SOCA2400 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Global Governance, Adam Osborne, Systemic Risk
25 May 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
SOCA2400
Globalization, Social Justice, and Development
March 20, 2018
WEEK 4
How is the World Governed?
From the Post-Cold War Order → Post Global Financial Crisis disorder?
Myth 3: The interests of populations are represented more efficiently and more
justly by Global Capitalism and its associated World Order (of the Post-Cold War
era) than by the Nation State.
Elements
1. Representations of interests of populations
a. Open up economy
b. Become more democratic
c. EXAMPLE: North Korea
i. Isolationist
ii. Closed borders
iii. They lack democracy
iv. They have no efficiency
v. People are equal, but equally poor
vi. BUT, it’s not the issue of opening and closing down
1. What makes NK, NK is lack of democracy INSIDE
2. Efficiency
3. More equal distribution of resources
a. Reagan – teach them how to fish
b. By the time they know how to fish, they’re dead because there’s no fish for
them to eat
Underlying Assumption
• Capitalism is based mainly on self-organization and self-governance of the
markets. However, at the same time, global capitalism has become a systemic
risk, global financial crisis should be regarded as a normal accident
o Self-destructive tendency of capitalist markets
o Requires some level of regulation
• Even market fundamentalists do not doubt that markets require institutions,
political frameworks and cultural patterns in order to function as markets.
Churchill’s NWO
The government of the world must be entrusted to satisfied nations, who wished
nothing more for themselves than what they had. If the world-government were in the
hands of hungry nations, there would always be danger. But none of us had any reason
to seek for anything more. The peace would be kept by peoples who lived in their own
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
way and were not ambitious. Our power placed us above the rest. We were like rich
men dwelling at peace within their habitations
Examples
• Finnish Education
• Susan George on WTO, IMF, and World Bank
• Nation-state matters
• Global governance for finance exists, but not for human rights, health, equality,
justice, welfare, etc.
• Imbalance of power
o US vs Guatemala
o EU vs US
• Bias towards powerful states and powerful corporations
→ Power – to have control over social relationships
→ Politics – how to use power
→ Democracy – using power by people’s representatives for the interest of their
constituencies
→ Efficiency
1. Productivity – hyper growth?
2. Capacity to solve public problems
What if productivity is unsustainable? How do we redistribute the wealth we created and
what if the process damages people’s capacity to address their issues?
Corporate Sector: Our Corrupt, Spoiled Brat
• Government becomes weaker
• Makes rescue packages for the rich, secured by the government, paid by the
people
• More dependence on companies’ performance in the context of deregulation, tax
evasion, low demand, high unemployment, budget cuts
• Center can’t hold it anymore
• Neo-Populists – The national capitalist class can save us from the global
capitalist class!
Efficiency?
• Billionaires become politicians to save us from corrupt politics (that they were
part of)!
o Clive Palmer
Critical Questions
• Does globalization undermine the state?
o Yes – hyper globalist
o No – skeptics
• Are we living in a politically integrated world or global polity?
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find more resources at oneclass.com
• Has globalization integrated nation-states and local communities into one single
political system/world order?
• Has globalization overwhelmed the power of the nation-state? Is there a power
shift from national governments to evolving systems of regional and global
governance?
• Who rules the world? Whose interest is favorted in the New World Order? How
democratic, transparent, and fair is the structure of world economic and political
relations in the post-Cold War Era?
• Social Relaions → Power → Politics → Democracy/National Solidarity?
What is Special about the Post-Cold War Era/Order?
State is Sandwiched
Global Polity in the News
• Tobacco giant Philip Morris sued Australia for introducing plain-packaged cigs
• Dutch insurer successfully sued Slovakia for reversing health privatization
• Scores of challenges against Canada under NAFTA on issues like electricity
regulation, export banks, hazardous waste
Zero Sum
• Has power shifted from a nationally bounded governance to a global
governance?
• Skeptics (Internationalists)
o Global context of state power today is still an internationalist one
o Nation states are still important and even more important
• Hyper-globalists
o Globalization diminishes the state element of governance
o Governance without government at a global level
▪ Due to growing importance of private sector and civil society,
transnational actors, global problems, global flows,
interdependency
o Governance as a manner of governing a state becomes global
• In both perspectives, the relation between nation state and globalization is a
zero-sum game, less and more
Dieter Eirel, Financial Crisis and Greece
→ Global Governance
• System of political coordination among public authorities (states and
intergovernmental organizations), private agents (corporations), civil societal
actors (NGOs, INGOs)
• Seeking to realize common purposes OR resolve shared problems through
making and implementing transnational norms, rules, programs, policies
• Global covenant – shared norms, values, rules which govern the global society of
states
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Myth 3: the interests of populations are represented more efficiently and more justly by global capitalism and its associated world order (of the post-cold war era) than by the nation state. Underlying assumption: capitalism is based mainly on self-organization and self-governance of the markets. Churchill"s nwo nothing more for themselves than what they had. If the world-government were in the hands of hungry nations, there would always be danger. But none of us had any reason to seek for anything more. The peace would be kept by peoples who lived in their own way and were not ambitious. We were like rich men dwelling at peace within their habitations(cid:1689) Examples: finnish education, susan george on wto, imf, and world bank, nation-state matters, global governance for finance exists, but not for human rights, health, equality, justice, welfare, etc. Imbalance of power: us vs guatemala, eu vs us, bias towards powerful states and powerful corporations. Power to have control over social relationships.
