moves on to the real definition of dialectic as absenting absence and in the human sphere, the axiology of freedom. Chapter 3 extends and deepens critical realism's characteristic concerns with ontology, science, social science and emancipation not only into the realms of negativity and totality, but also into the fields of reference and truth, spatio-temporality, tense and process, the logic of dialectical universalizability and on to the plane of ethics, where it articulates a combination of moral realism and ethical naturalism, whereby consideration of elemental desire involves commitment to the eudaimonistic society. This is then followed-in Chapter 4-by a sublime discussion of key moments in the trajectory of Western philosophy, the tradition of which can now be seen to be based on what the author calls the unholy trinity of the epistemic fallacy or the reduction of being to knowledge, primal squeeze or the collapse of structure and alethic truth, and ontological monovalence.
Is God a Delusion? addresses the philosophical underpinnings of the recent proliferation of popular books attacking religious beliefs. Winner of CHOICE 2009 Outstanding Academic Title Award Focuses primarily on charges leveled by recent critics that belief in God is irrational and that its nature ferments violence Balances philosophical rigor and scholarly care with an engaging, accessible style Offers a direct response to the crop of recent anti-religion bestsellers currently generating considerable public discussion.
From Science to Emancipation: Alienation and the Actuality of Enlightenment is the second of three books elaborating Roy Bhaskar's new philosophy of metaReality, which appeared in rapid succession in 2002.
What are the possibilities for and conditions of global security in the 21st century? This book provides an innovative study of future wars, crises and transformations of the global political economy. It brings together economic theory, political economy, peace and conflict research, philosophy and historical analogy to explore alternatives for the future. Patomäki develops a bold, original and thought provoking political economy analysis of the late 20th century neo-liberalisation and globalisation and their real effects, which he describes as a 21st century version imperialism. In order for us to understand global security and to anticipate the potential threats and crises, he argues that a holistic understanding and explanation of history is necessary and demonstrates that a systematic causal analysis of structures and processes is required. Putting this theory into practice, Patomäki constructs a comparative explanatory model which traces the rise of imperialism in the late 19th century and culminated in the First World War. He argues that even a partial return to the 19th century ideals and practices is very likely to be highly counterproductive in the 21st century world and could become a recipe for a major global catastrophe. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of international relations, globalization studies, politics, economics and security studies.
