Brooks: Interdependent and Domestic Foundations of Policy Change

Brooks, Sarah M. (2005). "Interdependent and Domestic Foundations of Policy Change: The Diffusion of Pension Privatization Around the World". International Studies Quarterly, 49(2), 273-294. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=16719702&site=ehost-live

This article examines the diffusion of pension privatization programs globally. It initially explains why there was such a need for pension reform: increased life expectancy and decreased birth rates have produced a strain on the funding mechanisms that worked historically. Brooks claims that the long-term effects of pension privatization were not known and wonders why policy measures were taken to liberalize pensions in the face of this insecurity (274).

She deploys a statistical method of 59 countries to examine how policy diffusion took place.

Brooks explores some explanations of policy diffusion: globalization requires that countries become more attractive to capital. Also, some argue that IOs have a unique, independent influence on this situation. This can take place either through hard power or soft power. These “downward” pressures on countries may not go very far in explaining why they make neoliberal reforms. The answer may lie in horizontal pressures.

An empirical model is then deployed to examine where the greater driver lies. Her dependent variable is the, “…adoption of some degree of private structural reform to a mandatory national old age pension system,” and is measured as a binary (284).

Her results, “…reveals a significant interdependent logic shaping the decision to privatize national pension systems, while also confirming the importance of domestic political and economic correlates of this deep institutional change” (285). “Peer dynamics thus powerfully shape the risk of privatization among nations in EECA and Latin America, increasing dramatically the risk of adoption as more peers turn to market-orientated pension reforms” (286). Demographics and domestic political institutions are significant while IFI influence is not. “Overall, the empirical model provides evidence of a forceful interdependent logic of domestic policy-making decisions” (289).

Weyland: Theories of Political Diffusion

Weyland, Kurt. (2005). "Theories of Policy Diffusion: Lessons from Latin American Pension Reform". World Politics, 57, 262-285.

“In sum, the present article asks what drives waves of diffusion most—foreign pressures, symbolic and normative imitation, rational learning, or cognitive heuristics” (263).

The questions asked by this article have broader theoretical implications, specifically on questions surrounding bounded rationality. The article wonders whether or not pension policies in Latin America can be examined to determine whether or not politicians made decisions that were because of the influence of international organizations, bounded rationality or through a process of cognitive heuristics. “The present analysis suggests that the cognitive-psychological approach, which emphasizes decision heuristics, offers a particularly good explanation for the spread of innovations in the pension area” (264).

The article examines idea diffusion as a s-curve. It also claims that idea diffusion has a geographical feature: clustering. Finally, it argues that diffusion proceeds in distinct waves.

An interesting figure (Figure 2) on 269 highlights the different levels of analysis that this issue encompasses. At the top, there is external pressure (IOs). In the middle, there is a “quest for legitimacy”, which is seen a a mid-level approach. At the bottom, there is rational learning and cognitive heuristics.

External Pressure: Has difficulty explaining geographic clustering. It also has problems explaining initial diffusion of ideas. Also, empirical data shows that compliance with IFIs is quite weak.

Normative Imitation: Here, countries adapt because they have internalized international norms. They adopt new policies because their preferences have changed. Weyland argues that this approach posits a large initial diffusion of ideas, which is not in line with the s-curve approach. “In sum, the general validity of the normative imitation approach is questionable, especially for the analysis of redistributive policies” (278).

Rational Learning: “…this framework confronts great difficulties in accounting for the three characteristics of diffusion. Above all, commonality in diversity poses a serious puzzle for rational choice” (279). Why would ideas cluster if actors are looking globally for policy inspiration?

Cognitive Heuristics: “…cognitive heuristics framework sees diffusion result from goal-orientated activities driven largely by actor interests” (281). However, this approach differs from rational learning in they methods that actors use to pursue their goals. “…cognitive0-psychological theories start from the robust empirical finding that human rationality is inherently bounded by innate, insuperable limitations on information processing and memory capacity” (282). Three heuristics are examined: availability, representativeness and anchoring. Availability: people witness a car crash and slow down. Representativeness: overestimation of trends from limited data. Anchoring: how do you adapt a model for your needs? These three heuristic approaches, “…provide a good explanation for the basic features of diffusion, namely, its geographical clustering, its s-shaped temporal unfolding, and its substantive characteristic of creating commonality in diversity” (285).

Swank: Tax Policy in an Era of Internationalization

Swank, Duane. (2006). "Tax Policy in an Era of Internationalization: Explaining the Spread of Neoliberalism". International Organization, 60(04), 847-882.

This article examines the spread of neo-liberal tax policies throughout the world. “My central argument is that the highly visible 1980s market-conforming tax reform in the United States should be especially important in shaping subsequent tax policies in other polities” (847). “Specifically, I argue that (asymmetric) competition for mobile assets associated with US reforms significantly influences national policy choices in other polities” (848). However, this is mitigated by domestic constraints (cost of implementation verses benefit).

Swank then examines other possible causes of the diffusion of tax policy in many countries. He looks at coercion, emulation, learning, competition and the domestic constraints that mitigate these decisions. He argues that there are different kinds of competition that can take place, and that the diffusion of tax policy can be attributed to asymmetrical competition: the US decreased the tax burden on capital and placed it on labor and other countries had to follow suit in order to remain attractive to the needs of capital.

He also identifies an ideational shift that may help the spread of tax policies. “…a shift to the right at the mass and elite level should significantly increase3 the weight assigned potential benefits and diminish the costs associated with adoption of the US model” (857).

“On the question of diffusion, substantial theory, an abundance of qualitative evidence about the perceptions of national policymakers, and the results presented above indicate that competitive pressures under girded the diffusion of US reforms” (873).

Of interest: "While there is little question that tax poilcy has experienced structural change...the substantial capacity of governments to fund social protection and public goods provision in the capitalist democracies has not been diminished appraciably by the US-driven diffusion of neoliberalism" (876).

Simmons, et. al.: The International Diffusion of Liberalism

Simmons, Beth A., Dobbin, Frank, & Garrett, Geoffrey. (2006). "Introduction: The International Diffusion of Liberalism". International Organization, 60(04), 781-810.

Here we examine the rise and spread of both economic and political liberalism. To understand the causes of this spread, our authors put fourth four distinct drivers and examine them qualitatively. These are the drivers of coercion, competition, learning and emulation. There are symposium articles that follow this article which explore these empirically. This abstract focuses solely on this article.

“Our principal objective is to shed light on the causal mechanisms that explain the timing and geographic reach of liberal innovations. What has caused these new policies to diffuse across time and space?”

They define economic liberalism as: “…policies that reduce government constraints on economic behavior and thereby promote economic exchange”. Political liberalism is also defined: “…policies that reduce government constraints on political behavior, promote free political exchange, and establish rights to political participation” (783).

The diffusion of ideas follows an s-curve. At first, there are a few people who are early adopters. Then, there is a rapid increase in adoption. Finally, there is a peaking out of the curve as all who could adopt have adopted.

Coercion: “Powerful countries can explicitly or implicitly influence the probability that weaker nations adopt the policy they prefer by manipulating the opportunities and constraints encountered by target countries, either directly or through the international and nongovernmental organizations…they influence” (790).

Competition: “…a more decentralized mechanism for policy diffusion than coercion” (792). In order to make claims about competition, theorists must be able to show that policies are being diffused by methods that are not just reducible to arguments about efficiency. This approach involves an information rich environment where actors mutually constitute the decisions of others, that relationships are horizontal and that policy interventions are mostly evaluated by short-medium-term effects.

Learning: “…refers to a change in beliefs or change in one’s confidence in existing beliefs, which can result from exposure to new evidence, theories, or behavioral repertoires” (795). Learning can be theorized as happening with individual rational actors or in broader communities.

