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Bill Brydon

Global Governance and the Politics of Crisis - Global Society - Volume 26, Issue 1 - 2 views

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    "The notion of global governance has always been intimately linked to that of crisis. In recent crisis episodes the architecture of global governance has been held responsible for weak or ineffective regulatory mechanisms that failed to either prevent systemic crises or to at least give an "early warning" of impending disasters, while in other episodes global governance institutions have been blamed for poor crisis responses and management. Global governance institutions have also been blamed for failing to expand the scope of their jurisdictions to incorporate new systemic risks and new market players, as well as for their inability to adapt to new political, economic, social and environmental challenges. The framing article for this special issue on "Global Governance in Crisis" examines four key features of global governance in the context of the global financial crisis: (1) the dynamic role played by ideas in making global governance "hang together" during periods of crisis; (2) how crisis serves as a driver of change in global governance (and why it sometimes does not); (3) how ubiquitous the global financial crisis was as an event in world politics; and (4) the conditions that constitute an event as a crisis. Due to the complexity and institutional "stickiness" of the contemporary architecture of global governance, the article concludes that a far-reaching overhaul and structural reforms in global governance processes is both costly and improbable in the short-term."
Bill Brydon

The Globalization of Law: Implications for the Fulfillment of Human Rights - Journal of... - 0 views

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    "How does the globalization of law, the emergence of multiple and shifting venues of legal accountability, enhance or evade the fulfillment of international human rights? The utility of law for the fulfillment of human rights can be summarized as a combination of normative principles, universal repertoire of definitions and boundaries, links to state enforcement, predictable processes for conflict resolution, and a doctrine of equal standing (Kinley 2009 27. KINLEY , David . 2009 . Civilising Globalisation: Human Rights and the Global Economy , Cambridge , NY : Cambridge University Press . View all references : 215). The intersection between the globalization of law and the globalization of rights is a question of global governance: In what ways and to what extent can and should law across borders regulate and enforce the protection of individuals from abuse of both global and local authority? What does existing literature tell us about where we stand in our understanding of the extent and meaning of these intersecting forms of globalization? There is a rough spectrum from pessimistic structural theories through more optimistic cosmopolitan reformist theories of norm change, with a middle position of a sociological and indeterminate dialectical struggle over the terms and impact of global governance. While we see clear evidence in the international human rights regime of the globalization of norms, definitions, and processes, it is unclear how much the globalization of law has enhanced enforcement or even standing for the fulfillment of core rights of the person."
Bill Brydon

Anti-Globalization or Alter-Globalization? Mapping the Political Ideology of the Global... - 0 views

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    "Globalization has unsettled conventional, nationally based political belief systems, opening the door to emerging new global political ideologies. While much analytic focus has been on ideational transformations related to market globalism (neoliberalism), little attention has been given to its growing number of ideological challengers. Drawing on data collected from 45 organizations connected to the World Social Forum, this article examines the political ideas of the global justice movement, the key antagonist to market globalism from the political Left. Employing morphological discourse analysis and quantitative content analysis, the article assesses the ideological coherence of "justice globalism" against Michael Freeden's (1996) three criteria of distinctiveness, context-bound responsiveness, and effective decontestation. We find that justice globalism displays ideological coherence and should be considered a maturing political "alter"-ideology of global significance. The evidence presented in this article suggests the ongoing globalization of the twenty-first-century ideological landscape."
Bill Brydon

Technology and Global Affairs - Fritsch - 2011 - International Studies Perspectives - W... - 0 views

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    Technology has always played an important role in global politics, economics, security, and culture. It has continuously shaped the structure of the global system, its actors, and the interactions between them and vice versa. However, theories of International Relations (IR), and in particular those of International Political Economy (IPE), have performed little to theoretically conceptualize technology as a powerful factor within explanations of change in global affairs. Although technology often is implicitly present in the theories of IR and IPE, it is often interpreted as an external, passive, apolitical, and residual factor. This essay argues that to develop a better understanding of transformation in global affairs, technology has to be integrated more systematically into the theoretical discussions of IR/IPE. Technology should be understood as a highly political and integral core component of the global system that shapes global affairs and itself is shaped by global economics, politics, and culture. This paper makes the case for an interdisciplinary approach, which systematically incorporates insights of Science and Technology Studies (S&TS) to provide a better understanding of how technology and the global system and politics interact with each other. In so doing, it opens the field to a richer understanding of how global systemic change is impacted by technology and how global politics, economics, and culture impact technological evolution.
Bill Brydon

