book review- power and politics in globalization; the indispensable state.pdf

7/27/2019 book review- power and politics in globalization; the indispensable state.pdf

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Business and Society Review 110:2

225232

2005 Center for Business Ethics at Bentley College. Published by Blackwell Publishing,350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA, and 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK.

Blackwell Publishing, Ltd.Oxford, UKBASRBusiness and Society Review0045-3609 2005 Center for Business Ethics at Bentley College??? 20051022Book Review

BUSINESS AND SOCIETY REVIEW CYRUS VEESER

Book Review: Power and Politics

in Globalization: The Indispensable State

(By Howard H. Lentner, Routledge, 2004)

CYRUS VEESER

A

keyword search of the term globalization

in any collegelibrary catalog will turn up a kaleidoscope of denitions andredenitions, from the rareed postmodern visions of Jean

Baudrillard to bestsellers like Thomas Friedmans The Lexus and the Olive Tree

.

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No single denition can exhaust the many facetsof so encompassing an idea. The house of globalization indeed hasmany rooms.

It is worth recalling that this explosion of interest in globalizationdates to the 1990s. The fall of communism in Eastern Europein late 1989, the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Chinasaccelerating move toward capitalism, the opening of Latin Americaneconomies after the debt crisis of the 1980s: together, these changessignaled capitalisms invasion of huge regions that had been off-limitsfor many years. This wave of market expansion coincided (fortu-itously) with the sudden takeoff of affordable computer technology,

symbolized by a spike in PC sales and the dot-com boom, makingglobalization the avor of the decade. Underlying these events wasthe assumption that the world was evolving toward a single politicaleconomy (liberal capitalism) and a single government system(representative democracy), all trussed into seamless unity by theinstantaneous diffusion of information through satellite, fax, cable,cell phone, video, DVD, email, and the Internet.

Reviewed by Cyrus Veeser, an associate professor of history, Bentley College.


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226 BUSINESS AND SOCIETY REVIEW

Francis Fukuyama wrote globalizations manifesto even beforethe era properly got under way. In his famous article (later book)The End of History, published while Mikhail Gorbachev was stilltrying to ne-tune perestroika, Fukuyama declared that the bloody trials of the twentieth century had proven beyond any doubt that democratic government and liberal capitalism were the end pointsof human social evolution. What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, Fukuyama wrote, . . . but the end of history as such: that is the end point of mankinds ideological evolution andthe universalization of western liberal democracy as the nal formof human government.

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With future philosophical and political

struggle thus moot, the posthistorical states could (implicitly)move toward world government.

As the expression of a popular mood, the era of globalization ended with the September 11 attacks, even though all the processes pre- viously mentioned, except the dot-com boom, continued apace. For Americans, the attacks signaled not so much a coherent ideologicalchallenge to capitalist democracy as the essence of globalization(Al Qaeda may operate in 60 countries, but it is no Comintern), but

a grim harbinger of the inherent risks that the openness of globaliz-ation entailed: uid borders, free trade, and instant communication-empowered small groups of nonstate actors to terrorize the most powerful nation on Earth and then melt away. The unexaminedexpectation that the world was moving toward global governanceand an integrated world system has been deated, and the nation-state and its prerogativespolicing borders, detaining suspects

waging preventive warare very much with us again. The present moment should thus be rather propitious for the

critique of globalization offered by Howard H. Lentner in Power and Politics in Globalization: The Indispensable State

(Routledge, 2004). A political scientist, Lentner argues that so much rhetoric to thecontrary notwithstanding, the world remains international rather than global (p. 29), that is, essentially dened by nation-states,their actions and interactions. The globe does not form the unit of organization of world society (p. 53). Indeed, Lentners critique issuch that globalization in the title should be in quotes: Although

globalization is the term of choice in contemporary discourse, it obscures the fact that the world remains divided into states (p. 4).Perhaps the marketing department at Routledge won out over Lent-ners philosophical convictions. The subtitle, by the way, includes


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CYRUS VEESER 227

the books only laugh line. It ironically appropriates the phraseindispensable state frequently used by U.S. Secretary of StateMadeleine Albright to refer to the vital role of the United States inthe world, and redeploys it as shorthand against the conventionalglobalization thesis that holds that states recede in the face of market pressures (p. 25).