Emulation: This approach is highly correlated to social constructivist approaches. “The distinguishing feature of social constructivism is its focus on the inter-subjectivity of meaning—both legitimate ends and appropriate means are considered social constructs” (799). This approach wonders how certain political policies and approaches became more broadly accepted as begin legitimate. Emulation can be seen as being caused by either epistemic communities (top-down) or through the emulation of peers through social psychology (horizontal).

The article then goes on to identify four different types of liberalism, which I will not elaborate on here. The article concludes by saying that these concepts are important and distinct (though the footnote points to a reference where they are unified). They then explain why each article is important in the symposium.

Benavot et. al.: Knowledge for the Masses

Benavot, Aaron, Cha, Yun-Kyung, Kamens, David, Meyer, John W., & Wong, Suk-Ying. (1991). "Knowledge for the Masses: World Models and National Curricula, 1920-1986". American Sociological Review, 56(1), 85-100. http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0003-1224%28199102%2956%3A1%3C85%3AKFTMWM%3E2.0.CO%3B2-I

This article examines how much of the primary school curriculum has become standardized from a sociological perspective. Old perspectives on this issue constructed the formation of school curriculum as the result of either the, “…functional requirements of society”, or, “…as a reflection of existing power relations in society” (86). This would skew the result more heavily towards a nationally patterned set of distinct curricula.

However, these authors posit that the rise of the standardization of national curricula can be seen a corollary of the rise of, “standardized models of society” (86). This can be seen as an emerging world cultural set of values and structures. “…the same world-wide processes that were involved in the spread of primary education may also have generated similarity in its content” (86).

The authors put forth a number of hypotheses. Increased social development would relate to increased standardization in curriculum as well as more focus on math, natural science and social science. Increasing development would also be seen through an increasing focus on “modern values”.

They deploy a statistical method for exploring these hypotheses. They find that there is a “world-wide trend” that moves countries towards standardization of curriculum. “This striking worldwide trend toward a more integrated notion of society could have a functionalist interpretation, e.g., greater public involvement in and control over social life produced a stronger conception of society as a ‘social system’” (92). Other statistical finding support the view that the standardization process was formed mostly not by national processes but by global processes.

Conclusion: “Functionalist theory suggests that national curricula vary by level of socioeconomic development, increasingly incorporate modern subject matter, and are slow to change” (96). What are the deeper drivers of this standardization? “We have no information on the processes by which this curricular standardization is achieved” (97). “The real surprise of our findings lies not in the unimportance of local influences, but in the relative unimportance of national influences on curricular structure” (98).

Kaufman, et. al.: The Balance of Power in World History

Kaufman, Stuart J., Little, Richard, & Wohlforth, William Curti. (2007). The balance of power in world history. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

“Hegemony leads to balance through all of the centuries we can contemplate” Kenneth Waltz, 1993:77

Is the balance of power as it has been understood by IR scholars, specifically realist scholars, a trans-historical fact, as Waltz claims? This book has been written to disprove this claim by looking at different historical periods where the actual imposition of balancing politics may or may not exist. There is even a nice quantitative overview of polarity in world history in the last chapter. The authors argue that balancing has had a role historically, but this is only about half of the time. Therefore, we can throw away the antiquated (and presumptuous) notion that balancing is a trans-historical fact.

The ways in which the term balance of power has been used is discussed. Haas (1953) has argued that balance of power is used in four ways: descriptively, prescriptively, normatively and analytically (2). Levy claims that balance of power, “is ‘that hegemonies do not form in multi-state systems because perceived threats of hegemony over the system generate balancing behavior by other leading states in the system’” (3).

“Overall, we conclude, the contemporary unipolar system is best understood not by assessing the logic of balancing, or balance-of-power theory; but by considering the logic of domination, and hegemonic stability theory” (20).

The rest of the book compromises the case studies, which are very interesting. I will not detail them here.

Wight: Agents, Structures and International Relations

Wight, Colin. (2006). Agents, structures and international relations : politics as ontology. Cambridge, UK ; New York: Cambridge University Press.

“The ability to predict outcomes in open systems is beyond all science” (52).

“There are simply no epistemological or methodological divides to accept, defend or bridge. …the argument advanced in this book promises nothing less than a comprehensive reassessment and restructuring of the theoretical cleavages that divide the discipline” (1). The theoretical divisions that are currently a very real trend in IR are not, Wight claims, epistemological or methodological, but they are rather ontological. Wight attempts to right this mess by focusing on the ontological arguments that have been overlooked by many in the discipline.

The agent-structure problem is the medium whereby Wight attempts to “unpack” his argument. He chooses this for three reasons: firstly, this problem is essentially ontological; secondly, every theoretical approach posits a solution to the agent-structure problem whether explicitly or tacitly; and thirdly, is the intersection of politics and ontology whereby the assumption is that the agent-structure problem is a part of social ontology. From later in the book, “If ever the agent-structure problem were solved, in the sense of requiring no further discussion, then social theoretic activity would come to an end, and along with it political, economic, cultural and ethical dispute. In this sense, the agent-structure problem is political” (63).

Wight also rejects the possibility that a general theory of IR is even achievable. “The attempt to construct a parsimonious theory of IR is not only flawed and doomed to failure, but also politically and ethically dangerous” (8).

In the second chapter, Wight situates his own political position vis-à-vis that of positivism. He claims that the current IR theoretical mess requires one to orient themselves with this hegemonic approach. “According to the positivist model of science, there is a general set of rules, procedures and axioms, which when taken together constitutes the ‘scientific method’” (19).

“…positivism can be characterized in the following manner. (1) Phenomenalism: the doctrine that holds that we cannot get beyond the way things appear to us and thereby obtain reliable knowledge of reality—in other words, appearances, not realities are the only objects of knowledge. (2) Nominalism: the doctrine that there is no objective meaning to the words we use—words and concepts do not pick out any actual objects or universal aspects of reality, they are simply conventional symbols or names that we happen to use for our own convenience. (3) Cognitivism: the doctrine that holds that no cognitive value can be ascribed to value judgments and normative statements. (4) Naturalism: the belief that there is an essential unity of scientific method such that the social sciences can be studies in the same manner as natural science” (21).

Positivists then use covering laws, instrumental treatments of theoretical terms, a Humean account of cause and an embrace of operationalism.

Wight rejects this positivism and instead embraces a scientific realism: “But it is not just the ‘covering law model’ which scientific realism rejects; it is the very attempt to demarcate a ‘scientific method’. For scientific realists there can be no single ‘scientific method’. Understood as the attempt to provide depth explanations of phenomena, it must be the case that differing phenomena will require differing modes of investigation and perhaps different models of explanation. Contra positivism, then, for scientific realists, the content of science is not the method” (19). “For scientific realists the productions of science are always open to revision and reformulation. The dialectic of science is never ending and no scientific discovery, or claim, is ever beyond critique” (24).

There is an account of the Kantian epistemological turn that arose from the catalyst that was David Hume. The scientific realists must always question epistemological claims and must revert back to ontology, though ontology will always require epistemology for further exploration.

“The empirical realist error is the conflation of three domains, or levels of realty, into one—that of the empirical. In contrast to this, scientific realists argue that in order to make sense of the scientific enterprise we need to distinguish between the domains of the empirical (experiences and impressions), the actual (events and states-of-affairs—i.e. the actual objects of potential direct experience) and the real or non-actual (the deep structures, mechanisms and tendencies)” (34-5).

There is a continued critique of positivism in its many forms. The hope of Wight is the imposition of a science without positivist “residues”. For him, scientific realism is one way that this can become a reality.