Shocks and Turbulence: Globalization and the Occurrence of Civil War - International In... - 0 views

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    "Several scholars argue that systemic global trends are pulling individuals not only upward toward the global level, but also downward to the local level; the result is a potential loss of authority for the state ( Ferguson and Mansbach 2004 32. Ferguson , Yale H. and Richard , W. Mansbach . 2004 . Remapping Global Politics: History's Revenge and Future Shock , Cambridge : Cambridge University Press . [CrossRef] View all references ; Rosenau 1990 82. Rosenau , James N. 1990 . Turbulence in World Politics: A Theory of Change and Continuity , Princeton : Princeton University Press . View all references ). Their theory of "fragmegration" can provide a causal mechanism for why longstanding grievances may erupt into civil war at a particular time. While increased global exposure does provide both states and individual citizens with tremendous benefits, sudden "shocks" of globalization can overwhelm a state's capacity to offset the negative impacts of globalization, thus weakening a state's capacity to deal with rival polities for the allegiance of its citizens. The present study conducts a cross-sectional logistic regression with discrete duration analysis to test the impact of globalization shocks on the onset of civil wars between the years 1970-1999. The results demonstrate that increasingly dramatic changes in the level of global integration are associated with an increased risk of civil war onset."
Bill Brydon

Work and Neoliberal Globalization: A Polanyian Synthesis - Bandelj - 2011 - Sociology C... - 0 views

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    This article reviews sociological research about economic globalization's impact on work and labor in developed and developing countries since the 1980s. We find that this period of neoliberal globalization influences work because of intensified activities of multinational corporations (MNCs), financialization of the global economy, and amplified prominence of international organizations, some of which diffuse neoliberal policy scripts while others mobilize a transnational civil society. Research we review generally points to liabilities of neoliberal globalization for workers. To understand these findings, we apply Karl Polanyi's concepts of fictitious commodities, the self-regulating market, and the double movement. We propose that, on the one hand, the activities of MNCs, international financial organizations, and many states exemplify pushes for institutional separation of economy and society in effort to institutionalize the idea of a self-regulating market at a global scale, which increases labor commodification and global inequalities. On the other hand, the activities of social movements, including unions and transnational actors that target globalization's impact on work, constitute the counter movement at national and global levels resisting marketization and pushing for labor decommodification. The aftermath of the ongoing economic crisis will tell to what extent this countermovement will be successful in generating an alternative to neoliberal globalization, and more protections for workers.
Bill Brydon

The Contest of Rival Capitalisms - 0 views

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    "A new authoritarian order is taking shape, this time within rather than against the capitalist world order. Globalization, in short, is shedding its liberal cloak. Post-Cold War triumphalism was premature in the funeral it staged for the Second World, defined in terms of its autocracy rather than communism. The capitalist character of the new Second World lulls Western globalists into moral as well as geopolitical (hence moral realist) indifference. For many in high places, it is still inconceivable that global capitalism could be a house divided. "Globalization" turns out to be anything but the steadfast ally of democratization it purports to be. It is in fact the greatest gift to a new breed of authoritarian capitalists. The case of China alone is enough to dispel the notion that capitalism and democracy are two sides of the same globalist coin. But Sino-globalization is only unique in that it makes no pretense about its authoritarian ends and means. To revitalize democratization as a global force, a radically different mode of globalization will have to be fostered. We call this the Global Third Way, but what it amounts to is People Power without borders."
Bill Brydon

Globalization and Political Trust - nccr trade regulation - 0 views

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    "This paper postulates that a country's integration into the world economy may lower citizens' political trust. I argue that economic globalization constrains government's choice set of feasible policies, impeding responsiveness to the median voter. Matching individual-level survey data from 1981 to 2007, repeated cross-sections of altogether 260'000 persons from 80 countries, with a measure of a country's degree of economic globalization for the same time period, I find that there is a trust-lowering impact of globalization; its magnitude, however, depends on whether or not the individual is informed about politics and the economy. Trust-lowering effects of globalization are larger for those who have no interest in politics, are unwilling to indicate their political leaning, or who have low educational levels. Two-stage least squares regressions and a set of country and time fixed effects support a causal interpretation. Obviously, viewing the domestic government as accountable for its policies plays a decisive role for the relation between economic globalization and political trust. Robustness against country's degree of economic development, past globalization and different time periods is tested."
Bill Brydon