Lentner proceeds logically although with little verve to press homethe argument that hegemonic states beget and sustain globaliza-tion. He takes aim at the more innocent advocates of globalization

who variously assert that the state is losing power to the marketor that a broad human project of global governance is making the

nation-state increasingly irrelevant (pp. 12). Lentner categorically denies that states are being diminished, weakened, and eroded by globalization. Indeed, he argues that the process of globalization

builds rather than tears down nation-states (p. 22). For Lentner,all roads lead back to the stateneither markets nor inter-national institutions can operate without states, he writes (p. 36),insisting that international organizations lack effectiveness except as instruments of the powers, above all the United States (p. 34).

Lentners argument is refreshingly untrendy, and there is some-thing admirable in his willingness to take on all challengers tothe primacy of the state and knock them on their tails. The lan-guage is pure, plodding political science, uncontaminated by thesoaring rhetoric of high theory. Lentner has little interest in post-modern readings of globalization as a late phase of capitalism in

which a new kind of world culture has emerged, a la Fredric Jamesonand Mike Featherstone.

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Nor is he concerned with newfangledapproaches to geographic space of the kind that propose that stateterritoriality currently operates less as an isomorphic, self-enclosed

block of absolute space than as a polymorphic institutional mosaiccomposed of multiple, partially overlapping levels that are neither congruent, contiguous, nor coextensive with one another.

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Heassumes rather than demonstrates a commonsense meaning for the term nation-state

and offers the following minimalist denitionof the books central topic: Globalization means increasing connec-tions across the world, a set of processes dating from the

mid-nineteenth century that have been largely continuous, except during the world wars (p. 28).

One problem with this parsimonious description is that it pointstoward the 1500s rather than the 1800s as the birth century of


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globalization. It was in the sixteenth century, after all, that Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas rst came into regular contact throughexploration, colonization, and overseas trade. The Columbianexchange of people, microbes, food crops, and domestic animalsradically transformed the planets formerly discrete biomes long

before Queen Victoria took the throne, creating the modern world, which railroads and telegraph lines merely knit together after 1800.Nonetheless, Lentners chronology allows him to argue that globalprocesses strengthen rather than weaken states. The advent of globalization since the 1800s has, after all, coincided with the pro-liferation of nation-states, bringing us to the current count of 191

member states in the United Nations. Thus evolving globalizationand growing states have coincided (p. 31). The book offers vignettesof history, quite conventional both empirically and theoretically, but it is not grounded in a detailed historical argument. Ultimately,Lentner is not interested in a sophisticated timeline of globalization;

what matters is the ongoing primacy of the state, the foremost institution in the world (p. 10).

The book provides a glimpse or two of the philosophical bases of

different approaches to globalization but does not make a sustainedphilosophical argument. The statist view that Lentner unabashedly embraces runs back to Hegel, who found in the nation-state not only the locus of political power but also an arena of public space

wherein citizens can debate common problems and attempt toachieve a common good (p. 103). His philosophical nemesis isliberalism and worse yet neoliberalism, rooted in Adam Smithsnotion that the common good is promoted by the selsh interactive

behaviors of individuals and rms pursuing only their own inter-ests (p. 27), in contrast to the collective and deliberative functionof states. Neosmithians come in two main varieties: first, the neoliberalmarketeers who prefer markets over states, assume that greed isgood, and focus on individuals rather than communities. They distrust government and the public arena, and they do not like

vigorous debate and political contestation (p. 138). Utopian cosmo-politans, on the other hand, include exponents of universal humanrights, champions of an international community, supporters of

humanitarian interventions, and supporters of rights divorcedfrom citizenship (p. 104). Their long-term hope is that nation-states

will give way to world government. Both groups err in privilegingthe individual over communities and in assuming that human


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CYRUS VEESER 229

nature is essentially benign, and both commit the mortal sin of adopting an antistatist attitude (p. 157).