He ontologically establishes three points about society: “First, societies are irreducible to people; social forms are a necessary condition for any intentional social act. Second, their pre-existence establishes their autonomy as possible objects of study. Third, their causal power establishes their reality” (46).

Wight then deploys the Bourdieu concept of habitus. He defines this as, “a mediating link between individuals’ subjective worlds and the socio-cultural world into which they are born and which they share with others. The power of the habitus derives from the thoughtlessness of habit and habituation, rather than consciously learned rules” (49). Society and the individual interact thought the medium of the habitus.

The remainder of the second chapter is a relatively rushed sketch of different theories and Wight’s classification of their position vis-à-vis the agent-structure problem and the issues surrounding either ontology, epistemology or methodology. He looks at Webber, Wallerstein, Waltz, Wendt, Cox, Carr and many others.

The third chapter’s aim is to, “identify what lies at the heart of the agent-structure problem and disentangle this from the other issues that surfaced during the debate surrounding this issue within IR, but which are not an integral part of it” (90). This debate is problematic because there are so many different theoretical approaches that have been taken and that must be disentangled. There is the standard levels of analysis approach, the micro-macro approach and the two structures approach. All of these are problematic on certain levels for Wight if they do not involve an understanding of full interaction between agents and structure where structure operates at all levels. The third chapter also has relevant, interesting and important things to say about emergence and deserves a more thorough read.

This abstract will stop at this point and should be taken up later with chapter 4-the end.

UPDATE:

Conclusion:

The agent-structure debate has provided the following to IR: it has brought forward the impossibility of focusing only on the international while ignoring the domestic; it has also rejected structural monism; it has also problematized methodological individualism; finally, it brought forward the difficulty of operationalizing this approach.

Little: The Balance of Power in International Relations

Little, Richard. (2007). The balance of power in international relations : metaphors, myths, and models. New York: Cambridge University Press.

This book attempts to unpack the metaphor of “balance of power”. It is a constructivist account of how balance of power can be situated within theoretical debates between positivists and post-positivists. It also takes apart four different Realist theories of IR and situates the concept of balance of power within those theories, highlighting how these theories can also be seen as being constructive in their approach.

Balance of power in IR is initially associated with anti-hegemonic alliances. When one power becomes too strong, other nations will rally together to create a different pole in the international system. This pole is designed to balance the power of the hegemon. Waltz famously said that states will either balance or bandwagon.

“The aim of this book is to illuminate the central, complex and yet contentious role that the balance of power plays in the theory and practice of international relations” (11). “Although there are significant areas of disagreement among…realists, it is generally accepted that the great powers monitor the material power possessed by all the other states in the international system and endeavour [sic] to manipulate the resulting distribution of power in their own favor as a means of enhancing their chances of survival” (11). By contrast…English school theorists…also link the balance of power to the existence of an international society and their approach requires them to take account of ideational l as well as material factors” (11-2). “For critics, the balance of power looks increasingly anachronistic and unhelpful as a tool for understanding international relations” (12).

He claims to make two main “moves”. These are a movement from agency to structure, as the metaphor eventually becomes so institutionalized that it becomes accepted as being a salient effect of international structure. The second move is to associate the balance of power with myth and metaphor and then to relate this to some of the most important attempts to understand IR since WWII.

Little then discusses the complex, confusing and ambiguous meaning that metaphors can come to have. The balance of power, for example, can be understood to mean a variety of things, and is defined in 9 different ways (27). The metaphor was originally used to explain Italian city states interacting.

He examines the metaphor from the perspective of scales on which power is balanced. “What impact does the scales metaphor have on this conception of power? In essence, it moves us away from an agency-based conception of power and towards a structural conception of power. It tells us less about the power possessed by the participants as agents and more about how the power possessed by the members of the system defines the structure of the social setting” (47).

Summing up chapter two’s argument, Little states, “…I argue that metaphors are not only a surprisingly complex phenomenon but also that any assessment of the balance of power is profoundly affected by whether we regard the concept as a substitution or an interaction metaphor” (50).

In the third chapter, Little makes a distinction between positivist and post-positivist approaches to understanding the relationship between metaphor, model and myth. “From a positivist perspective, myth is used in a colloquial sense and is associated with a fundamental error of some kind, whereas postpositivism associates myths with ideological narratives that draw on deep-seated beliefs about the nature of reality” (51).

The remainder of this third chapter further fleshes out the distinction between myth, metaphor and models from the positivist and post-positivist perspectives. There is a relation of the metaphor in the rhetoric of Churchill and George W. Bush. There is an extension of the balance of power metaphor to include bodies and arches. There is also a very informative flow-chart that tracks different iterations of balance of power metaphors and how these relate to the four authors that Little examines.

The next four chapters are explorations of the concept of balance of power within the structure of Mearsheimer, Waltz, Bull and Mortenthau. They are not detailed here, but should be reviewed. This is a limited review focusing on the first three chapters.

UPDATE:

Ch. 4: Morgenthau: Politics among Nations

The balance of power is a central feature of Morgenthau’s book. Wight highlights two processes that Morgenthau conflates: “One associates the balance of power with the unintended outcome of great powers engaged in a mechanistic drive for hegemony. The other dynamic is associated with a complex set of social, ideational and material factors that ameliorate the effects of the first dynamic and assists the great powers in maintaining an equilibrium that promotes their collective security and common interests” (92).

A first general criticism of Morgenthau’s approach is that it is ahistorical. A second criticism is that it is generally ambiguous. Thirdly, it is generally thought to be incoherent. For example, Donnelly (2000) critiques Morgenthau’s conception of balance of power as being two mutually exclusive things.

For Morgenthau, power politics are eternal, as this is deeply rooted in human nature. However, he also argues that the balance of power is made possible by a certain kind of international structure that some might call modern and rooted in European history. There is a dualism at play here which is difficult to reconcile, though I would be tempted to explain it through the same distinction as that between structural realists and neo-classical realists.

Morgenthau highlights the golden age of the balance of power at the Peace of Westphalia, which ended the Thirty Years’ War. “He justifies this assessment on two grounds; first, that this was the time when most of the literature on the balance of power was published, and second, that this was the era when princes most explicitly drew on the balance of power to guide their foreign policy” (101).

“…as I have tried to show in this chapter, from his perspective, the nature of international politics has undergone at least tw2o major transformations over the last three hundred years” (124). The first was the French Revolution, which challenged the aristocracy. The second was after WWI, with international super-powers. In this sense, Morgenthau begins to look somewhat like a constructivist. While international structure pushes countries towards something resembling hegemony, countries can fight back and bring about a sort of stability to the system. Morgenthau spoke against nationalistic universalism and thought of the historical transition as moving towards a world order. As we move there, we must attempt to achieve an associational balance of power (as opposed to an adversarial balance of power) through the tool of diplomacy.

Ch. 5: Bull: Anarchical Society

The concept of the balance of power figures strongly in Bull’s The Anarchical Society.

He begins by using Vattel’s definition (Swiss diplomat): “’a state of affairs such that no one power is in a position where it is preponderant and can lay down the law to the others’” (135). “For Vattel, therefore, the balance of power is contrasted with hegemony and it applies to a political arena where there is no overarching authority” (135).

Bull refers to balance of power as an institution, as defined as the following: “’a set of habits and practices shaped towards the realization of common goals’” (135).

Balancing then necessarily implies, “....’self-restraint as well as the restraint of others’” (135). In this sense, structure impels countries to work to resist the hegemonic rise of other countries, as well as resist hegemonic attempts of their own.

There are six complications to this: 1.) polarity is important; 2.) there are multiple types of power; 3.) the way that power is distributed geographically is important; 4.) the way that power is perceived is important; 5.) nuclear weapons change things; and 6.) the type of balance of power is important, for example, whether or not it is fortuitous or contrived.

