Cerny: Globalization and the Changing Logic of Collective Action

PG Cerny, “Globalization and the changing logic of collective action,” Theory and Structure in International Political Economy: An International Organization Reader 49, no. 4 (1999): 595-625.

Globalization has changed the way that rational decisions are made. No longer is the state the unitary locus of collective action problems. There are not a plurality of structural drivers of decision making.

"Globalization is defined here as a set of economic and political structures and processes deriving from the changing character of the goods and assets that comprise the base of the international political economy--in particular, the increasing structural differentiation of those goods and assets" (596).

"In particular, I argue that the more that the scale of goods and assets produced, exchanged and/or used in a particular economic sector or activity diverges from the structural scale of the national state--both from above (the global scale) and from below (the local scale)--and the more that those divergences feed back into each other in complex ways, then the more that the authority, legitimacy, policymaking capacity, and policy-implementing effectiveness of states will be challenged from both without and within. A critical threshold may be crossed when the cumulative effect of globalization in strategically decisive issue-areas undermines the general capacity of the state to pursue the common good or the capacity of the state to be a true civil association; even if this threshold is not crossed, however, it is arguable that the role of the state both as playing field and as unit becomes structurally problematic" (597).

Collective action problems are typically addressed from the level-of-analysis of the agent. Cerny argues that this may not be helpful and instead deploys a structural account of decision making capacity: "Choices are always made within specific 'structured fields of action'" (597).

While all assets are goods and all goods are assets, the distinction made in this piece is between those things meant to be kept for their value, including means of production, and those things intended for exchange. Similar distinctions have been made by others between industry and trade or use value and exchange value.

The history of political-economies of scale is analyzed. This I did not document.

10 hypotheses are put forward that are quite interesting, and rely on a nuanced understanding of system, structure and equilibrium. From the final hypothesis: "Finally, under these conditions the state will lose its structural primacy and autonomy as a unitary actor in the international system. The anarchy of the international system will no longer be one of states competing for power but one of nonfeudal rivalries and asymmetric cooperation among a range of interests and collective agents reflecting differentiated economic activities with diverse goods/assets structures..The main question that remains to be asked is whether such a system will tend toward chaos or toward a certain stability of a plurilateral kind" (625).