Democracy and the Global System -...

Fabian Biancardi

Democracy and the Global System

A Contribution to the Critique of Liberal Internationalism

Democracy and the Global System

Democracy and the Global SystemA Contribution to the Critique of Liberal Internationalism

Fabian BiancardiAssistant Professor of Political Science,Riverside Community College, California, USA

© Fabian Biancardi 2003

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Democracy and the global system: a contribution to the critique ofliberal internationalism / Fabian Biancardi.

p. cm.Includes bibliographical references and index.ISBN 1–4039–1777–9 (cloth)1. Democracy. 2. Globalization. 3. Internationalism. 4. Liberalism.

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To Teri and the girls

Contents

Abstract x

Acknowledgements xi

Preface xii

Introduction 1Democracy and the global system 4Liberal internationalism and the spread of democracy 4Liberal internationalism and the end of the Cold War 7Conceptualising the global system 9Conceptualising democracy 15Methodology 16

1 Barrington Moore’s ‘Social Origins’ and the Global System 20Introduction 20The basic argument of the text 21Theorising democracy 22The historical actors 23The original transition 24Theoretical implications 26Conditions favourable and unfavourable to democracy 28Criticisms 36Conclusion 38

2 Karl Polanyi, Democracy and the Global System 40Introduction 40The ‘double movement’ 40Structure and agency in the ‘double movement’ 42Self-regulating market utopia 45Domestic and international institutions of the self-regulating market 46

Opposition to market society in England/Britain 48Democracy and working-class opposition to self-regulation in Britain 50

Uneven and combined development and democracy 52

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Agrarian protection in Europe 53Working-class protection in Europe 55Middle-class protection in Europe 56Imperialism and the double movement 60The international political consequences of the double movement in the nineteenth century 62

‘World-historical-time’, liberalism and the twentieth century 64Criticisms: a post-liberal order? 66Conclusion 67

3 Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, Democracy and the Global System 69Introduction 69Schumpeter’s analysis of the direction of capitalism 70Schumpeter’s theory of democracy 73The consequences of democracy 77Democracy and the capitalist order 78Conditions for the success of the democratic method 81Criticisms 92Conclusion 93

4 Samuel Huntington, Political Order and the Global System 95Introduction 95Objectives of text 95Huntington’s thesis: modernity versus modernisation 97Aspects of modernisation: social mobilisation and economic development 99

Social modernisation and political change in traditional polities 104

Historic routes to political modernity: Continental, British and American 106

The city–country gap: ‘urban breakthroughs’ and ‘Green Uprisings’ 111

Political stability: civic and praetorian polities 114Huntington’s theory of the state and the political community 119

Modernisation and revolution 122Reform and political change 125Modernisation and corruption: politically functional? 128The global system and the prospects for democracy 131Conclusion 134

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5 David Held’s ‘Democracy and the Global Order’ 136Introduction 136Democracy and the global order 137The rise of liberal democracy 139War and militarism: the first ‘macro-pattern’ 142The development of capitalism: the second ‘macro-pattern’ 145

Liberal democracy and citizenship: the third ‘macro-pattern’ 149

Globalisation and the challenges to democracy 151Disjuncture 1: international law 155Disjuncture 2: internationalisation of political decision-making 156

Disjuncture 3: hegemonic powers and international security structures 161

Disjuncture 4: national identity and the globalisation of culture 163

Disjuncture 5: the world economy 165Disjuncture 5 (continued) 174Assessment of text 183Conclusion 184

Conclusion 186Introduction 186Liberal internationalism and the case studies 187Democracy and the global system: a framework for analysis 193Conclusion 209

Notes 211

Bibliography 242

Index 249

Contents ix

x

Abstract

This study seeks to analyse the relationship between the global systemand democratic governance. While much has been written in recenttimes about the impact that democratic states have on the global sys-tem, the question of whether the global system promotes, hinders or isin contingent relation to the institutionalisation of democracy has notbeen theorised to the same extent, especially within the discipline of International Relations (IR). The central hypothesis is that forms ofstate, democratic and non-democratic, are not simply a consequence of domestic processes and forces – cultural/ideological, economic, political – but also of international ones. This is not to deny the impor-tance of domestic contexts but to place these within the larger contextof the global system and to analyse their dynamic interrelations.

The structure of the thesis takes the form of evaluation, critique andcomparison of texts that to some extent have dealt with questions con-cerning international causes of socio-economic, political and culturalchange in a wider social context than is usually found in mainstream IRliterature. These are as follows:

1. Barrington Moore Jr., Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy2. Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation3. Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy4. Samuel Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies5. David Held, Democracy and the Global Order

Beyond the arguments of the specific authors, a critique of liberal inter-nationalism is attempted – a potentially significant interpretation of theglobal system, of democracy and of their interrelations. Finally, the con-cluding chapter seeks to elaborate a coherent framework for analysing thecomplex relations and salient variables established in the five main chap-ters and to provide a basis upon which to conclude whether indeed theglobal system may be said to promote or hinder the institutionalisation ofdemocracy within states.

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Acknowledgements

The research and writing of a book of this nature can be a long, and attimes, quite solitary endeavour. The support and encouragement ofone’s colleagues, friends and family can consequently become a criticalfactor in its evolution and completion. I have been privileged with anabundance of such sustenance.

First, I would like to extend my gratitude to Richmond, The AmericanInternational University in London for their support throughout the11 years of my tenure there. A particular debt is owed to Wolfgang Deckers,my closest Richmond colleague and dear friend, for supporting myevery step from the earliest stages of my academic career – from beforeI even knew I was to embark upon one.

I’d also like to thank John Otterpohl, former history and social scienceteacher at the American School in London, for nurturing my love ofteaching and for providing encouragement, guidance and, occasionally,the prodding necessary for me to do the right thing. My participation inhis meticulously organised study-tours to Vietnam, Cuba and SouthAfrica gave me a rare opportunity to see first-hand the reality of some ofmy earliest political ideals as well as delusions.

As anyone who reads this book or who has shared any significant timewith me will know, the intellectual debt I owe to London School ofEconomics Professor Fred Halliday, my doctoral supervisor, is immense.He has been and remains an inspirational teacher and model scholar tocountless students and fellow academics and I am indeed honoured tobe able to count myself among both of these.

Many thanks are due also to Professors David Held and Andrew Linklaterfor their unanimity in diagnosing some of the central problems with anearlier draft of this work and for their clear suggestions as to how best todeal with them. The responsibility for all those that remain is mine alone.

I wish also to express my eternal gratitude to my parents, Raúl andAlexia, above all for their love, friendship and sacrifices.

Finally, my partner, Teri Wagner, and our children, Chantal, Celineand Michelle, have endured the highs and the lows of this project moreintimately than anyone should have had to. I would like to thank themfor making these past eight years the best of my life.

FABIAN BIANCARDI

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Preface

This book has a number of objectives. It seeks to probe the relationshipbetween the liberal democratic model of government and the widerglobal system by asking whether this system may be said to promote orhinder the institutionalisation of the liberal democratic form of state –or, indeed, whether the relationship may be said to be a contingent onein which case it seeks to explore the features of this contingency. It isalso an attempt to engage critically with the social scientific and philo-sophical paradigm of liberal internationalism – a diffuse ideologicalposition which has historically, as well as currently, posited a number ofoptimistic presumptions about the likely global spread of liberal democ-racy. Finally, this book suggests an historically sensitive analysis of theinteraction between the global system, social structure and state as analternative theoretical formulation to liberal internationalism. It doesso, however, from a normative commitment to the realisation of theprimary liberal internationalist goal, namely, the global spread of sus-tainable liberal democracy, as much for its continued potential as for itspast accomplishments, rather than to its negation or even, as the morehopeful would have it, to its transcendence. The Atlantic revolution isstill sufficiently radical for the vast majority of societies and states in theworld today not to be surpassed, at the very least in practice, by any of itsnumerous historical challengers.1

Because the approach adopted here is unconventional is a number ofways, this section will introduce the basic method and arguments of thetext as well as attempt to anticipate at least a few of the likely objectionsand criticisms. The chapters sandwiched between the Introduction andConclusion are analyses of landmark texts written by prominent, someeminent, social scientists. Rather than book reviews, however, they arefocused on extracting insights, arguments and theoretical formulationsgermane to the evolving relationship between liberal democracy andthe global system. They are not, therefore, exhaustive treatments of theentire academic output of each of these authors nor, indeed, of each sin-gle text. To keep it manageable, such a comprehensive approach wouldhave to include only a very few authors, maybe just one. This would nothave delivered the range of questions, conceptualisations and theoriesthat I was looking for. Similarly, a purely thematic approach would nothave enabled me to engage with and confront the work of others so

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directly nor would it have been of the same value, because of the limitedrange of views, to students interested in this important field. The ‘keytexts’ approach adopted here, therefore, is a device, for better or worse,hit upon to make headway on a vast subject in need of parameters.While the introductory chapter attempts to justify the selection ofauthors and texts made here, suffice it to say that other academicpractitioners would choose differently even if agreement on the specificcriteria for making the selection was possible. Nevertheless, my hope isthat there is at least broad concurrence on the importance of engage-ment with the chosen texts for the purpose of stimulating intellectualreflection about the relationship between liberal democracy and theglobal system.

The basic argument of the book is that liberal internationalism’soptimistic expectation of the global spread of the liberal democraticform of state is misplaced – it is a-historical, teleological, unrealistic andbased on a deficient sociology of the global system. The interactionbetween the global system, social structures and states continues to pro-duce unique socio-economic, political and cultural formations thatrarely crystallise into liberal democracy. Geopolitical pressures and con-siderations of ‘national security’, global economic processes as well asideological reactions and movements produce highly contradictoryforces that, again, rarely combine unambiguously in favour of liberaldemocratic breakthroughs. A central theoretical argument of the book isthat the global system in interaction with domestic social systems is bestcharacterised by ‘uneven and combined development’ even if the case ismade for a non-dogmatic and highly flexible use of this originally neo-Marxist concept. At the very least, this flexibility is essential if humanagency is to have as meaningful a role in theoretical models of politicalchange as it evidently does in the real world.

As I’ve said, this is not to argue that the primary political goal ofliberal internationalism is itself misplaced. Clearly, the advantages tocountries as well as to relations between them of replicating globally thekinds of political dispensations prevalent in the Western liberal democ-racies would be enormous and totally unprecedented. This book is anexploration of context and of the means rather than the ends.

While the book attempts to pay due consideration to socialistcritiques of liberal internationalism – an entire chapter on a classic textof Marxist historical and comparative sociology (Barrington Moore Jr.),one on a classic democratic socialist critique of liberal capitalism (KarlPolanyi) and one also on a contemporary democratic socialist and femi-nist critique of democracy and globalisation (David Held) – the normative

xiv Preface

commitment to liberal democracy expressed in it is bound to displeasethose for whom this form of state is either unworthy of emulationbecause of intrinsic faults and limitations as much as those for whom itgoes too far in challenging established, non-liberal democratic models ofpolitical organisation. The first category, it seems to me, is more likely to include the Left in traditional Western terms, particularly the moreradical versions, while the latter is more likely to include the Right –nationalists of either persuasion are perhaps the most likely to be displeased with the normative commitment to liberal democracyimplied here.

Of course, one may accept or reject the normative argument whilebeing highly critical of the methods employed and conclusions reachedin this book. This is simply part of the rough and tumble of any aca-demic enterprise and is to be welcomed as such. Nevertheless, the com-ments that follow are aimed specifically at those who would take issuewith the normative commitment by rejecting the value of liberaldemocracy as a political goal.

Beginning with the possible objections by the radical Left, perhaps areasonable point of departure is the concept of democracy itself. This isnot an exploration of what democracy should mean and the conceptual-isation taken here is a very standard and familiar one. Although thebook does deal with the intellectual and historical malleability of themeaning of democracy, it is assumed that there is little value in examin-ing the relationship between the global system and versions or modelsof democratic politics on which there is no broad agreement or estab-lished institutional forms. So, for example, the notion that democracy issimply impossible in the context of capitalism does not receive theextended attention it may well deserve in a book, say, on democratictheory or on socialism for the obvious reason that the liberal democraticform of state has never actually existed in any other context but that ofcapitalism – of course, the relationship between global capitalism andthe institutionalisation of liberal democracy is a central concern of thiswork. It is not that I am incurious about nor unsympathetic to all non-liberal conceptions of democracy but rather that I am trying to deal withcomplex realities. Furthermore, a world-historical judgement on the var-ious ‘socialist’ and ‘peoples’ democracies has by now been made that isvery unfavourable to them. Certainly, in global terms at least, they nolonger constitute a powerful force of example.

To push the point further, for much of the Left a state that is anti-capitalist and/or ‘anti-imperialist’ has more to offer its people andpotentially the world in spite of the usual lack of political liberty than

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any number of liberal democratic ones. A common case in point is theadulation heaped on the decades-old regime in Cuba. Now, whateverone thinks of the United States’ embargo, and from the perspective ofthis study the question is whether it hinders or promotes the prospectsfor democracy there or anywhere else, to suggest that Cuba is actuallysufficiently democratic just as it is betrays a blatant disregard for theimportance of political liberty. A quite glaring example of such abetrayal is provided by Michael Parenti in a recent lecture on the reasonsfor US hostility towards Iraq. For Parenti, a neo-Marxist professor ofPolitics in the United States, a major reason for the war is Iraq’s unwill-ingness to act as a ‘compradore collaborator to Western investors’. ‘Thelast thing the plutocrats in Washington want in that region is inde-pendent, self-defining developing nations that wish to control theirown land, labor, and natural resources … Self-defining countries likeCuba, Iraq and Yugoslavia are targeted.’2

The United States, the only liberal democracy mentioned, is run bythe plutocrats while Cuba, Iraq and Yugoslavia are ‘self-defining’. Whatcould this phrase possibly mean? Is the ‘self’ an unlikely allusion to thedespots who run or used to run, in the case of Yugoslavia, these states?It seems to suggest cooperative or even unanimous decision-making butactually can only indicate political decisions that run counter to pre-sumed US desires and interests. It doesn’t really matter how cruel anddespotic the form of state, as long as it’s ‘anti-imperialist’ it must beworth defending. The lack of sound comparative political judgementevident in Parenti’s characterisations are repeated continuously in theanalyses of the radical Left. It is striking how similar this kind of think-ing is to the United States’ position during the Cold War of supportinganti-democratic regimes on the basis of their anti-socialism. Each con-siders political liberty to be less important than the supposed benefits ofsocialist or capitalist socio-economic orientations – both, fair weatherfriends of liberal democracy.3

For the radical Left, this lacuna derives principally from what itconsiders to be the ‘epiphenomenal’ character of political power. Sincethe state form is supposed to be a direct reflection of the economic form,as long as ‘social justice’ of the anti-capitalist variety is the primaryintention of rulers like Castro, the precise character of the state is oflesser consequence. If liberal democracy is ‘bourgeois democracy’ and‘the rule of corporations’, anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist regimes have atleast the virtue of recognising the key source of what is wrong with theworld and of attempting to set the power of the state against it. For rev-olutionaries, furthermore, the de-legitimation of the armed struggle

which is a major consequence of successful liberal democracy is alsoproblematic – a reason for shifting theoretical focus towards the develop-ing world and persuading others to do there what is certainly suicidalhere. (Of course, attempts at revolution often prove suicidal in the devel-oping world also and deadly not only for the revolutionaries themselves.)

The final and related point is that, for the radical Left, what helps tolegitimate the perpetuation of a global capitalism that is by definitionhighly exploitative of natural and social resources is the liberal demo-cratic form of state itself. True, the major liberal democratic powersoften support opponents of democracy if it suits them – during the ColdWar or in ‘the war against terrorism’, for instance. But the rhetoric ofsupport for the liberal democratic form of state, if not always the reality,is the legitimating mechanism or device most often relied upon by theleadership of the major liberal democratic powers. As is clear fromthe current military intervention in Iraq, ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom’, thepromise of liberal democracy is used to bolster the legitimacy of warsthat much of the Left has interpreted as driven by narrowly defined eco-nomic interests – an imperialist internationalism.4 Domestically andinternationally, the use to which the model of liberal democracy is putby Western governing elites is evidence of its shallowness. Furthermore,that global capitalism is feasibly replaceable by non-exploitative socialand political relations suggests that the struggle for social justice is inpart a struggle to demonstrate the vacuity of the claims made by sup-porters of liberal democracy. Given this reasoning why would anystraight thinking individual support a state form that consciously masksgrotesque inequalities of power and life-chances and is used to dupemillions of citizens whose real and objective interests lay elsewhere?Although an attempt to answer this question is made in the pages thatfollow, a reasonable response is that given by Bernard Crick:

… [L]iberty is never a sufficient condition for social justice (unlessyou are an anarchist, whether of the left- or right-wing variety) yet isalways and everywhere a necessary condition for social justice.5

Dispensing with political rights of the kind that have evolved in liberal democracies for the sake of social justice, national security, or anyother end is to throw the baby out with the bath water. Every real polit-ical regime that has attempted to ‘transcend’ the presumed limits of lib-eralism or to prevent it from developing has done so at the expense ofpolitical liberty and most often with immense human suffering.Intentions have never been as important as accomplishments and oneshould judge harshly those that pretend otherwise.

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Having said all that, what the following pages demonstrate is that therelationship between global capitalism and liberal democracy is verycomplex and the record very mixed in part due to the way global capi-talist processes interrelate with domestic systems of rule and to the factthat support for anti-democratic forms of rule often suits the liberaldemocracies themselves for geo-political as well as economic reasons. Inaddition, the reality is that only some states that support capitalist socialrelations are in fact liberal democracies and that institutionalising thisstate form is anything but straightforward and unproblematic. In otherwords, there is much in this book that corresponds with Leftist critiquesof liberal democracy and of the prospects of its global diffusion.

In anticipating a few of the likely objections and criticisms from the Right as well as from nationalists, perhaps a good starting point isthe normative commitment to internationalism expressed here. Whilesome on the Left will object to the liberal component of liberal interna-tionalism, as with many in the anti-globalisation movement seeing itessentially as a cover for the imperialist ambitions and objectives of theUnited States and other powerful liberal democracies, there is a wellestablished theoretical commitment to internationalism itself on theLeft, particularly the Marxist Left, which is much more rare on the Rightand among nationalists. The most common objection to international-ism on the Right has been pragmatic rather than wholly ideological.6

Common among Realists in the field of International Relations, thispragmatism is based largely upon the likelihood of a world made morechaotic and disorderly by the injection of ethical and ideological con-siderations in the foreign policy of states and in their wavering from thepursuit of narrowly defined national interests. The strategic dimensionof the ‘democratic peace thesis’, whereby relations between liberaldemocracies are hypothesised to be permanently pacified, is not suffi-ciently powerful or necessarily proven to risk the likely negative com-mercial and geopolitical consequences of a full-blooded commitment tothe institutionalisation of liberal democracy globally. The major liberaldemocracies have too many important undemocratic allies and com-mercial partners for this course of action. The can of worms that thiswould open in the global political system should not, under normalcircumstances, be risked.

As I write these words, the Bush administration in Washington andthe Blair government in London have in fact made the institutionalisa-tion of democracy in Baghdad a central pledge of the military campaignto ostensibly disarm Iraq of ‘weapons of mass destruction’ (WMD).What has been risked in terms of divisions among the major states in

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the United Nations’ Security Council, among NATO allies, among EUmembers as well as of divisions between Arab states and Western statesand their own societies is potentially immense. These evident divisionsare just the kind of consequences the Right has warned against histori-cally and what much of the Left has warned against in the run up to theinvasion.7 Clearly, such a gamble as this would not have been possible ifnot for the context created by the terrorist attacks on the United Stateson 11 September 2001. Here we have an example of what I call in thetext a Realist route to Kantianism, namely, security concerns and fears,however one judges their salience, driving policy ultimately towards lib-eral internationalist ends with even the force of example of a democraticIraq touted as a catalyst for further democratic change in the widerregion. Among other things, it is an example of the hegemony of the lib-eral democratic model of politics – when all else fails, the promise of lib-eral democracy may just about legitimise military intervention, if not inthe halls of the United Nations, at least in the minds of those for whomUS led ‘pre-emptive’ military action is a lesser danger than tyranny.8 Ifthis military operation in Iraq goes according to the plans and wishes ofthe current leadership of the United States and Britain, hardly likely sim-ply given the unintended consequences of war, liberal internationalismwill have been delivered an historic victory – if not, the likelihood ofstates promising to install or even endeavouring to promote liberaldemocracy elsewhere will have been seriously diminished. Not that waritself is necessarily detrimental to the prospects of institutionalising oreven deepening liberal democracy. As is argued in the text, war has beenassociated with both of these developments in the past.9

Beyond the pragmatic objection on the Right to the global spread ofliberal democracy is the historic ideological objection perhaps mostfamously made by Joseph de Maistre, the fierce eighteenth-century criticof the Enlightenment, who wrote of ‘the profound imbecility of thosepoor men who imagine that nations can be constituted with ink’.10 Inthe modern and secular version of this account, the major reason todoubt the universal applicability of the liberal democratic form of statederives from the uniqueness of each country’s political and social prac-tices, cultures, traditions and historical trajectory. Liberal democracy isnot like the wheel – a technical innovation that needs only to be suc-cessfully demonstrated to convince all of its utility. It is in most caseshundreds of years in the making, culturally, socially and politically theproduct of Western European development and thought, institution-alised nowhere properly until the twentieth century, in many casesafter the first half of that century, and vulnerable everywhere to

counter-attack, usurpation and manipulation. To the extent that it isinstitutionalised and stabilised in the extra-European world, it is invari-ably badly disfigured – perhaps most commonly with such rampant cor-ruption that one can hardly speak of rule by law never mind rule of law.Better, as Samuel Huntington has argued, to commit political efforts andresources to (non-communist) authoritarian forms of state that havegood prospects of delivering order and stability with pro-Western policyorientations than to liberal democracy that has few prospects of either.11

At least part of the critique from the Right fits well with the conceptof ‘uneven and combined development’ employed here, namely, thatcountries are indeed unique products of history. Nevertheless, becausecountries are determined jointly as parts of a global system rather thanhermetically sealed off from one another, the reality of political learn-ing, of pressures to emulate developments elsewhere and even of replication and homogenisation are insufficiently accounted for by theRight – this is true also of more orthodox Leftist uses of ‘uneven andcombined development’. Furthermore, ethically, the universalismimplied by commitment to liberal internationalist goals is not dimin-ished by the realisation that progress towards it is extraordinarily diffi-cult and bound to be full of setbacks – modesty is certainly requiredrather than stridency, but defeatism offers no rewards.

Turning to the objections of nationalists more directly, it is importantto register the fact that the modern global political system is predicatedupon national sovereignty and the rule of non-intervention (thus, inpart, the deep concern expressed by so many with the Bush administra-tion’s foreign policy doctrine of ‘pre-emption’). The various liberal internationalist innovations of the latter half of the twentieth centurysuch as the development of humanitarian international law and theuniversal jurisdiction implied by the United Nations’ Human Rightsconventions are seen by many nationalists, of both Right and Left, as the thin edge of a very dangerous wedge both for practical and ideological reasons.

It is also important to register the fact that we live in an historicalperiod that is ideologically profoundly anti-colonialist.12 One does nothave to accept the typical radical Leftist version of ‘imperialism’ –essentially Leninist rather than Marxist, whereby the prosperity of thedeveloped world is largely attributed to its expropriation of the wealth ofthe developing world – to acknowledge that the United States in particu-lar, but also the other major liberal democracies, do indeed have globalinterests as well as historically unprecedented levels of power to attemptto secure them. Furthermore, given the combination of globalisation

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and deepening interdependence, of threats from anti-modernist terrorists,of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, of failing economiesand states and of disgruntled dictatorships, the option for the major liberaldemocracies of disengagement with global politics, if it ever existed, has allbut disappeared. The opposite is true, namely, that the strategic necessity ofincreased engagement with even the most peripheral of societies and poli-ties has been demonstrated, even if the means of greater engagement by themajor states in the context of the post-Cold War world have yet to be agreedupon and may prove to be permanently elusive.

It is in the context of modern world politics that many nationalists inthe developing world (and their Western supporters), especially in coun-tries and regions where economic development has been particularly slowin relation to the needs of the vast majority and certainly in comparisonwith the developed liberal democracies, come to resent the very exampleof liberal democracy never mind Western pressures to alter domestic polit-ical arrangements in this direction. (Of course, as the attacks on theUnited States of 11 September 2001 proved beyond doubt, politicalIslamism is not simply a malady of material poverty.) While the sensitiv-ity to Western political manipulation, learned often through bitter expe-rience, is itself often manipulated by governing elites with everything tolose from political change, it can also take the form of a genuinely popu-lar and visceral exculpation of the most cruel and vicious dictatorships.Perhaps any Arab should not be seen as a more legitimate ruler of Iraqthan any foreigner, that is, regardless of how they rule, but this is certainlythe logic of nationalism – foreign rule, even for a limited duration, is bydefinition the antithesis of liberty in this continuing age of nationalism.A Western military intervention aimed in part at removing one of themost reprehensible regimes in the world – one directly responsible for thetorture and death of hundreds of thousands of fellow Muslims and Arabs – risks encouraging support for that regime rather than joy at itsremoval, particularly from those not immediately on the receiving end ofthe regime’s coercive power.13 The promise of a liberal democracyimposed militarily by foreigners, even if it was widely believed, will havea very difficult time competing with the emotional power of an anti-colonialism based in part on nationalist attachments and mythologies.

While many of these and other arguments are engaged with in thisbook, there is no doubt that there are indeed salient objections to themain liberal internationalist goal of the global spread of liberal democ-racy. Nevertheless, seen particularly in the light of the objections by theRight and by nationalists, it is important to understand just how radicalthis goal continues to be.

1

Introduction

When Mikhail Gorbachev, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, went before the General Assembly of the United Nations in late 1988 and declared: ‘Our ideal is a world commu-nity of states with political systems and foreign policies based on law’, he signalled the beginning of the end of the Cold War and the return to liberal internationalist principles.14 Since then, the flood-gates have opened for the debate on democracy and international relations.15 While it is certainly true that the various post-Cold War conflicts have diminished the original optimism of many writers, thegrowing visibility of popular struggles for democratic reform and the increase in the number of democratic states continues to generateintellectual excitement and theoretical speculation in the social sciencesas a whole.16

This is not, of course, a new theme in international relations. Inparticular, the suggestion that the more democratic a state the less likelyit is to engage in warfare – at least against other similarly organised states – has a well established pedigree reaching as far back as the eigh-teenth century in the writings of Immanuel Kant, Montesquieu andTom Paine.17 In the following century, this view was commended byAlexis de Tocqueville and Richard Cobden among others.18 Finally andperhaps most famously, in the second decade of the twentieth centurythe belief in a democratic basis to peace was put forward not just by an interested observer or theorist but by someone with a great deal of political power, namely, the President of the United States, WoodrowWilson.19 Nevertheless, despite this impressive heritage, the renewedinterest in the relationship between democracy and international relations is a product of the end of the Cold War. As James Mayall,

commenting on the idea of progress in relation to international society,states:

Only with the transfer of sovereignty from the princes to the peopleafter 1918, was the idea of salvation – now in secular form – reintro-duced [since the Thirty Years War] as a central preoccupation of inter-national relations. Since then, it has been reinforced twice – after1945 by the introduction of the idea that people everywhere have aright to economic welfare and after 1989 by the renewed emphasis onfundamental human rights generally and the right to democraticgovernance in particular.20

There are, however, a number of reasons why the discipline ofInternational Relations (IR) is not particularly well equipped to commenton the relationship between democracy and the global system. First, thedominant paradigm in the discipline, Realism, has long assumed thatstates, which it sees as the central actors in the global system, are in noposition to pass judgements on the internal ordering of other states. Thisargument is itself based on a number of important if varying reasonsperhaps the most common being the dictates of pragmatism. History ingeneral but also as reflected by international law has apparently taughtthat orderly and mutually beneficial relations between states are threat-ened by subversions of sovereignty, along with its correlative of non-intervention, the most exalted of international principles.21 A furtherrelated argument is based on cultural relativism whereby domestic polit-ical arrangements are deemed to be fundamentally a product of endoge-nous culture and, because one cannot judge these in any straightforwardhierarchical way without being accused of imperialism, domesticarrangements should not be the concern of outsiders.22

Second, there is the Realist proposition that concerns with domesticmatters are in fact irrelevant to the discipline on the basis that the anarchicstructure of the international political system, with self-help as its primaryorganising principle, sufficiently determines, albeit indirectly, the externalbehaviour of states.23 The broad thrust of foreign policy, it is argued, isdetermined by international configurations of state power – essentially,military power with emphasis on the ‘laws’ of strategic rivalry – regardlessof domestic socio-economic and political arrangements.24

Of course, Realism has not gone unchallenged and any balanced sur-vey of the contemporary literature within IR would surely indicate a quite vast array of anti-Realist and/or post-Realist arguments that setout to refute its basic assumptions and premises.25 In addition, unless

2 Democracy and the Global System

one takes the concern with promoting democracy by states as purelyrhetorical or even disingenuous, the very aim seems to contradict Realistinsights and assumptions.

In any case, an important final reason for the neglect of internationaland domestic interaction is due to the relative isolation of IR from therest of the social sciences.26 The fact is that until very recently bothSociology and Political Science had been working harder at coming toterms with the global system than IR had been at theorising the interac-tions with domestic structures or indeed building on the work of socialscientists generally.27

While the main objective of this thesis is not to provide yet anotherrebuttal of Realism in its various forms, it is at least possible to register that,from the perspective of its own specific domain, it appears exceedinglyconspicuous that the roots of many of the conflicts that have shaped thecontemporary world – colonialism, international wars, the Cold War –were not simply related to variations in states’ military power and its con-stituent sources, nor simply to the lack of an effective world government,but also to differences in domestic socio-economic arrangements and tothe form of states. If it has been clear for some considerable time that theglobal system interacts with domestic structures and in very complicatedways shapes those structures and is itself shaped in the process, it is stillprobably true that this theoretical orientation remains peripheral to main-stream IR theory.28 However, if the roots of modern conflict in the hetero-geneity of socio-economic and political arrangements is just one fairlyobvious and standard reason for the discipline of International Relationsto take seriously the ways in which international forces and processesinteract with domestic ones, it rests on the argument that these heteroge-neous arrangements are themselves a consequence, at least in part, ofinternational/domestic interaction – not, one would think, a particularlydifficult proposition to sustain, but, actually, a very complex matter indeedwhich this thesis will need to pay particular attention to.

Apart from the general points already made about Realism, perhapsbecause of the weight allocated to international political conflict withinthe IR discipline, there has been much more reflection here on thecauses and reasons for the ‘democratic’ or ‘liberal peace’, as well as ontesting and refuting the correlation between democracy and peace thanon the international dimensions of the causes of the spread, or obstaclesto the spread, of democratic regimes in the first place.29 For its part,political theory, with a few exceptions, is often either silent or implicitabout the international dimensions of democracy and its historicaldevelopment.30 Certainly, in terms of the interaction between the

Introduction 3

domestic and international realms there still seems to be considerablescope for theoretical innovation here – retrospective in terms of canonicalpolitical thought and analytical in terms of current theory and practice.

Democracy and the global system

Before outlining the particular conceptions of democracy, of the globalsystem and, indeed, of the methodology employed here, it is importantfirst to state the key question of the thesis and how this was derived at.The central preoccupation of the thesis is the extent to which the work-ings of the global system may be said to promote the domestic institu-tionalisation of democratic forms of government internationally. Insimple terms, there are three possible interrelationships here:

(a) That the relationship is one where the modern global system pro-motes the diffusion and institutionalisation of democracy;

(b) that the global system inhibits the spread and institutionalisation ofdemocracy, or;

(c) that the relationship is one of contingency: in terms of what may besaid to determine the forms of state; the historical epoch, or in termsof both.

While the concern here is not whether or how democracy may affectforeign policy, the sometimes strident and invariably hopeful claims ofthe internationally pacifying effects of democracy associated with vari-ous liberal internationalists has certainly helped to raise broader ques-tions. These involve the relationship between democracy and the globalsystem including the one that drives this thesis, namely, the question ofhow the global system specifically affects the prospects of institutional-ising and consolidating democracy domestically.31

Liberal internationalism and the spread of democracy

If, as Michael Doyle, the leading exponent of the ‘liberal peace’ puts it,‘liberal states are different’ and (pace Kant) that a ‘separate peace’ ofthese states is today a reality, announcing ‘the possibility of a worldpeace this side of the grave or of world conquest’, then the question ofwhat factors are responsible for the spread of this form of state is indeeda pressing matter.32 According to Doyle, there are two principle legaciesof liberalism for international relations, namely, the pacification of for-eign relations among liberal states and their simultaneous international


‘imprudence’ that is, the notion that these states are particularly aggres-sive, more than they rationally need be, towards non-liberal states.33

Furthermore, according to Doyle, only Kant’s theory of liberal interna-tionalism can help us understand these two legacies because at the heartof his analytical theory of international politics is a conception of the‘interactive nature of international relations’.34 ‘Kant tries to teachus methodologically that we can study neither the systemic relations of states nor the varieties of state behaviour in isolation from eachother.’35

So far, so good, but how does Kant’s methodology help to explain hisbelief in an ‘ever-widening pacific federation’? His answer, in the SecondDefinitive Article of Perpetual Peace, seems to be firmly based on whatcould reasonably be termed ‘the force of example’.

