International Relations Theory and Approaches for the caribbean

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

OF THE CARIBBEAN

International Relations Theory and Approaches in the

Caribbean

Dr. Jacqueline LAGUARDIA MARTINEZ

http://cmuscm.blogspot.com/2014/01/creating-value-through-modularity.html

http://www.adweek.com/socialtimes/infographic-the-global-iphone-supply-chain/196826

www.forestsclimatechange.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/From-Forest-to-Food-A-Supply-Chain-Hypothesis.jpg

https://operationsroom.wordpress.com/category/apparel/

https://operationsroom.wordpress.com/category/apparel/

What basic unit of analysis to use?

Nation-State Transnationalization

?

What theory approach to adopt?

Globalization Internationalization

?

Two different interpretations of how the international economy has changed

• Internationalization refers to an increased exchange of goods, services and capital.

• Globalization refers to a change in the division of labor that erases distinctions between national economies

Why Globalization?

• Social structure is becoming transnational, more than merely an interstate system (Ej: world trade is basically intrafirm trade; global production chains shows that the productive activity that takes place in a specific nation is not a “national” activity; emergence of supranational institutions as the G-7 Forum, the UN, the OECD; the WTO,…)

• Epistemological shift is required for this ontological change

• Emergent transnational studies

Globalization• It questions the nation-state centered analysis.• It denotes a transition from the linkage of national

societies predicated on a WORLD ECONOMY to an emergent transnational or global society predicated on a GLOBAL ECONOMY.

• The accumulation of capital, trade and investment are no longer confined to the nation-state.

• Its central tendency is usually located at:

1. The ascendance of transnational capital (transnational capitalist class, transnational practices)

2. TICS

3. Global culture

Globalization: Definitions• New global historical configuration of post-Fordism, an emergent

cultural logic of capitalism (Harvey et al.)

• It involves capitalist markets and sets of social relations and flows of commodities, capital, technology, ideas, forms of culture, and people across national boundaries via a global networked society (Castells)

• The emergence of a new transnational ruling elite and the universalization of consumerism (Sklair)

• Clash of civilizations (Huntington)

• Discourse to legitimize the strategies of imperialist capital (Amin)

• Globalization theory serves as an ideological rationalization for class inequalities and obscures present world reality (Petras)

• It is a cover concept for global capitalism and imperialism

• It is the continuation of modernization and a force of progress

Globalization: Definitions (Robinson)• Two interwoven process

1. Spread of capitalism production around the world and its displacement of al pre capitalist relations

2. Transition from the linkage of nations via commodity exchange and capital flows in an integrated international market to the globalization of the process of production itself.

• The essence is GLOBAL CAPITALISM, which has surpassed the nation-state stage of capitalism (capitalism is the first form of society to spread globally and to incorporate all societies into a world system).

• Under Globalization the capitalist system is breaking down all precapitalist residues and integrating the various polities, cultures and institutions of national societies into an emergent transnational or global society.

Globalization norms (Robinson)• Economic norm: Neoliberalism (elimination of state

intervention in the economy; regulation over the activity of transnational capital; macroeconomics adjustments that harmonize fiscal, monetary and industrial policies as requisite for the activity of transnational capital).

• Political norm: Global management (extension of the Western democracy model and supranational institutions).

• Cultural norm: Individualism and consumerism (mass communication and advertising).

Types of globalization

• Technological

• Economic

• Cultural

• Discoursive

Material or ideational reality?

?

Consequences?

Positive Negative

?

Globalization: Consequences• It provides the material basis for the emergency of a singular global

society (global culture).• It could mean the integration of all national markets into a single

international market.

• It generates fresh economic opportunities, political democratization and cultural diversity.

• It promotes the “peripheralization” of labor in advanced capitalist countries (part-time, temporal, subcontracting, ...)

• It promotes relocation of transnational capital and the use of cheap labor (immigrant, female, children labor).

• It promotes cultural homogenization, increases destruction of natural species and the environment, and undermines democracy.

• It promotes the depoliticization of publics and citizens.

• It does not imply an absence of global conflict, but rather a shift from interstate to more explicit social and class conflict.

A new culture: the culture of resistance

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TtZXwHbJTs

What theory approach to adopt?

Other theoretical

visions

IR traditional paradigms

?

IR theoretical frameworks1. Realism

2. Liberalism

3. Constructivism

4. Institutionalism, marxism, neogramscianism,…

Modern state system as the key political institution (hegemony, power, use of force come from nation-states, rational actor able to promote cooperation) in a competitive state system.

Globalization is seen as some new stage in inter or cross national relations as the interaction among nation-states.

How globalization modifies the dynamics of the nation-state

system?

The emergence of a world economic system is agreed, but the possibility of the ultimate disintegration of nation-states and national cultures is far to be accepted.

Development theories

UNEQUALITY among regions and countries

http://www.degreescout.com/blog/third-world-genius-a-look-at-untapped-talent

Contribution to Scientific Research

http://www.degreescout.com/blog/third-world-genius-a-look-at-untapped-talent

Contribution to Patents

http://www.viewsoftheworld.net/?p=2258

Mortality rates of under-five year old children

http://www.viewsoftheworld.net/?p=3448

Distribution of Billionaires

http://www.viewsoftheworld.net/?p=4214

University Rankings (Top 200 universities)

http://ourworldindata.org/data/food-agriculture/hunger-and-undernourishment/

Development theories

Modernization

Developing countries will develop following the same paths that rich countries followed in earlier periods. The spread of capitalism and technology outward from the developed capitalist part of the world would allow less developed nation-states to advance to the same level).

https://mhsaphuge1.wikispaces.com/file/view/article_image.php.jpeg/396738164/article_image.php.jpeg

Development theories

Modern state system as the key political institution

World System Theory• World system is a multicultural territorial division of labor in

which the production and exchange of basic goods and raw materials is necessary for the everyday life of its inhabitants (Wallerstein, 1974).

