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From Monthly Review - October 1998
"The State in a Changing World":
Social-Democratizing Global Capitalism?
By Leo Panitch
There are two central developments that define our era. One of these is the
historic failure of the socialist project of the mass working-class parties,
both Communist and Social Democratic. The other is, of course, what has commonly
come to be known as the "globalization" of capitalism. These two developments
are certainly related to one another, but they cannot be reduced to one another.
Each also has its own specific dynamics which need to be analysed
separately.
The failure of communism was not only due to the strength of global
capitalism. It was also due to the Communist Parties and regimes lack of
understanding that democratic rights alone provide socialism with the political
air it needs to breathe. Under a dictatorship, without multiple parties, freedom
of the press, speech, and association, workers could never learn how to become a
ruling class, as Rosa Luxemburg chastised Lenin immediately after his
dissolution of the constituent assembly. In the absence of political freedom
there is no way to generate the "thousand solutions" that need to be discovered
in face of the "thousand problems" that revolutionary change inevitably
entails.
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K. Dervis, 1997:
Global markets and the state: new challenges
for a new century
Moreover, in line with the caveat I just entered about the problematic aspects of
globalization, could some of the economic forces and social pressures it has unleashed adversely
affect the process of global economic integration, despite today’s confident forecasts? For
example, can globalization and open markets survive the extreme volatility that seems periodically
to grip capital markets? Events in Mexico and the “Tequila Crisis” they sparked elsewhere in
Latin America barely three years ago, and the recent financial crisis in Asia, show countries and
groups of countries attracting tens of billions of foreign capital in one year and losing equal
amounts the next--with the turnaround apparently occurring in a matter of days if not hours. What
does this imply about the role of the state in modern economies? And are there special social
challenges associated with globalization? What are the consequences for social cohesion (and
hence for the continuing assent of the governed to the policies of economic openness espoused by
increasing numbers of governments worldwide) of apparently rising inequality in some countries
and unemployment in others? And will governments continue to be able to provide core services
to their peoples if international mobility, especially of capital, undermines parts of the tax base on
which they have relied?
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Thandika
Mkandawire, 1998:
Thinking About Developmental States in Africa
One remarkable feature of the discourse on the state and development in Africa
is the disjuncture between an analytical tradition that insists on the
impossibility of developmental states in Africa and a prescriptive literature
that presupposes their existence. States whose capacity to pursue any national
project is denied at one level (theoretical or diagnostic) are exhorted, at the
prescriptive level, to assume roles that are, ex definicione, beyond
their capacity or political will. Such states are urged to "delink", to reduce
themselves, to stabilize the economy, to privatize the economy, to engage in
"good governance", to democratize themselves and society, to create an "enabling
environment" for the private sector, etc. In other words, to do what they cannot
do. What we then have is, to paraphrase Gramci, the pessimism of the diagnosis
and the optimism of the prescription. Obviously such a contradictory position is
unsatisfactory.
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Mark Beeson
- 2004
The rise and fall (?) of the developmental state: the
vicissitudes and implications of East Asian interventionism
In the aftermath of the Second World War a number of features of the evolving
international order were especially striking. Most obviously, the world divided into
two implacably opposed ideologically and militarily opposed camps – a structurally
entrenched bifurcation that was to distinguish post-war international relations for
more than four decades.
At the same time, an equally surprising and – arguably –
important, but altogether more positive development occurred: much of East Asia
began to rapidly industrialise and witnessed a concomitant and seemingly permanent
rise in living standards across the region as a consequence. East Asia’s transformation
was surprising because even as late as the 1960s and 1970s, influential strands of
radical scholarship continued to question whether the ‘peripheral’ parts of an
increasingly inter-connected global economy could ever hope to escape the predations
and exploitation of the established industrial heartlands of Western Europe and North
America. And yet the fact that Japan had rapidly re-established itself as East Asia’s
pre-eminent industrial economy appeared to be unequivocal evidence that, not only
was rapid economic development possible outside the established ‘core’ economies,
but that such a processes might ultimately take on a regional and self-sustaining
quality.
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| T. O. Adeboye: Governance and Economic Development: The role of the State in the
industrial development of Sub-Saharan Africa |
A. K. Bagchi- 2000
The past and future of the developmental state
The concept of the developmental state and its
transformations through history.
Like most human institutions—the family, the village, the city, the state,
customs, laws, the nation—the developmental state was born long
before anybody thought of naming it. There are debates about when it was
born, whether all developmental states (as they are usually characterized)
are properly labeled, and whether there have been developmental states
overlooked literature. In this paper, it will be claimed, inter alia, that indeed
there were developmental states long before economists, political scientists
or historians recognized them as such, and that not all developmental states,
as conventionally labeled, have been true members of the select club of
developmental states.
First, let us see what a developmental state (DS) means in the era of the
global spread of capitalism. It is a state that puts economic development as
the top priority of governmental policy and is able to design effective instruments
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| L. Boer: Feature Review: The State
in a Changing World |
World Development Report 1997
The State in a Changing World
(Summary)
Around the globe, the state is in the spotlight. Far-reaching developments in
the global economy have us revisiting basic questions about government: what its
role should be, what it can and cannot do, and how best to do it.