It can be shown that this idea of federalism, extending gradually toencompass all states and thus leading to perpetual peace, is practica-ble and has objective reality. For if by good fortune one powerful andenlightened nation can form a republic (which is by nature inclinedto seek peace), this will provide a focal point for federal associationamong other states. These will join up with the first one, thus secur-ing the freedom of each state in accordance with the idea of interna-tional right, and the whole will gradually spread further and furtherby a series of alliances of this kind.36

While Kant accepts the likelihood of ‘backsliding and destructive wars’,these are expected also to convince societies of the importance of peaceand of the necessity of joining the ranks of the republican federation.37 Isthis force strong enough to overcome those – domestic and international –arrayed against ‘republicanism’ or, as the theory today would have it,democracy? Surely, liberal internationalists (including Kant) have othermechanisms in mind that help explain the expansion of the democraticform of state necessary for their continued optimism? And what aboutthe good fortune of the original transition to republicanism/democracy?What explains the development of democracy in any one state? In otherwords, does liberal internationalism have a coherent historical sociologyof the development of democracy?

While, as one would expect, there is no single liberal answer to thesequestions there are strands within liberalism that point at least in twoother directions, apart from the force of example, that can help explainthe international spread of the democratic form of state. The first ofthese is the universal applicability of the institutional framework of liberal

Introduction 5

democracy based on the principle of the natural rights of all individuals.38

Once its properties are clearly understood the universal interest in (andgeneral demand for) recognition of moral equality, security and welfarecan at last be secured through this form of state – one predicated on itsduty to protect life, liberty and property. Peace is produced by thereplacement in authority of those who have vested interests in war, orare innately war-prone – monarchs, autocrats – with those whose inter-ests are overwhelmingly directed towards peace – the people. Note thatthis is not a theory of the transnational spread of democracy. Whereversocieties exist and whatever their relations, they will tend to evolve inthe direction of liberal democracy because of the nature of their inhabi-tants (rational, self-seeking, potentially moral) and of politics (consen-sual, legitimate authority as superior to coercive and illegitimate rule).Once a few of these liberal states emerge, the spread of their norms toother states and the possibility and desirability of the development ofeffective international institutions and laws also emerge to becomeincreasingly salient features of international relations.39

The second and related explanation for the global spread of liberaldemocracy is its intimate connections with the development of capitalism. Although often related to human nature also, this strand ofliberalism, associated with Adam Smith and Joseph Schumpeter amongothers, argues that the interests in maximising wealth and security forboth individuals and states as well as the individual and collective willto moral equality are best met through the rational innovation andconscious political construction of market societies which then produce,as a by-product, both the possibility of democracy as well as an addedand abiding interest in avoiding war.40 Not only is capitalism conceivedas universally applicable but its international and transnational spreadis sought as an ideal – the wider the division of labour and the freer themobility of the factors of production from political constraint, thegreater its efficiency and wealth generating capacities. The liberalcapitalist prescriptions of free trade and specialisation are by definitioninternational in scope – maximising wealth and security entail openingthe economy up to capitalist forces, domestic and international. Doesthis add up to a theory of the transnational spread of democracy?Potentially yes, if the actual spread and development of capitalism is itself seen as a transnational phenomenon and if this in turn is seen as a necessary and perhaps sufficient condition for the emergence of democracy. But is this explanation, along with the previous two,convincing?


Liberal internationalism and the end of the Cold War

If the claim that we are living in a democratic era stretches back to thelate eighteenth century, in the contemporary period the end of the ColdWar and the defeat of communism in Europe again raised the hopethroughout much of the world that liberal democracy, previously thepreserve of a few mostly very rich countries, could more easily be insti-tutionalised elsewhere. The link between this optimism and the van-quishing of communism relates to a number of considerations andassumptions. The first is that the communist states would themselves betransformed into liberal democracies as the superiority of the latter wasa major cause of the collapse of the former, that is, Kant’s force of exam-ple. The second is that because communism seemed to represent a viablealternative social and political model to capitalism and liberal democ-racy, its routing would finally remove this illusion along with its provenmobilising potential and once again return ‘capitalist democracy’ to itsrightful place as the only model worthy of universal replication. Sincethe existence of communist regimes was seen as the most crucial mate-rial and ideological source of support for the various ‘fifth-columnist’challengers, their collapse would evaporate these challenges. The thirdis that if the communist threat was at least partly responsible for legiti-mating authoritarian state responses, its defeat would pull the rug fromunder anti-communist dictatorships as well as dissolve the rationale andexcuses made by their international supporters, including, of course,some of the major liberal democracies themselves. Finally, with fascismalready defeated in the Second World War and military regimes in LatinAmerica in clear retreat by the mid-1980s, the omens against authoritar-ianism in general and for the spread of liberal democracy seemed dis-tinctly positive.

It was in this context, of course, that Francis Fukuyama’s article andthen book, The End of History and the Last Man appeared.41 The contro-versies and debates which this text inspired covered a great deal ofground but, again, what seemed to be especially in need of investigationand theorisation was the extent to which the workings of the global sys-tem taken as a whole – the nature of its inhabitants, of its societies andstates, of their relations – could be said to promote the institutionalisa-tion of democratic forms of government internationally.

Two claims above all seemed particularly questionable aboutFukuyama’s thesis as well as that of liberal internationalism morebroadly. The first was the assertion of a positive and reinforcing synergy

Introduction 7

between economic liberalism with its stress on market solutions, tech-nological dynamism, competition, strong linkages to a world capitalisteconomy and a minimal role for the state on the one hand and thespread of democratic political structures bringing freedom and dignityto formerly oppressed people on the other. My scepticism, however, wasnot based on the common proposition of the radical Left that any mean-ingful conception of democracy is simply not possible in the context ofcapitalism. (This view may be taken as highly disparaging of the varioussocial movements struggling to achieve the kinds of political settle-ments that are taken for granted in established democracies, as well as ofthe social struggles which were responsible for their achievement in thefirst place. Furthermore, it seems to betray extraordinary callousness ifnot ignorance of the brutality and savagery which characterises so manyof the world’s past and current authoritarian regimes.) Nor was it basedon an underestimation of the potential benefits, national and interna-tional, of the diffusion of prosperity and democracy; clearly, they wouldbe vast. Rather, my scepticism was based on the view that the relation-ship between capitalism and democracy is much more complex andproblematic than liberal internationalism frequently asserts. That, inother words, as Paul Cammack has argued, ‘liberal democracy is a con-junctural historical phenomenon’, of very recent origins that is evi-dently extremely difficult to reproduce and sustain despite the existenceof capitalism for several centuries.42

The second and very much related problem with liberal international-ist optimism seemed to be the conception of the global system itself. Ifthe relationship between capitalism and democracy was more complexthan many assumed this was partly due to the fact that capitalism hasnever been exactly synonymous with the global system – even if it is acrucial element of it that is often ignored by standard Realist concep-tions. The global system is itself an extremely complex and dynamicsocial formation with a variety of actors, institutions, forces andprocesses – ideological/cultural, economic, political – whose impact onthe direction of social change is anything but straightforward. This isparticularly so because of the complex ways in which the internationaland domestic realms interact. As Anthony Brewer has noted in the con-text of methodological debates related to Marxist theories of imperial-ism, the ‘question of the appropriate level of analysis – world-system,nation state, unit of production or whatever … is a non-problem. Therecan be no question of choosing to analyse at one of these levels, andignoring the others; any adequate account of the world system mustincorporate all of them, and their interrelations’.43


Taken together, the various strands of liberal internationalism suggestthat the causes of the expansion of the democratic form of state are basedon the nature of human beings and of politics, the development of capi-talism and the force of example from other liberal states. The centralweaknesses of these explanations are the lack of a coherent historicalsociology of the development of democracy and a consequent underesti-mation of the historically contingent nature of its development, theinadequacy of its conception of the global system, and the lack of inte-gration between the international context and domestic socio-economic,political and ideological change. In seeking to answer the question ofwhether the global system promotes or hinders the institutionalisationand consolidation of democracy, this thesis is partly driven by the judge-ment that these weaknesses need to be demonstrated more fully and thattheoretical alternatives to them are in need of development.

Conceptualising the global system

If the initial formulation of the question of whether the global systempromotes or hinders the spread of liberal democracy arose in the contextof debates around the ‘liberal peace’, the end of the Cold War and thenew possibilities which this heralded, the conceptualisation of theglobal system itself may be informed by, amongst other things, scholarlyefforts to understand the international dimensions of the causes andconsequences of social revolutions.44 As already mentioned, the twoparticularly striking features here were how far sociologists, political sci-entists, social psychologists and comparative historians were trying tocome to terms with matters ostensibly germane to the discipline of IRand what little mainstream IR seemed to offer in return.45

There are a number of insights and theoretical formulations devel-oped in the comparative study of revolutions which offer excellent pos-sibilities for analysis in IR – for analysing the interaction between theglobal system on the one hand and state/society relations on the other.Of primary importance is the placing of social and political change inthe context of what may be seen as, often too optimistically, the transi-tion to modernity – in the spread of the modern form/s of state, of polit-ical legitimation and of capitalism or more narrowly of industrialism.Equally important, of course, is the placing of this historical transitionin an international context. As Theda Skocpol has argued: ‘Right fromthe European beginnings … modernization has always meant nationaldevelopments only within the contexts of historically developingtransnational structures, both economic and military.’46 Following her

Introduction 9

lead, I take the key contextual variables of the global system to be thestructure of the world capitalist economy, the international political sys-tem, and the changes and transmissions in ‘world-historical-time’.47 Ifthe first two lay particular emphasis on historically determined and everchanging socio-economic and political conditions, the third alsoincludes ideological features ‘which affect both the overall world con-text within which [political and social changes] occur and the particularmodels and options for action that can be borrowed from abroad by[those who seek to further or oppose change]’.48

The particular virtue of ‘world-historical-time’ is that it takes intoaccount the political salience of models of change, of struggle, and ofends that influence the behaviour of individuals and groups in particu-lar historical periods. In this sense, its virtue lies also in its considerationof political agency – accepting as a central premise that politics arise outof the ‘partial judgements’ of individuals and groups.49

‘World-historical-time’ is closely related to the ‘force of example’ men-tioned above with the difference that untested ideological models ofchange and of ends which clearly have political purchase on the behav-iour of individuals and groups are also to be assessed for effect or impact.For example, in 1917 the model of change (proletarian revolution) andof ends (communism) which motivated Lenin and his fellow Bolshevikscould not have had political purchase in, say, 1789 for a number of obvi-ous reasons (no Marx, no proletariat). Yet, the fact that no communistregime existed anywhere in the world by 1917 did not diminish theirapparent enthusiasm for the model. Furthermore, the power of thismodel was tremendous precisely because of its potentially universalapplicability. The point is that ‘world-historical-time’ at once limits therange of possibilities open to those seeking change and provides poten-tially coherent strategies and models for them. In the current context,the common judgement suggests that democratic capitalism has fewserious global rivals even if the methods employed in achieving it mayvary widely. That ‘for the first time in human history, there is a singleclearly dominant state form, the modern constitutional representativedemocratic republic, distributed across the globe’ is a hugely importantfeature of the current global system.50

Of course, and this is another virtue of ‘world-historical-time’, thereare no inherently stable grounds for believing that, even if it is histori-cally unprecedented, this dominance of one political form is anythingbut a contingent feature of the current period. The liberal democraticform of state is the dominant model to a very large extent because thewealth and political stability of the richest countries in the world have


demonstrated its efficacy, particularly in comparison with historicalalternatives. But the fact of its dominance, particularly for those coun-tries (or those in power in these countries) that have had extremelydifferent historical trajectories and continue to have very different socialstructures, political and ideological traditions, can be seen as a seriousproblem – as, for example, in the demands for democratic reform inChina. The world-historical-timing of socio-economic and politicalchange is therefore critical to the prospects of any modern politicalmodel. The importance of ‘world-historical-time’ is that it prompts us tomake assessments of the impact of the global ideological context withinwhich change occurs.

While Skocpol stresses, in Realist fashion, the competitive nature ofthe ‘interstate’ system and particularly its military dimension (defeat inwars, threats of invasion, struggles over colonial control, defensivemodernisation) one needs to be aware of the fact that there are forms ofpolitical competition not expressed in military terms (diplomacy withinor outside of international institutions, pressures for improved humanrights or more expansively for homogeneity in socio-political frame-works) and indeed that there are, perhaps increasingly, co-operative fea-tures as well.51 Likewise, it is crucial to move away from entirelystate-centric approaches to international politics. A good way to con-ceive of this is to see the international political system in terms of globalgovernance or, as Fred Halliday has argued, ‘a system of multi-layeredauthority and policymaking’.

…today, more than ever, we can see the system of global governanceas based on four distinct levels. At the top lie international organiza-tions, such as the UN and the EU. Below them lie the traditional repos-itories of political power and democratic legitimacy, states. Below theselie civil society in its broadest sense, within countries and betweenthem: this comprises NGOs and social movements, but also the press,religious groups and all who seek, without assuming the authority ofstate, to influence its activities. Finally, and too easily forgotten in anage of structures, communities, global trends and so on, there is thebasis of the whole story, the individual, all six billion of us.52

The interdependence of this system of global governance with the worldeconomy again evinces both competitive and co-operative features aswith efforts to manage financial crises or strengthen regulatory regimesof various types internationally. Nevertheless, perhaps the most salientfeature of these contextual variables – the international political system,

Introduction 11

the world economy and ‘world-historical-time’, collectively, the globalsystem – is their uneven impact on states and societies. Here we mayintroduce a concept initially associated with Marxism but liable to muchbroader application, namely, the concept of ‘uneven and combineddevelopment’. This brings together these elements of the global systemand offers important insights. While Skocpol develops this to a consid-erable degree, it is Leon Trotsky who earlier employed it, if with ‘politi-cally incorrect’ language, in The History of the Russian Revolution.53 Itsbasic axiom is the rejection of unilinear historical development.

The laws of history have nothing in common with a pedanticschematism. Unevenness, the most general law of the historicprocess, reveals itself most sharply and complexly in the destiny ofthe backward countries. Under the whip of external necessity theirbackward culture is compelled to make leaps. From the universal lawof unevenness thus derives another law which, for the lack of a bettername, we may call the law of combined development – by which we mean a drawing together of the different stages of the journey, a combining of separate steps, an amalgam of archaic with the morecontemporary forms.54

The virtues of this conception, as long as it’s not ‘fetishised’ (i.e. asdetermining the impossibility of democratic rule or the absolute necessityof socialism – note that I avoid using the name law of ‘uneven and combined development’) are that it deals exceptionally well with thecontingency and complexity of politics and change within an interna-tional framework, orients analysis towards the domestic/internationalinteraction and helps explain the continuing problems of inequalitybetween states and societies. As the extract above suggests, the ‘com-bined’ element refers to the fact that domestic development or changeoccurs in an international context and that this context is critical instructuring the opportunities, constraints and choices available to indi-viduals and groups, including states, seeking change. It also refers to theway in which international forces and processes interact with domesticones to produce unique outcomes or conjunctures – social, economic,political, ideological/cultural. (The distinction between these realms,the domestic and international, being often more temporal than spatialin that what may begin as an international process or force is eventuallydomesticated as with religion or culture more generally.) In short,‘uneven and combined development’ contains within it the conceptionof ‘world-historical-time’, the changing structure of the capitalist worldeconomy and the international political system.


In the context of the development of Russia, ‘uneven and combineddevelopment’ is employed by Trotsky to explain the ‘peculiarities’ of itshistorical trajectory compared with, and under pressure from, richerEuropean countries: the delay in ‘the process of social differentiation’,the state’s greater share of national income and the consequent ‘doubleimpoverishment’ of its people and weakening of ‘the foundations of thepossessing classes’, the servile role of the church, the development of ‘Slavophilism’ (‘the messianism of backwardness’), the economicinsignificance of Russian cities and the nobility’s attempts ‘to take theplace of the lacking Third Estate’ (‘the solution of the problems of oneclass by another is one of those combined methods natural to backwardcountries’), the structure and ownership patterns (largely foreign) of itsindustry and of its social structure as a whole with advanced and con-centrated industrial sectors alongside a massive peasantry, the ‘incapac-ity of the bourgeoisie for political action’, the very despotism of its state,and so on.55

If the endlessly unique social, political and cultural formations thatarise from these complex historical combinations help explain the ‘het-erogeneous’ quality of modernity – from our perspective, why it may bethat liberal democracy and capitalist prosperity are not easily replicated –then it also raises the question of how it is that ‘homogeneity’ is possibleat all never mind such a stark feature of the current epoch. For Trotsky, asfor many in the classical Marxist tradition as well as for liberal interna-tionalists, the possibility of replicating social and political forms lay inthe universalising tendency inherent in capitalism – ‘it prepares and in acertain sense realizes the universality and permanence of man’s develop-ment’ – and in what he terms ‘the privilege of historic backwardness’.

Although compelled to follow after the advanced countries, a back-ward country does not take things in the same order. The privilege ofhistoric backwardness – and such a privilege exists – permits, orrather compels, the adoption of whatever is ready in advance of anyspecified date, skipping a whole series of intermediate stages. Savagesthrow away their bows and arrows for rifles all at once, without trav-elling the road which lay between those two weapons in the past. TheEuropean colonists in America did not begin history all over againfrom the beginning. The fact that Germany and the United Stateshave now economically outstripped England was made possible bythe very backwardness of their capitalist development.56

If in the long run, according to Trotsky, the degree to which a country is capable of skipping over intermediate steps is determined by its

Introduction 13

‘economic and cultural capacities’ (something he does not go on to theorise) the thrust of ‘uneven and combined development’, in drawingattention to the way domestic and/or domesticated legacies interactwith transnational forces and processes, seeks to explain differences andcontradictions not similarities and continuities – demonstrating, forinstance, how the introduction of western techniques and training inmilitary and industrial concerns under Peter I led to a strengthening ofserfdom and tsarism, ‘which delayed in its turn the development of thecountry’.57 It is, of course, precisely through such contradictions thatTrotsky seeks to explain the advent of ‘socialist’ revolution in the con-text of a ‘backward’ Russia thus rescuing historical materialism from itsunilinear modernisation straightjacket. Modernisation persists but thereare many possible combinations and routes, perhaps even some culde-sacs, if still one general direction of play.

There are, however, two necessary critical correctives to this concep-tualisation. The first relates to the role of agency in social and politicalchange. The idea that there is one predestined culmination of the his-toric process, be it socialism, liberal democracy or anything else, evenwhen inextricably linked to mechanisms of collective or individualstruggle – of class or for ‘recognition’ – by moving beyond the normativeto the determinist loses any possible analytical and, almost certainly,emancipatory usefulness. The providing of comfort with certainty is notthe task of the scholar, at least not in the social sciences. Recognisingthat liberal democracy has been achieved only through intense socialand political struggle, agency must nevertheless be seen within the limits and constraints, possibilities and opportunities provided by socio-economic, political and ideological contexts. Neither determinism noropen-ended voluntarism will do. If the global system does play a keyrole in hindering or promoting the institutionalisation of democracy, itdoes so in ways that reflect the interests, resources, organisation anddecisions, ultimately, of people in varying relation to one another and istherefore open, indeed, bound to change.

The second modification relates to the privileging of the socio-economic realm. While there may well be historical circumstanceswhere such an interpretation is indeed appropriate, there are clearly others where it is not. For example, the civil rights movements in theUnited States or Ireland had their crucial socio-economic dimensions,but to exclude discrimination on the basis of race and religion respec-tively from analyses would be to ignore salient features of these strug-gles. Likewise, the continuing struggles for gender equality throughoutthe world cannot simply be understood in terms of class relations,


however significant these clearly are. Assessing the interaction of variouslevels of analysis does not warrant a priori privileging of any one of them.58

Conceptualising democracy

It is common today to speak of democratic political systems withoutqualifying the various criteria used in distinguishing them from non-democratic or authoritarian ones. After all, the differences between thepolitical systems of Saudi Arabia and Australia or between Burma andGermany seem patently obvious. However, the question of what consti-tutes a democratic political system is far from settled. One of the mostimportant and enduring distinctions made in the theory of democracyand in the various debates around this subject pertains to what has beencharacterised as that between procedural versus substantive definitionsof democracy itself.59 The argument is between those that see proceduralconsiderations and constitutional arrangements – universal franchise,electoral system, separation of powers, ‘free’ press, the rule of law and soon – as sufficient and those that consider such a definition as excessivelylimiting given that the inspiration for democracy, its essential ideal, is itspromise, not only of legal but of substantive equality in the determina-tion of public policy, something which has not been delivered by anyexisting or historical political system. And yet, though an enduring feature of human society, especially but not exclusively modern society,has been inequality, it may be argued that these two positions, ratherthan being diametrically opposed, are in dialectical relation to eachother. After all, procedural questions do not arise in a vacuum but areinextricably interwoven with questions of ideals or ends.

Of course, the ends pursued through procedural innovation or reformare not always related to achieving greater substantive equality – electoral reform, for instance, may be aimed at achieving political stability by denying small minority parties proportional representation.However, the direction of institutional political reform in what are considered democracies in the modern period has tended to be towardsinclusion and political equality. This is particularly clear when democ-racy is viewed historically as what was considered democratic in thepast, the achievement of universal male suffrage, for example, is nowseen as unduly restrictive. ‘Really existing democracy’ is both an institutional framework and an ethical aspiration.

Nevertheless, trying to determine whether the global system may besaid to promote or hinder the institutionalisation of democracy requiresfirst a clear exposition and understanding of its procedural content.

Introduction 15

Here, liberal, representative or ‘actually existing’ democracy is taken to be, first and foremost, a political regime with six essential criteria:‘equal and universal adult suffrage; civic rights which assure the freeexpression of opinion and the free organization of currents of opinion;decisions taken by a [mostly] numerical majority; and guarantees of therights of minorities against any abuses on the part of majorities.’60

If civic and political rights at the level of the individual are critical so toois a representative assembly at the level of the political community,however defined, and, underlying all these features, the rule of law.

This focus on the institutions and procedures of a political regimeshould not, however, exclude or obscure analyses of the social structuresthat lay beneath it. The question of the socio-economic and cultural/ideological conditions or even preconditions for the establishment andsustainability of liberal democracy is crucial to our examination. As somuch of the literature on the emergence of social revolutionary crises,processes and outcomes makes clear, transnational relations are salientprecisely because they have helped to shape both state and socialstructures. Analyses of the relation between the global system, state and social formation as well as the role of ideology are all, therefore,necessarily important.

Methodology

To sum up, this thesis seeks to shed light on the relationship betweendemocracy and the global system and to demonstrate the weakness ofliberal internationalism’s optimistic expectation of the spread of democ-racy by suggesting that domestic/international interactions producecountervailing tendencies away from the institutionalisation and con-solidation of this form of state. A secondary motivation is to offer analternative conceptualisation of the global system and of its interactionwith domestic systems of rule that provides for a more convincing basisupon which to assess the relationship between the global system anddemocracy – an application of ‘uneven and combined development’. A final if still important motivation is to demonstrate the importance ofanalyses that are sensitive to these interactions for international rela-tions and for the IR discipline.

If the task ahead appears exceedingly ambitious, the method of itsexecution is calculated to restrain its potential for becoming toounwieldy. The chapters collected here are centred on case studies of textsby individual authors with the specific intention of extrapolatinginsights from them into the relationship between the global system and


democracy and to demonstrate the weaknesses of liberal international-ist optimism with regard to the worldwide spread of this form of state.While conceptions of the latter may differ in some details, the primaryfocus is on how the global system is itself conceptualised and on how itis seen to relate to social and political change at the domestic level,specifically, to the prospects of political democracy. The authors andtexts that are taken up on a chapter by chapter basis are as follows:

1. Barrington Moore Jr., Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lordand Peasant in the Making of the Modern World

2. Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation: The Political and EconomicOrigins of Our Time

3. Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy4. Samuel Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies5. David Held, Democracy and the Global Order: From the Modern State to

Cosmopolitan Democracy

So, what criteria were used in the selection of these texts and authors?The choice was made first on the basis that sufficient consideration wasallotted to one or more of two criteria deemed necessary in probingand/or countering the optimistic prognosis of the international spread ofdemocracy associated with liberal internationalism – developed fromsuggestions that democracy arises out of human nature and the nature ofpolitics, from its relationship to capitalism and from the force of exam-ple of other democratic states. The first criterion was the requirement ofsustained engagement with the formation of states and political systems.

The specific work of Barrington Moore Jr. and David Held seemedmost promising in helping us judge how far liberal internationalism’sview of the sources of democratisation made sense and what role if anythe global system itself could be taken to play in their development. Thework of Joseph Schumpeter and Samuel Huntington also seemed partic-ularly appropriate here – the former because of the classic status of hiswork on capitalism and democracy and of his association with liberalinternationalism, the latter because of his extremely cogent views onthe challenges posed by political modernisation. Furthermore, criticalappraisals of all these texts could potentially lead us to more convincingaccounts of the prospects of democracy and perhaps suggest what needsattending to if the hope of the spread of the liberal democratic form ofstate is to be realised.

The second criterion was more obvious and direct engagement withthe relationship between domestic socio-economic, political and

Introduction 17

ideological change and the workings of the global system, however con-ceived. Again, David Held’s text seemed particularly promising here butso too did that of Karl Polanyi because of his highly respected if oftenoverlooked views of the impact of liberalism on politics, domestic andinternational.

It is not difficult, of course, to suggest alternative sources for the task at hand and indeed others have been suggested and considered seriously – for example, Immanuel Wallerstein’s volumes on The ModernWorld-System, Seymour Lipset’s Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics,Kenneth Waltz’s Theory of International Politics, Hans Morgenthau’sPolitics Among Nations, Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History and the LastMan. In the end, however, the five texts chosen have more than enoughto offer the student interested in making headway on this as well asmany other topics. The major challenge is actually to do them thejustice they deserve.

Though this method may appear to be a form of intellectual historyrather than an empirical and question-driven thesis, this is not theintention. First, it does not seek to trace the theme of the relationshipbetween democracy and the global system across time in the work ofsuccessive thinkers as with the approach associated with Isaiah Berlin –no attempt is even made to arrange the works of the chosen thinkerschronologically.61 It is also not a study of ‘discourses’ as with theapproach associated with Quentin Skinner. Although some examinationof the ideological and political context in which the books themselveswere written is provided – in the introduction to the chapter onHuntington’s work and the conclusions to those of Polanyi’s andSchumpeter’s, for example – this thesis is much more concerned withassessing the actual arguments and conceptualisations laid out by theauthors and their relevance for understanding the current relationshipbetween democracy and the global system.62 Beyond this, a further pur-pose may be said to be closer to the historical method associated withPerry Anderson in that it seeks to ‘re-construct’ some highly influentialcontributions to the understanding of modernity, albeit from a muchnarrower angle than was intended by each of the authors.63

These authors and texts, in their varying ways, attempt to grapplewith some of the central political concerns of modern times. While therelationship between democratic government and the global system isnot always or even mainly their explicit focus, this is the analytical lensthrough which the argument here is focused. If this collection may beseen as essentially eclectic, all the authors at least posit theories that,explicitly or implicitly, help us probe and even suggest alternative


conceptions of the global system, of democracy and of their complexrelations to that of liberal internationalism. In addition, they do so fromvarying points of the political spectrum as well as from different academicdisciplines. Furthermore, particularly in relation to the growing literatureon globalisation, some of these earlier thinkers are again being referred tofrequently. An assessment of their main work is, therefore, to some extenttimely.64 Nevertheless, though they are all considered to have made significant contributions to social scientific debates and understanding, as William Connolly has argued convincingly, there are clear dangers inpursuing a topic such as ours through interrogation of key texts.

If we sink each into its specific historical context, much of what’smost important about it as an exemplar of modern discoursebecomes submerged. If we treat these texts together as participatingin a universal conversation in which each party provides differentanswers to the same timeless questions, we will miss distinctive fea-tures which might constitute the modern epoch. If we examinethem, consciously or unconsciously, solely from the perspective ofcurrent debates and beliefs, we will surely end by congratulating ourselves for having advanced so far beyond them.65

Others will ultimately judge how far these and other dangers have beenavoided but the modest expectation is that the insights generated bythese authors – supplemented with ‘external’ readings from within aswell as from outside of the IR literature – will help to formulate a sys-tematic and coherent framework for thinking about the relationshipbetween democracy and the global system. The more immodest expec-tation is that this framework will then provide a sounder basis uponwhich to conclude whether indeed the global system may be currentlysaid to promote or hinder the institutionalisation of democracy. Ofcourse, the point of providing such a framework is not simply to pro-mote better understanding of the relevant relationships and issuesinvolved but to provide a useful platform from which to promote thediffusion and consolidation of democracy itself. In this sense, I am verymuch in agreement with Amartya Sen’s contention that support fordemocracy should stem from ethical considerations at least as much asfrom instrumentalist ones.66

Introduction 19

20

1Barrington Moore’s ‘Social Origins’ and the Global System

Introduction

The main purpose of this chapter on Barrington Moore is to generateinsights from a classic text in the field of comparative historical sociol-ogy that point to the impact of the global system on the prospects fordemocratic governance worldwide. It is designed also to probe theassumptions that sustain liberal internationalism’s optimistic prognosiswith regard to the spread of this form of state.

The argument suggests that the relationship between democratic gov-ernment and the global system is much more problematic than liberalinternationalism tends generally to assume and that the political out-comes that result, in part from domestic/international interactions,leave far less room for its optimism. However, just as domestic obstaclesto the institutionalisation of democracy are often overplayed, it isimportant not to make the same mistake with respect to internationalones.67 It would be equally wrong, for instance, to suggest that theglobal system is always determinant of social and political change as tosuggest that the international context does not play a role at all. Whilethe impact of the global system on the prospects of democratic gover-nance is significant, one needs to be equally concerned with finding thelimits of the explanatory power of the global system on social and polit-ical transformation.

In addition, the chapter also suggests that Moore’s account of thesocial origins of democracy, fascism and communism clearly implies a theory of ‘uneven and combined development’ – and within this theusefulness of ‘world-historical-time’ as a category of social scientificunderstanding. What accounts for the particular form of state for Mooreis the impact of capitalist modernisation on pre-existing socio-economic

and political structures and their relationship to other states in theglobal system at a particular historical conjuncture. It is argued that amore explicit formulation of this framework would have provided hisanalysis with even more coherence and, perhaps, contemporary rele-vance and purchase. Nevertheless, Barrington Moore’s classic account ofthe historical preconditions of democracy and dictatorship, Social Originsof Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the ModernWorld, hereafter referred to simply as Social Origins, raises crucial ques-tions for the analysis of the prospects for democratic governance.68 Inparticular, those students of Politics and International Relations forwhom the Kantian hope of ‘liberal enlargement’ increasingly temptsaffiliation but whose engagement with comparative historical sociologymay be lacking, would benefit greatly from studying this text.69

The basic argument of the text

Social Origins is a powerful counter to any simple liberal view of the evo-lution of democracy, as much in its examination of the role of violenceas in its discussion of the pre-conditions for democratisation. Its mainfocus is on the crucial role played by the agrarian classes – landlords and peasants – in the transition to modernity (essentially defined as thespread of commercialisation of social relations beginning with agricul-ture and leading to industrialism) and their impact on subsequent polit-ical development. Stated simply, its thesis is that the institutionalcomplexes designated as dictatorship and democracy are rooted in thetransitions to capitalist society and in particular to the ways in whichthe landed upper classes and the peasants reacted to the challenges of commercial agriculture. As Moore puts it, ‘… we seek to understandthe role of the landed upper classes and the peasants in the bourgeoisrevolutions leading to capitalist democracy, the abortive bourgeois revolutions leading to fascism, and the peasant revolutions leading tocommunism’.70

While at first this may not appear to be fertile ground for students ofInternational Relations, on closer examination it is clear that the globalsystem itself was of major importance for all three routes to modernity.An indication of its importance comes early in the text. ‘The fact thatthe smaller countries depend economically and politically on big andpowerful ones means that the decisive causes of their politics lie outsidetheir own boundaries.’71 Such a thought would indeed warm the heartsof nationalists and conspiracy theorists all over the Third World butMoore’s exaggeration is at least partly a justification for the inevitably

Moore’s ‘Social Origins’ and the Global System 21

limited scope of his study to the ‘big’ states. In any case, his analysisdoes not and cannot escape the decisive role of the global system in thedevelopment of democracy or dictatorship in any single state.