“An international system exists…whenever ‘states are in regular contact with one another and where in addition there is interaction between them, sufficient to make the behavior of each a necessary element in the calculation of the other’” (139).

“By contrast, an international society exists when states, on the one hand, are ‘conscious of certain common interests and common values’ and, on the other, ‘conceive of themselves to be bound by a common set of rules in their relations with one another, and share in the working of common institutions’” (139).

Bull’s view of the institutional relationships involved in international society are represented in Figure 5.4: In the middle there is balance of power. As nodes that move away from this central point, there is international law, diplomacy, war and great power management (149).

Ch. 6: Kenneth N. Waltz’s Theory of International Politics:

“Waltz…insists that if there is any ‘distinctively political theory of international politics, balance of power is it’” (167).

Little argues that, while Waltz is typically seen as being a proponent of adversarial balances of power, the story can also be read as promoting an associational balance of power.

“So…Walt…has drawn a distinction between balance of power theory and balance of threat theory and he argues that the latter incorporates the idea of power but subsumes it, in conjunction with geography, offensive capabilities and intentions, within the more general concept of threat. He then goes on to argue that where as the balance of power theory predicts that states will ally against the strongest state, the balance of threat theory predicts that states will ally against the most threatening state” (169-70).

Reverse Balancing: “…identifies collaborative policies that are designed to promote stability by reducing the level of arms or implementing measures that are designed to inhibit the use of weapons” (172).

Waltz tries to establish an international political realm that is distinct from the realm of domestic politics, or unit level analyses. There are two forms of political order, one with an organizing principle of hierarchy and another with an organizing principle of anarchy.

The issue of power is central to Waltz’s theory. Firstly, he conceptualizes power in material terms, and disputes whether or not these material ends need to actually control outcomes of others. Secondly, he assumes that there is only ever a small amount of states that can affect the system. Thirdly, he assumes power is relative.

“From Waltz’s perspective, it is not that ‘anarchy is what states make of it’, in Wendt’s memorable phrase, but rather ‘anarchy is what polarity makes of it’ (192).

“…the two great powers are much more able to manage international affairs constructively than are the great powers in a mltipolar world” (206).

“He accepts, however, that a theory that is based on the structure of the international system can only help to explain ‘some big, important, and enduring patterns’… In essence, he makes three major claims in the book. The first is that anarchy is an extremely resilient political structure and that the balance of power provides the best theoretical explanation for this phenomenon. The second claim is that the nature of international politics is very different in bipolar and multipolar systems and this is because the balance of power operates on a very different basis in these two kinds of systems. The third claim, closely related to the second, is that the international system can be more constructively managed in a bipolar system than in a multipolar system. This is because the miltipola4r balance of power inhibits the constructive management of international affairs. Structural explanations, therefore, can account for continuity within systems and differences between systems” (209-10).

Ch. 7: John J. Mearsheimer’s The Tragedy of Great Power Politics:

Little explains that this book was written in response to those who believed that the end of the cold war represented some sort of “end of history” (213).

Little earlier argues that reading Waltz as a defensive realist is a misreading, something that Mearsheimer relies on in his situating of his IR theory. In line with the focus on metaphors, myths, etc., Little analogizes the international system to a tread mill. In Waltz’s theory, states run and run on the treadmill and there will always be competition and conflict, unless only two states remain. Only then is there the possibility of working together to solve problems. Mearsheimer, on the other hand, presents a treadmill where the great powers try to run faster than the other states until other states succumb to fatigue and only one state remains.

“The aim of this chapter is to highlight the role that the balance of power plays in Mearsheimer’s theory of international politics and to show how his theory transforms the conventional or certainly the Waltzian image of the international system and reveals that it is, inherently, a regionally based system” (215).

Assumes that great powers shape the international system. States are overwhelmingly concerned with their own survival because the international system is a self-help system. The, “…logic of anarchy compels every great power to adopt an aggressive stance in the international system” (224). States strive to be hegemons, though it’s virtually impossible (espseically in the age of nuclear weapons) to become the hegemon (based on Mearcheimer’s definition).

Mearsheimer then moves away from some more foundational, Waltzian structural realist assumptions and brings geography into the equation by talking about the “stopping power of water”.

Rogowski: Commerce and Coalitions

Rogowski, Ronald. (1989). Commerce and coalitions : how trade affects domestic political alignments. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.

This text posits that there will be domestic political coalitions or divisions based on a country’s natural relative endowments if they engage in free trade. He creates a handy metric for determining whether or not there will be tension in a given country that is a 2x2 box. Along the x-axis there is a distinction made between countries that are relatively abundant in land or labor. Along the Y axis, countries are separated into relatively capital rich and poor nations.

This is not an attempt to explain all of the effects of trade, but rather to provide a metric that can potentially be useful in determining some of the effects of increased or decreased trade on different coalitions in a given nation. The remainder of the text is an attempt to apply the theory to historical example. At times this is seamless and elegant, and other times it stretches too far to make causal connections that do not exist.

Hunter, et. al.: World Bank Directives, Domestic Interests, and the Politics of Human Capital Investmenet in Latin America

Hunter, Wendy, & Brown, David S. (2000). "World Bank Directives, Domestic Interests, and the Politics of Human Capital Investment in Latin America". Comparative Political Studies, 33(1), 113-143. http://www.csa.com/ids70/gateway.php?mode=pdf&doi=10.1177%2F0010414000033001005&db=sagepol-set-c&s1=80ee883868977a98ef5390896262f864&s2=33b0a246702c8a4b341473fa4c93e069

“Do international financial institutions significantly affect the development strategies their borrowers pursue over do domestic forces prevail over IFI influence?” (113). IOs are teachers, tutors, etc., but are the countries learning? This study focuses on the learning end of the relationship. “Our findings suggest that the World Bank has not had a significant impact on human capital investment in Latin America. Instead, powerful domestic forces tend to override World Bank directives” (115).

This article then turns its focus to the varying returns on investment in different areas of human capital development. It states that the empirical work of Schultz (1959, 1963) show that, “social returns on investments in human capital are greater than those on physical capital in the developing world, and…investments in basic education yield higher returns than those in higher education” (115). The argument is extended casually, and our authors posit that most of the beneficiaries of higher education investment are those who are already well off and who do not need the investment. “…an integral tenet of neoliberal social reform is that public resources [must] not be allocated to those who can afford to pay for private social services” (116). And, “…IMF officials are particularly determined to eliminate market distorting mechanisms like price supports and subsidies as well as nonessential social items. Cutting out free university education is consistent with this approach” (118).

The study then deploys an analytical approach to answering its hypothesis. They want to see whether or not significant investment in a country by BWIs will be answered with adequate change in social programs on the ground. It should be shown that as WB investment in countries increases, government subsidies to higher education decrease. This will happen partially by a virtue of the influence of technicos, or technocrats who are trained in the West and who carry western values.

Their dependent variables are central bank, “expenditures on both education and health,” expressed as a relation to GDP (122). There are four DVs. The independent variables are as follows: concentration of world bank project lending, lagged DVs, gross domestic product per capita, economic growth, debt service ratio, domestic political institutions and population (122-5).

The results: “The consistent finding across such a wide array of indicators offers strong evidence that the concentration of World Bank funding exerts little influence on social policy…it appears that the World Bank’s efforts to persuade its clients to shift spending toward programs that invest in human capital have met with little success” (127). The statistically significant variables are the lagged DV and GDP growth with an overall r-squared of over 95%. Further results show that World Bank lending to education doesn’t match up with government spending (or rather, how governments should be spending according to World Bank assumptions).

