Human rights

• Human⁄natural or legal
• Qestions over socioeconomic rights
• In CW third world some sympathy with USSR call for more collective model of rights
• Compatibility issues with inequality

 

Globalisation and IR theory

Realism:

• State centric
• Anarchic order of self-interested states.
• Ignores non-state powers
• Rejects "values" but loves sovereignty - isn't that a value?
• By describing selfish chaos do realists help create it? (yes)

Marxism:

• Focus on global capitalist order
• Requires uneven development, imperialism and war
• Ignores rise of sovereign states, influx of trade into LEDCs, and economic cooperation between top powers
• Complex interdependence theory
• Modified realism with more complex views of TNCs etc
• --> Globalisation theory, supraterritories etc.

Overstates mobility of capital? And underestimates importance of statewiki nada surf

Bretton Woods to neoliberalism

Problems of Bretton Woods:

• Dollar peg under pressure, dollar effectively overvalued in 70's for complex reasons
• Vietnam
• Tech exhaustion brings slowing of growth
• Strikes, social unrest

Breakdown:

• 1971 US devalues and BW breaks down
• 1973-4 oil price hike --> petrodollars to Africa
• End of full employment, fiscal crises, LEDCs lose MEDC markets
• Carter and Reagan tackle inflation through interest rates
• --> companies collapse, M&A boom, recession, debt crisis

But US interest rates rise again with massive military spending

Neoliberalism - crisis of inflation (overconsumption⁄money supply); Keynesianism: crisis of demand (underconsumption)

 

Globalisation and development

• Neoliberalism focus on improving exports
• Terrible - lost decade of development, gains in balance sheet come purely from govt cuts side, this done but exports not enhanced.
• Commercial lending to LEDCs plummets in mid80s but repayments and total debt just spiral under weight of interest
• Import cuts actually impeded export development
• Debt management of Latin America not done in Africa
• Privatisation makes it hard to measure FDI, do you count purchase of privatised companies
• 2⁄3 FDI between LEDCs, and lots of other third to a few (China presumably)
• 95-9 LEDCs less than 1⁄10 the FDI per capita of LEDCs

 

Global governance

• Liberal internationalism adds institutions of global gov to realism
• Cosmopolitanism seeks "genuine redistribution of power," global parliament etc.

 

• Imperialism and Globalisation
• Cooper- former Blair adviser - three types of state:
• Postmodern, transational, like EU state; Modern, lke old imperialists, China, India. Premodern - failed,base for terrorists and drugs. Postmodern have duty to impose order on premodern.
• US state strength is military, globalisation undermines financially, already multipolar world economy.

 

Cultural imperialism

• Not just US-out
• Power of recipient to interpret
• Should we support indigenous cultures or is this patronising?
• Erosion of public sphere and culture in favour of western individual materialist blah blah blah

 

International labour

• Globalisation brings 'race to bottom' on wages etc. undermines unions & solidarity by making competition between work cultures. But same poor conditions everywhere means there will be new global solidarity.
• Embrace end of nation - globalised proletariat so global resistance⁄movement
• But of course countries still matter. Did Seattle collapse because of protests, or developing country solidarity?
• Many LEDC NGOs and some unions oppose ILO, WTO labou standards etc, see as MEDC protectionism (as do neolib economists)
• AFL-CIO opposes China entry to WTO
• MEDC unions want to avoid export of jobs and may use HR concerns as excuse
• Isn't trade unionism dead anyway?

 

Global civil society

• Is there a space beyond govts and TNCs at global level?
• Is there globalisation from below? BUT people don't WANT globalisation! Oppressed most prone to wanting trad culture etc?
• -international NGOs, MPH etc
• But this real power? Only able to ask for action from states. Does It In fact legitimate unequal power?
• Empire of capitalism - offers 'pluralisation of lifeworlds,' 'expansion of desires', progressive in comparison to national capitalisms
• Brought about by multitude's struggle against national capitalisms (eh?)
• Now musy move on to rejecting capitalism altogether. National resistance meaningless
• Where does WSF fit? Attempt at globalisation from below
• MEDC anarchists have different crit of glob than LEDCs
• Transnational undemocratic. Still a strong progressive democratic case for the nation state.

Anti-globalisation politics

• Polanyi's double movement - laissez-faire --> growth then more market regulation.
• Is a second wave of regulation needed for globalised economy?
• Is anti-global credible generator of alternatives or pantomime?
• Anti-glob rejects primacy of industrial working class
• Rejects heirarchies, constructed plans (one no many yeses)
• If too open ended becomes innefectual and then objectively pro-End Of History

Ideas

• Taxes on speculation
• Capital controls
• Democratic global institutions, more MEDC free trade, more LEDC protection
• Anti GATS, TRIPS etc, rebuild idea of public services
• Localisation, power away from states

Problems

• Reactionary and romantic - socialism or Shiva
• Localism can tolerate inequality
• Bretton Woods took two world wars to generate
• BUT burden-of-thought-on-complainers attitude wrong given massive flaws of what we have now - URGENCY of change.