Theorising democracy

A few words about the meaning of democracy for Moore are necessary.Clearly, democratic governance is not simply or mainly the conse-quence of an ideal pursued by devoted followers. While ideological support for such values as liberty and equality, and for accountable andrepresentative institutions is a necessary ingredient in the evolution ofany particular democratic polity, by itself it tells us little about the his-torical development of such a polity. As Ernest Gellner has suggested:‘Theorists of democracy who operate in the abstract, without referenceto concrete social conditions, end up with a vindication of democracy as a general ideal, but are then obliged to concede that in many societiesthe ideal is not realisable.’72 Cognisant of such pitfalls, Moore speaksmainly of democracy in terms of its development or a process of socialdemands rather than a given assemblage of institutions and practices.Although these too come across in sporadic bursts, he attempts to sidestep the ‘trivial quibbling’ characteristic of most debates around definitions by arguing the following: ‘The author sees the developmentof a democracy as a long and certainly incomplete struggle to do threeclosely related things: 1) to check arbitrary rulers, 2) to replace arbitraryrules with just and rational ones, and 3) to obtain a share for the under-lying population in the making of rules.’73

Now, why there should be social demand for such a direction of change and whether or not it is universal in scope is never addressedby Moore. The questions are surely partly answered by reference to ideological movements acting (and writing) in adherence with politicalprinciples. Defining the scope of political change (constitutional, insti-tutional) and its desirability, would also lead us partly towards an examination of ideology. There is, however, very little in Social Originsabout the various theoretical conceptions of democratic government and there are no serious references to the writings of John Locke,Montesquieu, Adam Smith, Tom Paine or any of the other Enlightenmentauthors so replete in the works of mainstream democratic theorists.74

Rather, Moore’s account is an explicitly materialist one. He is concernedwith demonstrating that the direction of political change is bestanalysed by reference both to self-interest as defined by social classes andthe state in the process of dynamic structural change (modernisation),


and to the opportunities for acting upon these by reference to theresources and capabilities of social classes and the state in a changingideological, economic, military and political environment.

Moore does, however, distinguish between what might be called‘developed’ democratic government (Britain, the United States andFrance) from ‘semi-parliamentary’ or ‘unstable’ democracies (the WeimarRepublic, Japan in the 1920s, Italy under Giolitti). These are essentiallyauthoritarian governments which acquire one basic democratic feature –a parliament with limited powers.75 While the theoretical implications of authoritarian semi-parliamentary government will be taken up later, it is important here to understand that the forms of states according to Moore are not simply either democracies or dictatorships but that gradations between these positions are in fact much more common.Nevertheless, there are for Moore, three general types of states that fallunder the category of dictatorship and democracy – fascist and commu-nist for the former and bourgeois or liberal democratic for the latter.

The historical actors

Moore posits three main historical routes (four, including India) fromagricultural to industrial society which determine the nature of politicalsystems left in their wake. There are four explicit actors in this dramaand one implicit one. Social classes are explicit, namely, the landedupper class/es, the bourgeoisie (often referred to as an ‘impetus’ and thusrevealing Moore’s major dynamic actor) and the peasantry. Again, he isconcerned above all with demonstrating the decisive role played by thetwo social classes ultimately vanquished in the West by capitalist devel-opment in determining the nature of modern political systems.76 It istheir historical configuration in relation to the bourgeoisie and the state(the fourth explicit actor) which determines ‘the political outcome’. My contention is that this can only be properly understood in the widercontext of the global system (the implicit actor).

The state for Moore is not simply the functional arm of the economi-cally dominant class, at least not for all the empirical cases he covers.Although it is not explicitly theorised in terms of the debate on ‘autonomy’, it is clear from his analysis that the spread of capitalism, in a dialectical manner, greatly strengthened, indeed transformed thestate and made it one of the most important objects of class struggle.77

The state is variously treated as dependent on economic surpluseslargely extracted from society and, therefore, under precarious hege-monic control of the dominant economic class (particularly so where


the bourgeois impulse is strong) and as an autonomous entity seeking tomediate between social classes and other states in order to preserve orincrease its power (particularly for later developing countries).78 Whileits interests may be defined at different moments according to its ownrationale, it ignores the social bases of its resources at its peril. The stateis crucially caught in the same contradictory pressures brought about bycommercialisation and modernisation as the social classes it attempts to govern. Its autonomy or freedom of action has limits that are mostdramatically revealed by the social revolutions outlined by Moore.

The role of the global system in aiding, sponsoring or causing struc-tural social and political change is never systematically analysed byMoore. While he is unable to sustain an exclusively intra-societalapproach, it is clear that his intention is precisely to downplay ‘foreign’influences.79 The role of the international sphere is always peripheral to the unfolding dramas and its impact on the explicit actors or majorvariables is never theorised in a sustained fashion. Nevertheless, as weshall see, what is implied by the global system is much more than theexistence of other competing states, even if these are particularly crucialin the context of modernisation.

The original transition

Rather than go over each transition set out in detail by Moore, we will outline briefly the English example and proceed to the theoreticalimplications of the analysis as a whole. The reason for choosing theEnglish example is that, being the original transition to democracy forMoore and the so-called ‘model’ for later modernisations, its actualuniqueness will help stress the role of the global system as well as temper unilinear models of social development, arguably the centralweakness of both liberal and socialist internationalism.

Let’s begin by asking what factors explain the development ofParliamentary democracy in England? The most important factoraccording to Moore is the development of commerce in both the countryside and towns. Was this a purely endogenous development?No, it was due to the interaction between the state, the social structureand the global system at a particular historical conjuncture. All four ele-ments are crucial. The Tudor state sought first to consolidate and then toincrease its power vis à vis the landed classes partly as a consequence ofinternational conflict (The Hundred Years War 1337–1453) and partly asa consequence of internal conflict (Wars of the Roses 1455–85). As thelords lost their political role to the centralising state so they sought to


increase the economic power of their land via international trade. ‘SinceEnglish markets for wool were on the continent, particularly in Italy andthe Low countries, it is to the growth of trading towns there that one would have to turn in order to find the beginnings of the strongcommercial impulse that was eventually to rule English society.’80

The commercialisation of land had many far reaching consequencesnot least of which was the development of economic individualism as anew social creed. ‘… [L]ong before Adam Smith, scattered groups ofEnglishmen living in the countryside began to accept self-interest andeconomic freedom as the natural basis of human society.’81 Of equalimportance was the fact that a numerous tenantry became less impor-tant for the landlords while a high pecuniary return from the soilbecame more so. According to R.H. Tawney, ‘… [This change …] marksthe transition from the medieval conception of land as the basis of political functions and obligations to the modern view of it as anincome-yielding investment.’82 With these shifts, the question of socialorder, which had been the obligation of the landed classes, was raisedwith dramatic urgency. The casting adrift of copious numbers of peas-ants, in large part due to the violent enclosures, led to intermittentrevolts that the state was left to deal with. The state, however, was notup to the task. ‘Unlike the French monarchy, the English crown had notbeen able to build up an effective administrative and legal machinery of its own that could force its will upon the countryside.’83 The attemptsby the Stuart state to restore order led to a coherent opposition to the crown by the ‘commercially minded elements in town and country-side’ and precipitated the Civil War which ultimately resulted inParliamentary sovereignty.

The sovereignty of Parliament dominated by commercial landlords andtheir capitalist allies allowed for a reinvigorated enclosure movement andthe final destruction of the English peasantry, ‘…eliminating them as a factor from British political life’.84 This not only foreclosed the possibilityof peasant revolution but, ‘…[i]t meant that modernisation could proceedwithout the huge reservoir of conservative and reactionary forces thatexisted at certain points in Germany and Japan not to mention India’.85

Inter-state competition, state centralisation, international marketopportunities and domestic pacification in the context of early modernEngland led to the commercialisation of land, radically altering thesocial structure and establishing some of the original preconditions fordemocracy – one in which ‘suffrages were not counted, but weighed’86 –over three centuries. These preconditions according to Moore were: (1) arelatively strong and independent Parliament; (2) a commercial and


industrial interest with its own economic base; and (3) no seriouspeasant problem. No other country could possibly encounter the samehistorical and social conditions. All other social transitions would haveto face international conditions in part created by this original transi-tion. This was particularly so because England was now powerful and modern enough to ‘convert a large part of the entire globe into [its]trading area’.87

Theoretical implications

The most important overarching theoretical implication arising fromMoore’s account is an implicit theory of ‘uneven and combined devel-opment’,88 which suggests a useful orientation to the relationshipbetween democratic governance and the global system. It is implicitbecause, as he does not treat the impact of the global system on state for-mation and social transformation in a systematic way, Moore’s analysisonly implies this theory rather than develops it or brings it to the fore.It is worth quoting at some length here to flesh out this point.

To a very limited extent these three types – bourgeois revolutions culminating in the Western form of democracy, conservative revolu-tions from above ending in fascism, and peasant revolutions leadingto communism – may constitute alternative routes and choices. Theyare much more clearly successive historical stages. As such, they dis-play a limited determinate relation to each other. The methods ofmodernisation chosen in one country change the dimensions of theproblem for the next countries who take the step, as Veblen recog-nized when he coined the now fashionable term, ‘the advantages ofbackwardness’. Without the prior democratic modernisation ofEngland, the reactionary methods adopted in Germany and Japanwould scarcely have been possible. Without both the capitalist and reactionary experiences, the communist method would havebeen something entirely different; if it had come into existence atall. … Although there have been certain common problems in theconstruction of industrial societies, the task remains a continuallychanging one. The historical preconditions of each major species differ sharply from the others.89

As this extract suggests, the historical preconditions differ sharply pre-cisely because of the existence of other states in the global system whichhave already made the transition to modernity. What changes are thedimensions of the global system itself. As it becomes dominated by


more advanced industrial states, the development trajectory for all othercountries in the global system is irrevocably altered – as Realist theorywould seem to predict via defensive modernisation. But unlike Realism,the point for Moore is that the form of state – democratic, fascist andcommunist, the very forms of state arguably most associated with mod-ern geopolitical conflict – is the key political consequence of moderni-sation. What accounts for their particular form is the impact ofmodernisation on pre-existing social and political structures, and theirrelationship to other states in the global system at a particular historicalconjuncture.

Speaking specifically about the development of democracy inEngland, Moore makes the following point; ‘… [T]he English bourgeoisiefrom the seventeenth through much of the nineteenth century had amaximum material stake in human freedom because it was the firstbourgeoisie and had not yet brought its foreign and domestic rivals totheir full powers.’90 The implication here is that while international anddomestic diffusion of economic power under capitalism is real enough,it is thoroughly uneven and when combined with pre-existing (agrarian)social structures creates entirely new forms of ‘political outcomes’. Thesenew forms, however, are clustered around three distinct political‘species’ according to Moore – democracy, fascism and communism. At work is a single historical process leading to various historical experi-ences, that is, modernisation characterised by uneven and combineddevelopment.91

Uneven and combined development contextualises all social transfor-mations. The imperatives driving inter-state competition as well as thesearch for ‘order’ in world politics would be immeasurably altered with-out this added dynamic. Rather than ‘balance of power’ calculations,uneven and combined development may be the key to understandingattempts at modernisation and their consequences for internationalrelations.92 For example, considering Japan’s modernisation Moorewrites:

… differences in internal social structure constitute only one majorvariable … [t]here were also differences in timing and in the externalcircumstances under which premodern institutions broke down andadapted themselves to the modern era … [t]he superiority of Westernarms and technology became evident to many Japanese leaders veryrapidly. The question of national survival and the need to take appropriate steps to defend it pushed their way to the forefront withdramatic speed.93


To the extent that Moore analyses the interaction of domestic social andpolitical structures with international ones at particular historical periods, his account eschews parsimony and delivers a complexity thatclearly reflects the messiness of actual history. Now, to see whether thehistorical preconditions for states today augur well or otherwise fordemocratic transitions, and to further assess the efficacy of the theory ofuneven and combined development, we may turn to Moore’s account ofthe conditions favourable and unfavourable to democratic government.

Conditions favourable and unfavourable to democracy

Despite tremendous progress towards industrialisation in many countrieswhile being integrated in the international capitalist system, the vastmajority of states have so far avoided or rejected the liberal democraticform of state. Moore’s model suggests that, perhaps, the dynamics ofuneven and combined development, as with Germany, Japan, Russia andChina, may be promoting dictatorships rather than democratic polities.94

Although Moore suggests that the first decisive precondition for democratic government is ‘… the development of a balance to avoid too strong a crown or too independent a landed aristocracy’,95 whenfocusing on Third World states it would be more meaningful, first, tosuggest the consolidation of state power itself as a precondition. If theestablishment of democracy was to have any chance at all, it would haveto be in the context of independent statehood. The protracted wars of independence fought against colonial empires as well as the post-independence struggles over borders partly explains the more promi-nent role of military leaders in the politics of the Third World;96 fromthe start, the prospects for democracy in the Third World were poor.Now, substituting state for ‘crown’ and landed élite for ‘aristocracy’ wemay suggest, along with Moore, that the development of a certainamount of pluralism at the apex of the political system is an essentialingredient in the growth of democracy. In other words, the ‘institution-alisation of contestation’ first requires roughly evenly matched powers.Unfortunately, uneven and combined development has made it possiblefor states to acquire such enormous levels of despotic power relative tocivil society groups, through both market mechanisms and geopoliticalalliances, that those who challenge it need to have a very strong economic base indeed. In this sense ‘the advantages of backwardness’may be distinctly disadvantageous for democracy.

As we have seen with regard to England, the relative economic inde-pendence acquired by the landed classes had been achieved historically


via international market opportunities. There is, of course, every indica-tion that the landed élite in the Third World have exploited interna-tional market opportunities. Indeed, the Third World as a whole waslargely integrated into the international capitalist system via colonial-ism as exporters of primary products.97 In a sense, the incorporation ofprimary product producers into the international economy resemblesthe transition to commercial agriculture characteristic of ‘revolutionsfrom above’, the classic route culminating in fascism.98 What is extraor-dinary, given Moore’s model, is that any former colonial country hasmade a successful transition to democracy. Nevertheless, Moore is quickto point out that the ways in which the independence of the landed élitehas been hammered out are equally important.99

What is crucial for the development of democracy is that the eco-nomic independence for the landed élite must be achieved with the sup-port of and in alliance with ‘… a numerous and politically vigorous classof town dwellers’ that is, the bourgeoisie.100 In other words, ‘no bour-geois, no democracy’.101 The economic and political growth of the bour-geoisie is one of the main sources of the decisive connection betweensocio-economic factors such as wealth per capita (with its links to edu-cation and urbanisation) and democracy so prevalent in the literatureon democratisation.102 While it is clear that in most parts of the ThirdWorld the percentage of the population in urban areas is rising sharply(now constituting a majority of the world’s inhabitants);103 the extent towhich the landed élite and the bourgeoisie – very often a declining classin terms of numbers relative to the urban poor – have corporate interestsin allying themselves against the state is considerably less so.104

According to Moore, the probability of a landed élite/bourgeoisalliance depends on whether the form of commercial agriculture preva-lent in the countryside includes and necessitates both the co-operationand integration of the urban bourgeoisie in realising their profits andthe extent to which it is labour repressive/intensive.105 That is, whetherthe form of commercial agriculture creates ‘a considerable communityof interests with the towns’, and enables the landed class to curb itsdependence on the state by freeing itself of the state powers needed tokeep peasant labour cheap but plentiful. England’s wool trade is com-pared favourably to Germany’s grain trade in that the former necessi-tated minimum labour and strong ties with the urban marketers whilethe latter needed maximum exploitation of labour and little marketingfrom the urban bourgeoisie.106

The point about labour intensity is very important. Put simply, thegreater the supply of cheap labour needed, the more important restrictions


such as on labour mobility and unionisation imposed and enforced bythe state were for landlords and, consequently, the more damagingwould be the loss of influence on the state through the inclusion ofother corporate interests. In a study of the development of democracy inLatin America the authors suggest that immediately after independence‘[p]rogress towards democracy only occurred under the crucial precon-dition of absence of labor intensive agriculture. In fact, in no case where(1) labor intensive agriculture predominated, and (2) agriculture was thecrucial export sector, was unrestricted democracy established in SouthAmerica’.107 Any democratic opening would have to await further diffu-sion of economic power to other sectors, that is, economic diversification.

If the commercial and industrial element is so weak that it is notworth the landed classes being allied to it, then peasant revolution lead-ing to communism has been the danger. This happened in China andRussia, Moore reminds us, after unsuccessful efforts to establish such a coalition. Where a coalition between a strong landed élite with a weakbourgeoisie succeeds, according to Moore’s analysis, this has been thesocial origins of rightist authoritarian regimes and movements.108 Partof the explanation again falls on the theory of uneven and combineddevelopment. As Moore puts it: ‘[S]ooner or later systems of labor-repressive agriculture are liable to run into difficulties produced by com-petition from more technically advanced ones in other countries.’109

As the landed classes lose their economic base, this competition, in turn,intensifies their authoritarian and reactionary trends. If the political systems established at first fall short of fascism, eventually the door to fas-cism may be opened by their inability to carry out fundamental structuralchanges or to cope with severe problems. These are the authoritariansemiparliamentary regimes characteristic of many European countriesduring the inter-war years and, arguably, of many contemporary states inthe Third World.

Now, to what extent do commercial landowners in the Third Worldrealise profits by selling their products to the national bourgeoisie whoin turn sell them on to international and domestic markets or consumea large portion of them themselves? A good negative example, if anextreme one, is provided by the oil producing states of the Middle Eastwhose profits are realised almost entirely from overseas sales.110 Giventhe minimal backward linkages of oil production with domestic labour,capital or agricultural goods, the bourgeoisie in these states do not as yethave the leverage required for either an independent assault on the stateor for an alliance with private landowners against the state. Indeed, the most important landowners are often royal family members. Due to


the availability of foreign labour, extraction and production technology,transportation, marketing and consumer markets, the bourgeoisie inthese societies has been left to live off the considerable crumbs that fallfrom the tables of the landowners and the state.

For Third World states that are not endowed with massive oil reserves,a frequently asserted concern refers to their combination of power andfragility.111 Their considerable despotic power is combined with an economic fragility that is in part due to their dependence on externallygenerated revenues, another legacy of colonial history. The lack of middle-class incomes together with low infrastructural power means thatdomestic tax revenues account for a relatively small proportion of totalstate revenues.112 According to a recent report, for example, less thanone percent of the population of Pakistan, from a population of 140 mil-lion, pay any income tax.113 Tariffs on exports and imports being at apremium, the landed élite and the state have little incentive, withoutthe intervention of revolts from below or from external factors, to disrupt the social structure. This also means that the historic linkbetween demands for representation and taxation is weak. With thesedomestic and international circumstances, Moore’s model suggestsmajor obstacles to the establishment and working of democracy.

The next historical preconditions for democratic government are ‘the weakening of the landed aristocracy and the prevention of an aristocratic–bourgeois coalition against the peasantry and workers’.114

For most countries in the process of industrialisation, the weakening ofthe landed aristocracy would seem natural enough. However, as we haveseen, for countries which had been integrated into the international cap-italist economy as primary product producers, the weakening of thelanded aristocracy was anything but natural. The political dominance of the coffee plantation owners in Brazil, for instance, was not finallybroken until well into the twentieth century.115 With British capitalavailable for financing the limited infrastructure required by a primaryproduct exporting country, British merchants controlling the import–export trade and ships under the British flag, financed and insured inLondon, transporting the goods, the Brazilian landed aristocracy hadvery little interest in industrialisation. Nor was coffee, typical of primaryproducts with such limited linkage effects for the Brazilian economy, itsprice volatility and labour intensity, an appropriate product for the stimulation of industrial development. This was not, of course, unique toBrazil but characteristic of many Latin American countries.

When the weakening of the landed classes was apparent, it was due inlarge measure to changing international circumstances, particularly to


the First World War, the Great Depression and the Second World War.The commensurate growth in the political and economic weight of thecommercial-industrial bourgeoisie due to the added stimulation ofindustrial and commercial expansion by the loss of export markets, thepressure of nationalist or anti-imperialist sentiment widely held acrossclass lines, and the new dominance of American capital with an interestin branch plants which had a direct effect on the industrialisationprocess, all combined to break the political dominance of the landedclasses and to encourage the Brazilian state to adopt new industrialisa-tion policies. These policies, known collectively as ‘import substitutionindustrialisation’ (ISI) had many far-reaching consequences. For ourpurposes, what is of interest is that ISI greatly increased the power androle of the state, the national capitalists and foreign MultinationalCorporations (MNCs). It also greatly increased demand for foreign earnings because of its high capital intensity and ‘… if anything, Brazil’sties with the world market became stronger and more crucial as theoperation proceeded’.116

According to Paul Cammack, the most significant characteristics of theform of politics associated with ISI in Latin America, generally describedas ‘populist’ were ‘… its conjunctural success as a “second-best” optionfor dominant classes bereft of options of their own, and workers hithertoused to neglect or repression; its tendency to lose over time the abilityupon which this success depended both to control its working-classclientele and to keep the dominant classes at arm’s length; and its funda-mental antipathy to democracy, dependent as it was upon the use ofstate power to deny free political association to opposition and support-ers alike’.117 Whether the spread of military regimes in Latin Americaduring the 1960s and 1970s was due to an aristocratic–bourgeois coali-tion or to a new bourgeois–military coalition against the peasants andworkers, even when many of the workers’ movements were originally thecreation of states,118 the fact remains that the increased repression wasoften directed against the threat of upheaval by these classes who bearthe brunt of the costs of modernisation and their leadership.119 Anyconsideration of this process must include the role of the global systemas an integral part of it.

Besides those already considered, three other main international considerations in the repression in Latin America stand out. One is theforce of example or demonstration effect of successful revolutionarysocialist regimes such as Cuba and after 1979, Nicaragua, as well as theso-called ‘lessons of Chile’ (i.e. the experience of the Allende govern-ment between 1970 and 1973). It is indeed difficult to overestimate the


impact of these revolutionary victories and radical defeats in the contextof the Cold War on most regimes in Latin America, on their militaryestablishments, on the perceptions of the middle classes, on the leader-ships of radical social movements, and on the small but determined‘voluntarist’ revolutionary groups.120 Second, the military assistanceprovided to the repressive states by the United States and other majorarms exporters was considerable and often accepted as tacit support for the policies being carried out.121 Finally, the prospect of dwindlingforeign direct investment due to the threat of social instability and theeconomic and diplomatic pressures, both overt and covert, to ensure theprotection of property rights, often meant that democracy would haveto be sacrificed for the sake of a sound business environment.122

Nevertheless, there has been a pronounced increase in the economicand political power of the middle classes in many if not most of thecountries in this region since 1945 and the more recent return to demo-cratic government in most of them may be an indication of the relativeimportance of this increase as well as the decline in radical challenges tocapitalist development. This last point may also relate to uneven andcombined development in that many revolutionary challenges to ThirdWorld states were/are based on theoretical formulations developed in thecontext of earlier European settings or, as with Maoist parties, Europeantheory ‘adapted to Chinese conditions’. If, for example, Stalinism wasessentially ‘the amalgam of Marxism with Russia’s primordial and savagebackwardness’ then the challenges to states in the developing worldbased on European revolutionary thought were bound to end, if success-ful, in authoritarian forms of state.123 The consequences of ideological‘advantages of backwardness’ have been extraordinarily varied, whetherin the form of nationalism and its impact on independence movementsthroughout the Third World, of republicanism and its impact or of theimpact of revolutionary socialism on Third World states. What is certainis that alternative theoretical as well as existing models of rule, as ofstruggle, do need to be taken on board as part of the impact of the globalsystem on the prospects for democratic governance.

The final historical precondition for democratic government accord-ing to Moore is ‘… a revolutionary break with the past’.124 Given thenumber of recent transitions to democracy without full-blown socialrevolutions, this final precondition would seem rather austere. The lackof bourgeois revolutions in countries that have made transitions todemocracy suggests the possibility of ‘waves of democratisation’ (notnecessarily unilinear and most certainly not ‘peaceful’) and of democraticreversals rather than the necessity of one single revolutionary


rupture.125 As we have seen, Moore’s analysis of the development ofdemocracy and dictatorship suggests to him a single historical process atwork, namely, modernisation. It makes sense, he says, ‘… to regard theEnglish Civil War, the French Revolution and the American Civil War asstages in the development of the bourgeois-democratic revolution.’126

Modernisation, according to Moore, creates the conditions for eachcountry to carry the process a certain distance within the framework ofits own situation and institutions. As the historical conjuncturechanges, the interaction between the state, the social structure and theglobal system produces new opportunities for further democratisationor for new forms of dictatorship.

But if this is so, why can we detect democratic innovations spreadingtransnationally? Examples would include the enfranchisement of workersand of women, the development of civil rights and even the developmentof welfare states. Should not limitations in social structures and institu-tions be reached beyond which certain states cannot proceed withouta major social and political rupture? Uneven and combined developmentmust leave room at the very least for the possibility of broad political con-vergence without the necessity of revolution. Otherwise, the historicalrecord will prove it false. Inspired by the force of example, developmentsin the direction of democracy in a single country may feed into demandsfor democratic inclusion occurring elsewhere. Even the form of struggleitself is often replicated across national borders.

Moore’s handling of the Indian case is instructive because here toothere was no social revolution.127 Without going into the details of thisvery complicated historical account his argument is that by not havinga revolution India has prolonged its ‘backwardness’ and retains a highlyprecarious political system.128 Essentially, India’s small Western-educated élite remains faithful to democracy because it ‘… provide[s]a rationalization for refusing to overhaul on any massive scale a socialstructure that maintains their privileges’.129 Uneven and combineddevelopment has helped produce a uniquely balanced democracy wherethe vast majority of the population struggles to achieve subsistence. Anunlikely social formation which reminds us of the unpredictability bothof the ‘real world’ and of models in the social sciences.

With regard to the most recent transformations which have resultedin the nominal institutionalisation of democracy, if still precariously,namely, the revolutions in Central and Eastern Europe, we have wit-nessed a new route to democracy completely unanticipated by Moore’sanalysis.130 Clearly, however, the final collapse of the Soviet bloc hadimportant international dimensions.131 The first point to make is that


the failure of European communism was not simply the result of eitherits economic weakness nor its innate inability to reform politically. Onboth fronts the final collapse corresponded with considerable successesrelative to its past performance.132 Over and above the factors whichhave come to be subsumed under the rubric of ‘stagnation’, the impactof the global system on European communism at this particular histori-cal conjuncture was decisive. According to Fred Halliday, ‘[w]hat wasdeterminant, and what put stagnation into a wholly different light, wasthe global context, and in particular the relative record of “commu-nism” compared with its competitor, advanced capitalism.’133

The central legitimating claims of communist parties in power werefrom the beginning explicitly framed within the context of the globalsystem. That is, the inevitability of capitalism’s collapse as well as theability to sustain an alternative, superior, non-capitalist economic and political system were communism’s main theoretical assumptions.Both were demonstrably proven false after many decades by changeswithin the capitalist system itself, in part, of course, due to the existenceof communist states. If some states sporadically retreated from demo-cratic inclusion due to the ‘menace of radicalism’, as indeed England did during the more radical phase of the French Revolution or as‘McCarthyism’ in the United States would suggest, the more commondirection of change for advanced capitalism was one of inclusion – forexample, the expansion of social democracy through ‘Keynesianism’including the Marshall Plan, de-colonisation, the civil rights movement,the gains of women’s movements and so on. In no small measure, of course, many of these changes were brought about through socialstruggle within the context of liberal constitutional frameworks.134

Other significant legitimating changes which had tremendous international repercussions but are perhaps more germane to the develop-ment of capitalism itself are associated with the increasing role and relativeimportance of communications and consumer culture. One importantelement here was the explosion in youth culture or, if one prefers, theexploitation by the emergent music, fashion, telecommunications and allmanner of consumer industries of the recently acquired disposable incomeof the youth and its ironic legitimating effect. Ironic because this youthculture was often irreverent towards older generations – this, indeed, is one of its greatest appeals – whose earnings were mostly being spent andin ‘revolt’ against corporate and state power. The inability of the Sovietbloc to insulate itself from these developments and others includingWestern military and economic technological advances, meant that the belief in its ability to overtake capitalism was destroyed. ‘It was this


comparative, rather than absolute, failure that provided the basis for thecollapse of the late 1980’s[.]’135

Criticisms

Before attempting to assess the insights that Moore’s account providesus, we must first attend to the problems of that account itself. As wehave seen, the basic difficulty has arisen from Moore’s lack of systematicengagement with the impact of the global system on social and politicalchange, that is, on ‘political outcomes’. To the extent that a theoreticalexplanation of this relationship was implicit, I have suggested thatuneven and combined development may be the appropriate model for it. It is, however, regrettable that an investigation focused on thepolitical consequences of the spread of modernisation did not seek toplace it more squarely within the context of the global system.

The next criticism arising from Moore’s account is in many waysmuch more damaging. His insistence that the political mould of democ-racies, like dictatorships, was already set after the commercialisation ofagriculture – in some cases hundreds of years before the establishment ofwhat we today would recognise as democratic states – is unconvincing.In other words, the designation of England in the seventeenth century,France in the eighteenth century or even the United States after theCivil War as ‘en route’ to democracy is surely problematic. Not one ofthese states at these times was under the illusion that they were con-structing democracies. Constitutional Monarchy and Republics yes, butnot democracies. Clearly, Moore’s analysis of agrarian class relationsdemonstrates their importance for understanding political outcomes,but just what type of outcomes are actually demonstrated? In place ofdemocracy I would suggest ‘liberal or constitutional oligarchy’. Mooregives much too much credit to the bourgeoisie for providing the majorimpetus towards democracy, for being the protagonist of democracy. It seems much more likely that the institutionalisation of democraticgovernment, at least of the kind we would today recognise as demo-cratic, was the result of much more recent struggles for political incor-poration, in particular, those arising from the demands of subordinateclasses in the new capitalist order – working-class demands – but also ofcivil rights and women’s movement in the context of industrialism that could easily have resulted in less democratic outcomes. Did not thebourgeoisie in most countries and their ideological defenders resist theextension of the franchise for workers, not to mention women andminorities? However, the connection to the bourgeoisie may still be


valid in as much as its size and strength may well be positively correlatedto the size and strength of the working class. Furthermore, the logic of the principled justifications for extending political rights to the bourgeoisie could not easily be frozen philosophically or politically.

The question that arises is whether the liberal or constitutional oligarchic regimes established before the middle of the twentieth cen-tury were destined or essentially designed to continue their evolution ina democratic direction. Moore’s answer is obviously yes. My contentionis that if this were to be demonstrated, one would have to look at howsubordinate classes as well as other groups, such as political parties rep-resenting them, were actually incorporated as legitimate and formallyequal contestants into the political arena. My suspicion is that thiswould add to Moore’s list of preconditions at least one other require-ment, namely, a developed or ‘dense’ civil society.136 The reasons for thisare fairly straightforward. First, a civil society creates favourable condi-tions for the classes previously excluded from formal politics to organisefor collective action, allowing them the possibility of obtaining ‘a sharefor the underlying population in the making of rules’. This was histori-cally the case at least in Europe for the creation of working-class repre-sentation in trades unions and often through them into politicalparties.137 Second, a civil society more easily allows for the growth anddevelopment of a ‘counter-hegemony’ of subordinate classes. Throughparticipation in trades unions, civil rights or women’s movements, forexample, and with the dissemination of oppositional ideas through various media the hegemonic influence of dominant classes may becountered and challenged. This may also allow the development of seri-ous public debate and the possibility of replacing ‘arbitrary rules withjust and rational ones’.138 Finally, as most Enlightenment thinkers havesuggested, the semi-autonomous organisations and associations of civilsociety establish a counterweight to state power itself – a ‘check on arbitrary rulers’ – a further condition which may favour the extension ofdemocracy. As Michael Ignatieff has suggested in the context of the tran-sitions from communism, ‘[w]ithout civil society, democracy remains anempty shell; without civil society, the market becomes a jungle’.139

As regards dictatorships of the right, Moore’s suggestion that the routeto modernity taken by Germany and Japan in some way culminated infascism is also problematic. On the one hand, the problem that arises ishow to decide what in fact is an historical culmination.140 On the otherhand, if fascism is the result of social change which is centuries in themaking then why did democratic transitions occur after defeat in war?This either casts doubt on the depth and efficacy of historical social


processes and forces or makes war an extraordinary revolutionary agent.The second proposition may well be the correct one. Despite the role ofwar in all the transformations detailed by Moore, the lack of sustainedtheorising with its transforming qualities leaves a considerable gap inhis analysis. Actually recognising this weakness, Moore first charac-terises the crucial role of the Second World War in the success of theChinese revolution as ‘fortuitous circumstances’ and later adds:

From the standpoint of Chinese society and politics, the war was an accident. From the standpoint of the interplay of political andeconomic forces in the world as a whole, it was scarcely an accident.Just as the case of the Bolshevik victory in Russia, which some histo-rians see as the accidental outcome of the First World War, theinevitable analytical necessity of isolating certain manageable areasof history can lead to partial truths that are misleading and even falseunless and until one subsequently puts them back into their propercontext.141

Unfortunately, Moore does not heed his own warning and fails to placethe role of war in its proper theoretical context. The fact that the bulk of communist transitions in Central and Eastern Europe were also the result of war makes the same point. Again, these factors point to thelack of engagement with the global system in general and with the relationship between war and social/political change in particular.