The author then draws on examples from Brazil and Chile to explain their results. In Brazil, it was not possible to charge tuition because students rioted and the government appeased them. IN Chile, students pay for higher education. This is partially because the Pinochet government was highly successful at lobbying for reforms. (!)

They conclude that their, “…field research suggests that domestic political forces prevail over international technocratic linkages when it comes to redistributive social policy making” (138). One explanation for this in relation to earlier periods is that, “early stabilization measures and market reforms were launched by a small number of high-level officials in an atmosphere of secrecy and crisis. Current reforms, by contrast, are taking place during a longer time frame and in a relatively open political atmosphere, inviting politicians and interest groups to intervene” (139).

Gould: Money Talks

Gould, Erica R. (2003). "Money Talks: Supplementary Financiers and International Monetary Fund Conditionality". International Organization, 57(03), 551-586.

This article examines IMF conditionality. The IMF was originally created to monitor and offer short-term loans to support and stabilize the international exchange rate regime. In 1952, it started to place conditionalities with their loans, things that countries had to do in order to meet the requirements of the loan. Gould would like to examine why conditionalities are the way that they are. What factors and variables have contributed to their current state of being.

She argues that, “…Fund conditionality is influenced by the private and official financiers who supplement the Fund’s loan to borrowers” (552). These supplementary financiers are the agents who provide additional capital to countries when they are going through a short-term liquidity problem. These financiers can be grouped into three categories: creditor states, private financial institutions (PFIs) and multilateral organizations. Gould focuses on PFIs.

She then examines the historical arguments for IO influence. She looks at liberal theory and generalizes that IOs help, “…facilitate mutually beneficial exchange between international actors” (554). IOs are seen as being Pareto improving because they change the incentive structure between states. Much previous literature on this subject has focused on the state-as-an-actor assumption. Looking at PFIs provides a different perspective.

“Supplementary financiers and the IMF are locked in a mutually dependent relationship. The Fund depends on supplementary financiers to help ensure the success of its loan programs and its future bargaining leverage with borrowers. In turn, supplementary financiers depend on the Fund to help facilitate their financing transactions and make borrowers’ commitments more credible. As a result, supplementary financiers are both able and willing to influence the Fund’s activities” (555). “The empirical section focuses on one element of the design of Fund programs that best isolates the influence of PFIs: a certain class of binding conditions, labeled ‘bank-friendly’ conditions, which specify that the country must pay back a commercial bank creditor as a condition of its Fund loan” (560). “In short, the supplementary financier suggests that PFIs will be able to influence the terms of Fund conditionality arrangements when they can generat3e a credible threat to withhold necessary supplementary financing if their demands are not met. The PFIs’ threat will only be credible under certain conditions: if they are organized and if the threat is ex post incentive-compatible” (562).

The method involves using 249 cases from 20 countries, which she claims are generally representative. Table 1 lists different examples of bank friendly conditions that may be attached to loans. Figure 1 graphs the rise of conditionality verses the rise of conditions that involve bank-friendly measures, and is quite telling. The dependent variable is binary: “whether or not a given conditionality agreement includes a bank-friendly binding condition” (565). The IVs are private influence, US influence, salary increase for IMF workers, reserve size, tranche, constant GSP, and year.

The results: “…these results lend support to the supplementary financier argument, and cast doubt on the realist and bureaucratic alternative arguments. There is a strong relationship between the PRIVATE INFLUENCE variable and the bank-friendly dependent variable. The next section clarifies how that relationship works” (573). Private influence is significant and positively correlated in three models, where overall r-squared is about 50% and the n is relatively low (76 in model 2). No other IV is relatively as significant and influential.

Gould then attempts to casually map this linkage. She examines Mexico and Turkey. She concludes that PFIs have been able to influence the Fund because the Fund is partially reliant on PFIs for their policy success.

Buria: The Bretton Woods Institutions

Buria, Ariel. (2005). "The Bretton Woods Institutions: Governance Without Legitimacy?" CSGR Working Paper No. 180/05.

This article starts out with a quote from Douglas North: “Institutions are not…created to be socially efficient; rather they, or at least the formal rules, are created to serve the interests of those with the bargaining power to create new rules” (2).

The voting structure of BWIs is examined in this article and it is found to be highly correlated with the influence of countries who contribute more quota money to funds. The attempt is to then create a different metric whereby countries could be given voting rights in these institutions. This new metric would do much to skew voting power away from traditional hegemons and towards newly industrializing countries. “…present day quotas…represented the economic structure of the world in 1944 are far from representative of the current sizes of economies, of their ability to contribute resources to the Fund or of their importance in world trade and financial markets” (5).

There was a quota review group. They attempted to make changes to this regime. However, while they were given a mandate to make these changes, they did not take into account developing countries (6). The review group was an iteration of vested interests having their way in an IO.

The first metric that Buria examines is the measurement of GDP in determining voting rights. “The majority favored conversion at market exchange rates, averaged over several years, but a minority preferred to measure GDP for purposes of the quota calculations using PPP-based exchange rates. They considered that market exchange rates do not necessarily equalize prices of tradable goods across countries, even after taking into account transport costs and quality differences, and that this creates an index numbers problem in which the GDP in developing countries is understated in relation to developed countries if market exchange rates are used” (9).

In this world, Japan is seen as being a higher potential contributor than China, France more than India.

The quota system is also skewed in favor of developing countries in that it does poor job of measuring inter-European trade.

Buria then shows that, “…the measurement of GDP in terms of PP favors an increase in the quota share of all developing countries by eliminating a measurement bias against them. The introduction of volatility as a factor in the quota formula also favors developing countries, particularly exporters of primary products” (16).

She then looks at the eroded legitimacy of BWIs. The Fund ahs lost all influence over industrial countries. International financial markets have given countries access to other forms of financing. There is a, “…growing chasm between shareholders and stakeholders, between those who determine IMF policies and decisions and those to whom those decisions and polices are applied” (18). Also, the rapid expansion of NICs is highlighted with their growing coffers of financial reserves.

In conclusion, this article claims that the quota formulas need to reflect a changed global economy, where the influence of the economic powers of 1944 is decreased and the influence of the economic powers of the 21^st century is increased. “…the determination of quotas is as much a political as a technical exercise” (26).

Barnett, et. al.: The Politics, Power and Pathologies of International Organizations

Barnett, Michael N., & Finnemore, Martha. (1999). "The Politics, Power, and Pathologies of International Organizations ". International Organization, 53(04), 699-732.

“…IOs stray from the efficiency goals these theories impute [Pareto efficiency, etc.] and that many IOs exercise power autonomously in ways unintended and unanticipated by states at their creation” (699).

They use a constructivist approach that is highly influenced by sociological institutionalism. “…we argue that the rational-legal authority that IOs embody gives them power independent of the states that created them and channels that power in particular directions. Bureaucracies, by definition, make rules, but in so doing they also create social knowledge” (699).

They claim that their approach to IOs offers a different view of power in IOs, that it provides a base for treating IOs as autonomous actors, and then that they then can assess the desirability of IOs.

They firstly explore theoretical approaches to understanding organizations. They contrast an econometric approach with a sociological approach. In the economic approach, there is little social interaction. In the sociological approach, this is reversed. “Our point is simply that when we choose a theoretical framework, we should choose one whose assumptions approximate the empirical conditions of the IO we are analyzing, and that we should be aware of the biases created by those assumptions” (704).

They then look at whether or not IOs can be seen as being autonomous. For a realist, an IO can be reduced to the interests of the nation that was formative in its creation. However, they claim that there is a rupture in the principle-agent problem: what the principle wants is not necessarily what the agent will give them. They use Weber.

They claim that IOs are autonomous sites of authority. To make this claim, they rely heavily on Weber’s study of bureaucracies. IOs do the following: they classify, they fix meaning, they distribute norms.