The last fifty years have shown clearly both the benefits and the limitations
of state action, especially in the promotion of development. Governments have
helped to deliver substantial improvements in education and health and
reductions in social inequality. But government actions have also led to some
very poor outcomes. And even where governments have done a good job in the past,
many worry that they will not be able to adapt to the demands of a globalizing
world economy.
The new worries and questions about the state's role are many and various,
but four recent developments have given them particular impetus:...
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G. M.
Carew - 1995
Development theory and the
promise of democracy in Africa
My objective in this essay is twofold: first, I will attempt to assess
two major hurdles to the transition to democracy. I argue that the
first experiment with democratic regimes in postcolonial Africa was
derailed by two false moves:
a) the presumption of nationhood in
devising a postcolonial political order;
b) the adoption of a flawed
and inadequate theoretical framework for interpreting political
processes in Africa. Second, I argue that the removal of these
obstacles to democratic governance imposes one further conditionality:
the need to reconceptualize democratic criteria in a bid to render it
relevant to culturally plural and ethnically diverse societies.
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Y. Bangura - UNRISD - 1991
Authoritarian Rule and
Democracy in Africa: A Theoretical Discourse,
The last few years have been marked by
intense struggles for democratic reform in several African countries and the
1990s are likely to be the decade for transition to democracy in a growing
number of African countries. In this highly topical study, Yusuf Bangura tackles
the profoundly important and complex questions of the foundations and
determinants of authoritarianism and democracy in Africa. The paper addresses
itself to such questions as: How does one explain the persistence of
authoritarian and military rules in a large number of African countries? What
are the key processes involved in the transition from authoritarian and military
régimes to civilian and democratic ones? What are the structural pre-conditions
for sustenance of democratic systems in African countries? What are the
implications of economic crisis and structural adjustment for the prospects of
democracy in the continent?
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Róbinson Rojas - 1997
Notes on the centrality
of the African state
Two contradictory features have marked the development of the African
state after decolonization: extreme political fragility and extreme
consistency in serving the interests of international capital. In both
cases, a common structure: a gap, a lack of connection, between African
civil society and African state. The African state mainly as a dynamic
part of the structure of dependency, and governments as the foreman to
keep civil society producing a surplus to be accumulated by foreign
and native social elites which enjoy almost absolutist power.
How external forces extract surplus from dependent economies in Asia,
Africa and Latin America, is well documented. How internal forces
extract surplus in dependent economies is less documented. Sometimes,
impressionistic snapshots are useful. J. Bayart, in "The Sate in
Africa", Longman, 1993, writes:...
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A.Okolo - 1983
Dependency in Africa: stages of African political economy
(This work, first presented at a conference on "The Future of
Africa" organized by the University of Ife, in Nigeria, and then
published in ALTERNATIVES, Vol. IX, No. 2, 1983, provides the
researcher with a well reasoned reading of the political economy of
African development/lack of development, which should be considered
by the so-called 'experts in development studies' serving the interests
of the international capital. I reproduce and annotate here some excerpts
of this major work on the African political economy. Róbinson Rojas)
The history of Africa is a history of domination by the Western
political economy, which created and now dominates and operates the
modern world system.
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ECLA - 1975
The political context and the role of the State
The gap between the prevailing real styles of development and the value-
oriented images of what development should provide have accentuated two
political contradictions that have long been present in the region:
(a) The contradiction between the imposing roles assigned to the State
as defender of national sovereignty,
definer of the national purpose,
arbiter between interest-groups and
dispenser of services,
and the frequently
deficient policy-making,
planning,
administrative and financial
capacities of the State;
(b) The contradiction between
political forms
emphasizing equal rights and democratic procedures, and
the very uneven distribution of opportunities
for political participation.
In most Latin American countries, reliance on the State to "solve
problems" of whatever nature is more widely diffused throughout the
population than in most other parts of the third world, and is much more
pronounced than it was at the earlier stages of development of the
countries which are now industrialized.
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| Migration of peoples,
disintegration of states (Africa 1999) |
M. Van Creveld - 1996
The fate of the
state
In this article the state of the state will be discussed under five headings.
Part I looks at the state's declining ability to fight other states. Part II
outlines the rise and fall of the welfare state. Part III examines the effects
of modern technology, economics, and the media. Part IV focuses on the state's
ability to maintain public order. Finally, Part V is an attempt to tie all the
threads together and to see where we are headed.
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P. H. Baker/J. A.
Ausink:
State
collapse and ethnic violence: toward a predictive model |
| S. Saumon: From state capitalism to neo-liberalism in Algeria: the case of a
failing state |
| S. Saumon: External domination via domestic states: the case of Francophone Africa |
| S. Saumon: French
neo-colonialism in Francophone Africa? The role of the state in processes of foreign
domination |
| V. A. Schmidt: The New World Order, Incorporated:
the rise of business and the decline of the nation state |
| V. L. Uchidelle: Globalization has not severed
corporations' national links |
| R. Lubbers/J.