Conclusion

Despite the weaknesses referred to above, it is important to understandthe extraordinary merits of Moore’s account both for the developmentof insights into the relationship between the global system and demo-cratic governance and as a critique of liberal internationalist models ofthe spread of democracy. Moore’s suggestion that the transformation ofthe world due to the spread of capitalism is the rightful ‘meta-context’ inwhich to consider the development of modern political systems is cru-cial. This alone raises the global system to a key level of analysis whenconsidering the prospects for democratic governance as well as chal-lenging notions of the immutability of the system itself.142 However,unlike liberal internationalism, his analysis of capitalist modernisationsuggests that the political consequences of this historical process are farfrom straightforward and actually likely to be unfavourable to the institutionalisation and consolidation of the democratic form of state.


Overall, Moore’s model suggests that the interaction between thestate, the social structure and the global system at a particular historicalconjuncture produces the immediate context in which political changeoccurs. His greatest moral insight should also be included here, namely,that whatever the route to modernity, revolutionary or otherwise, thecost in human lives and dignity has always been extraordinarily high,including as it has in different periods the violent (how could it be otherwise?) expropriation of common land, slavery, judicial and extra-judicial murder, colonialism, civil and international war.143 To begin to understand the complex relationship between the global system and democratic governance and to develop alternative conceptions of the prospects of the spread of democracy to those offered by liberalinternationalism means to incorporate these analytical and moralinsights.


40

2Karl Polanyi, Democracy andthe Global System

Introduction

This chapter seeks to shed light on the relationship between the globalsystem and democratic governance through an assessment of the contributions made by Karl Polanyi in his classic account of the histori-cal origins of modernity.144 In particular, his analytical emphasis on the role of ideology in the forging of modernity serves to counter the assumption of rationality – individual, social and international –associated with liberal internationalist views of the emergence of democ-racy and its worldwide spread. This chapter suggests that the concept of‘world-historical-time’, which is designed to incorporate the salience ofthe global ideological dimension for socio-economic and politicalchange is an important tool of analysis even if Polanyi does not employthe specific term. Similarly, the overarching analytical concept of‘uneven and combined development’ is suggested here as an addition toPolanyi’s theoretical structure though, again, his cogent arguments onthe tensions and contradictions of capitalism and the contingency of itsinternational and domestic consequences serves to highlight the weak-ness of unilinear models of socio-economic and political developmentquite brilliantly.

The ‘double movement’

Karl Polanyi’s The Great Transformation, contains, in fact, three inter-related historical transformations. The first involves the transition tocapitalism culminating in the nineteenth century with what he terms a ‘specific civilisation’ – by which the author means a distinct social system encompassing both domestic and international dimensions; the

second, the breakdown of this system culminating in the Second WorldWar; and the third, the transcendence of this system with the rise of a post-liberal order.

Polanyi’s framework of analysis is simple but elegant. Modern politicsare defined and contextualised by reference to what the author calls the‘double movement’: the conflict between the extension of marketorganisation on the one hand and the elementary requirements of anorganised social life on the other.145

Polanyi’s contention is that capitalist society marks a sharp break withall previously known social systems in that it alone subordinates socialrelations to the requirements of the economic system.146 Rather thanbeing a mere function of social organisation as, for example, with feu-dalism,147 the economic system under market society attempts to shapeand direct all aspects of social organisation through the authoritativeallocation of market prices. To accomplish this remarkable transition,what economists call the ‘factors of production’, namely, labour, landand capital have to be treated as pure commodities.

It is with the help of the commodity concept that the mechanism ofthe market is geared to the various elements of industrial life.Commodities are here empirically defined as objects produced forsale on the market; markets, again, are empirically defined as actualcontacts between buyers and sellers. Accordingly, every element ofindustry is regarded as having been produced for sale, as then andthen only will it be subject to the supply-and-demand mechanisminteracting with price. In practice this means that there must be mar-kets for every element of industry; that in these markets each of theseelements is organized into a supply and a demand group; and thateach element has a price which interacts with demand and supply.These markets – and they are numberless – are interconnected andform One Big Market.148

It is this move, the commodification of labour, land and money, aboveall, which distinguishes capitalism from all other social systems andplaces market society in conflict with organised and sustainable sociallife. The reason for this, in the first instance, is that these elements arenot, in fact, commodities at all.

Labor is only another name for a human activity which goes with lifeitself, which in turn is not produced for sale but for entirely differentreasons, nor can that activity be detached from the rest of life, be

Polanyi, Democracy and the Global System 41

stored or mobilized; land is only another name for nature, which isnot produced by man; actual money, finally, is merely a token of pur-chasing power which, as a rule, is not produced at all, but comes intobeing through the mechanism of banking or state finance. None ofthem is produced for sale. The commodity description of labor, land,and money is entirely fictitious.149

More importantly, the treatment of labour, land and money as actualcommodities, if completely realised, would destroy the very possibilityof social existence. It would degrade humanity beyond recognition,despoil nature beyond sustainable levels and destroy the productive system which gave rise to the commodity fiction in the first place.150

To counteract these disastrous potentialities and thereby to protectsociety, defences are generated aimed at ‘checking the expansion [of themarket] in definite directions’.151 Polanyi’s thesis is that not only wasmarket organisation incompatible with social existence in the long termbut that the measures taken to protect society from the extension ofmarket organisation to labour, land and money, were themselves incom-patible with the market system. The protection of society, in otherwords, necessarily entails the transcendence of capitalism.152

This, then, is the ‘double movement’ – expansion of and protectionfrom the market – and its consequences, intended and unintended, govern the dynamics of modern politics.153

Structure and agency in the ‘double movement’

If the extension of market organisation is in conflict with the elemen-tary requirements of an organised social life then what or whom isbehind this extension? The answer given by Polanyi is that the exten-sion is due to four interrelated causes, namely, the international politi-cal system, the modern state, class interests and the ideology ofeconomic liberalism. Let us take each of these in turn.

Inter-state competition and the rise of the modern state

It is no accident that The Great Transformation begins with an analysis ofthe global system. The basic reason for this is the author’s contentionthat the social changes in society which were heralded by theCommercial and Industrial Revolutions were ultimately reflected at themost universal level. It is also Polanyi’s argument, however, that the ter-ritorial division of political authority is at the root of the developmentand spread of market society. Contrary to liberal theory which suggests


that the rise of market organisation is a ‘natural’ phenomenon adheringto fundamental motivations of human nature, it was in fact the modernstate whose basic features were not only determined by the CommercialRevolution but whose intervention was absolutely necessary for thetransition first to mercantilism and then to capitalism.

Politically, the centralized state was a new creation called forth by theCommercial Revolution which had shifted the center of gravity ofthe Western world from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic seaboardand thus compelled the backward peoples of larger agrarian countriesto organize for commerce and trade. In external politics, the settingup of sovereign power was the need of the day; accordingly, mercan-tilist statecraft involved the marshaling of the resources of the wholenational territory to the purposes of power in foreign affairs. In inter-nal politics, unification of the countries fragmented by feudal andmunicipal particularism was the necessary by-product of such anendeavor. Economically, the instrument of unification was capital,i.e., private resources available in form of money hoards and thuspeculiarly suitable for the development of commerce. Finally theadministrative technique underlying the economic policy of the cen-tral government was supplied by the extension of the traditionalmunicipal system to the larger territory of the state.154

Inter-state competition resulting from the territorial and political divi-sion of Europe was, in the first instance, the well-spring from whichboth the rise of the modern state and the extension of market societybegan.155 The subordination of social relations to the economic system,however, was not the result of mercantilism. Markets under mercantil-ism were still ‘merely an accessory feature of an institutional settingcontrolled and regulated more than ever by social authority’.156 A fur-ther step was needed for the transition to capitalism and that for Polanyiwas given by the rising costs and financial insecurities associated withthe use of machines. That is to say, with the rise of industrialism.

Although the new productive organization was introduced by themerchant – a fact which determined the whole course of the trans-formation – the use of elaborate machinery and plant involved thedevelopment of the factory system and therewith a decisive shift inthe relative importance of commerce and industry in favor of the lat-ter. Industrial production ceased to be an accessory of commerceorganized by the merchant as a buying and selling proposition; it


now involved long-term investment with corresponding risks. Unlessthe continuance of production was reasonably assured, such risk wasnot bearable.157

The introduction of costly machines into the process of productionmeant that the elements of industry, namely, land, labour and moneyhad to be on sale.

Class and ideology in the ‘double movement’

The vigour with which the British state (the first commercialised andindustrialised country) pursued market principles, especially in thenineteenth century, is explained by the adherence of the ‘middle classes’to the liberal utopia of self-regulating markets. Polanyi’s use of class isevidently quite distinct from Marx’s. Although the development of cap-italism is at the root of the rise of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat andthe decline of the landed classes and the peasantry, class conflict accord-ing to the author was rarely if ever characterised as head-on collisionbetween two opposing classes with diametrically opposed interests.158

Rather, because of the fluidity and dynamism of class formation anddecline under capitalism,159 and, crucially, because of the functionalservices to society performed by each class, they always represent largersections of society than themselves.

… [I]t is the relation of a class to society as a whole which maps outits part in the drama; and its success is determined by the breadth andvariety of the interests, other than its own, which it is able to serve.Indeed, no policy of narrow class interest can safeguard even thatinterest well – a rule which allows of but few exceptions.160

Because the middle classes’ business interests ran parallel to society’sgeneral interest in regard to production and employment, and becausethis, in turn, ran parallel to the state’s own distinctive geopolitical interests, they were in a key position to influence the direction of government policy. However, without the coherence, and indeed, thehegemony of economic liberalism as an ideology by the nineteenth century, the task of gearing society towards their ends would not havemet with the evident successes they achieved.

Economic Liberalism was the organizing principle of a societyengaged in creating a market system. Born as a mere penchant for


non-bureaucratic methods, it evolved into a veritable faith in man’ssecular salvation through the self-regulating market. Such fanaticismwas the result of the sudden aggravation of the task it found itselfcommitted to: the magnitude of the sufferings that were to beinflicted on innocent persons as well as the vast scope of the inter-locking changes involved in the establishment of the new order.161

It was, in fact, the interaction of ideology with class interest which gavethe ‘double movement’ its potentially catastrophic dynamism. For ifeconomic liberalism, sectional middle-class business interests and thestate’s own geopolitical interests were behind the extension of marketorganisation, then at various times and depending on specific social for-mations, the task of protecting society from the ill effects of the marketfell to the landed classes, the peasantry and the working class, all ofwhom would need the power of the state in order to secure their ends.Thus, modern politics was born. Before we get into this crucial set ofconfigurations, however, let us first examine the liberal utopia of self-regulating markets more closely.

Self-regulating market utopia

The fundamental premise of economic liberalism is that, if left to itsown devices, the market will produce economically and thereforesocially optimal outcomes. The central problem for liberals, then, isensuring that markets are indeed allowed to function without interfer-ence, in particular, without political intervention. The reason for this isthat state intervention introduces non-economic variables (especiallyshort-term political imperatives) into essentially economic processes,thus inhibiting their proper functioning and distorting their outcomes.To safeguard non-intervention by social authority, liberalism prescribesthe separation of the economic from the political sphere, an innovationwholly at odds with human history. Ultimately, this institutional sepa-ration is nothing less than blanket political approval for the subordina-tion of social relations to the requirements of an economic system basedon individual gain.

The ideology of economic liberalism is clearly utopian on many levels.First, as we have seen, it is utopian in its insistence on the treatment oflabour, land and money as pure commodities. Second, it is historicallyutopian in that the role of the state in fostering the social conditions onwhich markets depend is denied – for example, in fostering the com-modity fiction from the ‘enclosure’ movement in Britain to the near


universal legal sanctioning of private contracts. Third, it is utopian in its belief that economic optimality is necessarily socially or politicallyoptimal, domestically and internationally – that society is best served by the overall impact of individuals seeking maximum economic gain in a context of ‘free markets’.162 The disastrous consequences of theIndustrial Revolution on the great majority in society further strength-ened this utopian strain. The reason for this is that the fault for theobvious human degradation resultant upon the Industrial Revolutionwas wrongly placed at the foot of the protectionist policies innovated bythe squires of Speenhamland.163 Finally, and because markets are said tobe self-correcting and self-regulating, it is utopian in believing thatpolitical authority can ever be separated from the economic basis ofsociety – much less that it should relinquish that authority. In otherwords, it is utopian in assuming that the political responses to the socialeffects of markets could and should be restrained.

Domestic and international institutions of the self-regulating market

Despite the utopian nature of the project, economic liberalism combined with middle-class business interests and state interests164 toproduce social institutions based upon these fictions. The domesticinstitutions of ‘free markets’ in labour, land and money were buttressedby their equivalents in the international sphere. Given the internationalcharacter of commerce and Britain’s predominant international eco-nomic position by the nineteenth century, the transition to capitalismwas accompanied by the internationalisation of self-regulating mecha-nisms. Two institutions were key here, namely, free trade and the goldstandard.

As long as trade remained protected by mercantilist state policies, theself-regulation of markets remained impaired. The competitive nature ofboth the international political system as well as economic organisationunder capitalism, stimulated political and economic pressures to keepthe costs of production as low as politically feasible. These costs couldnot find their real market values, it was argued, unless and until tradewas ‘freed’ internationally from ‘artificial’ state restrictions. While themost immediate concern at the turn of the nineteenth century was that of trade in grain, the price of which was closely correlated to wages,the rule applied to all potential production inputs and therefore to all commodities. Likewise, unless money was freed from political


interference by tying its value permanently to a real commodity, such asgold, self-regulation could not proceed on an international basis.

The utopian springs of the dogma of laissez-faire are but incompletelyunderstood as long as they are viewed separately. The three tenets –competitive labor market, automatic gold standard, and interna-tional free trade – formed one whole. The sacrifices involved inachieving any one of them were useless, if not worse, unless the othertwo were equally secured. It was everything or nothing.165

The internationalisation of self-regulating market mechanisms throughfree trade and the gold standard ran counter to international politicaldevelopments since at least the seventeenth century. Rather thanstrengthen the basis of national political authority, it called for a dra-matic removal of state sovereignty in the crucial areas of trade andexchange with the attendant loss of control over the value of the cur-rency. State policy was to be concerned first and foremost with themaintenance of stable exchange rates through the self-correcting mech-anism of the gold standard thus ensuring free trade on an equal footinginternationally. If a country ran a trade deficit, then, in time, the valueof its currency would decline and its goods would become more com-petitive thus enabling it to close the trade gap. The self-correcting mech-anism of the gold standard was nothing less than the internationalcorollary of the separation of the economic from the political sphere inthe context of the competitive state system. Following the prescriptionsof economic liberalism internationally would entail, as in the domesticsphere, the surrender of social authority in regard to the economicaffairs of society.

As we would expect from the ‘double movement’, however, whatthese institutions actually stimulated, along with the growth of interna-tional trade, was the increasingly national organisation of production,distribution and exchange – including centrally organised banking systems – precisely to avoid or at least to better manage the social dislo-cations associated with externally generated economic adjustments.166

In truth, the new nationalism was the corollary of the new inter-nationalism. The international gold standard could not be borne by the nations whom it was supposed to serve, unless they weresecured against the dangers with which it threatened the communi-ties adhering to it. Completely monetarized communities could nothave stood the ruinous effects of abrupt changes in the price level


necessitated by the maintenance of stable exchanges unless the shockwas cushioned by the means of an independent central banking policy. The national token currency was the certain safeguard of thissecurity since it allowed the central bank to act as a buffer betweenthe internal and the external economy.167

The extent to which the rules of the game, despite their apparent dangers,were actually followed – domestically by Britain and internationally bythe major states – is only partially explained by the blind faith inprogress at the heart of liberalism. It is, to a much greater extent, a tes-tament to the extraordinary success of industrial capitalism in revolu-tionising the wealth creating power of society and its applications forgeopolitical competition. As with the Commercial Revolution andmercantilism, once the decisive steps were taken by one or more states,alternative paths of development were eventually foreclosed. The factthat very few, if any, other states were able to replicate these develop-ments with any precision says more about the conditions they faced,domestically and internationally, than their lack of effort and desire todo so. In other words, the uneven and combined development of capi-talism is a contextual variable capable of elucidating the reasons for thislack of homogenous development.

Opposition to market society in England/Britain

The social dislocations brought about by the extension of market soci-ety, then, created tremendous political and economic opposition bothdomestically and internationally.

While on the one hand markets spread all over the face of the globeand the amounts of goods involved grew to unbelievable propor-tions, on the other hand a network of measures and policies was inte-grated into powerful institutions designed to check the action of themarket relative to labor, land, and money. While the organization ofworld commodity markets, world capital markets, and world currencymarkets under the aegis of the gold standard gave an unparalleledmomentum to the mechanism of the market, a deep-seated move-ment sprang into being to resist the pernicious effects of a market-controlled economy. Society protected itself against the perilsinherent in a self-regulating market system – this was the one comprehensive feature in the history of the age.168

Beginning with Britain, initial opposition was attempted by the landedclasses whose power and political patronage was threatened by the


creation of, first, a regional and, finally, a national labour market. The Speenhamland Law of 1795 prevented the commodification oflabour by introducing, in effect, ‘the right to live’ for labourers, deci-sively checking the free flow of demand and supply in the allocation ofthe wage-price for labour.169 While the unintended consequences of theLaw included a dramatic fall in the productivity of labour, the pauperi-sation of labour and the fall of wages below the subsistence level due tothe guarantee of wage subsidies, the overall impact on labour, accordingto the author, was to ease its transition to a full blown market economyand therefore to delay the birth of the industrial working class. Just asthe Tudors and early Stuarts had delayed the Commercial Revolution bytheir opposition to enclosures, so the squires of Speenhamland hadprovided the labouring masses with some time to adjust to the new realities.170 This is not, however, how the eminent thinkers of the day or the middle classes interpreted the consequences of the Law. For them,the basic lesson of Speenhamland was seen to be that interference with the workings of the market led to even worse conditions for labour-ers than its immediate institutionalisation.171

To the bewilderment of thinking minds, unheard-of wealth turnedout to be inseparable from unheard-of poverty. Scholars proclaimedin unison that a science had been discovered which put the laws gov-erning man’s world beyond any doubt. It was at the behest of theselaws that compassion was removed from the hearts, and a stoic deter-mination to renounce human solidarity in the name of the greatesthappiness of the greatest number gained the dignity of secular religion. … Reactionary paternalism had in vain tried to resist thisnecessity. Out of the horrors of Speenhamland men rushed blindlyfor the shelter of a utopian market economy.172

To overturn the Speenhamland Law and therefore to create a marketsociety, the middle classes pushed for political power. This, according tothe author, was achieved with the Parliamentary Reform Bill of 1832which disenfranchised the rotten boroughs and finally secured politicalpower for the House of Commons.173 Once in power, the representativesof middle-class business interests introduced the legislation whichmarks both the birth of industrial capitalism and that of the industrialworking-class, namely, the Poor Law Reform Act of 1834.174 Far fromushering in a period of non-intervention or de-regulation, however, thedevelopment of industrial capitalism and with it the working-classmovement, generated further demands for factory laws,175 social legisla-tion and for the extension of political representation, all of which flewin the face of the self-regulating market.


Democracy and working-class opposition to self-regulation in Britain176

Up to this point, one might be forgiven for wondering what all this hasto do with democracy. In fact, it is only in the context of the ‘doublemovement’, according to the author, that modern democracy may beclearly understood. Following the logic of the text, we will deal first withthe British experience.

Britain’s transition to capitalism was carried out under extremely fortuitous international and domestic conditions. Not only was Britainthe most successful commercial and trading nation by the nineteenthcentury, but as Barrington Moore has indicated, the transitional prob-lem of what to do about the peasantry had been decisively dealt with byits earlier abolition.177 While we will come back to this question later, for now we may simply note that for the vast majority of countries, the peasantry’s demand for protection against market driven social dis-location created unforeseen political dynamics.

If the British middle classes found economic liberalism to be an indis-pensable ally, then the emergent working classes found their ideologicalally in socialism, initially, in particular, in Owenism.

Owenism was a religion of industry the bearer of which was the work-ing class. Its wealth of forms and initiatives was unrivalled. Practically,it was the beginning of the modern trade union movement.178

These ‘forms and initiatives’ included Villages of Co-operation, UnionShops, Labour Exchanges and the Builders’ Union or Guild from whichthe modern trade unions developed despite the state’s attempts to pre-vent them through successive Combination Acts. However, perhaps thehistorically unique characteristic among working-class movementsinternationally, Owenism, while refusing to accept the division of soci-ety into an economic and political sphere, nevertheless rejected politicalaction as a means of securing lasting protection for workers.179

The task of extending political representation for workers fell to theChartists who attempted to put pressure on the government throughvarious means including the traditional lines of the Reform Movementwhich had secured the vote for the middle classes.180 Collecting millionsof signatures, publicly demonstrating, organising strikes, even armedinsurrection at the very margins of the movement, the cause of working-class representation was denied by the liberals in power for whom populardemocracy was anathema.


The uncompromising rigidity with which such an extension of thevote was rejected by the Reformed Parliament for a third of a century,the use of force in view of the mass support that was manifest for theCharter, the abhorrence in which the liberals of the 1840’s held theidea of popular government all prove that the concept of democracywas foreign to the English middle classes.181

While working-class organisation and opposition was itself created byindustrial capitalism and greatly assisted by associated developments incommunications, by the end of the 1840s three major factors workedagainst Chartism. One was the palpable fear of revolution which thesocial upheavals on the Continent in 1848 spread throughout Londonand the major cities of Britain. As during the radical phase of the FrenchRevolution, the ruling classes of Britain were in no mood to compromisewith the unofficial opposition and again they were able to count onwidespread support for their defence of ‘law and order’.182 The secondfactor that worked against Chartism was the liberals’ understanding thatpolitical representation for workers would potentially derail their proj-ect for the institutionalisation of the self-regulating market. The protec-tionism of the landed class in the form of the Corn Laws was difficultenough to deal with in the context of a very limited franchise. Clearly,the demand for the extension of the vote represented a demand forgreater political leverage so as to protect labour and its allies from thesocial dislocations associated with market led change. According toMichael Mann:

Most people preferred to avoid the state. But when states began to exploit and so politically cage them, they became politicized.Chartists wanted the vote to free themselves from novel social andeconomic exploitation. They urged lower, progressive taxation,reform of the Poor Law, fewer local government and police powers, a ‘ten hours’ act, and mutualist protections against ‘wage slavery,’including union organizing rights. ‘The Charter and somethingmore’ was their most popular slogan.183

Finally, by the end of the 1840s, with greater working-class sectionalismand economic prosperity, capitalism ‘began to deliver the goods’. Risingtrade boosted employment, taxes were lower due to the ending of thedebt cycle incurred in the Napoleonic Wars, and the appeal of politicalrepresentation, given steadfast and united opposition, was temporarilydissipated. The crucial point is this: the extension of the franchise was


only achieved when the possibility of radical transcendence of marketorganisation was itself rejected by the bulk of the working class. The separation of the economic from the political sphere, in other words,necessitated moderate economic demands. Only when this conditionapplied was the vote conceded.

Arguably, of course, the great majority of the British working class hadnever embraced the kind of radicalism which was to surface later on theContinent and elsewhere under the influence of Marxism or Anarcho-syndicalism. Nevertheless, if we leave to one side the enfranchisementof women which was not achieved in full until 1928, then perhaps 1885has greatest claim to the year when the majority of working menachieved the vote in Britain.184 By that time, wages had more than dou-bled since the ‘Hungry Forties’, nearly 80 per cent of the population wasurbanised, birth rates of both the propertied classes and working classeshad begun to fall and the pattern of social stratification was increasinglycomplex due to the growing sectionalism between those with mar-ketable skills and those without – such that one may see the emergenceof a ‘lower middle class’.185 Under these conditions and given continuedpressures to reform, the British ruling class was confident that capitalismwould not be transcended through electoral means.186

Not before the working class had passed through the Hungry Fortiesand a docile generation had emerged to reap the benefits of theGolden Age of capitalism; not before an upper layer of skilled work-ers had developed their unions and parted company with the darkmass of poverty-stricken labourers; not before the workers had acqui-esced in the system which the New Poor Law was meant to enforceupon them was their better-paid stratum allowed to participate in the nation’s councils. The Chartists had fought for the right to stopthe mill of the market which ground the lives of the people. But thepeople were granted rights only when the awful adjustment had beenmade. Inside and outside England, from Macaulay to Mises, fromSpencer to Sumner, there was not a militant liberal who did notexpress his conviction that popular democracy was a danger to capitalism.187

Uneven and combined development and democracy

If Marx and Engels had been right in their analysis of the transnationalspread of capitalism so powerfully expressed in the CommunistManifesto, then one might expect to see the liberal form of state


replicated universally. After all, if capitalism was creating ‘a world after itsown image’, then why shouldn’t all other states, clearly eager to revolu-tionise their own power capabilities, follow the socio-economic and polit-ical model set by the British experience?188 On the one hand, many statesdid seek to emulate the British experience under the compulsion of ‘defen-sive modernisation’ by choosing to industrialise. On the other hand, how-ever, only very exceptionally were they able to do so without forgoing theliberal institutional framework set by the British experience. The reasonsfor this are in large part given by Polanyi’s assessment of the varied impactof the ‘double movement’ in the rest of the world. However, as we will see,although Polanyi’s framework takes us a very long way towards under-standing the socio-economic, political and geopolitical processes at workin the spread of capitalism and its effects, as with Barrington Moore’sanalysis, the lack of explicit and sustained engagement with the interac-tion between the international and domestic realms – as suggested by the theory of ‘combined and uneven’ development – diminishes theexplanatory power of this aspect of his work.

Underlining the lack of framework which would engage with thedifferential impact of capitalism worldwide in a coherent and systematicfashion, Polanyi’s analysis of this is diffused throughout the various chapters dealing with the impact of the ‘double movement’ as it pertainsto labour, land and the productive system. In an attempt to pull thesestrands together, the following sections will highlight Polanyi’s assess-ment of the impact of the ‘double movement’ on the European Continentand the colonies by grouping them geographically and according to class and state interests, ideologies and overall political consequences.

Agrarian protection in Europe

According to Polanyi, the transition to industrial capitalism on theContinent, which is said to have occurred some 50 years later, was notaccompanied by the same degree of moral and cultural debasement sostriking in the British experience – the evacuation of the countrysidebeing achieved, to the extent that it was, by the lure of higher wagesavailable in the towns rather than through the coercion of an enclosuremovement. Furthermore, statute law and administrative action savedthe tenant, the peasant and the agricultural labourer from the most per-nicious effects of urbanisation. The political sway of Prussian conserva-tives, for example, like the squires of Speenhamland, sought to protectthe land (the basis of their political authority) and its inhabitants fromthe worst effects of market mobilisation which had indeed shocked


Continental observers. Unlike their English counterparts, however, freetrade and technological developments in transportation meant thatthey faced an ‘avalanche of imported grain’, cheaper than their ownproduce and therefore more attractive to manufacturers and urbanworkers alike. Faced with the utter destruction of its rural society,Central Europe was forced to protect its peasantry by introducing cornlaws. ‘In effect, the great influence wielded by landed interests inWestern Europe and the survival of feudal forms of life in Central andEastern Europe during the nineteenth century are readily explained bythe vital protective function of these forces in retarding the mobilizationof land.’189

The landed interests were not alone in challenging the self-regulatingmarket in land. Besides the peasantry, the vast majority of whom weresimply not able to join the steady stream of urban migrants, both themilitary and the higher clergy were available as allies against any imme-diate transformation to market society. The very different social struc-tures which the spread of capitalism encountered in Europe meant thatemulation of the British experience was not possible. The liberal statewhich became the corollary of economic liberalism in Britain, found nosustenance in the European context. Even in France, where liberalism aswell as more radical ideologies were most deeply ingrained, social con-ditions produced a very short-lived ‘Bourgeois Republic’ and the mostcontorted political anti-liberalism in the form of Napoleon Bonaparteand later unstable regimes.190

… [E]conomic liberalism was wedded to the liberal state, while landedinterests were not – this was the source of their permanent politicalsignificance on the Continent, which produced the cross-currents ofPrussian politics under Bismarck, fed clerical and militarist revanchein France, ensured court influence for the feudal aristocracy in theHapsburg empire, made Church and Army the guardians of crum-bling thrones.191

With the challenge of industrialism thrown down by England, theContinental powers had little choice but to make the required changesto their systems of production, led not by the middle classes but by reac-tionary alliances with the peasantry as the last defenders of propertyrights and ‘law and order’. In place of liberalism, literary romanticismallied ‘Nature with the Past’ and presented the agrarian movement ofthe nineteenth century as ‘the guardian of man’s natural habitat, thesoil’.192 Therefore, the uneven and combined development of capitalism


helped produce anti-democratic political movements among the agrarianclasses in Europe.

Working-class protection in Europe

The time lag associated with the later industrialisation of Europe meantthat there was no Industrial Revolution in a comparable sense becauseEnglish methods of social protection were imitated before and not afterthe new productive techniques became available. The fact that the semi-feudal aristocracies of Europe were equally distant from the middle classesas they were from the working classes meant that alliances between thelatter were easier to construct and to retain. ‘Since 1830, if not since 1789,it was part of the Continental tradition that the working class would helpto fight the battles of the bourgeoisie against feudalism, if only – as thesaying ran – to be cheated by the middle class of the fruits of victory.’193

These experiences, combined with ‘Marxian ideologies’, served topoliticise the working classes to a much higher degree than their Englishcounterparts. The shared material interest with capitalists in cheapimported grain could not, in itself, overcome other contrasting interests.Also, in most of the Continent, the process of ‘nation-state building’gave labouring classes, whose allegiance was sought by those for andagainst imperial authority, extra leverage in attaining sectional protec-tion.194 This protection was achieved largely through legislation thanksin part to the formation of socialist political parties rather than throughthe power of trade unions to monopolise labour.

While economically the difference between compulsory and voluntarymethods of protection – legislation versus unionism – can be easilyoverrated, politically its consequences were great. On the Continenttrade unions were a creation of the political party of the working class;in England the political party was the creation of the trade unions.While on the Continent unionism became more or less socialist, inEngland even political socialism remained essentially trade unionist.195

In so far as democracy is concerned, these differences added up to onegreat divergence, namely, that universal suffrage, rather than fosteringnational unity as in Britain, resulted very often in the exact oppositeeffect. Along with the uneven and combined development of capital-ism, differences in timing offered new possibilities in dealing with thedislocations associated with economic transformation and novel politi-cal consequences were the result.


Middle-class protection in Europe

One of Polanyi’s central theses is that protection from the ravages of unre-stricted markets extended to capitalist business itself.196 The major reasonfor this was on account of the way in which the supply of money wasorganised under a market system. Because profits in market society aredetermined by prices, the monetary system upon which prices depend isvital to the functioning of the market. As we have seen, England intro-duced the international gold standard during the Napoleonic Wars inorder to facilitate free trade and ensure self-regulating exchanges.Theoretically, given world demand for manufactured goods, the predom-inant trading and manufacturing nation would stand to benefit no morefrom such arrangements than any other country. After all, why shouldothers further disrupt their social structures to industrialise if these goodscould simply be bought from England in exchange for primary products?Classical liberalism’s prescription of ‘comparative advantage’ could thuscome into play and everyone would benefit. The liberal utopia of keepingpolitical imperatives out of economics, however, could not stand theweight of either the social dislocations associated with the CommercialRevolution and mercantilism nor the pre-capitalist competitive state sys-tem. Given England’s demonstration of the potential power of industrial-ism, Continental states were in no position to risk their systems ofproduction for the sake of liberal theory.

In any case, liberal theory was woefully inadequate in narrow economic terms. Assuming stable gold reserves and no state-sponsoredincreases in the money supply, expansion of production and trade eventually leads to falling prices.

Scarcity of money was a permanent, grave complaint with seven-teenth century merchant communities. Token money was developedat an early date to shelter trade from the enforced deflations thataccompanied the use of specie when the volume of business swelled.No market economy was possible without the medium of such artifi-cial money.197

As a result, the system of international commodity money, the goldstandard, stimulated the introduction of central banking systemsthroughout Europe. ‘Modern central banking, in effect, was essentially a device developed for the purpose of offering protection without whichthe market would have destroyed its own children, the business enter-prises of all kinds.’198


The economic conflict between politically controlled ‘token’ moneyand the self-regulating international gold standard created the basicdilemma for capitalist systems of production by the nineteenth century.Through the use of short-term loans, manipulation of interest rates andopen-market operations, centrally organised banking systems alleviatedthe worst effects of gold withdrawals and helped spread the pain ofadjustment more equally throughout society. They acted as buffersbetween the domestic and international economy. In the long term,however, the overall impact of this form of protection was unable tosave capitalism from its contradictions.