The authors then make the claim that IOs can be pathological. IOs are prone to dysfunctional behavior, “…but international relations scholars have rarely investigated this…” (715). “…we elaborate how the same sources of bureaucratic power, sketched earlier, can cause dysfunctional behavior. We term this particular type of dysfunction pathology” (716). The source of the dysfunction is then pursued: is it inside or outside the IO and whether it is material or cultural (716).

World polity model would posit that there are two reasons for IO dysfunction: they seek legitimacy in place of efficiency and that they live in a world of contradictions (717-8). They explore five mechanisms by which pathologies can arise in IOs: “irrationality of rationalization, universalisms, normatization of deviance, organizational insulation, and cultural contestation” (719). “Our claim, therefore, is that the very nature of bureaucracy-the ‘social stuff’ of which it is made—creates behavioral predispositions that make bureaucracy prone to these kinds of behaviors” (719).

They conclude that this approach can be useful for IR scholars for three reasons: 1.) IOs are treated as actors; 2.) IOs can have independent effects on the world; and 3.) IOs can be normatively evaluated (726).

Hofkirchner et. al.: ICTs and Society: The Salzburg Approach

Hofkirchner, Wolfgang, Fuchs, Christian, Raffl, Celina, Schafranek, Matthias, Sandoval, Marisol, & Bichler, Robert (2007). ICTs and Society: The Salzburg Approach. Towards a Theory for, about, and my means of the Information Society

There is an increasingly important role being played by ICT in the social sciences. This article, in part, attempts to identify exactly what that role should be. It argues that ICT should be understood as a “transdiscipline”. It is a unique position taken by the Salzburg University that involves the creation of a center to promote ICT as a distinct discipline.

“By the term transdiscipline we mean something distinct from the term inter-discipline. This in two respects: first in the respect of the scientific status and second in the respect of the societal function” (7). In regards to the scientific status referred to in the above quote, the transdiscipline nature of ICT should be a transgression of different barriers that have been historically established between disciplines. This should also work as a force to “bridge several gaps” that exist between both natural and social sciences, involving the gap between specialists and generalist and the gap between basic and applied research. Regarding the societal function discussed in the quote at the beginning of this paragraph, “…the concept of a transciscipline does not adhere to the long held assumption of science being in an ivory tower, but implies a transgression from the scientist to the stakeholders affected by the results of research and a transformation into a new science that is human-centered, democratic, participatory” (12).

The future of information society, or the future information society, however you would like to construct the sentence as they are both highly correlative, can be assessed scientifically in three ways: through its aims, scopes and tools. The aims, “…would have to serve the practical purpose of meeting the demand for governance which has been rising exorbitantly” (15). The scopes would involve just about everything: …”sociosphere, ecosphere and technosphere” (15). The tools: “…a science of the Information Society is a science by means of Information society—by means of making use of possibilities technologies of knowledge provide for getting access to, comparing and assessing an ever increasing variety of knowledge” (16).

The creation of the Information and Communication Technologies & Society (ICT&S) at the University of Salzburg will pursue the following in a social context: “…develops both technological prototypes and policy recommendations for the implementation of ICTs for business, government, and civil society organizations…” and “…researches the design of ICTs as well as the design of the full range of societal…conditions of their implementation” and “…crosses the perspectives of engineering and social sciences and humanities and even other disciplines if appropriate” (19). The institution is dedicated to studying and approaching the interaction of technology and society as, “…a feedback-loop between science and technology, no the one hand, and society on the other, in times when the old modes of steering society have proven obsolete” (24). The eventual goal is to bring about a Global Sustainable Information Society (GSIS).

The GSIS involves sustainability, justice, fairness, equality, solidarity, harmony with nature, freedom, human efficiency, culture, politics, economy, technology, etc.

There is a further fleshing out of the scope, aims and tools that ICT&S will use to achieve GSIS, with an extensive discussion of the internet as a complex organization. The report concludes by reiterating the goal of the report, which was to make the case that ICT must be a transdisciplinary approach to tackling the complex problems that current society faces.

Wallerstein: Antisystemic Movements: History and Dilemmas

Wallerstein, Immanuel. (1990). "Antisystemic Movements: History and Dilemmas". In S. Amin (Ed.), Transforming the revolution : social movements and the world-system (pp. 187 p.). New York: Monthly Review Press.

The Creation of Antisystemic Movements and the Debate about Strategy, 1789-1945:

Wallerstein attempts to highlight and put into historical context different social movements, and eventually prescribe a set of policies and ideals that should be adhered to by progressives in the future. “The post-1945 history of these movements can only be understood or appreciated in the context of their history as organized continuing movements. And this history must perforce start with the French Revolution” (13). This movement was the cornerstone of all successive movements, having put the ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity on the global pedestal.

After the French revolution, he claims that other social movements were disorganized. For his example, he talks about the revolution of 1848. As this revolution was a broadly based proletarian uprising across Europe that was brutally crushes, Wallerstein takes the logical conclusion that social movements needed to become increasingly organized and coordinated. One could not overthrow a state without a structure to replace it. “…the primary lesson to be drawn from the experience of 1848 was the need for long-term political organization as the necessary tool with which their objectives might be achieved” (17).

Wallerstein then goes on to highlight revolutions and social movements that occurred after the revolution of 1848. These movements became increasingly socialist, though not uniformly. There were issues with the implementation of socialist movements globally, and there was specifically a rupture between socialist movements and nationalist movements. “The socialist movements were to be found largely in core countries, the nationalist movements largely in peripheral ones” (23).

Postwar Success of the Movements: Triumphs and Ambiguities:

“People resist exploitation. They resist as actively as they can, as passively as they must” (27).

He looks at the three “worlds” and claims that, in many ways, in and around the era of 1945, many antisystemic movements felt as if they had won. There had been large movements towards socialist governance throughout the globe. “…the period after 1945, in at least a majority of the countries of the world, representing at least three-quarters of the worlds’ population, the ostensible intermediate objective of nineteenth-century antisystemic movements—the coming to power either of a workers or of a popular movement—had in fact occurred” (33).

“To be antisystemic is to argue that neither liberty or equality is possible under the existing system and that both are possible only in a transformed world” (36).

“Let us therefore sum up the experience of the post-1945 coming to power of the movements. Each kind of movement put into effect some very great reforms which have earned them substantial popular support. There were some great changes of which the movements could boast and whose consequences were visible. At the same time, despite initial advances in social equality, political liberty, and international solidarity, in the long run, the movements disappointed, and disappointed greatly…” (38).

Forward to What? The Debate on Strategy Reopened:

He highlights some of the important movements post WWII that have shown themselves to be antisystemic, but wonders where we are really going. 1968 represented a year in which a new wave of antisystemic movements erupted. He posits that we need to think about both long-term and short-term strategies.

Agenda for the Movements:

“The lesson of 1848 was that spontaneous uprisings were not viable as a path of serious social or national revolution. Social transformation requires social organization. It was out of this lesson that the ‘old’ antisystemic movements were born. We have argued that 1968 marked the emergence of ‘new’ antisystemic movements that were protesting against the successes (that we see as failures) of the ‘old’ antisystemic movements” (48).

He sees four things that must happen: repolitization of the base, reconceptualization of the understanding of transformation in society, bring together diverse movements in a “family”, and, the “deghettoization” of social movements (48-53).

Camus: The Myth of Sisyphus

Camus, Albert, & O'brien, Justin. (1991). The myth of Sisyphus and other essays (1st Vintage international ed.). New York: Vintage Books.