• World system is an intersocietal networks in which the interactions are important for the reproduction of the internal structures of the composite units and importantly affect changes that occur in these local structures (Chase-Dunn and Hall).

• World system is a military alliance and conflicts among a group of states in a region (Wilkinson).

• The transfer or exchange of economic surplus is the fundamental criterion of a world systemic relationship. Diplomacy, alliances, and conflict are additional (Gunder Frank and Gills).

World System Theory• There is a power hierarchy between core and periphery.

• The core has more economic and political/military power.

• The core get the main benefits through price inequality.

• Peripheral countries are structurally constrained to experience developmental processes that reproduce their subordinate status.

• Core and peripheral countries generally retain their positions relative to one another over time, although there are individual cases of upward and downward mobility in the core/periphery hierarchy.

• Between the core and the periphery is an intermediate layer of countries referred to as the semiperiphery.

Intersocietal hierarchy composed of core, peripheral and semiperipheral societies

Modern World System (Wallerstein)

• The modern world system is capitalist, political structured as an interstate system of unequally powerful and competing states.

• Its is a world-economy formation.

• The core has remained composed of several states, while exhibiting a phenomenon called the “hegemonic sequence” (the rise and fall of hegemonic core states).

• The basis of the core power is the concentration of innovations in new lead industries and in military and organizational technologies that affect the relative power and capacities of firms and states.

• With the most dynamic economy and often the largest military, the core (hegemonic, leading state) also disseminates its language, culture and currency as global standards.

Development theories

There is a correspondence of the boundaries of the capitalist world-economy to that of an interstate

system comprised of sovereign states.

Capitalist World-Economy (Wallerstein)• It was able to expand from its initial European base to

incorporate the entire world and eliminate all other historical systems from the globe.

• Current changes in the post 1945 World-System: (1) United States is not the most efficient producer nor the most prosperous country and (2) the Cold War is over.

• Changes starting in the 70´s: Started the decline of the relative power of the USA and the great disillusionment with developmentalism in the Third World.

• According to Wallerstein the collapse of the USSR was a geopolitical catastrophe for the USA, since it eliminated the only ideological weapon for the USA to restrain Europe or Japan (or new emerging actors) from pursuing their self-defined objectives.

World System Theories under Globalization

• Collapse in the faith in the state as the central locus of social change and progress.

• To reconceive the concepts of center and periphery outside of a nation-state and/or geographic basis.

• Development and underdevelopment should be reconceived in terms of global social groups and not nations.

Marxism• Social classes and capital accumulation as the key unit of

analysis, rather that the nation-state or the state system per se (neither centers of accumulation nor political power are any longer correlative with nation-states).

• Tensions in the state system are derivative of the of class tensions and uneven national development is a consequence of the uneven capital accumulation.

• Economic and political networks are increasingly located in transnational spaces and managed by transnational classes and groups.

• Globalization conceived as scenario of competing national capital (equivalent to state rivalries) and looks for a new hegemon (usually a nation-state) in the international system.

• How globalization modifies the interstate system?

What approach to adopt?

Question for debate

?

For studying IR in the Caribbean (and in general) we need to:

• Not only to look at the current socioeconomic, political structures at the national level but the transformation of those structures.

• To think how might development be conceived, as a transnational rather than a national phenomenon?

• How to understand the Caribbean’s alignments?

So far, both unit of analysis

Still the Nation-State because…

• It still exists and still relevant as a control/regulatory actor because there is not a transnational/supranational authorities yet and domestic politics still matter (nation-states are main political actors in the international system, national governments are the sources of national policies and main responsible on encouraging regional integration and preserving national sovereignty, …).

• The function of the nation-state is shifting from the formulation of national policies to the administration of policies formulated by transnational elite acting through supranational institutions.

• It is still the spatial reference point for most of transnational agents as well as for local opposition to globalization.

• Basic measurements and indicators are all based on nation-state data.

• The economies in the developing countries still react in regional patterns, influenced partly by the style of capitalism dominant in a particular region (Daves).

Bibliography1. William I. Robinson, Beyond Nation-State Paradigms: Globalization,

Sociology, and the Challenge of Transnational Studies, Sociological Forum, Vol. 13, No. 4. (Dec., 1998), pp. 561-594

2. Immanuel Wallerstein, “The World-System after the Cold War”, Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 30, No. 1. (Feb., 1993), pp. 1-6.

3. Christopher Chase-Dunn; Peter Grimes, World-Systems Analysis, Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 21. (1995), pp. 387-417.

4. Daves, Bryan R. Review: “A Small World after All? The Reach and Grasp of the Globalization, Debate”, Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs, Vol. 42, No. 2, Special Issue: The European Union and Latin America: Changing Relations. (Summer, 2000), pp. 109-121.

5. Steven R. David, “Explaining Third World Alignment”, World Politics, Vol. 43, No. 2. (Jan., 1991), pp. 233-256.

6. B. R. Tomlinson, “What Was the Third World?” Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 38, No. 2. (Apr., 2003), pp. 307-321.

7. Douglas Kellner, “Theorizing Globalization”, Sociological Theory, Vol. 20, No. 3. (Nov., 2002), pp. 285-305.