Lentner gives a hearing to various pretenders eager to dethronethe state, including supranational markets, multinational corpora-tions, transnational civil society, multilateral agencies, and globalnongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Observers taken in by thesmoke and mirrors of globalization discourse may accept theseepiphenomena as clear signs that nation-states are shufing towardoblivion, but Lentner knows that all extra-national processes andagencies owe their existence to the protection of strong states. It isthe fortitude of the United States that sustains the security of order

underlying globalization, he insists (p. 78). Nor should we be dupedinto thinking that the world market trumps state power. The spreadof liberal ideology and the proliferation of free markets associated

with globalization have resulted from the growth of power of thehegemonic states (p. 25).

If the world market cant undercut the power of hegemonicstates, dont expect lesser forces to have more luck. Will a new global consensus emerge to confront environmental changes that

threaten human existence? It seems more likely that responses tosuch problems as global warming will occur in the future on a coun-try by country basis . . . despite efforts to coordinate policies under the Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Pro-tocol (p. 63). Indeed, the enemies of globalization would do well torealize that nation-states rather than global government are thelast great hope of humankind: the state forms the essential meansfor achieving the values sought even by protesters against global-ization (p. 88). Lentners Hegelian devotion to states leads himto elevate the status quo in world affairs to a positive good.

Not surprisingly, in toting up the winners and losers in globaliza-tion, Lentner identies the use of state power by wise leaders as thecritical factor. The winners are developmental statesSingapore,China, South Korea, and Malaysiaas against the predatory andautarkic states which have failed to prot from globalization. Theseeffective states are able to participate in the world economy in waysthat increase their own autonomy (p. 67). Neoliberalism is not a

viable road to development because a dynamic economy is unlikely to emanate from a desultory state (p. 129). China exemplies suc-cess in the face of global pressures. As it grows economically andupgrades its military, Chinas autonomy will increase even in


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the context of operating within the constraints of globalizationprocesses (p. 67). The measure of success here is implicitly whereChina stands in the pecking order of the great powers. The fact that Chinas rise comes at a considerable cost to many of its citizensfor example, the 140,000 Chinese workers who died in industrial acci-dents in 2002does not enter into Lentners equation.

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Nor doesLentner mention the human cost of the American hegemony that holds together the interstate system and global capitalismthedeaths of civilians and U.S. soldiers in Iraq are not an issue so longas that discretionary war does not signicantly reduce Americanpower in the world (p. 78).

The dogged insistence on a single theme makes this books argu-ment easy to follow, but does not avoid contradictions. Lentner takes aim at all opponents of the centrality of the state, includingdo-good NGOs like Oxfam and Doctors Without Borders. He dis-likes the fact that these humanitarian agencies . . . do not possesscharters that make them accountable to any citizenry, and . . . donot need to face elections (p. 147). Even the most well meaning of activists work without any clear institutional forum in which to

debate public policy (p. 155). Does it really follow, however, that the actions of groups like Paul Farmers Partners in Health, whichhas proven that even poor countries can successfully treat HIV anddrug-resistant tuberculosis, have diminished the idea of commongood . . . from the prior conception that prevailed within states

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? By Lentners logic, Human Rights Watch and Union Carbide exist inthe same moral plane because both have contributed to the dean-choring of citizenship from the state (p. 155). A more nuancedargument might see the NGOs that try to reduce the cost of medi-cine for AIDS, limit the use of land mines, and stop global warmingas civil societys response to the increasing global power of phar-maceutical companies, arms manufacturers, and industrial pollut-ers. At Lentners level of abstraction, we are not really analyzingglobalization at all, but rather sorting dissimilar entities into stateor nonstate categories. This view of global actors and processes isstatic, not statist.