Camus starts out: “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide” (3). “Suicide has never been dealt with except as a social phenomenon. On the contrary, we are concerned here, at the outset, with the relationship between individual thought and suicide” (4). “…killing yourself amounts to confessing. It is confessing that life is too much for you or that you do not understand it” (5). “The subject of this essay is precisely this relationship between the absurd and suicide, the exact degree to which suicide is a solution to the absurd (6). “Reflection on suicide gives me an opportunity to raise the only problem to interest me: is there a logic to the point of death? I cannot know unless I pursue, without reckless passion, in the sole light of evidence, the reasoning of which I am here suggesting that source. This is what I call an absurd reasoning” (9).

The absurdity of life is that there is nothing else. “This hearth within me I can feel, and I judge that it exists. This world I can touch, and I likewise judge that it exists. There ends all my knowledge, and the rest is construction” (19). Camus rejects the logic of the affirmation of the existence of God. He doesn’t reject the affirmation of God (42). “What I know, what is certain, what I cannot deny, what I cannot reject—this is what counts” (51). “I don’t know whether this world has a meaning that transcends it. But I know that I do not know that meaning and that it is impossible for me just now to know it” (51).

“Thus I draw from the absurd three consequences, which are my revolt, my freedom, and my passion” (64). “The preceding merely defines a way of thinking. But the point is to live” (65).

The Absurd Man (Don Juan, Actor, Conqueror): “The absurd does not liberate; it binds. It does not authorize all actions. ‘Everything is permitted’ does not mean that nothing is forbidden. The absurd merely confers an equivalence on the consequences of those actions” (67). Don Juan goes out and woos women. He does not do this for some future gain or punishment, but for pleasure now. “I see Don Juan in a cell of one of those Spanish monasteries lost on a hilltop. And if he contemplates anything at all, it is not the ghosts of past loves, but perhaps, through a narrow slit in the sun-baked wall, some silent Spanish plain, a noble, soulless land in which he recognizes himself. Yes, it is on this melancholy and radiant image that the curtain must be rung down. The ultimate end, awaited but never desired, the ultimate end is negligible” (77). The actor mimes the absurd, he is not content with living his own absurdity, but must embody the absurdity of another. The conqueror understands that man is the end of man’s own existence and that there is nothing else. He would love to transcend the whole of the world but he knows that this is impossible.

“Let me repeat that these images do not propose moral codes and involve no judgments: they are sketches. They merely represent a style of life. The lover, the actor, or the adventurer plays the absurd. But equally well, if he wishes, the chaste man, the civil servant, or the president of the Republic” (90).

Camus then examines artistic creation. “Creation is the great mime” (94). He looks at the suicide of Dostoevsky’s Kirilov, who doubts that God exists, but kills himself to prove that ‘he will not be had’ (105). Then there is ephemeral creation, of which I will say nothing.

He ends with an examination of the myth of Sisyphus. “They [the gods] had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor” (119).

Sisyphus climbs the hill pushing the rock. It is brutal, difficult work. The rock falls. “It is during that return, that pause, that Sisyphus interests me. A face that toils so close to stones is already stone itself!...That hour like a breathing-space which returns as surely as his suffering, that is the hour of consciousness…He is stronger than his rock.,” and, “The workman of today works every day in his life at the same tasks, and this fate is no less absurd…Sisyphus, the proletarian of the gods, powerless and rebellious…There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn” (121).

“One must imagine Sisyphus happy” (123).

Foucault: Power/Knowledge: Truth and Power

Foucault, Michel, & Gordon, Colin. (1980). Power/knowledge : selected interviews and other writings, 1972-1977 (1st American ed.). New York: Pantheon Books.

Truth and Power:

This interview is concerned with Foucault’s understanding of the role of science, and how the ways in which questions are formulated can illuminate or obscure relevant facts. In Foucault’s first answer, he says that, in his examination of science and the ideological functions it aided, his questions always returned to this: power and knowledge (109).

He is critical of the dialectical approach to understanding history, as it, “is a way of evading the always open and hazardous reality of conflict by reducing it to a Hegelian skeleton, and ‘semiology’ is a way of avoiding its violent, bloody and lethal character by reducing it to the calm Platonic form of language and dialogue” (115).

Concerning his genealogical approach, Foucault explains the following: “But this historical contextualization needed to be something more than the simple relativisation of the phenomenological subject. I don’t believe the problem can be solved by historicizing the subject as posited by the phenomenologists, fabricating a subject that evolves through the course of history. One has to dispense with the constituent subject, to get rid of the subject itself, that’s to say, to arrive at an analysis which can account for the constitution of the subject within a historical framework. And this is what I would call genealogy, that is, a form of history which can account for the constitution of knowledges, discourses, domains of objects etc., without having to make reference to a subject which is either transcendental in relation to the field of events or runs in its empty sameness throughout the course of history” (117).

Foucault then takes issue with the applicability of the idea of ideology for three reasons: “it always stands in virtual opposition to something else which is supposed to count as truth”; “…[it] refers…to something of the order of a subject; and, “…[it] stands in a secondary position relative to something which functions as its infrastructure, as its material, economic determinant” (118).

Power is not just a concept working in the negative, to hold subjects down, etc. Power works and produces things. It, “induces pleasure, forms knowledge, produces discourse” (119). These new forms of power that Foucault is highlighting are much more efficient and much less wasteful in their allocation and promotion.

Power is also a concept that is broader than the State. “I don’t want to say that the State isn’t important; what I want to say is that relations of power, and hence the analysis that must be made of them, necessarily extend beyond the limits of the State. In two senses: first of all because the State, for all the omnipotence of its apparatuses, is far from being able to occupy the whole field of actual power relations, and further because the State can only operate on the basis of other, already existing power relations” (122).

There is then a discussion of the role of the intellectual, with a distinction being made between the specific intellectual and the general intellectual.

“The important thing here…is that truth isn’t’ outside power, or lacking in power: contrary to a myth whose history and functions would repay further study, truth isn’t the reward of free spirits…Truth is a thing of this world: it is produced only by virtue of multiple forms of constraint. And it induces regular effects of power” (131).

“In societies like ours, the ‘political economy’ of truth is characterized by five important traits: “…centered on the form of scientific discourse”; “…subject to constant economic and political incitement”; “…object, under diverse forms, of immense diffusion and consumption”; “…produced and transmitted under the control…of a few great political and economic apparatuses”; and, “…it is the issue of a whole political debate and social confrontation” (131-2).

He suggests the following: “’Truth’ is to be understood as a system of ordered procedures for the reproduction, regulation, distribution, circulation and operation of statements. ‘Truth’ is linked in a circular relation with systems of power which produce and sustain it, and to effects of power which induces and which extend it. A regime of truth. This regime is not merely ideological or super-structural; it was a condition of the formation and development of capitalism” (133).

The key is to divine how to produce new truth. You can not escape power, for truth is always power. It is a matter of discovering how to find emancapatory truth/power, knowledge/power.

Foucault: Power/Knowledge: Two Lectures

Foucault, Michel, & Gordon, Colin. (1980). Power/knowledge : selected interviews and other writings, 1972-1977 (1st American ed.). New York: Pantheon Books.

Two Lectures:

He begins by outlining some of his research projects, and moves to identifying an “increasing vulnerability to criticism of things” (80). “So, the main point to be gleaned from these events of the last fifteen years, their predominant feature, is the local character of criticism” (81).

Foucault also identifies a “return to knowledge”, that he defines at, “a fact that we have repeatedly encountered…an entire thematic to the effect that it is not theory but life that matters not knowledge but reality, not books but money…there is something else to which we are witness, and which we might describe as an insurrection of subjugated knowledges” (81). These subjugated knowledges (both erudite knowledge and popular knowledge) all deal with, “historical knowledge of struggles” (83).