That in spite of these devices to mitigate the effects of deflation, theoutcome was, nevertheless, again and again a complete disorganiza-tion of business and consequent mass unemployment, is the mostpowerful of all the indictments of the gold standard.199

The all or nothing nature of the market system, as with the lessonsdrawn from the consequences of Speenhamland, meant that the inter-national gold standard could be made self-regulating only if countriesrelinquished central banking. The opposite, namely, the increasingpoliticisation of monetary policy actually occurred. Stable exchangesand sound credit conditions being the sin qua non of profitable business,bankers were the ‘born leaders’ of the middle classes. While governmentpolicy largely followed their demands until the twentieth century, middle-class participation in the councils of Europe rarely amounted tothe political sovereignty achieved in Britain. Rather, their influence wasweighed against the demands of the landed classes and peasantry, theworking class and the state’s own bid for power and national unity in a potentially lethal balance. As Bismarck put it:

Germany is not looking to Prussia’s liberalism but to her power … Thegreat questions of the day will not be decided by speeches and major-ity decisions – that was the mistake of 1848–1849 – but by iron andblood.200

The protectionism which the middle classes sponsored, however, was soclearly aligned to the power of the state and aimed at the disruptivepotential of the international environment that ‘nation’ and ‘currency’fused as one.201

The integrating power of monetary policy surpassed by far that of theother kinds of protectionism, with their slow and cumbersome


apparatus, for the influence of monetary protection was ever activeand ever changing. What the businessman, the organized worker, thehousewife pondered, what the farmer who was planning his crop, theparents who were weighing their children’s chances, the lovers whowere waiting to get married, resolved in their minds when consider-ing the favor of the times, was more directly determined by the mon-etary policy of the central bank than any other single factor. And ifthis was true even with a stable currency, it became incomparablytruer when the currency was unstable, and the fatal decision toinflate or deflate had to be taken. Politically, the nation’s identity wasestablished by the government; economically it was vested in thecentral bank.202

The influence of uneven and combined development was most conspic-uous in the fields of production and investments. While this aspect ofPolanyi’s analysis is the least well developed, we may glean some of themajor points from his work. First, earlier industrialised countries devel-oped more banks and more effective and integrated banking systemscapable of providing credit to manufacturers and states alike. However,the preponderance of the City of London meant that internationalcredit was dependent upon ‘good behaviour’ defined in terms of the lib-eral shibboleths of balanced budgets and sound currencies. Domesticpressures for protection together with underdeveloped productive sys-tems made these very difficult to attain. The one common feature of lateindustrialisers was the heavy state involvement in the process comparedwith Britain. Not only was government protection more systematic interms of coping with social dislocations but direct state investment inthe productive process, often through military spending, the sponsoringof ‘trade institutes’ and technical education and state investment ininfrastructure, for example, was also deemed necessary to ‘catch up’with earlier industrialisers. Under the gold standard, the impact on cur-rencies was delayed and mitigated thanks to central banking systems,but, ultimately, the pressures were clearly visible.

Ricardian trade and currency theory vainly ignored the differences instatus existing between the various countries owing to their differentwealth-producing capacity, exporting facilities, trading, shipping,and banking experience. In the liberal theory, Great Britain wasmerely another atom in the universe of trade and ranked precisely onthe same footing as Denmark and Guatemala. Actually, the worldcounted a limited number of countries, divided into lending


countries and borrowing countries, exporting countries and practi-cally self-sufficient ones, countries with varied exports and such asdepended for their imports and foreign borrowing on the sale of asingle commodity like wheat or coffee. Such differences could beignored by theory, but their consequences could not be equally disregarded in practice.203

One possible way to deal with both of the problems of underdevelopedsystems of production and lack of investment capital in the context ofthe gold standard and free trade was to invite foreign direct investment.In this way, Britain succeeded not only in finding profitable avenues for ‘loose capital’ but also in stimulating further demand for its capi-tal goods internationally. If the danger for Britain was the possible loss of domestic investments, for the host country the dangers were moreserious. One was the distorted or ‘mal-development’ associated withinvestments geared towards foreign interests. The other was the poten-tial dependence forged through reliance on foreign capital.

Frequently overseas countries found themselves unable to dischargetheir foreign debts, or their currencies depreciated, endangering theirsolvency; sometimes they decided to right the balance by politicalmeans and interfered with the property of foreign investors. But thiswould have required that the countries concerned should be more orless equal participants in a system of world division of labor, whichwas emphatically not the case.204. … The Pax Britannica held its swaysometimes by the ominous poise of heavy ship’s cannon, but morefrequently it prevailed by the timely pull of a thread in the interna-tional monetary network.205

While Germany and France were often able to avoid these dangers, mostof Europe, including Russia, was not.206 Before we move to the rest ofthe world, perhaps a few words on the position of the United States isnow fitting. The reason that the United States is largely excluded fromPolanyi’s analysis is that the conditions which it faced saved it from theworkings of the ‘double movement’ until the mid-nineteenth century.The commodifying of land, for instance, was only problematic for thewretched indigenous people who had lived there for millennia, not for the settlers. Social protection for Indians was never an importantpolitical consideration for the government whose unrelenting aim wasfurther territorial expansion. In terms of labour, the free flow fromEurope together with the available land ensured its survival without the


need for much government intervention. Finally, as for money, theexpanding US market meant that trade was essentially domestic and, inany case, until the turn of the century, it was not committed to keepingforeign exchanges stable.207 Nevertheless, unlike any other country inthe world, its commitment to capitalism is enshrined in its very consti-tution. When, in due course, the ‘double movement’ did catch up withit, the first industrial war – the American Civil War – was the result.208 Asto its early extension of the vote to working-class (white) males com-pared with other states, again, the lack of ‘disruptive strains’ due to itsunique conditions combined with a near total lack of anti-capitalist ide-ologies to produce a relatively ‘safe’ environment for democracy. Inother words, because the spoils of politics did not include the whole ofthe economic system, opening it to relatively popular participation wasnot dangerous to private property.209

If labour and land accounted for social legislation and corn duties ortariffs respectively, then central banking very nearly rounded off thesocial protection in Europe called into being by the extension of marketorganisation. One final form of protection of great significance, however, needs to be addressed, namely, imperialism.

Imperialism and the double movement

The imperialist movement of the end of the nineteenth and early twen-tieth century which incorporated the rest of the world into the interna-tional capitalist system was due neither to the inherent nature of modernstates nor of modern capitalism to expand. Polanyi’s claim is that AdamSmith, by unlocking the mysteries of wealth creation under capitalism,initiated anti-imperialism. If mercantilism represented the fusion of statepower and trading interests, modern capitalism, in the guise of liberal-ism, belittled such notions and resolutely maintained the separation ofthe economic from the political sphere. It denounced war and conquestas dynastic machinations and considered colonies expensive luxuriesgeared for imports not exports where the ‘smart’ money gathered.

Free traders and protectionists, liberals and ardent Tories joined inthe popular conviction that colonies were a wasting asset destined tobecome a political and financial liability. Anybody who talkedcolonies in the century between 1780 and 1880 was looked upon asan adherent of the ancien régime.210

The reversal came suddenly and with no time-lag between Britain andthe Continent. The Great Depression of 1873–86 and the concomitant


collapse of agricultural prices brought home more than anything elsethus far, the interdependent nature of the international capitalist systemand the perils therein to individual countries of its failure. Protection forEuropean landlords and rural workers including peasants could no longerbe upheld given the volume and pace of world trade as well as ‘the uni-versal mobilization of land implied in the mass transportation of grainand agricultural raw materials from one part of the planet to another, at afractional cost’.211 The only remedy evident to all Western powers wasphysical acquisition of overseas markets. If one could control the cheapagricultural imports at the point of origin then social dislocation at thecentre could be more effectively managed, politically and economically.Neither ‘Realist’ nor Marxist theories of imperialism are suggested, thebalance between the economic and political processes at work being fairlyequal.212 The international gold standard and free trade, state policiesdesigned to maintain stable exchanges, increased volume of trade, tech-nological developments in transportation affecting both the cost andspeed of long distance trade, delicate social and political balances in themetropolitan countries and the competitive state system, all combined tooverturn a deep seated ideological conviction that conquest did not pay.

That the costs to the people affected was the shattering of their socialand cultural systems did not seem to diminish the appetite of imperial-ists. According to D. K. Fieldhouse:

In the thirty-six years after 1878 Europe and the United Statesacquired about 17.4 per cent of the world’s land surface at an averagerate of some 240,000 square miles a year. By 1914 there were very fewcountries which were not under European rule or onetime colonieswhich had seized their independence.213

While European racism added to the potency of the ideological justifi-cations for the imperialist project, in many ways that project resembledthe earlier rise of capitalism in Europe itself. Social Darwinism here wasalready entrenched and used assiduously as a justification for socialinequality before the rest of the world was incorporated into the inter-national division of labour completed by imperialism. The mobilisationand commodification of land and labour for the sake of profit, had alsodestroyed earlier social and cultural formations. While in Europe socialprotection was sought from other classes and the state, in the coloniesthe only recourse was collusion with foreign administrators, politicalindependence and, eventually, mobilisation of the state and economicstructures inherited from imperialism.


The international political consequences of the double movement in the nineteenth century

For all the atrocities which accompanied its rise, market society createdby the end of the nineteenth century, for the first time in human history, a worldwide interdependent social system. One of the mostextraordinary aspects of this transformation is the absence of majorinternational war from 1815 to 1914, precisely the years of capitalisttransformation. ‘The Hundred Year’s Peace’, as it is commonly referredto, is the starting point of Polanyi’s work and at first glance seemsentirely counter-intuitive to the arguments of the book since these pointto innumerable causes for conflict. The author’s contention is that peacewas ensured by four interrelated social institutions, namely, the balanceof power, the gold standard, capitalism and the liberal state. Let us takeeach of these in turn.

Until the nineteenth century and since the treaties of Westphalia(1648) and Utrecht (1713), the principle and system of the balance ofpower respectively, have played an important role in the maintenance ofthe independent sovereignty of European states.214 War being funda-mental to the functioning of this system, recourse to it was necessary andcommon. After 1815, however, the balance of power resulted in peace.

The backwash of the French Revolution reinforced the rising tide ofthe Industrial Revolution in establishing peaceful business as a uni-versal interest … Church and throne started out on the denationaliza-tion of Europe. Their arguments found support both in the ferocity ofthe recent popular forms of warfare and in the tremendouslyenhanced value of peace under the nascent economies.215

For the first third of the century, reacting against the ideals and arms ofrevolutionary republicanism – even if led, in the end, by an emperor –the conservative forces of the Holy Alliance under Metternich combinedwith new economic imperatives to enforce an active peace policy. At thedisposal of this ‘international of kinship’, besides coercive power, wasthe ‘voluntary civil service’ of the Roman Church.216

With a short period of conflict in between, which included theFranco-Prussian War, the next balance of power system to ensure peacewas the Concert of Europe (1871–1914). Lacking the ‘feudal as well asthe clerical tentacles’ of the Holy Alliance, the Concert accomplishedthe same results with fewer joint military actions on a much wider geographical scale. At its disposal was haute finance.217


[It] functioned as the main link between the political and the economic organization of the world in this period. It supplied theinstruments for an international peace system, which was workedwith the help of the Powers, but which the powers themselves couldneither have established nor maintained. While the Concert ofEurope acted only at intervals, haute finance functioned as a perma-nent agency of the most elastic kind. Independent of single govern-ments, even of the most powerful, it was in touch with all;independent of central banks, even the bank of England, it was closelyconnected with them. There was intimate contact between financeand diplomacy; neither would consider any long-range plan, whetherpeaceful or warlike, without making sure of the other’s good will.218

The ‘position, organisation, and techniques’ of international financecreated so dense a web of economic interdependence among andbetween states and civil societies that peace became the overridingstrategic interest among the major powers. As Norman Angell wouldhave it, to even contemplate that war could be profitable in these circumstances was a ‘great illusion’.219

As for the gold standard and capitalism, these were prerequisites forthe growth of haute finance and, as we have seen, served to deepen theinterdependent nature of the global system by the twentieth century.The role of the liberal state as an institution of nineteenth-century civil-isation, however, is less straightforward. If what is meant by this is theobservation that states in this period, despite the protectionist policiesinnovated to cope with markets in land, labour and money, followedpolicies broadly in line with economic liberalism, then clearly this was the case until the end of the century. If, however, the liberal state is taken to mean the liberal democratic state, then it is surely not thecase that it was an institution until after the First World War, and thenfor a tiny minority of states internationally.

The intimate association of political liberalism with the rise of capi-talism in Britain, the United States and France definitely had a tremen-dous demonstration effect throughout the century, as the liberalinternationalism of Immanuel Kant would predict. Furthermore, the riseand decline of classes under capitalism and their demands for social pro-tection universalised its appeal precisely because it demonstrated poten-tial strategies for securing sectional interests politically, especially formiddle classes but also for others. However, as Bolshevism was feared byruling classes for the strategy it represented to working classes facingsimilar social conditions, so the liberal state was feared in those


countries where extending the vote to workers would mean the almostcertain derailment of capitalism. In other words, by the late nineteenthcentury, the ‘uneven and combined development’ of capitalism world-wide meant that the potential of democracy, in capitalist countries withsocial structures very differently balanced to those of the United Statesand Britain, included the transcendence of capitalism. For this reason,political liberalism or liberal democracy was not a central institution ofnineteenth-century civilisation. The demand for democracy and itseventual if temporary victory, did play, however, a decisive role in thecollapse of the global system.

‘World-historical-time’, liberalism and the twentieth century

If one of the major objectives of liberalism was the de-politicisation of the economic sphere, then its failure by the twentieth century was colossal. The abandonment of economic liberalism and return to autarchy exemplified by the new imperialism set a chain reaction in process which ultimately resulted in the First World War. The ‘world-historical-time’ of liberal dominance appeared now to have been seriously diminished and alternative models of domestic and interna-tional development surfaced with renewed and invigorated mobilisingpotential.220 One by one, from 1900 onwards, the institutions of theglobal system began to crumble and with them the ‘peace interest’. Theworld returned to the pre-capitalist ‘zero-sum’ order. World trade con-tracted sharply as tariffs rose to cushion the effects of interdependence.World prices plummeted if unevenly and raised further social demands forprotection. The Concert of Europe was replaced by two hostile camps andcolonial rivalry became acute. While the gold standard limped on, underthe circumstances, it was a sham. The ‘war to end all wars’ that engulfedEurope and beyond was itself still only a symptom of a deeper malaise.

The conflict of 1914–18 merely precipitated and immeasurably aggra-vated a crisis that it did not create. But the roots of the dilemma couldnot be discerned at the time; and the horrors and devastations of theGreat War seemed to the survivors the obvious source of the obstaclesto international organization that had so unexpectedly emerged. Forsuddenly neither the economic nor the political system of the worldwould function, and the terrible injuries inflicted on the substance ofthe race by World War I appeared to offer an explanation. In reality,the postwar obstacles to peace and stability derived from the same


sources from which the Great War itself had sprung. The dissolution ofthe system of world economy which had been in progress since 1900was responsible for the political tension that exploded in 1914.221

Attempts to restore the global system to its pre-1914 foundations failedfor a variety of reasons but among the most important according toPolanyi was the establishing of liberal democratic states throughoutEurope under circumstances wholly at odds with their possible survival.One of the key conclusions of liberalism drawn from the First WorldWar, as with the Second World War and the Cold War, was that author-itarianism was the critical cause of the conflict. Unfortunately, theliberal regimes which arose from the ashes of defeat in war – this ratherthan a ‘clean’ victory for democratic forces was the cause of theirtemporary success – now faced economic conditions worse than imme-diately preceded the conflagration. Far from attempting to aid thesestates through international mobilisation and redistribution ofresources, however, the states held responsible for the war were eitherpunished through war reparations or if new states carved out of dissolved empires, given, at most, moral support.

The social devastation associated with the war and the crisis of return-ing soldiers combined with new democratic channels of opposition tocreate a decisive shift to the Left in the politics of European countries.

When, in Central Europe, the social structure broke down under thestrain of war and defeat, the working class alone was available for thetask of keeping things going. Everywhere power was thrust upon the trade unions and Social Democratic parties: Austria, Hungary,even Germany, were declared republics although no active republi-can party had ever been known to exist in any of these countriesbefore.222

Under the restored gold standard, the new democratically legitimatedcommitment to social protection including high levels of public spend-ing and tariffs, helped stoke inflation and weaken exports. The WallStreet crash of 1929 dealt another serious blow to a world economywhich was yet to recover from the First World War. Two years later thecountry which innovated the gold standard abandoned it and signalledthe end of the liberal global system. Added to this was the fear ofBolshevism which represented a radically novel way of organising soci-ety such that it would not be subordinated to the requirements of mar-ket economy but rather to the ostensible needs of the working class.


Born of similar conditions which existed in many parts of Europe –backward industrial economy, weak middle class, massive peasant population, foreign financial dependence, autocratic monarchical state,weakened state due to war, socialist led working class – the BolshevikRevolution was a threat to market society. Middle classes everywherelent their support to reactionaries ostensibly committed to the restora-tion of law and order and a return to ‘normality’. By the 1930s few liberal regimes survived the fascist onslaught which the impasse of market society had helped to create.

Criticisms: a post-liberal order?

For Polanyi and many others of his generation, the defeat of fascism rep-resented much more than the possibility of a return to a functioningcapitalist system. Again, Europe experienced a decisive political shift tothe Left perhaps best exemplified by the changes in the heartland of eco-nomic liberalism, namely, the Labour Party’s comfortable defeat of theTories led by Churchill in the 1945 elections. Clearly a democraticsocialist, Polanyi believed that out of the horrors of the Second WorldWar the dangers inherent in capitalism, and therefore the follies of economic liberalism, would finally be universally recognised and a post-liberal world order inaugurated. Has this been accomplished?

Certainly the world created by the Bretton Woods system was essen-tially liberal if, thanks in part to Stalinism, more understanding of thedifficulties involved in gearing societies to the demands of markets andtherefore more tolerant of interventionism. The lead taken in this fieldby the United States also carried with it some important compensatoryelements, including an energetic civil society capable of producing,among other things, radical political reform movements and powerfulcultural styles and forms. Other changes which have taken place sincethe end of the Second World War are obviously too innumerable to listbut many like the extension of the Welfare State, the end of formalimperialism, the growing recognition of international environmentalimperatives, the emergence of the EU, the end of superpower con-frontation, the infrequency of international war between the majorpowers and so on seem to point in the direction which Polanyi had in mind. However, what gives greatest pause in agreeing with him that indeed we have transcended the worst of the ‘disruptive strains’inherent in capitalism, is the contemporary salience of the ‘doublemovement’. For every step taken towards domestic protection and inter-national economic and political co-ordination, there seems to be at least


one step taken in the direction of market extension. This is more than the jaundiced view from the geographical core of current neo-liberalism. Everywhere we look the ‘double movement’ is still at work.Whether in the degradation of the ‘underclass’ amid the extraordinarywealth of advanced capitalist countries, the starving millions in thedeveloping world, the ecological threat to the Earth’s lakes and forests,the military and authoritarian regimes which defy their populations or the policies of the world’s economic giants (public and private), the extension of market society and with it the demands for social protection, has not been and may never be completed.

In the former communist world, unlike in the nineteenth century, theextension of liberal democracy has been roughly concurrent with the re-extension of the market in land, labour and money. The frighteningsimilarities to the inter-war period have not been lost on many Westernobservers although, as only one of many reasons, the social transforma-tions carried out by successive Stalinist regimes alters the resemblanceradically. Meanwhile, the remaining communist countries with only avery few exceptions are busy extending the market organisation withoutany concessions to demands for liberal democracy.223

The collapse of a socialist alternative seems complete. The workingclasses whose condition under capitalism gave rise to it are in decline inthe developed world and rising in the developing world. It is here wherethe struggle for democratic government is most evident.

Conclusion

Despite Polanyi’s over-optimistic predictions that the transcendence ofcapitalism was at hand by the middle of the last century, his analyticalframework and our additions of ‘uneven and combined development’ and‘world-historical-time’ to his conception of the global system certainlycalls into question unilinear models of development including, of course,that of liberal internationalism. Also, his suggestion that the developmentof democracy is the result of struggles against capitalist transformation isanother blow to this theoretical orientation. Furthermore, his analysis sug-gests that global ideological support for democracy is not in itself sufficientto overcome the many contradictions produced by the ‘double movement’which make this form of state exceedingly difficult to institutionalise inmany, perhaps most, countries of the world.

We have seen that the main elements of the ‘double movement’include social structure (classes and their interests vis à vis the market),the state’s interests in the context of both a market society and


a competitive state system and the role of ideologies. The uneven andcombined development of capitalism has added to the complexity ofPolanyi’s model but is indispensable to it. The failure of socialism as aradical alternative to capitalism has literally made the world ‘safer fordemocracy’ – its dominance in terms of ‘world-historical-time’ has fewerrivals and therefore fewer excuses for its denial – but the notion that‘free markets’ and ‘free societies’ are synonymous relies on too static aview of both. The separation of the economic from the political spheredemands continued successful economic performance for the many.Faith in capitalism’s ability to deliver may in broad terms be high and itspost-war transformations are certainly impressive. As the demand forprotection of land, labour and money, however, continue to press onthe political and economic processes responsible for their endanger-ment, so, as Polanyi hoped for, the unintended consequences may radicalise democracy itself and extend its use beyond its traditional support of capitalism.


69

3Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism,Socialism, Democracy and theGlobal System

Introduction

On the rare occasions when Joseph Schumpeter’s work is invoked byInternational Relations scholars, they are invariably related to what maybe termed his ‘twin-theses’ of world politics, namely, that the phenom-enon of modern imperialism is a pathology of pre-capitalist origins andthat modern and ‘fully’ capitalist states are essentially pacifist bynature.224 These writings on explicit ‘international’ themes are usuallyseparated from discussions of his general theory of capitalism and liberaldevelopment. What drives this chapter, given the central concern withliberal internationalism, is an assessment of Schumpeter’s analysis ofcapitalism and of its direction; his analysis of democracy and its rela-tionship to capitalism; and, his analysis of the likelihood of the adop-tion of this form of state by countries other than those few establisheddemocracies at the time of writing.

It argues, ironically given his stature within liberal internationalism,that his failure to theorise the interactions between capitalism anddemocracy even within the major liberal capitalist states led him to amuch more pessimistic prognosis of capitalism’s historical durability thanwas justified. It argues further that this itself is symptomatic of a largerfailing, namely, to theorise socio-economic, political and ideologicalchange in the context of the interactions between the international anddomestic domains. The central problem is that his socio-psychologicalanalytical model is unconvincing as an historically grounded sociology ofdevelopment and it is this, ultimately, which is responsible for weakeninghis major theoretical claims and conclusions.

Schumpeter’s analysis of the direction of capitalism

It is probably best to be very clear from the start about the shortcomingsof Schumpeter’s work for the purpose of this analysis. The unproblem-atic spread of capitalist social relations across the globe which is pre-cisely the main fault of liberal internationalism is for the most partreplicated faithfully by Schumpeter. One searches the text in vain forany sustained theorising of capitalism generating international dynam-ics which complicate and divert political as well as socio-economic con-sequences. The creation of novel social structures at variance with thosein the metropolitan countries through the specialisation of primaryproducts for export, for example, is never properly considered. AsMichael Doyle puts it:

Just as ideal domestic politics are homogenized, so world politics toois homogenized. Materially monistic and democratically capitalist, allstates evolve toward free trade and liberty together. Countries differ-ently constituted seem to disappear from Schumpeter’s analysis.‘Civilized nations’ govern ‘culturally backward regions’.225

While, as we will see, this overstates the case substantially, Schumpeterdoes not develop the international dimension of the tensions and con-tradictions which he does see as inherent in capitalism. This said, how-ever, Schumpeter’s analysis of the direction and dynamics of capitalism,even if stripped of its international moorings, as well as his analysis ofdemocracy do yield some valuable insights.

For all the disagreements Schumpeter has with Marx and his follow-ers, the central thesis developed in Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy isthat ‘[t]he capitalist order tends to destroy itself and centralist socialismis a likely heir apparent’.226 (The respect he has for Marx’s scholarship isin fact plainly evident and contrasts sharply with his views on thosewho would call themselves loyal Marxists.) Unlike much of Marxism,however, he rejects the view that an economic breakdown will beresponsible for the decomposition and argues against what he calls the‘theory of vanishing investment opportunity’ – the notion that there isa long-run tendency in capitalism to economic stagnation as a result ofthe declining rate of profit and lack of new opportunities for profitableinvestment and enterprise.227 He rejects too the ‘immiserization thesis’and argues not only that the poor do not get poorer in absolute termsbut that the masses gain from mass consumption relatively more thanthe rich.228


Finally, he argues against the thesis of a growing ‘reserve army’ of the unemployed and suggests that capitalism will be destroyed by itseconomic achievements rather than failures because these create an‘atmosphere of almost universal hostility to its own social order’. As thisconclusion suggests, Schumpeter’s approach is essentially a socio-psychological one with the cognitive state of the various social strataplaying a critical role in his analysis.

There are essentially three processes which generate the anti-capitalistoutlook from within itself according to Schumpeter. The first is theundermining of the entrepreneurial or innovative function, whichSchumpeter regards as the essential feature of capitalism, by its tendencyto increase rationalisation and centralisation through competition. Notthat monopoly itself would destroy the vigour of capitalism. In fact, inearlier work Schumpeter defends monopoly against its detractors. Freefrom the threat of imitation and competition, the monopolist entrepre-neur was most likely to fulfil his or her function, namely, to innovate.The competitive market could be creatively sterile by contrast.229 Veryreminiscent of Max Weber’s analysis of bureaucratisation, Schumpeterbelieved that the growth of large-scale enterprises in both the privateand public sectors of the economy increased central control over whathad been hitherto subject to direct market regulation.230 And thisincreased centralisation favours the possibility of vesting the economicaffairs of society to the public rather than the private sphere, a decisivestep towards socialism according to the author.231

The second related process is the destruction by the competitivemechanism of capitalism’s ‘protective’ strata. These include the aristoc-racy (the upper stratum) as well as the small producers and traders (thelower stratum). The thesis here, in what may be characterised as a use of‘uneven and combined development’, is that capitalism has dependedon pre-capitalist social formations, specifically feudal classes, for its suc-cess and that capitalist policies ‘wrought destruction much beyond whatwas unavoidable’.232 As for the aristocracy, capitalism has depended ontheir willingness and ability to ‘manage the state, to govern’. The exam-ples provided of bourgeois misrule are the French revolution andGermany’s Weimar Republic. The basic reason is psychological. Thearistocracy’s ‘ability and habit to command and to be obeyed’ carriedenormous prestige with all classes. ‘That prestige was so great and that[lordly] attitude so useful that the class position outlived the social andtechnological conditions which had given rise to it and proved adapt-able, by means of a transformation of the class function, to quite differentsocial and economic conditions.’233

Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, Democracy 71

By contrast, the industrialists and merchants were devoid of suchprestige. In most cases, however, this did not matter as this division oflabour suited the bourgeoisie as long as their interests were generally fur-thered. As to the lower strata, capitalism first attacked the artisan andthe peasant and then moved inexorably to the small producers andtraders of capitalist industry. Even if the economic consequences werepositive from the point of view of consumers and capital alike, the polit-ical consequences of the disappearance of small- and medium-sizedfirms are what concern Schumpeter.

… [T]he very foundation of private property and free contractingwears away in a nation in which its most vital, most concrete, most meaningful types disappear from the moral horizon of the people … this evaporation of what we may term the material sub-stance of property – its visible and touchable reality – affects not onlythe attitude of holders but also that of the workmen and the public ingeneral. Dematerialized, defunctionalized and absentee ownershipdoes not impress and call forth moral allegiance as the vital form ofproperty did. Eventually there will be nobody left who really cares tostand for it – nobody within and nobody without the precincts of thebig concerns.234

The final process relates to capitalism’s encouragement of a rational andcritical attitude which is eventually turned against its own social system.‘… T]he bourgeois finds to his amazement that the rationalist attitudedoes not stop at the credentials of kings and popes but goes on to attackprivate property and the whole scheme of bourgeois values.’235 Here theauthor argues, in fact, that while the criticisms against the capitalistorder proceed from an attitude which spurns allegiance to extra-rationalvalues, they cannot be refuted simply through rational argumentbecause the criticisms also contain extra-rational power. ‘… C]apitalismstands its trial before judges who have the sentence of death in theirpockets.’236 The reasons offered are mostly related to the mistaken, ifperfectly understandable, perceptions of the masses. Capitalism’s posi-tive performance is only clear in the long-run while in the short-run theinefficiencies, insecurities and frustrations of ordinary life seem over-whelming. ‘In order to accept his lot, the leveller or the chartist of old would have to comfort himself with hopes for his great-grand children.’237 Even the secular improvements which do take place in the short term, Schumpeter argues, are largely taken for granted. (In thecontext of the contemporary developed world one might include here


the near ubiquity of consumer durables like televisions, videos andstereos.) The other important misperception for the author involves theperceived injustice of the distribution of wealth and power under capi-talism. ‘The long-run interests of society are so entirely lodged with theupper-strata of bourgeois society that it is perfectly natural for people tolook upon them as the interests of that class only.’238

Unable to produce an emotional attachment to its social order capitalism is doomed to ultimate extinction by one further piece of the puzzle, namely, the vested interest which intellectuals – created,educated and subsidised by capitalism – have in social unrest. So low isSchumpeter’s estimation of ordinary people that the previous indict-ments are insufficient to result in the overthrow of capitalism.

… [T]he mass of people never develops definite opinions on its owninitiative. Still less is it able to articulate them and to turn them intoconsistent attitudes and actions. All it can do is to follow or refuse tofollow such group leadership as may offer itself.239

Intellectuals under modern capitalist conditions come to the aid of themasses because their basic function is to criticise the existing socialorder. The bourgeoisie for its part is unable and unwilling to silencethem because the freedoms of which they approve are inextricablylinked to those of which they may disapprove.

Only a government of non-bourgeois nature and non-bourgeoiscreed – under modern circumstances only a socialist or fascist one – isstrong enough to discipline them. In order to do that it would haveto change typically bourgeois institutions and drastically reduce theindividual freedom of all strata of the nation. And such a governmentis not likely – it would not even be able – to stop short of privateenterprise.240

This enticing connection between capitalism and democracy will bedeveloped below after we first examine Schumpeter’s conception andanalysis of democracy itself.

Schumpeter’s theory of democracy

If the preceding analysis, with the benefit of hindsight, falls incrediblyshort of the historical record thus far, Schumpeter’s critique of the‘Classical Doctrine’ and elaboration of his own theory of democracy is


more successful. First there is the demolition of the concepts of ‘The General Will’ and ‘The Common Good’ with regard both to theirsociological absurdity and, given a clumsy fusion of romanticist andutilitarian philosophies, their ideological inconsistency.241 Next, theassumptions of the Classical Doctrine concerning individual and grouprationality as well as equality, necessary for ‘rule by the people’, are sys-tematically destroyed. Anyone involved in the assessment of commonlyheld political ideas whether at the university level or otherwise must surelyfeel that Schumpeter is on solid ground when he argues that it is above allin the field of national and international affairs that assumptions of ration-ality are most stretched. Whether this is due ultimately to the distancebetween politics and the responsibilities of every day life as the authorargues or perhaps because, despite political rhetoric to the contrary, therehas never existed the political will to educate ‘the people’ as thoroughly orintensively as the élites have consistently thought necessary for them-selves, there is little doubt that were ‘the people’ really in direct politicalcontrol democracy would be a different system to what it currently is.