Koorevar: Nation state
and democracy in the globalized world (1998) |
E. J. Arnold, Jr.: The use of military
power in pursuit on national interests (1994. U.S.A)
In remarking that "war is merely the continuation of
policy by other means," Clausewitz unambiguously defined the conduct of war--the
use of military force--as a means for a state to achieve policy and not an end
in itself.[1] He implied, but did not state, that other means must also exist.
These other means as well as the use of military force emanate from the four
elements of national power: military, economic, political, and social. What
Clausewitz did not discuss in his treatise On War were the circumstances
under which war becomes the correct means with which to pursue policy--the
imposition or dominance of one state's national interests over those of another
state. He never answered the question: When is it proper to use military force
in the pursuit of national interests? |
G. Arrighi, Globalization, State Sovereignty, and the 'Endless' Accumulation of
Capital (1997)
I shall begin by arguing that much of what goes under the catch-word
"globalization" has in fact been a recurrent tendency of world capitalism since
early-modern times. This recurrence makes the dynamics and likely outcome(s) of
present transformations more predictable than they would be if globalization
were as novel a phenomenon as many observers think. I shall then shift my focus
on the evolutionary pattern that has enabled world capitalism and the underlying
system of sovereign states to become, as Immanuel Wallerstein (1997) puts it,
"the first historical system to include the entire globe within its geography." |
Foreign Policy IN FOCUS
Trade
Military
Drug Control
Labor
Human Rights
Environment
U.S. Agencies
Financial Flows
Food and Farm
Global
Governance
Women |
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The State, the community and society in social development
by Fernando Henrique Cardoso, President of
Brazil
(Translation of the revised text of President Cardoso's address at the
First Regional Follow-up Conference on the World Social Development Summit
Meeting (Sao Paulo, 6-9 PRIL 1997))
"The World Summit for Social Development, held in Copenhagen on
11 and 12 March 1995, brought up once more the ideals which gave rise to the
United Nations at the San Francisco Conference and which have since been
reasserted in many forums of the Organization. The maintenance of peace and
security, although an irreplaceable element in the peaceful coexistence of
nations, was not the only objective of that Conference, however: it also sought
to lay the foundations for a form of coexistence which would make possible more
harmonious development. The United Nations Charter which emerged from that
meeting was the clear expression of a humanistic spirit and of the quest for
democratic ideals and values which made human beings the centre of governments’
concern."
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G. Schopflin, 1997:
Civil Society, Ethnicity and the State: a threefold
relationship
Traditionally civil society is conceptualised as a necessary condition of
democracy. Indeed, some arguments come close to seeing civil society and
citizenship as the sole defining condition of democracy. The proposition to be
argued here is that the problem is, in fact, much more complex and that civil
society is only one component of democracy, though a vital one.
In brief, the argument to be put forward here is that democracy is
composed of three key, interdependent elements - civil society, the state and
ethnicity. These three are in a continuous, interactive relationship. They have
different functions and roles, create different, at times overlapping, at times
contradictory attitudes and aspirations and through their continuous
interaction, all three are reshaped and reformulated dynamically. Hence civil
society is not a static entity, a state of affairs that has been reached and is
then established for good, but is fluid, shifting, conflictual, responsive to
changes in politics and vulnerable to hostile pressures. |
International Monetary Fund
Economic Forum 2001:
Governing global finance: the
role of civil society
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UNRISD:
Globalization and civil society: NGO influence in international
decision-making |
UNRISD:
Greening and the grassroots: people's participation in sustainable
development |
UNRISD:
Copenhaguen Plus Five. Follow-up to the social summit |
UNRISD:
Trade-related employment for women in industry and services in developing
countries |
IFAD, 1995:
Civil
society: development from the roots up |
C. P. Oman, 2001:
Corporate Governance and
National Development
The case studies identified key forces resisting moves to improve corporate governance,
including vested interest goups, and those that can be mobilised to work for improvements such
as the rise of institutional investors. Two of their titles, “Private Vices in Public Places” and “The
Tide Rises, Gradually”, convey the tenor of the studies and also of this paper. They are listed in
the references and available on our website. In the paper they are quoted by the name of the
country.
It was after the Development Centre’s Washington Conference on Corruption, coinciding
with the signing of the OECD Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in
International Business Transactions, in February 1999, that we began to look at corporate
governance from a developmental perspective. This was a natural sequel to the Washington
Conference, which had shown the important role of the private sector in the quest for more
transparency and the fight against corruption. Its final report was issued in October 2000 on the
occasion of an Anti–Corruption Summit organised in Washington among others by USAID and
the World Bank. |
The Commission on
Global Governance:
The millenium year and the
reform process |
PARAMETERS
(US Army
War College Quarterly) |
ECLAC:
Changing production patterns
with social equity
*Introduction. By the Executive Secretary of ECLAC
(1997)
*Changing Production Patterns with Social Equity (1990)
*Policies to Improve linkages with the global economy (1995)
*Population, Social Equity and Changing Production Patterns
(1995)
*The Equity Gap: Latin America, the Caribbean and the Social Summit (1996)
*Sustainable Development: Changing Production Patterns, Social Equity and the Environment (1991)
*Social Equity and Changing Production Patterns: An Integrated
Approach (1992) |
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