India-Brazil-South Africa (IBSA) in the New Global Order - 0 views

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    A question of interest to scholars of International Politics concerns the manner in which weaker states attempt to influence stronger ones. This article offers a case study of one recent exercise in coalition-building among southern powers as a vehicle for change in international relations. It analyzes the global interests, strategies and values of India-Brazil-South Africa (IBSA) and the impact of the IBSA Dialogue Forum on the global order. Five major points are outlined. First, common ideas and values shape the global discourse of the emerging coalition. Second, soft balancing based on a value-driven middle power discourse is a suitable concept to explain IBSA's strategy in global institutions. Third, institutional foreign policy instruments such as agenda-setting and coalition-building are pivotal elements of IBSA's soft balancing approach. Fourth, the trilateral coalition suffers from considerable divergence of interest in global governance issues and limited potential gains of its sectoral cooperation, particularly in trade, due to a lack of complementarities of the participating economies. Finally, despite these obstacles the IBSA Forum has impacted the global order in recent years as a powerful driver for change. India, Brazil and South Africa have contributed to an incremental global power shift in their favour. The southern coalition also induced a change in the character of multilateralism and, in particular, its procedural values.
Bill Brydon

Global citizenship and marginalisation: contributions towards a political economy of gl... - 0 views

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    "The development of a global form of citizenship stands in a rather tense relation with the realities of vast numbers of marginalised citizens across the globe, to the extent that marginality appears to be the hidden other of global citizenship. The aim of this paper is to contribute to the development of a political economy of global citizenship by elaborating on some of these issues. The paper provides a critical discussion of the literature on global citizenship education using a theoretical approach that stems from political economy theories of globalisation. The notion of an emerging transnational class system will provide the starting point for understanding the processes and forces behind current forms of global structural marginalisation and their implications for the possibilities of a global citizenship."
Bill Brydon

'Global law' and governmentality: Reconceptualizing the 'rule of law' as rule 'through'... - 1 views

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    This article challenges the optimism common to liberal IR and IL scholarship on the 'rule of law' in global governance. It argues that the concept of the 'rule of law' is often employed with sparse inquiry into the politics of its practical meaning. Specifically, the article focuses on liberal research that advocates the emergence of a 'global' judiciary, and the claim that judicial governance will marginalize state power and authority. Rather than employ a zero-sum conception of power, this article regards a prospective global legal system less as a constraint on state power and more as a rationale for rule 'through' law by vested actors. To make the argument, Michel Foucault's concept of 'governmentality' is combined with Barnett and Duvall's notion of 'productive power' to denote how legal techniques of power are integral to the construction of social 'truth' and consequently the governance of conduct. This is further associated with Koskenniemi's critical scholarship on the power of law's perceived objectivity and universality. In this vein, the article questions how liberal scholars use the American judicial model (the Marbury ideal) to claim that an institutionalization of 'global' judicial authority can deliver the rule of 'no one' in global governance. A governmentality perspective is then applied which suggests that the lack of supreme constitutional rules at the global level makes judicial governance less a check than a means to propagate normative standards conducive to dominant state power.
Bill Brydon

National responsibility, global justice and exploitation: a preliminary analysis - Jour... - 0 views

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    "This article addresses the problem of filling in a missing component of David Miller's non-cosmopolitan theory of global justice, as elaborated in his recent National responsibility and global justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). Miller originally included non-exploitation as one of the norms of global justice, but he does not provide a theory of exploitation in his recent book. This article is a preliminary attempt to suggest how Miller might fill in this gap. This article identifies the problems Miller faces in coming up with a theory of exploitation, given the limits imposed by the other parts of his theory of global justice. It examines and criticises several possible theories of exploitation that Miller might use. Finally, it argues that a modified version of Hillel Steiner's liberal theory of exploitation fits into Miller's overall theory of global justice."
Bill Brydon

Globalization and Alterglobalization: Global Dialectics and New Contours of Political A... - 0 views