Even taking Lentners argument on its own terms, however, con-

tradictions appear. Naturally, Lentner opposes privatization becauseit further erodes the idea of a common good. Yet he acknowledgesthat neoliberal governments have stripped themselves of economicpower by privatizing services and institutions. In international


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CYRUS VEESER 231

affairs as well, governments choose to devolve such state functionsas refugee and humanitarian relief onto the NGOs. The fact that states of their own volition have reduced the scope of their authority and activity points toward a long-term trend undermining Lentnersreiterated claim that the search for authority in a globalizing worldleads directly to states (p. 14). Lentners response, that creatinginternational institutions to substitute for state ones can obviously

be achieved only by states, is a tautology that explains litt le(p. 149). He denies that the broad adoption of liberal market prin-ciples and the shift of production from public agencies to privateenterprise results from a shift of power to rms and away from

states. Instead, Lentner insists that this is an example of statesusing their metapolitical power . . . to decide what falls into the pub-lic sphere and what, private (pp. 157158). But surely this conces-sion ies in the face of the books thesis that an analyst today must confront the problems of an untransformed world of states (p. 143).Untransformed? If neoliberal states have willingly reduced their domestic authority in pursuit of a higher good (efciency, economicgrowth, and so on), might they not reasonably sacrice autonomy

in pursuit of a greater good in the international arenasay, collec-tive security and a common market? The clear and obvious exampleis the European Union. And perhaps because it presents such anobvious contradiction to the underlying logic of this book, Lentner has precious little to say about European unication except that it remains exceptional: No other region in the world approaches thedepth of the organizational coordination achieved there. . . . Noevidence exists for parallel global patterns developing (p. 11).

In all, Lentner has provided a useful if blunt rejoinder to the morepie-in-the-sky views of hyperglobalizers who believe that worldgovernment is just around the corner and to free marketeers likeKenichi Ohmae who assert that nation states have already

lost their role as meaningful units of participation in the global economy of todays borderless world.

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Lentners essay is not really an analy-sis of globalization per se. It does not offer a judgment about the

benets of globalization for ordinary people in developed or lessdeveloped countries, nor does it ask if globalizations glass is half

empty or half full. It focuses entirely on the fact that in either case,a glass contains the waterthat is, states hold up the world order.By insisting on a hoary and hidebound view of the interstatesystem, Lentner casts out not only postmodernism but also a


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forward-looking assessment of where that system may be heading. And there is a certain danger in this quaint state-centrism: thehegemaniacs of the current Bush administration invaded Iraq inpart because a nation-state is not a moving target, unlike the non-state actors who pulled off the September 11 attacks. This book achieves its narrow goal of defending the nation-state against allcomers more completely than most readers will wish.

NOTES

1. See for example, Jean Baudrillard, The Spirit of Terrorism

(New York: Verso, 2003), and Thomas L. Friedman, The Lexus and the Olive Tree:Understanding Globalization

(New York: Anchor, 2000).2. Francis Fukuyama, The End of History? The National Interest

16(Summer, 1989).

3. See Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism

(Durham, NC: Duke, 1991), and Mike Featherstone, ed., Global Culture: Nationalism, Globalization, and Modernity

(London: Sage, 1990).For a quick overview of theories, see Douglas Kellner, Theorizing Global-ization, Sociological Theory

20: 3 (November 2002): 285305.4. Neil Brenner, Beyond State-Centrism? Space, Territoriality, and

Geographical Scale in Globalization Studies, Theory and Society

, 28: 1(February 1999): 53.

5. For statistics on industrial deaths in China, see Garrett D. Brownand Dara ORourke, The Race to China and Implications for Global Labor Standards, International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health

, 9: 4 (OctoberDecember 2003): 300.6. On Partners in Health, see Tracy Kidder, Mountains Beyond Mountains:

The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, A Man Who Would Cure the World

(New York:Random House, 2004).

7. Kenichi Ohmae, The End of the Nation State: The Rise of Regional Economies

(New York: Free Press, 1995).

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