Schumpeter paints a fairly horrid picture of what we could expect ifthe prescriptions of the Classical Doctrine were actually adhered to.Irrational prejudices and impulses leading inexorably to lower moralstandards and giving vent to unrestrained dark urges; with the dangersof demagoguery, given the ability of groups to ‘manufacture the will ofthe people’, much enhanced under these conditions.242 In short, all theclassical arguments against democratic government are marshalled indefence of his own theory of democracy, what David Held has aptlycalled the ‘competitive elitism’ model.243

So what does Schumpeter propose to replace the Classical Doctrinegiven its spurious and mystical claims? ‘Really existing democracy’ isseen by the author to constitute a method for selecting political élites,‘… an institutional arrangement for arriving at political – legislative andadministrative – decisions by vesting in certain individuals the power to decide on all matters as a consequence of their successful pursuit of thepeoples vote.’244 The roles of the two key but problematic elements of theClassical Doctrine, ‘the people’ (with ‘definite and rational’ opinionsabout everything) and the ‘representatives’ (‘who see to it that their opin-ions are carried out’) are reversed so that the deciding of issues by theelectorate becomes ‘secondary to the election of the men who are to dothe deciding’. The role of the people is to produce a government.245

Democratic life for Schumpeter then is the struggle between rivalpolitical leaders, arrayed in parties, for the mandate to rule. In a charac-teristic display of the force of his argument which must strike anyone


living in a democratic polity as unmercifully accurate, Schumpeter stripsaway the mystique of party politics thus:

A party is a group whose members propose to act in concert in thecompetitive struggle for political power. If that were not so it wouldbe impossible for different parties to adopt exactly or almost exactlythe same program. Yet this happens as everyone knows. Party andmachine politicians are simply the response to the fact that the electorate mass is incapable of action other than a stampede … . Thepsycho-technics of party management and party advertising, slogansand marching tunes, are not accessories. They are the essence of politics. So is the political boss.246

The self-proclaimed strengths of his ‘realist’ theory in comparison to theClassical Doctrine are numerous. First, he argues that since ‘the will andthe good of the people’ may be better served by dictatorship at any giventime, his theory at least provides ‘a reasonably efficient criterion bywhich to distinguish democratic governments from others’, that is,rather than by its absolute ability to deliver the ‘will and good of thepeople’.247 Second, his theory accounts for the vital role of political lead-ership rather than attribute all initiative to ‘the people’. ‘ “ManufacturedWill” is no longer outside the theory … it enters on the ground floor asit should.’248

Third, sectional interests (‘group-wise volitions’), the narrow pursuit ofwhich is an infringement of the ‘common good’, are now accounted for.Fourth, inequalities of resources and organisation or ‘unfair’ competi-tion, which plainly impact on the democratic political process, are againaccounted for by Schumpeter’s theory. Completely shorn of ideals, it isnot in judgement as to whether it is fair or otherwise. Fifth, the relation-ship between democracy and individual freedom is now ‘clarified’. ‘If, onprinciple at least, everyone is free to compete for political leadership(free, that is, in the same sense in which everyone is free to start anothertextile mill) by presenting himself to the electorate, this will in mostcases though not in all mean a considerable amount of freedom of discussion for all … nevertheless’ it is all there is to that relation.’249

Sixth, the theory does not imply control of leaders by the electorate oreven their eviction, just the ‘installing’ or the choice not to install themduring an election. In Britain, of course, eviction during office is nor-mally the privilege of the political party and in the United States theprocess of presidential impeachment is normally in the hands of theparty with a majority in Congress. In both instances, however, politicians


keep a keen eye on the opinions of electors. In any case, Schumpeterargues that the removal of a serving minister or leader is ‘contrary to thespirit of the democratic method’ and by inference so too are all forms ofcivil disobedience whose aim is the resignation of serving leaders.250

Finally, the author suggests the last relative virtue of his theory ofdemocracy is that it obliterates the controversy or contradiction of theClassical Doctrine with regard to majority rule. ‘Evidently the will of the majority is the will of the majority and not the will of “the people”.The latter is a mosaic that the former completely fails to “represent”.’251

While democracy could serve a variety of ends such as the pursuit of social justice, the increased wealth of society or of strengthening security, Schumpeter argues that it is important not to confuse theseends with democracy itself. According to David Held, ‘what politicaldecisions are taken is an independent question from the proper form of their taking: the conditions of the de facto legitimacy of decisions and decision-makers as a result of the periodic election of competingpolitical élites’.252

… [T]he reason why there is such a thing as economic activity is ofcourse that people want to eat, to clothe themselves and so on. Toprovide the means to satisfy those wants is the social end or meaningof production. Nevertheless we all agree that this proposition wouldmake a most unrealistic starting point for a theory of economic activ-ity in commercial society and that we shall do much better if we startfrom propositions about profits. Similarly, the social meaning orfunction of parliamentary activity is no doubt to turn out legislationand, in part, administrative measures. But in order to understandhow democratic politics serve this social end, we must start from thecompetitive struggle for power and office and realize that the socialfunction is fulfilled, as it were, incidentally – in the same sense as production is incidental to the making of profits.253

As we can see, the most common metaphors used in Schumpeter’s discussion of democracy are taken from economics. Just as the market is an institutional arrangement designed to produce goods and servicesso democracy is an institutional arrangement designed to produce governments. Just as firms and entrepreneurs compete for customers so political parties compete for political ‘consumers’. Therefore, just ascapitalism is the rule of the capitalist so democracy is the rule of thepolitician. In each case the power of the ‘consumer’ is limited to theopportunity of accepting or refusing. The intricate and complex process


of shaping what is ‘produced’, the workings of ‘supply and demand’ andthe context in which this takes place, in other words, is almost totallyjettisoned by this account not only because it is of secondary impor-tance for Schumpeter’s theory but also because the initiative is so com-pletely with the ‘producers’. This is one of the central points of hisattack on the assumption of individual rationality.

The consequences of democracy

If political power in democracy is so clearly lodged in the hands of élites, why then is it in the least bit important? Schumpeter’s reply to this question is ‘strictly relativist’: ‘Exactly as there is no case for oragainst socialism at all times and in all places, so there is no absolutelygeneral case for or against the democratic method.’254 Nevertheless,there are consequences to this method which the author is keen torelate. Primary among them is that in a democracy ‘politicians have adistinct professional group-interest’ which explains in large part whythey often fail to serve the interest of their class or of the groups withwhich they are connected.

Politically speaking, the man is still in the nursery who has notabsorbed, so as never to forget, the saying attributed to one of themost successful politicians that ever lived: ‘What businessmen do notunderstand is that exactly as they are in oil so I am dealing invotes’.255

By this formulation, the debate on the ‘relative autonomy of the state’,at least with regard to democracies, is made intelligible by the injectionof the careerism of those chosen to run it. It also serves to counter hisown argument about the controlling of government. As long as politi-cians are indeed above all careerists, then the political initiative is nottheirs so completely. It would seem to be better explained in terms ofinterdependence, if still one characterised by inequality.256 In fact,Schumpeter is clear about this interdependence when enumerating thenegative consequences of the democratic method. Because it produceslegislation and administration as by-products of the competitive strug-gle for office, the ‘wastage of energy and lack of efficiency’ is one problem.257 A more profound difficulty is that it is responsible for theendemic short-termism of policies under democracies – ‘distorting allthe pro’s and con’s’ – particularly acute with regard to foreign policy,and one of the sources of anti-democratic ‘feeling’.


Thus the prime minister in a democracy might be likened to a horse-man who is so fully engrossed in trying to keep in the saddle that hecannot plan his ride, or to a general so fully occupied with makingsure that his army will accept his orders that he must leave strategy totake care of itself.258

The final negative consequence of this method of selection is the pitifully low quality of leadership it tends generally to produce. ‘… It]creates professional politicians whom it then turns into amateur administrators and “statesmen”.’259 When politicians do possess thequalities necessary for success at the polls, these are not necessarily the qualities needed in an administrator. Successful in office, they mayprove ‘failures for the nation’. The one strength of the democraticmethod, apart from the relationship between it and freedom discussedearlier, is that, pace Churchill, ‘… the case for democracy stands to gain from a consideration of the alternatives: no system of selectionwhatever the social sphere – with the possible exception of competitivecapitalism – tests exclusively the ability to perform and selects in theway a stable selects its Derby crack’.260

Democracy and the capitalist order

So what is the relationship between democracy and capitalism accord-ing to Schumpeter and can this shed light on the international forcesacting on domestic political institutional arrangements? There is little doubt in Schumpeter’s mind that modern democracy is of bour-geois origin.

[H]istorically the modern democracy rose along with capitalism, andin causal connection with it … democracy in the sense of our theoryof competitive leadership presided over the process of political andinstitutional change by which the bourgeoisie reshaped, and from its own point of view rationalized, the social and political structurethat preceded its ascendancy: the democratic method was the politi-cal tool of that reconstruction … [It] is a product of the capitalistprocess.261

The ideal of the parsimonious state, guaranteeing bourgeois legality(above all, private property and contract) and providing the frameworkfor ‘autonomous individual endeavor’, was perfectly suited to the socialclass in a position to benefit most from the separation of the economic


from the political sphere. In other words, limiting the sphere of politicsby limiting the scope of public authority was the characteristic innova-tion of bourgeois politics. Whereas pre-capitalist society entailed onesocial order with political status and economic function solidlyfastened, the bourgeois order disassociated the political from the socio-economic. Freed from militarist and protectionist impulses, bourgeoissociety could, in principle, whittle away at the importance of politicaldecision ‘to almost any extent that the disabilities of the political sectormay require’.262 While, as we have seen, the bourgeoisie was politicallyheavily reliant on feudal ‘social capital’, as long as its material interestswere not threatened, it was well qualified to display ‘tolerance of politi-cal differences and respect for [different] opinions’.263 This tightlycircumscribed tolerance could then spread to other classes as long asbourgeois ‘standards’ were dominant. ‘The English landed interestaccepted the defeat of 1845 with relatively good grace; English laborfought for the removal of disabilities but until the beginning of the present century was slow to claim privileges.’264

Despite these close connections, for Schumpeter the direction of capitalism threatened democracy for two reasons. First, because at thetime of writing, Schumpeter believed that Western nations were ‘muchdivided on fundamental questions of social structure’. Second, becausethe bourgeoisie was better at producing political leadership for parties ofnon-bourgeois origins than for itself. And yet, if capitalism was bound todisappear the same was not necessarily true of its quintessential politicalinnovation. Like socialism itself, socialist democracy would also be a product of bourgeois civilisation. ‘General elections, parties, parlia-ments, cabinets and prime ministers may still prove to be the most con-venient instruments for dealing with the agenda that the socialist ordermay reserve for political decision.’265 Ultimately, however, the danger ofsocialism lay in using democratically accountable political powerdirectly to own, control, organise and extract economic surplus from thepopulation. The consequence, for Schumpeter, is necessarily a dictator-ship over rather than of the proletariat. ‘As a matter of practical necessity,socialist democracy may turn out to be more of a sham than capitalistdemocracy ever was.’266

The historical account we are given of the relationship between capitalism and democracy is one of a simultaneous democratic and cap-italist transition. His references betray extrapolations from the Englisharchetype but, in any case, the overall picture will only fit the historicalrecord of any Western European country, however broadly, if oneexcludes universal suffrage as a key ingredient of democracy. Schumpeter


does not make any distinction here. While it may well be correct, if tautological, to suggest that bourgeois democracy has only ever existedin capitalist domestic contexts, the international picture suggests no nec-essary correlation. Here we can see a variety of authoritarian dictator-ships ruling over largely capitalist economies as in Burma or, untilrecently, Nigeria. Third World regimes know, as much as early nine-teenth-century British liberals knew, that democracy entailing universalsuffrage could and perhaps would turn their world upside down.Democracy as a method does not shed light on the reasons for denying itto so many societies. It refuses to acknowledge its potentially subversivequalities. Democracy doesn’t legitimate once and for all but dynamically.(And on the receiving end may be the Right, with too narrow a concernwith wealth creation and efficiency as much as the Left, for being out oftouch with majoritarian concerns.267) Democratisation is not simply for those in transition from dictatorship but for ‘democracies’ as well.

Equally important is the fact that the designation of contemporaryliberal democracy as ‘bourgeois’ is misleading to the point of evacuatingthe social movements and struggles responsible, in the Western contextat least, for the eventual and historically recent extension of universalsuffrage and formal political equality. The point is this, what we wouldagree is democratic today was considered unacceptable, inconceivableeven, only a century or so ago.268 But democracy considered in part as a historically contingent process rather than simply as a methodaccounts for this changing condition. The process itself is shaped, given direction/s by real material and ideological forces and conflicts.This is also the stuff of democratic politics. To evacuate the ideals ofdemocracy is to ignore one of its components, a source of change in thething itself.

Also, the Marxist claim that the morality of the bourgeois politicalrealm is fraudulent, since its main function is to uphold the inherentlyimmoral socio-economic one, is weak. ‘Bourgeois democracy’ is said tobe bankrupt because while giving the illusion of moralising both realmsit steadfastly maintains the limits of separation. But if the limits orboundaries are set by the private accumulation of capital, then histori-cally these have been shown to be extremely elastic. More to the point,the success of the struggles associated with achieving democracy andextending its very meaning, are proof of this elasticity. Furthermore,considering the political salience of struggles around such issues as education, health care, housing, working conditions and hours, prohi-bitions against child labour, and so on what is striking is not the limita-tions provided by the separation of two distinct domains but the


absence of any. According to Donald Sassoon:

… [T]he European twentieth-century state is irreversibly interven-tionist. In a situation in which the state is seen to be responsible forwelfare in its widest meaning, and in which democracy is either areality or a real possibility, it would be surprising if the governingélites did not devise policies aimed at establishing norms and stan-dards of living which could not be spontaneously arrived at by othermeans such as market relations, familial bonds and charitableefforts.269

Of course, the separation of the public from the private sphere has a certain instrumentalist logic: Why put up with the undemocratic natureof the private sphere if it offers nothing in return? But the ‘bourgeois’appellation tells as much the story of the failed attempts to overcome itssupposedly inherent limitations without annihilating its virtues, as of thelimitations themselves. As Susan Strange put it, albeit in a different con-text, identifying the structural power ‘is only half the battle’, the nextstep is to analyse the ‘key bargains’.270 While extremely varied interna-tionally, these key bargains have included major gains in both politicaland economic terms.

Conditions for the success of the democratic method

Thus far, Schumpeter’s analysis of democracy suggests a not insur-mountable institutional method for replication in all countries. It isonly when he deals explicitly with the conditions for the success of thedemocratic method that this view is shattered. At last we find in this sec-tion an engagement, if not necessarily a sustained one, with the under-lying social prerequisites for democracy. ‘Democracy thrives in socialpatterns that display certain characteristics and it might well be doubtedwhether there is any sense in asking how it would fare in others that lackthose characteristics – or how a people in those other patterns wouldfare with it.’271 While the author confines himself ‘to the great industrialnations of the modern type’, the conditions outlined may usefully assistus in theorising the sources of their existence as well as the causes for thelack of such conditions in other countries.

The first condition for the success of the democratic method is that‘the human material of politics – the people who man the partymachines, are elected to serve in parliament, rise to cabinet office,


should be of sufficiently high quality’.272 This in turn requires, as ‘theonly effective guarantee …, the existence of a social stratum, itselfa product of a severely selective process, that takes to politics as a matterof course’.273 What Schumpeter has in mind here is the existence of a ruling class (England is the only country to fulfil this condition com-pletely!) whose members see politics as their predestined career. It is thearistocracy of pre-capitalist origins the decline of which under capital-ism, we have already seen, is in part responsible for the inevitable disso-lution of the system itself. The fact that the competitive struggle ofdemocratic politics is so wasteful and often repels ‘most of the men whocan make a success at anything else’, makes the continued existence ofa reserve of high quality personnel crucial.

Now, assuming the continued existence of some such stratum and evenaccepting the appeal which ‘patrician’ politicians or parties may hold forsome, this condition would seem to indicate an even greater applicabilityof the democratic method in the developing world where aristocraticlanded interests are often more evident than in the developed world. Butit is precisely in this context where democracy is most precarious. If it istrue, as Schumpeter suggests, that the bourgeoisie is inherently in need ofpolitical masters from beyond its ranks, then these have come most oftenwithout democratic baggage. The fact is that the English model ofa landed élite losing much of its social power (based on the unity of theprivate and public or economic and political spheres of feudalism) toa centralised state which continued to rely on its personnel for the run-ning of this state; of the existence of a domestic ‘balance of power’between these two forces at a time when technological innovation was ofenough importance to allow it some space without the fear or threat oftotal social annihilation; and of many other factors as well, doesn’t fitmany, if any European transitions to modernity, never mind extra-European ones. This is why England is the only country to fulfil this con-dition completely. Its unique history is used to define the condition itself.

Furthermore, while it sometimes may be the case that in rich countries democracy repels ‘most of the men who can make a success at anything else’, in developing countries with more limited opportuni-ties for ‘self-enrichment’, politics tends to attract these very people. Onegoes into politics, as it were, to make a success of everything else. This isa critical sign of the weakness of civil society and evidence of unevenand combined development. As Ernest Gellner put it:

In traditional societies, he who has political power soon acquireswealth as a kind of consequence. This is not altogether unknown


even in commercial and industrial societies, but it is incomparablyless important. There, the best way to make money is to make money.It is quite possible to do this without acquiring or bothering toomuch with power. (This virtually defines Civil Society.) The economyis where the action is … It is possible to prosper while simply attend-ing to one’s business. This is another way of saying that the law protects wealth, independently of whether one has formed specialalliances or groups of followers for its protection.274

Of course the quality of leadership is crucial in any political system, butthe quality of ‘the human material of politics’ is not in itself a fruitfulavenue of inquiry as a prerequisite for democracy unless the notion of‘quality’ is expanded considerably to include adherence to a range ofdemocratic cultural norms, attitudes and practices. There is a consider-able literature on political culture which seeks to address just what normsand values are required to sustain democracy.275 A more currentapproach is evident in the literature on ‘social capital’ which seeks in partto address the sources of such norms and values.276 Francis Fukuyama, inparticular, has examined the economic and political dimensions of ‘theexistence of a certain set of informal values or norms shared amongmembers of a group that permit co-operation among them’ – his defini-tion of social capital.277 It is a mainstay of this literature that many of thesources of social capital on which ‘modernity’ depends are pre-capitalistin origin and, as with Schumpeter’s analysis, many of the debates revolvearound the question of whether capitalism is a net generator of socialcapital or rather depletes it, as well as what the likely socio-economic andpolitical consequences are in either case. According to Fukuyama:

The ability to cooperate socially is dependent on prior [to capitalism]habits, traditions, and norms, which themselves serve to structure themarket. Hence it is more likely that a successful market economy,rather than being the cause of stable democracy, is codetermined bythe prior factor of social capital. If the latter is abundant, then bothmarket and democratic politics will thrive, and the market can in factplay a role as a school of sociability that reinforces democratic institu-tions. This is particularly true in newly industrializing countries withauthoritarian governments, where people can learn new forms ofsociability in the workplace before applying the lessons to politics.278

Although we have here a clear and not uncommon justification forauthoritarian capitalism, one may agree with the point that just as the


structures of kinship, religion, ethnicity, secular political ideology andclass impact on economic development, so may they do so on politicaldevelopment. In view of the derivative quality of many of Schumpeter’sarguments, his exclusion of such a core Weberian conception of cultureand political economy is rather surprising. This is not to suggest a staticview in which a country either has some mix of attributes, includingcultural ones, that enables it to become democratic while others don’t.Instead, what may be suggested is a dynamic view in which the salienceof the international sphere (in its interrelations with domestic spheres),both in terms of it as a source as well as a context in which social capitalis generated, is crucial. Just as religions may be said to be ‘exogenouslygenerated’ and interpreted variously according to national and interna-tional circumstances, so too is capitalism and the ideology of liberaldemocracy. A more useful approach than the quality of political leader-ship then may well be that of asking what factors orient it towards one political system (an institutionally and ideologically pluralist/multi-party, secular and law based one) rather than another; and whatfactors orient potentially contending civil society groupings towards a liberal democratic framework. In terms of the latter question, stablepatron–client relations may well suit some of these better than democ-racy, especially if they fear loss of power and wealth consequent upondemocratisation. Analyses of the type addressed above which includecertain aspects of culture may or may not be the appropriate way for-ward, but even if they are, they need not exclude the internationaldimension. For example, the commitment by political élites in India tothe liberal democratic framework, in stark contrast to its regional neigh-bours, is often related by analysts to their British educational back-ground.279 Similarly, the democratic stimulus to the political élites ofSpain, Portugal and Greece provided by the prospect of joining theEuropean project was crucial just as it is for the ‘new’ democracies ofCentral and Eastern Europe today.

The second condition for success is that ‘the effective range of politi-cal decision should not be extended too far’. On one level this is more ofan appeal to practicality than to any formal limits to the power of gov-ernments. If all the functions of state, for example, were subject to thecompetitive method, paralysis would quickly result. Likewise, politi-cians should not be expected to exclude specialists as and when theirown expertise is inadequate for the task of legislating appropriately. Onanother level, however, this condition speaks also to the need for sepa-ration of the powers and functions of the state – ‘… in most democraticcountries a large measure of independence from political agencies is


granted to the judges’.280 It is curious that such a crucial point as thisone should receive relatively little attention from Schumpeter. Withoutthis institutional pluralism and real limitations on the power of theexecutive through constitutional arrangements (codified or otherwise),democracy cannot be but a sham. As the twentieth century has taughtus above all, the unrestricted power of the state is the most commonthreat to life and liberty.

Furthermore, this condition suggests that if the competitive model is to work, rival leaders and parties must not be too divided on basicquestions of political ends and means. The more the state is expected to do, the more likely the disagreements. This certainly correlates withhistorical experience. One of the recurring themes of economic history,if decidedly not of orthodox theory, is the increasing requirement ofstate intervention in the context of late development. Of course,Britain’s early protectionism should not be overlooked, including government support and protection with overseas trade, its use of tariffsand discriminatory shipping rules, not to mention the state’s sanction-ing of private property.281 Nevertheless, as David Landes has argued,since catching up means not having the time nor means to grow as earlier developers, a heavier reliance on government assistance andorganisation follows inexorably.282 In other words, ‘underdevelopment’was born with Britain’s transition to capitalist modernity.283

The political consequences may be manifold. In the first place, thedanger lies in the state assuming so many of the responsibilities for eco-nomic development that it either consciously/ideologically crushes anyintermediary institutions (as with historical communism); uncon-sciously prevents them from developing to any degree (as in most tradi-tional societies in which these actually never existed); or else co-optsthem for narrow purposes (including class, ethnic, colonial, bureaucraticand geopolitical ones). This doesn’t exhaust the reasons for state involve-ment by any means but is simply suggestive of some obvious pitfalls.

Second, as Schumpeter implies, to the extent that such intermediariesexist, the scope for disagreement is extended in proportion to the scopeof state control and on the basis of losers and winners. Third, the risks offailing to ‘catch-up’, especially geopolitical ones, are such that, as withthe suspension of legal dissent in times of war, opposition is less likelyto be tolerated, at least until the gap has been narrowed. The earlierphases of modernisation in the context of a competitive global systemput a premium on social unity and cohesion and threaten pluralism.Commenting on the shift noted by Adam Ferguson in the eighteenthcentury, from the values of ‘honour’ associated with pre-capitalist


society to those of ‘interest’ associated with capitalism, and on his fearthat this would lead to a new dictatorship, Ernest Gellner points out hiserror by saying:

Even when a curious coalition of warriors and industrialists tried this on in inter-war Germany and Japan, they were eventually elimi-nated. Military rule characterises unsuccessful rather than successful interest-oriented nations: it is not the division of labour, but a relatively low level of it, which leads in that direction.284

The fact that there existed an international coalition of states which between them defeated fascism in most of Europe stands as thegreatest international contribution to the continuation of democracy.Nevertheless, this pathology of the semi-periphery is indeed notable –from Spain, Portugal and Italy to Latin America and the Middle East.Especially in the context of ideologically and socially divided societies,it seems to be the ‘one more push’ syndrome of underdevelopment.

Fourth, if greater state involvement is not to be paid entirely by inter-national capital flows, the proportion of surplus extracted by the statewill have to rise and with it the risks of social unrest. As the history ofrevolutions has demonstrated again and again, it has been the mostmarginalised groups that have paid a disproportionate part of this sur-plus. Finally, if states are to make up their investment requirements byattracting foreign loans and direct investment, the conditions mostconducive to this may also involve considerable state repression, partic-ularly when society is deeply divided in socio-economic and ideologicalterms.285 The ‘public’ despotism of the state not only serves as an alternative to the ‘private’ despotism of the market but is integral to it.

This said, it would clearly be absurd to suggest that late developers arecondemned to undemocratic forms of rule. History teaches us other-wise. Still, as with Schumpeter’s concern with the fate of socialistdemocracy, giving the state too much direct control over ‘the economicaffairs of society’ is in tension with making it accountable. In a depress-ing but important conclusion to a book on third world politics,Christopher Clapham makes the following remarks:

In any society, one of the functions of the state is to divert resources(perhaps entirely laudably) from producers to consumers, and fromthose with less to those with more political influence. Where third world states are in some degree distinctive is the small and self-perpetuating nature of the group of beneficiaries. Inefficiency and


exploitation are both expressed through a neo-patrimonial pattern ofsocial relationships, and most evidently through corruption, whichsimultaneously benefits those with political influence and distortsthe application of any universalist criteria for running an organisa-tion or allocating its benefits. While the external economy and espe-cially the multinational corporation are often treated as the villain ofthe piece, their role is often just to act as the mechanism throughwhich domestic élites extract a surplus from their own economy, andestablish a clientelist relationship with the external world. The role of the corporation ceases to be a ‘problem’ once the state becomesefficient and accountable.286

The third condition is the existence of a ‘well-trained bureaucracy of goodstanding and tradition, endowed with a strong sense of duty and a no lessstrong espirit de corps’.287 A civil service which meets these criteria actuallymakes possible the existence of ‘amateur’ government in the first place. Italso serves to limit the range of political decisions presumably by remind-ing ministers of what is and is not politically and/or practically feasible. In this context, it is important that the bureaucracy be sufficiently inde-pendent from politicians, ‘a power in its own right’. Finally, the existenceof such a civil service is what makes the advent of successful socialism a real possibility. ‘Potentially it is the only answer to the question …democratic politics has proved itself unable to produce decent city government; how can we expect the nation to fare if everything, eventu-ally including the whole of the productive process, is to be handed over to it?’288

Schumpeter is clear that an official class with the necessary qualities of personnel and of traditions such as is required cannot ‘be created in a hurry’ nor be ‘hired with money’. What is needed to secure it is theexistence of a ‘social stratum’ with the requisite prestige and quality tosupply recruits.

The bureaucracies of Europe … exemplify very well what I am tryingto convey. They are the product of a long development that startedwith the ministeriales of medieval magnates (originally serfs selectedfor administrative and military purposes who thereby acquired thestatus of petty nobles) and went on through the centuries until the powerful engine emerged which we behold today.289

While the detail of this quotation seems to imply the reliance on yetanother pre-capitalist ‘social stratum’, it is probably the same onereferred to earlier in the context of the first condition of success.


After all, both strata had to be ‘not too rich’, ‘not too poor’, ‘not too exclusive’, and ‘not too accessible’. How many of these can there be?Assuming therefore that Schumpeter is talking about one stratum thesocial origins of whose members vary historically, we are still left withthe proposition that modern democracy, like modern capitalism, haslived on the resources of its feudal past. (This can be argued to be a kindof combined and uneven theory of development whereby certain pre-capitalist social forms are responsible for the success of capitalism anddemocracy – a feudal legacy that is deemed necessary for their attain-ment just as the Absolutist ‘phase’ is deemed functional for the rise ofthe modern capitalist state by Perry Anderson.290)

Presumably, very few can deny either the importance of this condi-tion nor the difficulties involved in securing it. Also, one does not haveto accept Schumpeter’s insistence on feudal origins to acknowledge thefact that the personnel have been overwhelmingly drawn from thehighest social ranks of society. As with the first condition, we are dealinghere with the requirement of ‘quality’ and the same points apply.However, there is a considerable literature on the role of civil services insponsoring, promoting and sustaining coups d’état in the developingworld. Unless the ‘strong sense of duty’ is to the democratic systemitself, their independence is potentially a major problem. According toChristopher Clapham:

In countries where the state is itself by far the dominant source oforganised power, control of the state by any agency external to itbecomes extremely difficult, and a military coup represents the ulti-mate refinement of the process by which the state is taken over by itsown servants. Sometimes indeed a coup can be seen as the result ofactions by the incumbent government which threaten the interestsand self-image of the bureaucracy.291

The final condition necessary for the success of democracy is charac-terised by Schumpeter as ‘democratic self-control’. On the negative side,this entails broad agreement about the undesirability of voters andpoliticians confusing their respective roles (a Burkeian conception ofrepresentative government which again spells the abandonment of theClassical Doctrine); the undesirability of excessive criticism of govern-ments on all issues; and the undesirability of unpredictable and violentbehaviour. On the positive, ‘democratic self-control’ requires ‘a largemeasure of tolerance for difference of opinion’.292 Unfortunately, thistolerance itself requires a ‘national character’ and ‘national habits’


which the democratic method cannot be relied upon to produce. Again,we are partly in the realm of attitudes, norms and culture, without veryspecific sources. At least Weber, Fukuyama and others make a more concerted attempt at specificity; religion, ethnicity, the family, the state.

The question of what produces stable social co-operation in the context of modernity is, of course, coterminous with the entire field ofsociology. Perhaps then we should forgive Schumpeter on this score.The fact that each potential source of social stability can be associatedwith any political system makes matters extremely difficult. Further-more, what he says is true. Tolerance for different opinions is a precon-dition of democracy. It also relies heavily on individuals changing theiropinions on issues and on the way they vote. And yet, we are right to beimpatient with glib assertions about ‘national character’ because, on theone hand, even if agreement were possible as to what constitutes such athing, as with ‘culture’, these are not written in stone but are change-able, even if not as easily or purposefully as the Enlightenment traditionoften implies. Here, Barrington Moore’s injunction against taking culture as a given is indispensable.

To explain behaviour in terms of cultural values is to engage in circu-lar reasoning … If culture has an empirical meaning, it is as a ten-dency implanted in the human mind to behave in certain specificways ‘acquired by man as a member of society’ … The assumption ofinertia, that cultural and social continuity do not require explana-tion, obliterates the fact that both have to be recreated anew in eachgeneration, often with great pain and suffering. To maintain andtransmit a value system, human beings are punched, bullied, sent tojail, thrown into concentration camps, cajoled, bribed, made intoheroes, encouraged to read newspapers, stood up against a wall andshot, and sometimes even taught sociology. To speak of cultural iner-tia is to overlook the concrete interests and privileges that are servedby indoctrination, education, and the entire complicated process oftransmitting culture from one generation to the next.293

On the other hand, as this quotation suggests, the conditions that canbe specified are too important to be overshadowed by those that can’t.

Summing up by reiterating his original point of departure,Schumpeter returns to more stable ground:

… [T]he reader need only review our conditions in order to satisfyhimself that democratic government will work to full advantage only


if all the interests that matter are practically unanimous not only intheir allegiance to the country but also in their allegiance to thestructural principles of the existing society. Whenever these princi-ples are called in question and issues arise that rend a nation into twohostile camps, democracy works at a disadvantage. And it may ceaseto work at all as soon as interests and ideals are involved on whichpeople refuse to compromise.294

What Schumpeter means by ‘allegiance to structural principles’ is legiti-macy, and therefore stability, of social structure. His socio-psychologicalapproach is tailored to deal with this matter of legitimacy. Whatever thebases of it – and we have seen that for him these have been largely pre-capitalist – in the most advanced countries, according to Schumpeter,they are being systematically undermined by the development of capi-talism itself.

What about the legitimacy of the social structure for developing coun-tries? Now, one of the reasons for the instability, if not total absence ofdemocratic regimes in the developing world as well as for the previousintensity of the Cold War, is that the political and ideological alterna-tives thrown up by great social inequalities are huge. While Schumpeterexplicitly excludes any of these from his analysis, his treatment of whatwe might call European ‘late-developers’ is revealing. Writing on Russia,Schumpeter states the following:

Even writers most hostile to the regime that followed upon the tsarsinvariably make haste to assure their readers that they are duly horri-fied at the monstrosity of tsarism. Thus the simple truth has beenentirely lost in a maze of cant phrases. As a matter of fact, that formof government was no less appropriate to the social pattern that hadproduced it than was the parliamentary monarchy in England andthe democratic republic in the United States. The performance of thebureaucracy … ; its social reforms, agrarian and other, and its haltingsteps toward a diluted type of constitutionalism were all that couldhave been expected in the circumstances. It was the imported radi-calism and the group interest of the intellectuals that clashed withthe spirit of the nation and not the tsarist monarchy which on thecontrary had a strong hold upon the vast majority of all classes.295

Here we have a product of ‘uneven and combined development’, a country in transition to capitalist modernity with all kinds of pre-capitalist social formations, relying to a large extent on foreign capital


for its modernisation of industry, at a ‘world-historical time’ whena good portion of its intellectuals were pushing for various alternativesincluding liberal democracy and socialism.296 If not for the First WorldWar and poor political leadership, according to Schumpeter, these con-ditions would not have led to revolution. Moreover, so secure was thesocial structure of tsarism that after the failed uprising of 1905, intellec-tuals became increasingly militant and criminal, thus spawning a cycleof violence and repression that is largely responsible for modern ‘misunderstandings’ of tsarism.297

Undoubtedly, this assessment is far from complete but even if we disagree with the actual details, the circumstances Russia found itself inat the start of the twentieth century are not unlike the context manydeveloping countries have faced and continue to face. One obvious sim-ilarity is that since the Russian Revolution of 1917, until 1989, all thesocial revolutions that have taken place have done so in the developingworld. While some of these have been associated with national libera-tion struggles, many have not. The least that can be said about theimpact of capitalism on social structure is that over time it can be reliedupon to transform it. What’s more, political authority is one of the keycomponents of this transformation, at least in mediating it intention-ally or otherwise and even in purposefully channelling it. That is whyconservatives, revolutionaries as well as reformers of all hues havesought state power and, of course, a good reason why democracy mat-ters. If society is to be constantly changing, then individuals and groupsshould at the very least attempt to ensure that it doesn’t necessarilychange against them. Democracy, with formal political equality andcivil rights, offers a more generous context than does dictatorship forthe political agency required to even attempt such action. This alsoaccounts for democracy’s potentially subversive character.

This raises what is surely a precondition for stable democracy, namely,overall economic growth. Endemic structural change without economicgrowth, at least in the long term, is quite simply a recipe for political insta-bility, not to say disaster. The certainty of life-long unemployment andfalling living standards, unless confined to a small minority, cannot pro-vide the basis for political legitimacy of any description; least of all can itprovide a stable context for a politics based on some measure of choice andtolerance. The collapse of the Weimar Republic and the rise of fascism inEurope as a consequence of international economic depression and of thepolitical factors which worsened this depression provides a standard exam-ple for this precondition. The major difficulty is that economic growthmay also be able to sustain non-democracies as well. In this context, it may


be argued that sharp reversals of economic conditions may lead to pressures for political inclusion for various reasons including ‘outside’ sectional interests being particularly exposed by these downturns, anddemocracy being seen as the most appropriate, if not the only alternative.Also, the positive correlation between democracy and economic develop-ment as demonstrated by the major liberal democratic countries acts as a considerable force of example for those struggling against dictatorship –a key feature of the Kantian strand of liberal internationalism.298

Now, what is required for sustained economic growth in the first placeis itself a huge question which all states and not a few social scientistshave been pondering for some considerable time. At a minimum, in thecontext of endemic structural change dictated in large part by technolog-ical innovation, economic pluralism would seem necessary. Placing all theeggs in one basket is far too risky given market volatility. Even when thecommodities are so central to industry as is oil, their eventual obsoles-cence makes economic systems that depend on just a few products fortheir aggregate growth, unfertile ground for democratic political stability.