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    In the shadow of the nation-state, transnational dynamics and contacts operating from a non-national logic have been always present and are even increasingly so. Nation-state has never completely controlled all kinds of crossborder transactions, whether it be those directed by large international conglomerates, migrants, and refugee flows, or even the variety of illegal activities of transnational criminal organizations, be it pirating, maritime or other, be it slave trade, organ trafficking or even the lucrative drug trade, and others. Today, one cannot work from a single level of abstraction that revolves around nation-states and the "national." Such focus would miss on a wide range of power relations above and beyond states that involve crossborder dynamics. The range of transnational interactions associated with the process of globalization and alterglobalization constitute genuine and important challenge to our understanding of global politics. In this article, I argue, that political analysts need to engage in multiscalar analysis (meaning the coexistence and co-constitution of various spaces-local, national, regional, and global) and that they must also recognize that it is heuristically fruitful to apprehend global processes in a dialectical fashion. In short, to grasp the enigma of globalization and of its antithesis alterglobalization requires exploring innovative conceptual and methodological approaches.
Bill Brydon

Porto Alegre as a counter-hegemonic global city: building globalization from below in g... - 0 views

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    This paper analyzes the case of Porto Alegre, Brazil as a counter-hegemonic global city. Porto Alegre is a city with no particular relevance to neoliberal globalization that, nevertheless, was launched to a global scale by transformations in local governance. New mechanisms of deliberative democracy captured the attention of social actors constructing a movement of globalization from below, making Porto Alegre the de facto capital of the World Social Forum. In this paper I focus on the educational policies created in the city, which expanded the social imaginary in education and are a key component of Porto Alegre's 'globalization'.
Bill Brydon

Liberal Silences and the Political Economy of Global Governance - Kirkup - 2011 - Polit... - 0 views

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    The books under review, though offering important advances in understanding their particular issue areas of global governance, together reproduce a number of liberal political-economic silences that obscure key power relations, a process made visible through resistance. These silences privilege the formal public-private sphere of civil society over both alternative expressions of social agency and the continuing importance of state sovereignty, leading to false claims of wider participation, partnership and empowerment in global politics and also unexpected social and environmental consequences. Hajnal, P. I. (2007) The G8 System and the G20: Evolution, Role and Documentation. Aldershot: Ashgate. Mattli, W. and Woods, N. (eds) (2009) The Politics of Global Regulation. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press. Hall, R. B. (2008) Central Banking as Global Governance: Constructing Financial Credibility. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Singh, J. P. (2008) Negotiation and the Global Information Economy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bill Brydon

Globalization and the Legitimacy of Intergovernmental Organizations - 0 views

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    Focusing on 'democratic deficit', this article examines how globalization affects the legitimacy of intergovernmental organizations (IGOs). Two contextual factors are considered: (i) democracy at the domestic level and (ii) global inequality. Since these two factors determine the severity of democratic deficit in each country, the impact of globalization on citizens' support for IGOs significantly varies across states. Globalization does not undermine the legitimacy of IGOs in democratically well-attuned rich states. The Pew Global Attitudes Project 2002 lends support to this primary argument.
Bill Brydon

The Next Three Futures, Part Two: Possibilities of Another Round of US Hegemony, Global... - 0 views

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    This two-part paper discusses developments at the beginning of the 21st century, using the comparative world-systems perspective to see disturbing similarities, and important differences, between what happened during the late 19th century and the first half of the 20th century and what seems to be happening in the early 21st. We then use this perspective to consider possible scenarios for the next several decades. In Part One, published in the preceding issue, we considered the major challenges of massive global inequalities, ecological degradation, and a failed system of global governance in the wake of US hegemonic decline. In Part Two that follows, we discuss the major structural alternatives for the trajectory of the world-system during the 21st century, positing three basic scenarios: (1) another round of US economic hegemony based on comparative advantage in new lead industries and another round of US political hegemony-instead of supremacy; (2) collapse: interstate rivalry, deglobalisation, financial and economic collapse, ecological disaster, resource wars, and deadly epidemic diseases; and (3) capable, democratic, multilateral and legitimate global governance strongly supported by progressive transnational social movements and global parties, semiperipheral democratic socialist regimes, and important movements and parties in the core and the periphery.
Bill Brydon

