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Chapter Seven: Hierarchy in a Globalized World
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This book has developed a theory of hierarchy and applied it to various political settings and theoretical issues in international politics. It has laid out a unifying theory for the study of political hierarchy across traditional subfields, used it to generate new explanations for certain empirical processes, and provided new explanations and insights into existing debates. This final chapter examines how the firm-type model might increase understanding of the contemporary international system and political trends in globalization, a phenomenon that has increasingly occupied the attention of social scientists with its bewildering array of issues, processes, and outcomes. Two theoretical trends have emerged in the study of globalization in the realm of international politics. The first explicitly has stressed the links between globalization and hierarchy. A broad array of theorists, including historical institutionalists, post-Marxists, Gramscians, political geographers, and critical theorists, have explored how various hierarchical processes and their ideologies underpin the development of contemporary global governance. Some scholars have revived the concept of hegemony to show how the United States exerts ideological dominance within global economic institutions such as the IMF, World Bank, and the World Trade Organization (WTO).1 Other theorists have concentrated on the normative underpinnings of the global economy . See Joseph Stiglitz, Globalization and Its Discontents (New York: W. W. Norton, ); and Robert Wade, “US Hegemony and the World Bank: The Fight over People and Ideas,” Review of International Political Economy (): –. and its propensity to create new divisions and flows of international labor.2 Still others have explicitly equated globalization with imperialism , arguing that the promotion of economic liberalization, globalization , and democracy by the United States is no different than imperial orders of the past.3 In perhaps the most widely acclaimed neo-Marxist account of globalization, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri claim that the present global system constitutes a deterritorialized system of “empire ” that operates under a “single logic of rule.”4 Finally, as a partial response to real-world events and the U.S. military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq, accusations of a new “global” imperialism have been leveled against the United States.5 Globalization also has spawned a new wave of constructivist scholarship that seeks to identify and explain a broad array of new nonstate actors, processes, and normative understandings that challenge the traditional nation-state system. Many scholars have focused on the growing role of international nongovernmental actors (NGOs) in the international system, their normative underpinnings, and their capacity to foster change in the practices of states.6 Constructivist scholars of international political economy have drawn attention to new nonstate actors in the global economy such as offshore tax havens and private credit rating agencies and their growing influence in regulating global economic activity.7 Global economic actors and processes, such as the new international division of labor, deterritorialized monetary arrangements, and international economic organizations, have all been critically examined from normative and ideational perspectives.8 In so doing, these new . James Mittelman, The Globalization Syndrome: Transformation and Resistance (Princeton: Princeton University Press, ). . See James Petras and Henry Veltmeyer, Globalization Unmasked: Imperialism in the st Century (New York: ZED, ); and Mark Laffey and Tarak Barkawi, “The Imperial Peace: Democracy, Force and Globalisation,” European Journal of International Relations (): –. . Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, ). . On the United States as a new empire, especially in the post–Cold War era, see Chalmers Johnson, The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy and the End of the Republic (New York: Metropolitan, ); and Andrew J. Bacevich, American Empire (Cambridge: Harvard University, ). Bacevich argues that both globalization and empire have been actively pursued by the United States through its unilateral policies. . Margaret Keck and Katherine Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, ). . See Ronen Palan, The Offshore World: Sovereign Markets, Virtual Places, and Nomad Millionaires (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, ); and Timothy Sinclair, “Passing Judgment: Credit Rating Processes as Regulatory Mechanisms of Governance in the Emerging World Order,” Review of International Political Economy (): –. . For a representative overview, see David Held et al., Global Transformations: Politics, Economics and Cultures (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, ). constructivist theories of globalization criticize prevailing rationalist, state-centric theories for failing to explain the political dynamics of these new global actors and processes.9 Much is at stake in the study of globalization. If, indeed, globalization includes elements of hierarchical governance, then the organizational theory developed in this book should be able to distinguish and apply the logics of the U-form and M-form on...
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