Criticisms

Schumpeter’s ‘reading’ of the direction of capitalism with the stress onincreasing centralisation and bureaucratisation through the process of‘creative destruction’ led him, as with Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom, intoa teleological hole.299 Both, of course, were very much a product of theirtime and, to be fair, these were teleologies with some qualifications or escape routes. Still, like some paranoid American conservatives thatdate the institutionalisation of socialism in the United States fromRoosevelt’s ‘New Deal’, they misjudge badly the staying power and flex-ibility of capitalism. All the more surprising in the case of Schumpeter isthe lack of connection made between the consequences of democracyand the sustainability of capitalism. In a democratic context, thedilemma which faced socialists in forcing capitalism to reform itself andthereby stabilising and legitimating it, doesn’t appear that agonising. Aslong as they seek sustained political power, ideological or even long-term strategy takes second place to practicality. Moreover, if the appetitefor social reform is widespread, all the significant parties may well jointhe move, as Donald Sassoon’s following example illustrates.

It is certain that a British Conservative government would haveintroduced some welfare measures between 1945 and 1950. TheBritish Conservatives had committed themselves to social reforms


ever since the Second World War, when, stung by the success of theBeveridge Report and convinced by a run of by-election defeats,Churchill told the nation (21 March 1943) that, after the war, unem-ployment would be abolished, state ownership should be extended,compulsory national insurance introduced ‘for all purposes from cradle to grave’, and that ‘there was no finer investment … than putting milk into babies’.300

However, if in the immediate post-war period the strongly intervention-ist lines favoured by the Left were in the ascendant, by the 1950s thesehad given way to widely held pro-market views associated with the con-sumer society which had spread from the United States. This shift wasdue to many complex factors including the ideological and materialimpact of the Cold War, the development of free trade actively encour-aged by the United States, the increasing power of mainly US multina-tional corporations (both in terms of direct investment/production andadvertising), government policies that promoted domestic demand(welfare spending) and held down inflation (in large part made possibleby labour migration) and the transformation of rural workers into pro-letarians.301 While the countries of the Soviet bloc also grew rapidly,political legitimacy lagged well behind in part because growth there didnot result in consumer societies. ‘People do not want to double steeloutput and treble iron production; they want comfortable houses andwashing machines, and rightly so: the ideology of growth for growth’ssake is the ideology of the cancer cell.’302 In the West, political partiesthat eschewed the new consumer society (the result supposedly of‘Fordism’) were increasingly marginalised. Thus democracy and interna-tional capitalism reinforced each other at least for this ‘Golden Age’.

Conclusion

In reviewing Schumpeter’s work here we have seen that the lack of sustained engagement with the international dimensions of capitalism,socialism and democracy was a major source of weakness. Because ofthis lack of engagement there was little cause to push for the particularvirtues of the conception of the global system employed throughoutthis work. Nevertheless, it is clear that despite Schumpeter’s acute viewof democracy and capitalism, his failings in this text are in serious danger of overshadowing his accomplishments. Not only has socialismfailed to replace capitalism in the most advanced countries of the world –a misdiagnosis which he shares with all too many, if for different


reasons – but democracy has been institutionalised in countries whichhis theory suggests would be very unlikely to do so. What kind of liberalinternationalist representative is this? The answer in part is that much ofhis influence on liberal internationalism is based on earlier writings andthat this text represents something akin to apostasy.303 And, indeed, thisbetrayal demonstrates the fragility of the grounds for liberal interna-tionalism’s optimistic account of the sources of democratisation. WhileSchumpeter’s socio-psychological framework is not a convincing alter-native to this model, his analysis does serve to remind one of the diffi-culty of institutionalising the democratic form of state in most countriesof the world. More fundamentally, perhaps, this text serves to illustrate,as with Polanyi’s work, the enormous impact that the Second World Warhad, not only on the ground of politics as it were, but on the thinking ofintellectuals who witnessed it – just as his work on imperialism was aproduct of the First World War and an answer to Lenin’s explanation ofimperialism. The idea that democratic capitalism would eventuallyrevert to a hegemonic position globally was simply too far a stretch ofthe imagination.


95

4Samuel Huntington, Political Order and the Global System

Introduction

The purpose of this chapter is to assess a specific work of SamuelHuntington that points to the fundamental difficulties involved in institutionalising and consolidating the democratic form of state forcountries in the developing world. In challenging the unilinear modelof development associated with modernisation theory, Huntington’stext also serves to question seriously the basic optimism of liberal inter-nationalism’s view of the prospects for democracy worldwide – at thevery least in the foreseeable future.

This chapter argues, however, that while it does in fact produce a convincing and relevant set of arguments, including an implicit if cleardeployment of ‘uneven and combined development’ and of ‘world-historical-time’, that serves to counter the major expectations of liberalinternationalism, Huntington’s highly sophisticated sociology of devel-opment is deficient in a number of important ways – in not engagingmore directly with the contradictory impact of the specifically capitalistfeatures of modernisation or with the contradictory impact of the inter-national political system and their interrelations, and in not questioningmore thoroughly the meaning and value of political legitimacy and con-sequently in assuming the inappropriateness of the democratic form ofstate rather than its unlikely institutionalisation in developing countries.

Objectives of text

Political Order in Changing Societies304 is nothing if not ambitious; in itHuntington sets out explicitly to examine the conditions under whichpolitical order and stability may be achieved for developing countries in

the context of the seismic changes initiated by Western modernisation.There are not a few loaded terms here. ‘Order’? ‘Stability’? From whatperspective one might ask. The answer he gives is, essentially, from an‘objective’ social scientific perspective.

The indices of political order or its absence in terms of violence,coups, insurrections, and other forms of instability are … reasonablyclear and even quantifiable. Just as it is possible for economists toanalyze and to debate, as economists, the conditions and policieswhich promote economic development, it should be possible forpolitical scientists to analyze and to debate in scholarly fashion theways and means of promoting political order, whatever their differ-ences concerning the legitimacy and desirability of that goal.305

This attempt to eschew ideological and normative judgements as to whattype of order is best in terms of, say, promoting human dignity, and hisfailure to even hint at the potential cost of political stability in similarterms puts Huntington’s work firmly in the Machiavellian camp, a por-trayal, no doubt, with which he would happily approve.306 There are several problems with this approach including the charge of being disingenuous and, given the inevitable ethical dimension in humanaffairs, of obliterating the fact/value distinction.307 The disingenuousnessstems from the point that for Huntington social scientific ‘truth’ is notnecessarily sought for either its intrinsic value or its value to humanity butrather for the service it might provide the ‘national interests’ of the UnitedStates. That these ‘values’ may coincide is never argued by the author andwe are, in fact, left with a thesis which is clearly ideologically motivated inthe political context of the Cold War. Huntington’s ‘scholarly debate’ isorganised around the following key questions: Why is political order sodifficult to attain in the developing world? Why is revolutionary commu-nist power peculiarly able to achieve political order and stability? Howshould modernising states attempt to promote non-communist politicalorder and stability? What, if anything, can liberal democratic states do topromote non-communist political development? The dimension of legiti-macy, of course, is inescapable; it cannot be separated from the discussion.

One could argue that another serious problem that flows from thisapproach relates to the policy implications of the analysis. In a charac-teristic statement, Huntington here captures the problem exactly: ‘Forthe government interested in the maintenance of political stability, theappropriate response to middle-class radicalism is repression, notreform. Measures which reduce the numbers, strength, and coherence of


the radical elements of this class contribute significantly to the maintenance of political order.’308

Obviously, the various post-1945 dictators in the developing worlddid not have to read this to come to their own conclusions.Nevertheless, in the context of the late 1960s and the Cold War, suchpronouncements by a very learned Harvard professor could hardly failto enter the foreign policy debates of the time. Indeed, a major andexplicit aim of the text in question was to inject ‘realism’ into those verydebates and to argue against those who sought to fight the appeal ofcommunism in the Third World with improved economic and socialconditions as, for example, with the Alliance for Progress in LatinAmerica. In most instances, the author argues, success on these frontshasten rather than reduce political instability.

The real problem, however, is not so much the possibility that socialscience may be used for ‘reactionary’ purposes. This has always been thecase and will continue to be so. One need only see how useful the workof sociologists and psychologists is to those in the business of ‘marketing’all manner of consumer products, including lethal ones. The problem israther that what Huntington attempts to pass-off as ‘truth’ is nothing ofthe sort. The idea that states interested in political stability should repressmiddle-class radicalism is not simply provocative and reactionary, it isabsurd. This is not to deny that repression in some historical and politi-cal contexts sometimes works to diminish or even eradicate revolution-ary threats to states. The point, however, is that every case will differ indetail. One is not dealing in absolutes here and concern for accuracynecessitates qualification not dogma. Furthermore, as suggested already,normative considerations cannot but raise necessary if sometimes awk-ward questions. For all this, Huntington’s book is absolutely packed withextraordinarily intelligent and insightful analysis.

Huntington’s thesis: modernity versus modernisation

Maintaining that political violence, disorder and instability (frequentunconstitutional change in political leadership) increased in the twodecades following the end of the Second World War, Huntington’s ‘pri-mary thesis of the book is that it was in large part the product of rapidsocial change and the rapid mobilization of new groups into politicscoupled with the slow development of political institutions’.309 Theoverarching and international context of the malaise is the transitionfrom a myriad of pre-modern or traditional socio-economic and politicalforms to ‘modernity’ – a concept used in various ways and usually

Huntington, Political Order and the Global System 97

broken down into distinct if interrelated subgroups such as cultural,social, economic and political modernity. If ‘modernisation’ is the namegiven to transitional processes in aggregate, modernity itself is the set of conditions, involving all the subgroups, prevalent in the most‘advanced’ countries of the world, namely, the ‘communist totalitarian’states and ‘Western liberal’ states. Using the examples of the UnitedStates, Great Britain and the Soviet Union, Huntington outlines thesalient features of political modernity as follows:

Each country is a political community with an overwhelming consen-sus among the people on the legitimacy of the political system. Ineach country the citizens and their leaders share a vision of the publicinterest of the society and of the traditions and principles upon whichthe political community is based. All three countries have strong,adaptable, coherent political institutions: effective bureaucracies,well-organized political parties, a high degree of popular participationin public affairs, working systems of civilian control over the military,extensive activity by the government in the economy, and reasonablyeffective procedures for regulating succession and controlling politicalconflict. These governments command the loyalties of their citizensand thus have the capacity to tax resources, to conscript manpower,and to innovate and to execute policy. If the Politburo, the Cabinet, or the President makes a decision, the probability is high it will beimplemented through the government machinery.310

Although the inclusion here of the Soviet Union and ‘communist states’seems distinctly perverse today, it is a clear indication of the thorough-ness of the discrediting of ‘historical communism’ as a viable alternativeto capitalist modernity in the decades following its publication. It is alsoa reminder of the tenacity of the communist model as an alternativemodernity to both believers and opponents at that time. More impor-tantly, however, this inclusion reveals the ease with which Huntingtonequates political stability with legitimacy. Political order as a precondi-tion for other ‘values’ (pace Hobbes and the liberal tradition of politicaltheory) may well make it a privileged one – though it would have to be argued explicitly – but it does not define political legitimacy.311

Obviously, from the perspective of one interested in democracy’s rela-tionship to the global system, this matter is of crucial importance andone that will be looked at in greater detail below. For the time being, suf-fice it to say that considering political order as the most important andpressing challenge facing the developing and developed world is a form


of conservatism if not totally at odds with the twists and turns of actualhistory then at least with plenty of counter-arguments.

Although ultimately there is in Huntington’s thesis a unilinear con-ception of political modernisation, to his great credit, and unlike somethat have expressed more optimistically naive conceptions, the authorsees this complex phenomenon as the major cause of political decay inthe post-war period.312 Rather than lead to modernity, both the mod-ernising forces unleashed on developing countries via the global systemas well as their own modernising efforts in response to the moreadvanced states lead to political violence and disorder.

It is not the absence of modernity but the efforts to achieve it whichproduce political disorder. If poor countries appear to be unstable, itis not because they are poor, but because they are trying to becomerich. A purely traditional society would be ignorant, poor, and stable.By the mid-twentieth century, however, all traditional societies werealso transitional or modernizing societies. It is precisely the devolu-tion of modernization throughout the world which increased theprevalence of violence about the world.313

The basic fault displayed here and generally reproduced throughout thetext is the notion of ‘traditional’ societies as essentially identical orhomogenous – ‘ignorant, poor, and stable’. Though he deploys the dis-tinction between ‘bureaucratic’ and ‘feudal’ polities, there is very littleon the extraordinary variety of pre-modern social and political forma-tions.314 Nevertheless, the highly problematic nature of modernisationis strongly conveyed here. It is a kind of ‘Humpty-Dumpty’ modernisa-tion thesis – once traditional societies are dismembered by the combi-nation of modernising forces, they cannot be put together again andalmost certainly not in the image of the Western liberal democracies.Again, the argument here is that, at the time of writing, the communistmodel had a higher probability of institutionalisation than the liberaldemocratic one, thus the significance of the study in the context of theCold War. The reasons lay in the impact of international modernisingforces on domestic systems of rule.

Aspects of modernisation: social mobilisation and economic development

Huntington speaks of ‘aspects’ of modernisation – the principal onesbeing urbanisation, industrialisation, secularisation, democratisation,


education (increased literacy) and mass media exposure.315 The causesof these ‘aspects’, the precise mechanisms by which they are transmittedinternationally and the relations as well as the structures of powerwhich they may be said to involve internationally are all severely under-theorised. On one side we have modern countries and on the other wehave modernising ones. For all the emphasis on the spread or ‘devolu-tion’ of modernisation throughout the world and with the importantexceptions of geopolitical competition and the defensive pressureswhich this gives rise to, the spread of ideas, and colonialism, it is actu-ally the juxtaposition between modern and modernising rather thantheir interrelations which receives most attention from Huntington.Not that there is no merit in this approach. After all, the mere juxtapo-sition is a hugely influential factor in motivating and unleashing socialchange, as the ‘power of example’ has demonstrated in countless situa-tions. If today these ‘aspects’ of modernisation are more commonly the-orised under the rubric of ‘globalisation’, it is because the internationaldimensions of socio-economic, political and cultural change are muchmore clearly acknowledged.316

While Huntington seeks to maintain a distinction between ‘idealistic’versions of political modernisation which focus on the differencesbetween traditional and modern polities and proceed to define the phe-nomenon as the unproblematic movement from one to the other andhis own ‘realist’ view of it as the political ‘aspects’ and ‘effects’ of social,economic and cultural modernisation, slippage between these twoforms is evident at key points of the argument. This is especially sowhen he comes to analyse both the political problems of so-called ‘traditional’ polities and the earlier political modernisations ofContinental Europe, England and the United States.317 Nevertheless,taking the distinction at face value for the time being, the ‘idealistic’method is said to yield the following broad categories of expected change:

1. The rationalisation of authority: a single, secular, national politicalauthority replaces a large number of traditional, religious, familialand ethnic authorities.

2. The differentiation of new political functions/development of spe-cialised structures: areas of competence such as legal, military, admin-istrative and scientific are separated from the political realm and new,autonomous, specialised but subordinate organs are created to dis-charge tasks. Office and power are distributed more through achieve-ment and less by ascription and administrative hierarchies becomemore elaborate, complex and disciplined.


3. Mass participation and mobilisation in politics: predominantlyurban social groups with broadened loyalties and identities, withgreatly expanded reflexive knowledge about society and the world,with increased reliance on universalistic values, engaged in massivelydiversified economic activities, with changed attitudes and expecta-tions, become involved in and affected by governmental affairs.318

Huntington’s focus on the political consequences of socio-economic andcultural modernisation yields a picture of considerable political disintegra-tion. The two categories of modernisation that the author considers most relevant to politics are ‘social mobilisation’ and ‘economic develop-ment’.319 The former is a consequence of literacy, education, increasedcommunications, mass media exposure and urbanisation and relates fun-damentally to changes from traditional values, attitudes, and expectationsto those associated with modern ones.320 It is most closely associated withthe development of modern political consciousness. Economic develop-ment, however it is measured, refers basically to the growth in economicactivity and output. ‘Social mobilization involves changes in the aspira-tions of individuals, groups, and societies; economic developmentinvolves changes in their capabilities. Modernization requires both.’321

Huntington’s argument is that positive movement in the major areasof social development, which is empirically demonstrable, does not nec-essarily entail equivalence in political terms. In other words, despiterapid urbanisation, increasing rates of literacy, higher levels of industri-alisation, per capita income and mass media circulation, politically,much of the developing world was moving away from the idealist ver-sion of modern politics. Instead of a trend towards competitiveness anddemocracy, there was an ‘erosion of democracy’ and a tendency to auto-cratic military regimes and one-party regimes. Instead of stability, therewere repeated coups and revolts. Instead of a unifying nationalism andnation-building, there were repeated ethnic conflicts and civil wars.Instead of institutional rationalisation and differentiation, there was fre-quently a decay of the administrative organisations inherited from thecolonial era and a weakening and disruption of the political organisa-tions developed during the struggle for independence.322

The only concept of political modernisation which, according toHuntington, appeared to be generally applicable to the developing worldwas that of ‘mass mobilisation and participation’. The argument here ismade up of two parts, the socially and politically disintegrative force ofmodernisation and the integrative one. First, social and economicchanges disrupt traditional political and social groupings and undermine


loyalty to traditional authority and institutions. In the countryside, forexample, a new élite of civil servants and schoolteachers who representthe authority of the central government challenges secular and religiousvillage leaders. Similarly, the erosion of the traditional extended family,under the impact of modernisation, with its political, economic, welfare,security, religious and other social functions leaves a narrower form ofsocial organisation, the nuclear family, too much to do with insufficientmeans of doing it. The result, according to Huntington, is a strengthenedtendency towards distrust and hostility as ‘new values undermine the oldbases of association and of authority before new skills, motivations, andresources can be brought into existence to create new groupings’.323

In terms of an integrative effect, the social and psychological anomiewhich is the consequence of modernisation also creates the need fornew loyalties and identifications which may take all kinds of formsincluding re-identification with traditional groups and ideologies as wellas the mobilisation of new ones. The rise of religious fundamentalistmovements, political tribalism and ethnic chauvinism, for instance, fitneatly into this argument.

Modernization means that all groups, old as well as new, traditionalas well as modern, become increasingly aware of themselves asgroups and of their interests and claims in relation to other groups.One of the most striking phenomena of modernization, indeed, is theincreased consciousness, coherence, organization, and action whichit produces in many social forces which existed on a much lower levelof conscious identity and organization in traditional society.324

Putting together these two sides of the argument, the disintegratingeffect of modernisation and the novel forms of integration, Huntingtontheorises that the result is generally increased conflict and often violence ‘among traditional groups, between traditional groups andmodern ones, and among modern groups’.325

Huntington’s theory of modernisation clearly runs counter to thosethat argue the best way to promote political stability is to promote economic and social development for the closer a country gets tomodernity without actually achieving it, the more unstable and violentit tends to be. The author denies a direct correlation between povertyand political instability and suggests that within developing countries,‘violence’, ‘unrest’ and ‘extremism’ are more common in the wealthiersections than in the poorest.326

The rate of modernisation is also crucially important – the higher therate, the greater the degree of instability. If political instability was


prevalent in the developing world during the twentieth century, it wasin large part, according to the author, because the rate of modernisationwas faster there than it had been for earlier transitional countries. In what is a clear version of the theory of ‘combined and uneven’ development, Huntington puts the matter succinctly.

The modernization of Europe and of North America was spread overseveral centuries; in general, one issue or one crisis was dealt with ata time. In the modernization of the non-Western parts of the world,however, the problems of the centralization of authority, nationalintegration, social mobilization, economic development, politicalparticipation, social welfare have not arisen sequentially but simulta-neously. The ‘demonstration effect’ which the early modernizershave on the later modernizers first intensifies aspirations and thenexacerbates frustrations.327

Frustrated aspirations are indeed fundamental to Huntington’s theory,providing the major impetus towards the politicisation and mobilisa-tion of social groups. Take the question of the relationship betweenincreasing literacy and political stability. Huntington marshals consider-able empirical evidence to suggest that those countries with levels ofeducation and literacy comparable to developed ones but in the contextof low levels of economic development experience very unstable poli-tics.328 The reasons for this are not difficult to surmise. The frustration isfelt not simply for the lack of opportunities that match educationalattainment but also in solidarity for the impoverished. To be educatedwhen all around are miserably poor, especially when ideological curesabound, is to court the politicisation and radicalisation of more well-to-do sections of society. Indeed, the middle-class social origins of revolu-tionaries like ‘Che’ Guevara demonstrates this point well.

So, too, with regard to economic development. Rather than provide theopportunities to satisfy aspirations, rapid economic growth has itself beencorrelated with increased frustration and political instability.329 Some ofthe possible reasons for this relationship include the concentration ofgains in the hands of a few groups while losses are diffused among themany; the prevalence of inflation and its consequent tendencies towardsfurther inequalities of wealth; and, the exacerbation of traditionalinequalities due to the impact of Western legal systems encouraging thereplacement of communal land ownership with private ownership.330

‘Economic development increases economic inequality at the same timethat social mobilization decreases the legitimacy of that inequality. Bothaspects of modernization combine to produce political instability.’331


Huntington hypothesises, however, that social mobilisation is moredestabilising politically than economic development because attitudes,demands and desires change faster than economies’ ability to satisfythem. The ‘gap’ which is said to open up between these two forms ofchange under modernisation is a major source of political instability.Hostile to socio-economic mobility in terms of values (entrepreneurialroles often left to ethnic minorities) and interests (a high proportion ofsociety is engaged in agriculture in the context of very unequal landownership), modernising traditional societies experience developmentalbottlenecks which leave substantial portions of society no alternative butto demand action from the state. As will be reiterated later, the state indeveloping countries is too often itself unambiguously commanded bythose with economic power, in part because of the absence of a criticalmass of middle-class reformers, and ‘[h]ence social mobilization turnsthe traditional economic inequality into a stimulus to rebellion’.332

So, while the forces of modernisation ‘extend political consciousness,multiply political demands, broaden political participation’ – especiallysince late modernising countries cohabit the world with established liberaldemocracies – modernisation undermines traditional sources of politicalauthority and traditional political institutions. This greatly complicatesthe problems of creating new bases of political association and new politi-cal institutions that combine legitimacy and effectiveness. Without suffi-cient opportunities for social and economic mobility and adaptablepolitical institutions, social frustration leads inexorably to political insta-bility.333 Overall, the impact of modernisation on developing countriesinvolves the following relationships according to the author:

(1) Social mobilisationEconomic development

� Social frustration

(2) Social frustrationMobility opportunities

� Political participation

(3) Political participationPolitical institutionalisation

� Political instability334

Social modernisation and political change in traditional polities

A major argument of the text is that traditional societies are usually notsimply passive in their relation to modernisation but that at a certainpoint and for varying reasons, unless executive political power attemptsconsciously to modernise society itself it will be pushed aside by socialforces that will (the international forces will be dealt with in a later


section). In social terms modernisation involves the sequential emer-gence of an intelligentsia, commercial and entrepreneurial groups, pro-fessional and managerial ones, an urban working class and a politicisedpeasantry.335 The political instability associated with the transition tomodernity can be explained not simply by the rise of such groups andtheir values but by the consequent resistance of at least some traditionalsectors with entrenched privileges. Principally, these are the church, theland-owning aristocracy, the army and, if the polity is highly bureau-cratised, the civil officials.336 The executive power, typically either amonarch or emperor, will have the responsibility of maintaining stability while securing the integrity and longevity of the state by imple-menting reforms thought to be congruent with modernity.

Following an established typology of traditional political systems,Huntington divides the most prevalent ones into two groups, namely,the ‘bureaucratic’ and the ‘feudal’ polity.337 Their characteristics aregiven in Table 4.1. The reason for making this distinction is that, forHuntington, overcoming social and political resistance to modernisa-tion necessarily entails the concentration and centralisation of power tofacilitate policy innovation, the institutional differentiation of the statein terms of functional specialisation and the ability to assimilate andsocialise the social forces produced by modernisation; the three criteriaof political modernity in the ‘idealist’ version. By comparing theserequirements to the actual historical institutional arrangements of tradi-tional polities, the author is able to theorise the types of changes neededfor each type of system. A further distinction is then made betweenthree phases or stages of modernisation, the early, the middle and the


Table 4.1 Characteristics of the bureaucratic and the feudal polity

Bureaucratic Feudal

Concentrated power Dispersed powerMonarch appoints officials Offices are hereditary within aristocracyHigh social and political mobility Highly stratified stateSeparation of functions and Fusion of functions and division ofconcentration of power powers

Land owned by monarch Land ownership dispersed andhereditary

King/emperor sole source of legitimacy Legitimacy shared with nobilityKing/emperor sole source of authority Monarch and nobility have independent

sources of authorityEssence is one-way flow of authority Essence is two-way system of reciprocalfrom superior to subordinate rights and obligations338

third, suggesting the strengths and weaknesses of each type of traditional polity in coping with each phase of modernisation.

Typically, the first challenge of modernization to a dispersed, weaklyarticulated and organized, feudalistic traditional system is to concen-trate power necessary to produce changes in the traditional societyand economy. The second problem is then to expand the power ofthe system to assimilate the newly mobilized and politically partici-pant groups, thus creating a modern system. This challenge is thepredominant one in the modernizing world today. At a later stage thesystem is confronted with the demands of the participant groups fora greater dispersion of power and for the establishment of reciprocalchecks and controls among groups and institutions.339

Even though the main challenge facing the executive authority of thebureaucratic state in the early phase of modernisation is said to be theconversion of the civil officials to the cause of sweeping reforms, what ismost striking about Huntington’s schema is that while pluralistic politi-cal systems are suggested as the end-point of political evolution – clearevidence of his unilinear conception – they are necessarily anathema tothe first phase of modernisation for late modernising countries andhighly problematic in the second. To understand how this compares tothe situation faced by early modernisers and therefore to see how theglobal system may be implicated, we need to look more deeply intoHuntington’s conceptualisation of how these actually achieved the transition to modernity in the first place.

Historic routes to political modernity: Continental, British and American

The author suggests three distinct patterns of early Western politicalmodernisation, the Continental European, the British and theAmerican. All three involved the rationalisation of authority, the differ-entiation of structure and, the expansion of political participation, butin varying sequence.

During the seventeenth century, the major states of the continent ofEurope were centralising power, ‘nationalising’ commerce, bringingdynasties and the church to heel, suppressing medieval estates, expand-ing public services and state bureaucracies, originating and expandingstanding armies, extending and improving taxation. Absolutism, inother words, was the result of the rationalisation of authority and


the differentiation of political structures. ‘At the beginning of theseventeenth century, every country of western Christendom, fromPortugal to Finland, and from Ireland to Hungary, had its assemblies ofestates … . By 1700 the traditional diffusion of powers had been virtuallyeliminated from continental Europe. The modernizers and state-buildershad triumphed.’340 Why the urgency? The answer given is that conti-nental states faced intense international rivalry combined with high lev-els of social conflict compared to other areas. With only three years ofpeace on the continent in the whole of the seventeenth century, warpromoted the centralisation of authority because military strengthrequired national unity, the suppression of regional, religious and polit-ical dissidents, the expansion of armies and bureaucracies and majorincreases in state revenues. The broadening of political participationwould await till well into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The Stuart pattern of centralisation and institutional differentiation inBritain followed very similar ‘absolutist’ lines but for the constitutionalstruggle it provoked. The result, according to the author, was an omnipo-tent legislature rather than an absolute monarch. Not that this legislaturewas in the least bit representative in the modern sense but, as with theContinental model, the broadening of political participation would beachieved in stages beginning in earnest in the third decade of nineteenthcentury. While civil strife contributed to this process, particularly the re-emergence of religion as a source of conflict in the seventeenth centuryas well as that of ideology and class, the major reasons for the attempt torationalise and centralise authority as well as the failure to achieve it toquite the same degree as on the continent are put down to geopoliticalcompetition and the accidental quirks of geography.

Largely because of its insular position, Great Britain was a partialexception to this pattern of war and insecurity. Even so, one majorimpetus to the centralization of authority in English governmentcame from the efforts of the Stuart kings to get more taxes to buildmore ships to compete with the French and other continental pow-ers. If it were not for the English Channel, the Stuart centralizationprobably would have succeeded.341

The American pattern is strikingly different. Here the principal elementsof the English Tudor constitution are said to have taken root and givennew life at the same time as they were being abandoned in England.Although these included the Tudor innovations of ‘the supremacy of thestate over the church’, the ‘heightened sense of national identity andconsciousness’ and a ‘significant increase in the power of the Crown and


the executive establishment’, it also meant that the medieval pluralismcrushed by the rationalisation and centralisation of authority in theother two patterns of modernisation was much more fully retained inthis one.342 Where Europe replaced ‘fundamental law’ as the source ofpolitical authority with that of the state, the United States continued toadhere to it in the form of a written and codified constitution; whereEurope innovated the concepts of ‘state sovereignty’ and ‘divine right’ –‘giving the sanction of the Almighty to the purposes of the mighty’ – theUnited States dispersed authority.343 As Bagehot argued patronisingly,‘[t]he English constitution, in a word, is framed on the principle ofchoosing a single sovereign authority, and making it good: theAmerican, upon the principle of having many sovereign authorities, andhoping that their multitude may atone for their inferiority’.344

In military terms also, the United States lagged behind Britain, whichlagged behind the Continental powers in developing military profes-sionalism. Only in the achievement of widespread political participation,excluding women and African-Americans, did the United States lead theway.345 The comparative reasons for this are said to be as follows:

On the electoral level, the expansion of participation in Europemeant the gradual extension of the suffrage for the assembly fromaristocracy to upper bourgeoisie, lower bourgeoisie, peasants, andurban workers. This process is clearly seen in the English reform actsof 1832, 1867, 1884, and 1918. Where no assembly existed, the cre-ation of a popular assembly was also at times accompanied by theintroduction of universal male suffrage which, in turn, directlyencouraged political stability. In both cases, control of the assemblydetermined control of the government, and hence struggles over whoshould vote for the assembly were often intense and sometimes vio-lent. In America, on the other hand, no class differences existed as inEurope, and hence the social basis for the conflict over suffrage exten-sions was less than in Europe. In addition, the continuation of thepluralistic institutions of medieval constitutionalism reduced theapparent significance of suffrage extensions. In a system of checksand balances with many institutions competing for power, it seemednatural enough that at least one of these institutions (usually thelower house of the assembly) should be elected by popular suffrage.Once this was granted, however, the competition between socialforces and between governmental institutions produced the gradualdemocratization of the other institutions.346

The basic security threats being domestic in character – those fromindigenous Indians – the dispersed nature of settlements meant that


defence forces could be made up of settlers themselves organised intomilitia, hardly the stuff from which Absolutism is made. Furthermore, ifthe political institutions were essentially feudal, the social institutionswere decidedly not so. Without an established church, a powerful landowning aristocracy, a professional army, a bureaucracy or a peasantry,the obstacles to the rise of new social classes engaged in new economicactivities were minimal and seen principally as foreign in origin. TheUnited States and the new economy of Adam Smith were born twins in1776. If government intervention was not needed in the United Statesto change social customs and structures because of the absence of feudalsocial institutions, the relative abundance of land and other resourcescombined with the crystallisation of federalism to militate against stateintervention on the part of one ‘national’ class against another.347

So much for the general outline of the three historic paths to moder-nity but what can they tell us about contemporary transitions? The lessons drawn from them are crucial to Huntington’s theory of ‘late’modernisation and the major one is that current modernising countriesrequire the twentieth century equivalent of Royal Absolutism to bringabout the fundamental changes essential to achieving modernity. This iswhy. The historic situation faced by the United States was ‘exceptional’in most ways and attempts to reproduce its form of government in dif-ferent contexts, as with the nineteenth-century Latin Americanrepublics, were bound to lead to failure. As in early modern Europe soalso for contemporary modernising countries; the rationalisation andcentralisation of state power is a necessary precondition not simply forthe purposes of providing unity in the context of geopolitical insecurityand deep social divisions but for socio-economic and political ‘progress’.‘An antique polity is compatible with a modern society but it is not compatible with the modernization of a traditional society.’348

For the same reason, adopting modern Western European politicalsystems is highly problematic because with still largely powerful feudalsocial institutions, ‘new states’ are incapable of pushing through thechanges required by ‘old societies’. ‘Liberal, pluralistic, democratic governments serve to perpetuate antiquated social structure.’349 In thisway, Huntington points out, the political goals of the United States to spread and enhance liberal democratic constitutional forms are indirect conflict with its social goals of modernisation, ‘reform’, ‘socialwelfare’, ‘more equitable distribution of wealth’ and the ‘developmentof a middle class’.350

The great problem for late modernisers is that, largely because of theexistence and example of modern polities, they face the needs torationalise and centralise authority, to differentiate governmental


structures and to broaden political participation simultaneously ratherthan sequentially. For Huntington, the one political system that at thetime of writing seemed best able to accomplish these contradictory goalswas the communist one.