Patomäki Towards global political parties Ethics & Global Politics - 0 views

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    While the transnational public sphere has existed in the Arendtian sense at least since the mid-19th century, a new kind of reflexively political global civil society emerged in the late 20th century. However, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), advocacy groups, and networks have limited agendas and legitimacy and, without the support of at least one state, limited means to realise changes. Since 2001, theWorld Social Forum (WSF) has formed a key attempt in forging links and ties of solidarity among diverse actors. Although the WSF may seem a party of opinion when defined negatively against neoliberal globalisation, imperialism, and violence, in more positive ideological terms it remains a rather incoherent collection of diverse actors; while itself defined as a mere open space. There is a quest for new forms of agency such as a world political party. Various historical predecessors of global political parties, real and imagined, provide conceptual resources, useful experiences for envisaging the structure, and function of a possible planetary partyformation. H.G. Wells's 'open conspiracy' is a particularly important future-oriented leftdemocratic vision. Wells believed that only a mass movement of truly committed individuals and groups could have the power to transform the world political organisation, by creating a democratic world commonwealth. Recently, for instance, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri have formulated similar ideas. I argue that transformative political agency presupposes a shared programme, based on common elements of a wider and deeper world-view, and willingness to engage in processes of collective will-formation in terms of democratic procedures. From this perspective, I outline a possible organisation and some substantial directions for a global political party. The point is also to respond to the criticism of existing parties and cultivate the critical-pluralist ethos of global civil society, but in terms of democratic party-formation
Bill Brydon

Emerging powers, North-South relations and global climate politics - HURRELL - 2012 - I... - 0 views

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    "There is a widespread perception that power is shifting in global politics and that emerging powers are assuming a more prominent, active and important role. This article examines the role of emerging powers such as China, India, Brazil and South Africa (BASIC) in climate change politics and the extent to which their rise makes the already difficult problem of climate change still more intractable-due to their rapid economic development, growing power-political ambitions, rising greenhouse gas emissions and apparent unwillingness to accept global environmental 'responsibility'. By reviewing the developments in global climate politics between the 1992 Rio Earth Summit and Rio+20, this article unsettles the image of a clear shift in power, stressing instead the complexity of the changes that have taken place at the level of international bargaining as well as at the domestic and transnational levels. Within this picture, it is important not to overestimate the shifts in power that have taken place, or to underplay the continued relevance of understanding climate change within the North-South frame. Emerging powers will certainly remain at the top table of climate change negotiations, but their capacity actively to shape the agenda has been limited and has, in some respects, declined. Even though emerging powers have initiated and offered greater action on climate change, both internationally and domestically, they have been unable to compel the industrialized world to take more serious action on this issue, or to stop them from unpicking several of the key elements and understandings of the original Rio deal. At the same time, developing world coalitions on climate change have also fragmented, raising questions about the continued potency of the 'global South' in future climate politics"
Bill Brydon

Human rights do not make global democracy | Eva Erman - 1 views

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    "On most accounts of global democracy, human rights are ascribed a central function. Still, their conceptual role in global democracy is often unclear. Two recent attempts to remedy this deficiency have been made by James Bohman and Michael Goodhart. What is interesting about their proposals is that they make the case that under the present circumstances of politics, global democracy is best conceptualized in terms of human rights. Although the article is sympathetic to this 'human rights approach', it defends the thesis that human rights are not enough for global democracy. It argues that insofar as we hold on to the general idea of democracy as a normative ideal of self-determination (self-rule) that is, of people determining their own lives and ruling over themselves, the concept of democracy accommodates two necessary conditions, namely, political bindingness and political equality. Further, it argues that neither Bohman's nor Goodhart's accounts fulfills these conditions and that one explanation for this could be traced to a lack of clarity concerning the distinction between democracy as normative ideal and democracy as decision method or rules (for example, institutions, laws and norms) for regulating social interactions. This ambiguity has implications for both Goodhart and Bohman. In Goodhart's work it manifests itself as a vagueness concerning the difference between political agency and democratic agency; in Bohman's work it becomes unclear whether he contributes a normative democratic theory or a theory of democratization. Although this article develops both a conceptual and a normative argument against their proposals, the aim is not to find fault with them but to point to questions that are in need of further elaboration to make them more convincing."
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