This leads to the emergence of a genealogical approach to research. “Let us give the term genealogy to the union of erudite knowledge and local memories which allows us to establish a historical knowledge of struggles and to make sue of this knowledge tactically today” (83). “It is not therefore via an empiricism that the genealogical project unfolds…What it really does it to entertain the claims to attention of local, discontinuous, disqualified, illegitimate knowledges against the claims of a unitary body of theory which would filter, hierarchies and order them in the name of some true knowledge and some arbitrary idea of what constitutes a science and its objects. Genealogies are therefore not positivistic returns to a more careful or exact form of science. They are pre3cisely anti-sciences” (83). “…a genealogy should be seen as a kind of attempt to emancipate historical knowledges from that subjection, to render them, that is, capable of opposition and of struggle against the coercion of a theoretical, unitary, formal and scientific discourse” (85). “If we were to characterize it in two terms, then ‘archaeology’ would be the appropriate methodology of this analysis of local discursivities, and ‘genealogy’ would be there tactics whereby, on the basis of the descriptions of these local discursivities, the subjected knowledges which were thus released would be brought into play” (85). “What is at stake in all these genealogies is the nature of this power which has surged into view in all its violence, aggression and absurdity in the course of the last forty years, contemporaneously, that is, with the collapse of Fascism and the decline of Stalinism” (87).

Remaining in the first lecture, there is an extended discussion of the nature of power. Power is examined as a construct of economy, and asked whether or not this is not constraining. Power is not simply modeled on the commodity (89), but Foucault wonders how one can conduct a non-economic study of power. Power has been historically seen as a tool of repression, “…repression no longer occupies the place that oppression occupies in relation to the contract, that is, it is not abuse, but is, on the contrary, the mere effect of the continuation of a relation of domination” (92).

In the second lecture, Foucault begins by examine the relations of power, truth and right in the relation to one another like a triangle. “My problem is…: What rules of right are implemented by the relations of power in the production of discourses of truth? (93). “There can be no possible exercise of power without a certain economy of discourses of truth which operates through and on the basis of this association” (93).

Foucault then moves onto the concept of sovereignty. “When we say that sovereignty is the central problem of right in Western societies, what we mean basically is that the essential function of the discourse and techniques of right has been to efface the domination intrinsic to power in order to present that latter at the level of appearance under two different aspects: on the one hand, as the legitimate rights of sovereignty, and on the other, as the legal obligation to obey it” (95).

He then promotes five different methodological precautions to his study, which he summarizes as follows: “I would say that we should direct our researches on the nature of power not towards the juridical edifice of sovereignty…but towards domination and the material operators of power, towards forms of subjection and the inflections and utilizations of their localized systems, and towards strategic apparatuses” (102).

Foucault then goes on to talk about the rupture in the ways in which power has been enforced. It is through surveillance (104), it is the greatest invention of bourgeois society (105), it is crucial for the development of capitalism (105) and it involves the creation of a “society of normalization” (107).

Baylis: The Philosophic Functions of Emergence

Baylis, Charles. A. , & Goldstein, Jeffry. A. (2006). "Classic Paper: The Philosophic Functions of Emergence". Emergence, 8(1), 67-83.

(from Goldstein’s introduction) Baylis offered that emergence could be explained causal mechanisms. He put forth four ways in which this change could occur: integrative emergence , integrative subemergence, disintragrative emergence and disintegrative subemergence. This type of change is characteristic of a+b where the sum is not reducible to either a or b. Baylis also offers that the way that scholars of emergence were looking at the subject was too narrow and that not just any change could be seen as being emergent. “…emergence is not ordinary change in general but is instead consonant with a special kind of change, i.e., one that generates the outcomes which are unpredictable, non-deducible, irreducible, and capable of daunting (not violating) traditional notions of causality and determinism” (69).

Baylis begins by noting the current (1929) importance surrounding the issue of emergence. “The aim of this paper is to point out that, ins spite of the fact that emergence is more widespread than even its most ardent advocates have claimed, for it si indeed ubiquitous, nevertheless it solves none of these problems, supports no one Weltanshauung [worldview] rather than any other, and does not even imply evolution” (71)

Baylis defines emergence: “…are those characters of a complex which are not also characters of a proper part of that complex, and emergence or creative synthesis is that event which occurs when a complex having emergent characters is formed” (72). His example is water, with neither the character of hydrogen or oxygen.

“The attempt to solve some of the traditional problems of philosophy by means of the concept of emergence is no more successful than the attempt to make it imply evolution or value [two things he claims it does not support earlier in the paper]” (78). Emergence gives a name and thus calls attention to a commonly overlooked but nevertheless ubiquitous fact of the universe, the fact, namely, that some of the characters of every complex are different from the characters of any of the elements of that complex” (79). “The concept of emergence, then, has philosophic value in pointing out a fact which no theory may deny and in making possible new and suggestive answers to many of the standard philosophical problems…The concept of emergence is a key which opens new doors to philosophic inquiry, some of which may lead to treasure, but it is not a master key which of itself unlocks the many doors of that seemingly impregnable castle where lie concealed the answers to the various problems of philosophy” (83).

Goldstein: Emergence as a Construct

Goldstein, Jeffrey. (1999). "Emergence as a Construct: History and Issues". Emergence, 1(1), 49-72.

“Emergence…refers to the arising of novel and coherent structures, patterns, and properties during the process of self-organization in complex systems. Emergent phenomena are conceptualized as occurring on the macro level, in contrast to the micro-level components and processes out of which they arise” (49). Goldstein then goes on to identify properties that are common to emergent phenomena: radical novelty, coherence or correlation, global or macro level, dynamical, ostensive (50).

He then distinguishes emergent phenomena from “whole before its parts” and “gestalts”. “Whole before its parts” is a way of describing events that privilege the whole over the parts as contributing most heavily to the explanation. To this he refers back to Aristotle and Zeno’s conversation regarding distance, parts, wholes and infinity. Aristotle claimed that the whole was first a whole, and then its parts. This differs from emergence, which, “is not pre-given by a dynamical construct arising over time” (52). “Gestalt”, or references to whole systems such as natural systems, is seen as also suffering from the same distinction that “whole before its parts” does, in that it privileges a cordoned off “whole” as standing separate. Emergence, on the other hand, refuses such constraints.

Goldstein then distinguishes between proto and neo-emergence to highlight changes in the understanding of the concept of emergence over time. It was initially coined by G.H. Lewes: “…the emergent…cannot be reduced either to their sum or their differences” (53). These “proto-emergent” scientists led vigorous debates that eventually fizzled in the 1930s. Part of the reason for this disappearance was that proto-emergence scientists viewed the cause of emergence as being a black-box.

Neo-emergence is seen by Goldstein to be the modern iteration of the emergence movement. In that, these systems must have at least the following characteristics: nonlinearity, self-organizing, beyond equilibrium, attractors. These qualities have been studied by different schools of thought: Complex Adaptive Systems Theory, Nonlinear Dynamical Systems Theory, Synergetic School, Far-From-Equilibrium Thermodynamics (55-7).

The article then addresses issues surrounding explanation and emergence and wonders about emergence whether, “it is simply an epistemic recognition of the inadequacy of any current theory for deriving macro-level properties from micro-level determinants” (59). Some believe that the theory will eventually be discarded when other theories that more robustly can describe micro leading to macro-level changes arise.

Different forms of emergence are looked at, and the concept of “spontaneous novelty” is brought up in contrast to “radical novelty”. Not all new, unique or different features of a system that arise from micro-level agents can be termed emergent. We have to be, “careful in our recognition of emergent phenomena and continually ask the question of whether the pattern we see is more in our eye than the pattern we are claiming to see” (64).