If Versailles set the standard for one century and Westminster foranother, the Kremlin may well be the most relevant model for manymodernizing countries in this century. Just as the heads of minorGerman principalities aped Louis XIV, so also the heads of equallysmall and fragile African states will ape Lenin and Mao. The primaryneed their countries face is the accumulation and concentration ofpower, not its dispersion, and it is in Moscow and Peking and not inWashington that this lesson is to be learned.351

As one can see, Huntington here and elsewhere throughout the textemploys a clear, if not always very sensitively expressed, theory of‘combined and uneven’ development coupled with a notion of theimportance of ‘world-historical-time’. While we will come back to anassessment of the totality of this work in due course, it is important firstto make some preliminary comments about the above versions of his-tory. First, the problem of determining when modernity was in factachieved is a serious one. If, for example, one accepts the three criteriaof political modernity outlined by the author, then none of the threehistorical patterns was complete until well into the twentieth centurywith the advent of universal suffrage, this being when political partici-pation was fully broadened. Second, it is rather extraordinary given theimportance of the event to the development of the United States thatthe Civil War does not feature as a critical period and process of its modernisation. The United States’ transition to modernity is wronglycharacterised as peaceful and stable in relation not only to earlierEuropean ones (revolutionary and non-revolutionary) but also to thosecountries currently undergoing rapid change in the developing worldand in particular to those faced with the prospect of revolutionary trans-formation. This is not to suggest that revolutionary transitions arethemselves necessarily more or less violent than non-revolutionary onesbut simply to emphasise, as Barrington Moore Jr. did in relation to polit-ical ‘evolution’ in England, that American modernisation did actuallyhave an extremely high cost in human lives, even excluding the exter-mination of indigenous peoples.352 It would be more truthful to save thedesignation of ‘exceptional’ to those who were/are able to achievemodernity without much loss of blood.


While historical interpretations will vary, the work of comparing earlierinternational political, socio-economic and cultural contexts is importantbecause these have played critical roles in shaping the development and trajectories of countries and will continue to do so. Before assessingHuntington’s specific view of the global system as it relates to the prospectof democracy, let us return to his theory of modernisation as presented inhis analysis of the causes of political instability in the developing world.

The city–country gap: ‘urban breakthroughs’ and ‘Green Uprisings’

While cities obviously long predate the modern period, overwhelminglyurbanised societies are just as obviously a product of modernity.According to the author, the gap between the city and the countrysidethat opens up as a result of social and economic modernisation is theprimary source of political instability for developing countries anda ‘principal obstacle to national integration’.353

Not wishing to devalue the appalling struggles involved in securinga dignified life for the urbanising masses in the developing world, theadvantages of urban life often include higher overall living standards,more educational and economic opportunities, as well as much moredynamic forms of culture.354 What is most modern is to be found in thecity and what is most traditional, in the countryside.

Huntington refers to an ‘urban breakthrough’ to signify the politicalshift from traditional rural forms of rule to the domination of middle-class, urban rule at the national level. If the first shift towards instabilityis the appearance of new social classes with new values engaged in newforms of economic activity carried out in new ways, then the ‘urbanbreakthrough’ is significant because it signals a critical step away fromtraditional politics and the deepening of instability. The disunity of themiddle class in its struggle against the traditional oligarchy and theabsence of effective and legitimate political institutions combine to produce various forms of unstable urban politics. In addition, the inau-guration of the rural masses into national politics, the so-called ‘GreenUprising’ offers a counterpoint to urban instability which will influencesubsequent political development decisively.

There are, according to Huntington, four major forms the ‘GreenUprising’ may take. The first is that which occurs in the context ofa colonial society. Here, rural society is mobilised by nationalist intellec-tuals in support of political independence. Failure to sustain this supportafter national liberation is achieved may result in all kinds of new social


and political struggles. The second form occurs within a competitiveparty system where one segment of the urban élite develops appeals forthe rural vote to overcome the established urban-based parties. Third, a rural oriented military regime may seek to outmanoeuvre its urbanrivals by developing its own power base in the countryside. Finally, if no alliance is successfully constructed between urban élites and the rural masses from within the political system, the likelihood of ruralmobilisation against the system, namely, in the form of revolutionaryupheaval, rises dramatically.

The crucial differences involve the target of the uprising and frame-work in which it occurs. In the nationalist case, the target is the impe-rial power and the mobilization takes place within the framework ofa nationalist movement which replaces the imperial power as thesource of legitimacy in the political system. In the competitive case,the target is the ruling party and the mobilisation takes place withinthe framework of the political system but not within the frameworkof the ruling party. In the military case, the target is usually the for-mer ruling oligarchy and the mobilisation is part of the effort by themilitary leaders to construct a new political framework. In the revo-lutionary case, the target is the existing political system and its lead-ership and the mobilization takes place through an oppositionpolitical party whose leadership is dedicated to replacing the existingpolitical system.355

While urban instability is a ‘minor but universal’ characteristic of mod-ernisation, its rural counterpart is ‘major but avoidable’, according toHuntington. Three out of the four types of ‘Green Uprisings’ lead to thenon-revolutionary bridging of the gap between country and city. Thereis a price to be paid for rural support, however, and that is the strength-ening of the traditional over the modern. ‘Thus, paradoxically, theGreen Uprising has either a highly traditionalizing impact on the polit-ical system or a profoundly revolutionary one.’356 If the latter is avoidedand modernisation proceeds, the appearance of the working class (‘too weak’ and/or ‘too conservative’ to challenge the middle class)helps to shift the political balance towards the city again and the dangercomes from a renewed rural assault on urban domination. Huntingtonlabels this a ‘fundamentalist reaction’ and its containment or defeat signals the advent of political modernity. ‘The society which was once unified by a rural traditional culture is now unified by a modern urban one.’357



Table 4.2 Changes to urban–rural power relations initiated by modernisationand their effects

Phase City Countryside Comments

1. Traditional Stable Stable Rural élite rule; stability Subordinate Dominant middle class absent;

peasants dormant.

2. Modernisation: Unstable Stable Urban middle (take-off) Subordinate Dominant class appears and

begins struggleagainst rural élite.

3. Urban Unstable Stable Urban middle classbreakthrough Dominant Subordinate displaces rural élite;

peasants still dormant.

A 4. Green Uprising Unstable Stable Peasant mobilisaion (containment) Subordinate Dominant within system

re-establishes stabilityand rural dominance.

A 5. Fundamentalist Stable Unstable Middle class grows andreaction Dominant Subordinate becomes more

conservative; workingclass appears; shift ofdominance to city produces rural fundamentalist reaction.

B 4. Green Uprising Unstable Unstable Peasant mobilisation(revolution) Subordinate Dominant against system

overthrowsold structures.

B 5. Modernising Stable Unstable Revolutionaries in power(consolidation) Dominant Subordinate impose modernising

reforms on peasantry.

6. Modern Stable Stable Countryside acceptsstability Dominant Subordinate modern values and

city rule.358

Table 4.2 illustrates the types of changes to urban–rural power relations initiated by modernisation and their effects on the stability of thecity and the countryside. As with all other aspects of modernisationaccording to Huntington, the only stable polities and societies are thethoroughly traditional and thoroughly modern ones; those in between arein unstable flux. Having destroyed traditional stability modernisation cre-ates the possibility, if not necessarily the immediate certainty, of future sta-bility under new rules, values, social, political and economic institutions.

Political stability: civic and praetorian polities

Huntington distinguishes current political systems generally by theirlevels of institutionalisation and political participation. With regard to the former dimension he proposes two possible divisions, ‘high’ and ‘low’ levels of institutionalisation. Dividing participation into threepossibilities, ‘high’, ‘medium’ and ‘low’, he provides a neat range of categories of political systems, namely, ‘praetorian’ and ‘civic’.359

‘Praetorian’ political systems are those where participation is high rela-tive to institutionalisation and are typically ‘unclassifiable in terms ofany particular governmental form because their distinguishing charac-teristic is the fragility and fleetingness of all forms of authority’.360 Theycan oscillate wildly between charismatic ruler, military junta and parlia-mentary regime because their essential problem, according to theauthor, is a society that lacks political community and the institutionsneeded to socialise participation.

‘Civic’ polities, in contrast, are those where, at all levels of participa-tion, political institutions are sufficiently durable to provide the basis ofa legitimate order and a political community. ‘In a civic polity, the priceof authority involves limitations on the resources that may be employedin politics, the procedures through which power may be acquired, andthe attitudes that power wielders hold.’361

So what is the relationship between modernisation and these two categories of political systems? Huntington answers this question by reminding the reader that the attainment of a stable civic polity isnot directly dependent on the achievement of a modern society. Forexample, in terms of literacy, per capita income and urbanisation,Argentina was economically and socially a highly developed country bythe 1950s, yet politically it remained underdeveloped. ‘So long as acountry like Argentina retained a politics of coup and counter-coup anda feeble state surrounded by massive social forces, it remained politicallyunderdeveloped no matter how urbane, prosperous, and educated itscitizenry.’362 On the other hand, India remained socially underdevel-oped by the 1950s but was already politically modern and stable. Thecrucial point is that political institutionalisation must keep pace withsocial change (‘urban breakthroughs’, ‘green uprisings’, ‘fundamentalistreactions’ etc . … ) and this is possible only with the development ofpolitical institutions capable of structuring, organising and socialisingthe mass of the population. Furthermore, the only institution with thispotential capacity, whether in the context of revolutionary developmentor otherwise, is the political party.


The political party is the distinctive organization of modern politics … The function of the party is to organize participation, toaggregate interests, to serve as the link between social forces and thegovernment. In performing these functions, the party necessarilyreflects the logic of politics … [and] operates on patronage, influ-ence, and compromise. Consequently, the promoters of moderniza-tion, like the defenders of tradition, often reject and denigratepolitical parties. They attempt to modernize their society politicallywithout establishing the institution that will make their societypolitically stable. They pursue modernity at the expense of politicsand in the process fail to achieve the one because of their neglect ofthe other.363

‘Praetorian’ societies then are those with political parties, if they havethem, which are incapable of fulfilling their functions so that the socialforces created by modernisation or reacting to it become directly engagedin general politics rather than mediated and socialised by legitimateinstitutions. As Huntington says, they typically have ‘political armies’,‘political clergies’, ‘political universities’, ‘political bureaucracies’, ‘politi-cal labor unions’ and ‘political corporations’.364 Under these circum-stances, it is little wonder that political stability is so difficult to achieve.

As expansion of political participation proceeds ‘oligarchical’ praetori-anism (e.g. nineteenth-century Latin American countries with majorlandowners, leading clergy and armed forces as the dominant socialforces) is transformed into ‘radical’ praetorianism by the emergence of a middle class. The author suggests that a major source of this radicalpraetorianism in the developing world is Western colonialism becauseby weakening or destroying indigenous political institutions in Africa,the Middle East and southern Asia and stimulating independence move-ments led by the ‘offspring of the native elite or sub-elite groups’, theresults were often very weak state organisations.365

[I]ndependence frequently left a small, modernized, intellectual eliteconfronting a large, amorphous, unmobilized, still highly traditionalsociety. Africa in the 1960’s was not too dissimilar from Latin Americain the 1820’s. In the latter case creoles attempted to impose republi-can institutions inappropriate for their society; in the former case theelite attempted to impose mass institutions also inappropriate for thesociety. In each instance, political authority decayed and the institu-tions withered: the Latin American constitutions became pieces of


paper; the African one-party state became a no-party state. The insti-tutional void was filled by violence and military rule.366

As Basil Davidson has also argued in the context of Africa, while Europerequired two centuries and more to accommodate the model of thenation-state, many developing countries have had only a matter ofdecades.367 The dislodging of the nationalist intelligentsia by the mili-tary in the case of many African states has its parallels in Latin America.The distinctive quality of ‘radical’ praetorianism is the emergence ofmiddle-class political participation in the guise of a military takeover,what Huntington labels a ‘breakthrough coup’. ‘The participation of themilitary or of military groups as collectivities in politics comes only withthat differentiation of the officer corps as a semi-autonomous institu-tion which goes with the rise of the middle class.’368

The examples given of such ‘breakthrough coups’ from the MiddleEast include Iraq in 1958, Syria in 1949 and Egypt in 1952; from LatinAmerica they include Chile and Brazil in the 1920s, Bolivia, Guatemala,Venezuela, El Salvador, Peru and Ecuador during and after the SecondWorld War; and from Asia they include Thailand in 1932 and 1933,Pakistan and Burma in 1958. By challenging the oligarchy and promot-ing social and economic reforms, national integration and the extensionof political participation, Huntington suggests that military officers‘play a highly modernizing and progressive role’, especially in the earlystages of political modernisation.369

Two interesting connections between the pattern of ‘anticipatory’,‘breakthrough’, and ‘consolidating’ coups (characteristic of the shiftfrom oligarchic to middle-class praetorian regimes) and the global systemare suggested by the recurring examples of foreign trained officers beinginvolved in all three stages of coup making (usually Latin American offi-cers trained in the United States) and defeat in war finally pushing offi-cers into political action. With regard to the former, the cases ofGuatemala and El Salvador are given and for the latter the cases of Syria’sincompetent conduct of the Palestinian war and Bolivia’s defeat in theChaco War.370 However, the basic social roots of radical praetorianism liein the gap between city and countryside referred to earlier.

The extent of the instability depends upon the extent to which thegovernment is able and willing to use the countryside to contain andto pacify the city. If the government can build a bridge to the coun-tryside, if it can mobilize support from the rural areas, it can containand ride out the instabilities of the city. If the countryside is passiveand indifferent, if rural elite and rural masses are both excluded from


politics, then the government is caught in an urban prison of insta-bility and functions at the whim of the city mob, the capital garrison,and the central university’s students. If, however, the countrysideturns against the political system, if the rural masses are mobilizedagainst the existing order, then the government faces not instabilitybut revolution and fundamental change. The distinctive characteristicof radical praetotianism is urban instability. The stability of that insta-bility depends upon the exclusion of the countryside from politics.371

Each new political participant brings new resources and techniques tothe struggle. The university students with their legacy of corporateautonomy bring the demonstration and the military brings the coup. Associety moves from the first phase of radical praetorianism to its secondphase with the emergence of the urban working class into politics, thestrike is used to bring pressure upon authority.

Avoidance of ‘radical’ praetorianism for late modernisers is very diffi-cult and usually involves some combination of the early existence ofhighly developed political parties, a ruling oligarchy open to middle-class penetration and/or a highly professional army. The examples givenby the author of such avoidance are the 1916 electoral victory of theUnión Cívica Radical in Argentina and the limited and ‘supplementary’role of the 1924 military intervention in Chile.372

Finally, ‘mass’ praetorianism emerges with the political debut of the lower classes into politics and, according to Huntington, the ‘progressive’ role of the military is frequently transformed by this shiftinto a conservative one with the characteristic ‘veto’ or ‘guardian’ coup.373

If … a society moves into the phase of mass participation withoutdeveloping effective political institutions, the military becomeengaged in a conservative effort to protect the existing system againstthe incursions of the lower classes, particularly the urban lowerclasses. They become the guardians of the existing middle-classorder … their historic role is to open the door to the middle class andto close it on the lower class.374

These ‘veto’ coups usually occur when groups which the military opposewin an election (or are certain to) or when a government in powermoves in a radical direction or begins to court groups which the militaryopposes.375 This ‘guardianship’ ideology of the military, its functionexplicitly or implicitly recognised in many Latin American constitu-tions, is probably as universal an outlook as is possible to find amongpraetorian societies.


If avoidance of radical praetorianism is extremely difficult, the moveout of radical praetorianism and to a civic order is fraught with evengreater obstacles. Going through various scenarios in meticulous detail,from the possibility of students building effective political institutionsto that of the clergy doing so, Huntington concludes controversiallythat given very special circumstances, the military may be the onlysocial force with the requisite qualities and capacities to build the political institutions needed for long-term stability. ‘ … [M]ilitary intervention, which many people consider to be the source of the evil ina praetorian society, may also be the source of the cure.’376

The most important examples of successful transitions to a civic orderunder military tutelage, according to the author, are the institutionalisa-tion of the revolution in Mexico by Calles and the other military leaders atthe end of the 1920s, Ayub Khan’s innovation of the ‘Basic Democracies’in Pakistan after 1958, the creation of an effective party organisation inTurkey by Mustafa Kemal and Ismet Inönü from the early 1920s andGenerals Pak and Kim’s constitutional innovations in South Korea in theearly 1960s.377 The critical social precondition for these successes is the lowlevel of articulation of the social forces in existence – the more complexand variegated the society, the more difficult the construction of effectivepolitical institutions under middle-class military leadership.

At the oligarchical level of praetorianism, a viable, expansible partysystem depends upon the action of the aristocrats or oligarchs. If theytake the initiative in the search for votes and the development ofparty organisation, a country may well move out of its praetoriancondition in that phase. If it does not … the opportunity passes to themilitary. … If the military fail to seize that opportunity, the broaden-ing of participation transforms the society into a mass praetorian system. In such a system the opportunity to create political institu-tions passes from the military, the apostles of order, to those othermiddle-class leaders who are the apostles of revolution.378

Huntington’s analysis of military intervention in the politics of transitional societies, while profoundly acute (his analysis of praetorian-ism, like his schema generally explains the riddle of the propensity ofsemi-peripheral countries towards political violence and disorder quitebrilliantly), is too sanguine. From a more contemporary perspective, theconceptualisation of the military as being able to play the historic roleof the middle class, or the belief in developmental prospects under military rule suggests a quite anachronistic view. Of course, this is withthe benefit of hindsight after the ignominious jettisoning of numerous


military regimes from Africa and Latin America. Still, by refusing toengage explicitly with the ethical dimension of politics, Huntingtonleaves himself open to greater criticism than that of just getting his prognosis wrong.

Before we come to outline Huntington’s understanding and theorisa-tion of the role of revolution in modernisation and in order to betterunderstand why the purposeful construction of political parties neces-sary for long-term stability lags behind the mobilisation of new socialforces into politics, we need to know how Huntington conceives ofthese institutions and their relationship to society.

Huntington’s theory of the state and thepolitical community

Political institutions generally become necessary, according to theauthor, when social forces – territorial, ethnic, religious, economic orstatus groups – conflict. ‘In the total absence of social conflict, politicalinstitutions are unnecessary; in the total absence of social harmony,they are impossible.’379 So, some form of community, however rudi-mentary, must exist prior to political institutions but once created theybecome primarily responsible for maintaining and indeed promotingthat community. Taking a distinctly Durkheimean view, Huntingtonsuggests that while for a simple society community is found in ‘theimmediate relation of one person to another’, in more complex societiescommunity involves three interrelated elements:

(a) [S]ome compatibility of interests among the groups that composesociety;

(b) some definition in terms of general principle or ethical obligation ofthe bond which holds the groups together and which distinguishesits community from others; and,

(c) the creation of political institutions involving and reflecting themoral consensus [b] and mutual interest [a].380

Only with the development of political institutions can linkages betweenindividual interests and common interests be deepened and sustainedover time as well as provide the basis for regenerating a sense of commonpurpose. Since, according to Huntington and in contrast to orthodoxMarxist analyses, one of the basic consequences of modernisation is themultiplication of social forces rather than their reduction into twoopposing classes, the more complex and variegated society becomes themore dependent it is on effective political institutionalisation.381


The historical trajectory of modern polities outlined by the authorsuggests the movement from the rule of a small homogenous rulingclass through social diversification over several centuries to the develop-ment of complex political institutions that assuage the demands of newsocial groups through varied forms of political socialisation. Because thebuilding of political institutions takes considerable time and effort, aslong as social change is slow, these can be created without too much riskof political decay. Besides the timing of this evolutionary process,another critical factor in the unfolding of a modern legitimate state ableto fulfil its tasks of maintaining order, resolving conflict, selectingauthoritative leaders and promoting community is the necessity of itsinstitutions becoming increasingly independent of the social forceswhich created them in the first place. Only then can they ‘temper, mod-erate and redirect the power of each group so as to render the domi-nance of one social force compatible with the community of many’.382

Again, in his discussion of the state’s independence from social forcesHuntington reveals a quite troubling view of political legitimacy. Giventhe moral role of political institutions in his theory, the author proposesa definition of ‘public interest’ in terms of the ‘concrete interests’ of thegoverning institutions.

A society with highly institutionalized governing organizations andprocedures is more able to articulate and achieve its public interests.The public interest, in this sense, is not something which exists a priori in natural law or the will of the people. Nor is it simply what-ever results from the political process. Rather it is whatever strength-ens governmental institutions. The public interest is the interest ofpublic institutions.383

While one may or may not agree that the public interest is somethingcreated and brought into existence by the institutionalisation of gov-ernmental organisations in the first place, it surely does not necessarilyfollow that what is in the interest of a public institution must coincidewith the interests of society. What is troubling here is the conception oflegitimacy with which one is being asked to judge the matter.

In contrast to the theory of representative government, under this concept governmental institutions derive their legitimacy andauthority not from the extent to which they represent the interests ofthe people or any other group, but to the extent to which they havedistinct interests of their own apart from all other groups.384

As we have seen, for Huntington, the quintessentially modern form ofpolitical organisation, the only form that transcends the interests of


individuals and of social groups yet organises group interests witheffective authority is the political party. Why do group interests organ-ised by a political party diverge from what one might have called the‘objective’ interests of social groups? Because the political party has itsown distinct institutional interests different from class, ethnic, genderor status groups. However, one of the basic points of democratic legiti-macy is to make it more likely than otherwise that the ‘unique’ interestsof public offices, like the institutional interests of political parties, actu-ally coincide with social interests. Why else bother with accountability,representation, checks and balances and so on? If, as Huntington suggests, ‘the moral basis of political institutions is rooted in the needsof men in complex societies’, then the increasing demands for these tobe democratic must also be accounted for.

The historical trajectory of most developing countries, according tothe author, allowed for few if any of the developments referred to above.When social and economic change did come as a result of Western inter-vention, pressure and/or emulation, it was much too quick for stableand non-violent reform of political institutions. New as well as old socialgroups are mobilised without being politically socialised. Political insti-tutions are themselves typically simple expressions of the interests ofparticular social groups and, what’s more, rudimentary political com-munities can hardly be said to exist in very many cases.

Following Bertrand de Jouvenel, Huntington suggests that communitymeans ‘the institutionalisation of trust’ and that ‘the essential function ofpublic authorities’ is to ‘increase the mutual trust prevailing at the heart ofthe social whole’.385 If there is a lack of trust in the culture of a society thencreating and sustaining public institutions becomes very much more diffi-cult. According to Huntington, the Arab world, Latin America, Ethiopia,Iran, Burma and many other developing areas and countries as well assome developed ones may be characterised as ‘low-trust’ and therefore limiting individual loyalties to groups that are intimate and familiar.386

The undermining of traditional bases of association by social and eco-nomic forces in the context of such ‘low-trust’ cultures make creating‘effective, adaptive, complex and rationalised organisations’ on whichmodern politics depend extremely problematic. ‘High-trust’ cultures weare told, on the other hand, develop new forms of association with muchgreater ease and are therefore less prone to ‘confused and chaotic’ politics.

The ease with which traditional societies have adapted their politicalsystems to the demands of modernity depends almost directly on theorganizational skills and capacities of their people. Only those rare peoples possessed in large measure of such skills, such as the


Japanese, have been able to make a relatively easy transition toa developed economy and a modern polity387

Given Japan’s history, it is indeed surprising, not to say incredible, tosuggest that its transition to modernity was ‘relatively easy’. Japan’smodernisation, in fact, should serve as an excellent antidote to the con-ceptualisation of ‘domestic’ culture as somehow permanent and sociallyand politically determinant.388 For all its apparent cultural homogeneityand ‘high-trust’ status, seen from the broader perspective of its interac-tion with the global system, Japan’s transition to modernity was excru-ciating not only for the Japanese themselves but for their near anddistant neighbours as well.

For many developing countries, however, especially perhaps those ofmore recent historical construction, mistrust in the political culture dueto ethnic heterogeneity or any number of other reasons can quite legiti-mately be added to such phenomena as the interaction between veryunequal social structures with the rapid pace and unequal nature ofsocial and economic change, the force of example of modern politiesand the lack of broadly based representative state institutions to namebut a few, as part of the explanation for incoherent and vulnerable polit-ical institutions. What is less than helpful is the conceptualisation ofpolitical community, clearly an important dimension of stable politics,in purely cultural terms – remembering Barrington Moore’s dismantlingof such a conception – just as it is inappropriate to view it solely in classor ideological terms. As Huntington himself argues with rather morepessimism or paranoia than is justified, societies can actually overcomeall kinds of historical legacies to construct modern organisations.

The ultimate test of development is the capacity of a people to estab-lish and maintain large, complex, but flexible organizational forms.The capacity to create such institutions, however, is in short supplyin the world today. It is precisely the ability to meet this moral needand to create a legitimate public order which, above all else, commu-nists offer modernizing countries.389

This brings us to the author’s theory of the ‘totalitarian’ path to politicalmodernity and to the role of revolution in achieving it.

Modernisation and revolution

The rarity of revolutionary transformation should in no way weaken theconclusion that in terms of causes it is characteristic of modernisation


and, as with other forms of violence and political instability, Huntingtonsuggests that it is most likely to occur in societies which have experiencedsome socio-economic development and where political institutionalisa-tion has lagged well behind this development.390 Having occurred ineither highly centralised traditional monarchies (France, Russia, China),narrowly based military dictatorships (Mexico, Bolivia, Guatemala,Cuba), or colonial regimes (Vietnam and Algeria), they represent the‘extreme case of the explosion of political participation’ for the author.391

(He obviously could not count Nicaragua or Iran amongst the group and,from a contemporary perspective, it is interesting to note that the communist regimes were considered by the author to be pretty muchinvulnerable to revolution themselves because of their capacity to expandtheir power and to broaden participation within their system.)

Of the most likely groups to be revolutionary, the lumpen proletariat,industrial workers, middle-class intelligentsia and peasantry, only analliance between the last two could and had achieved this type of tran-sition to modernity, itself a reasonable explanation for its relative rarity.392 The peasantry has been associated with revolution for a num-ber of crucial reasons. First, being generally the most numerous mem-bers of society, for a revolution to be popular, the peasantry must beinvolved. When one considers that in a modern society the proportionof the population engaged in agriculture is almost insignificant, onebegins to imagine the cost borne by the majority in a transitional soci-ety through the road to modernity, especially with the strengthening ofthe forces of modernisation since the early European transitions. Theimpact of Western concepts of individual land ownership on communalpeasant organisation may play a part in worsening the conditions formany. The replacing of the extended family by the nuclear one mayincrease risks further and reduce the viability of plots. As traditional cus-toms to land give way to commercial considerations, inequalities multi-ply. If the goal of private ownership is to create a system of individualproprietors, its effect is often ‘to hasten the reduction of the peasant topeonage.’393 Furthermore, while the industrial worker can gain alongwith the capitalist through economic growth, the peasant works on a factor of production that is much more limited by nature. In terms ofland ownership, what the landlord gains, the peasant loses. Finally, aswith the position of industrial workers in the first half of the nineteenthcentury in Europe and America, there are few recognised and acceptedmeans through which peasants can advance their claims on politicalsystems. Quoting Celso Futardo on the campesino movement in Brazil,the author drives this point home.


Ours is an open society for the industrial worker, but not for the peasant. In effect, our political system permits the urban groups toorganize in order to press their claims within the rules of the demo-cratic game. The situation of the campesino is totally different. Sincethey have no rights whatsoever, they cannot have legal claims or bargaining power. If they organize, it is assumed that they do so withsubversive ends in mind.394

Despite rhetoric or belief to the contrary, ideologically speaking, thebridging of the gap between peasantry and intelligentsia usually meansthat social and economic improvements for the peasantry and national-ism, as a response to either military threats or foreign investment, mustbe major components of the revolutionary appeal. ‘The common causewhich produces the revolutionary alliance … is usually nationalism andthe catalyst is usually a foreign enemy. … It is impossible to have a socialrevolution which is not also a nationalist revolution.’395

Being most often, in part, also a revolt against the dominant globalsystem, Huntington recognises foreign intervention as a common con-sequence and thereby deepening of revolution as well. As for the mostcritical domestic political consequences of revolution they are seen asthe destruction of the old political institutions and patterns of legiti-macy; the mobilisation of new groups into politics; the redefinition ofthe political community; the acceptance of new political values andconcepts of legitimacy; the conquest of power by a new and moredynamic political élite; and the creation of new and more resilient polit-ical institutions.396 In short, social revolutions achieve political moder-nity. For the ‘oligarchic’, ‘radical’ and ‘mass’ praetorian societies of thedeveloping world caught in the tensions and contradictions of transi-tion from traditional stability, successful revolution, according toHuntington, is the ally of stable order and ‘the truly helpless society isnot one threatened by revolution but one incapable of it’.397

Far from being a ‘realistic’ account, from the perspective of the begin-ning of the twenty-first century, this view of the revolutionary path tomodernity is surely too ‘idealist’. In relation to the possibilities of con-structing political and socio-economic modernity, revolutions have lostmost, if not all of their shine. Fundamentally, this is a problem arisingfrom the fact that modernity itself is a moving target – a major reasonfor questioning Huntington’s inclusion of the Soviet Union as an exam-ple of a modern polity at all. In this sense, the author’s optimistic assess-ment of the long-term developmental prospects, especially of ‘Leninist’revolution, seems, again, distinctly anachronistic. With regard to the


legitimacy of revolutionary states, as has been argued previously,Huntington seems to conflate this matter with political and institu-tional stability generally, as the following extract suggests: ‘The 99 percent turnouts in communist states are testimony to the strength of thepolitical parties in those states; the 80 per cent turnouts in westernEurope are a function of the highly developed organization of partiesthere; the 60 per cent turnouts produced by American parties reflecttheir looser and less highly articulated organization.’398

It may well be the case, of course, that revolution does in fact continue to offer some developing countries a quite legitimate way ofresolving acute problems such as oppression from anti-democratic,authoritarian and dictatorial states of various kinds or of unjust andcontradictory social systems.399 The point is that the historical recordraises serious doubts about the ability of revolutionary states in thetwentieth century to sustain that legitimacy over time – or, what mayactually amount to the same thing, to sustain the social and political‘progress’ which is rightly associated with many revolutions. If the ‘historical communist’ states (like their current survivors) were reallylegitimate in the commonly understood sense of that term, one has toquestion why so much effort was expended on domestic coercion, controland the denial of pluralism. Without much real possibility of expressingdisapproval of the direction and detail of government policy, why shouldthe claims of revolutionary states to legitimacy be believed?400

Nevertheless, Huntington’s assessment of the broad causes and conse-quences of revolution, even if the international dimension is considerablyunder-theorised, as well as the contextualisation of the phenomena withinthe specific boundaries of transitional societies is certainly correct.401

Reform and political change

Defining reform as ‘a change in the direction of greater social, eco-nomic, or political equality, a broadening of participation in society andpolity’, Huntington suggests that the task of a reformer may be evenmore difficult than that of a revolutionary.402 Given the precedinganalysis, it is not difficult to see why. The reformer faces oppositionfrom conservatives and from revolutionaries, has to balance socio-economic change and political change – ‘the basic dilemma facing alltransitional societies’ – has to be adept at manipulating social forces andsophisticated in the control of social change. Dangers lurk everywherefor the reformer. If at certain periods of time and under certain condi-tions, reform seems quite able to avert more radical demands, at other


times it may serve to precipitate revolution. In nineteenth- and earlytwentieth-century Europe, the extension of suffrage, factory legislation,recognition of unions, wages and hours laws, social security and unemployment insurance are widely believed to have defused revolu-tionary demands. On the other hand, as Mikhail Gorbachev found tohis cost, limited mobilisations necessary for reform can lead to runawaymobilisation of the kind associated with revolution.

Huntington argues that for modernising countries a basic tensionexists between the achievement of social and economic equality, on theone hand, and political equality on the other. Giving more power toopposition groups through greater political equality, for instance, canslow change on the socio-economic front. Kemalist Turkey is cited as anexample of the progress in carrying out fundamental social and eco-nomic changes achieved through a highly concentrated one-party political system. ‘The shift to a competitive party system after WorldWar II … expanded political participation, made politics more demo-cratic, but also slowed down and in some areas even reversed the processof social-economic reform.’403

For the oligarchic regimes of Latin America, the problem was the exactopposite – to achieve socio-economic reform, the power of the rulingclass needed to be curbed by expanding participation to oppositiongroups. Because of this, the reformer in Latin America seemed more revolutionary due to the need to support change on all fronts while theconservative seemed more reactionary because of the opposition to bothsocio-economic and political reform. This polarisation contributed tothe violence of Latin American politics during the twentieth centuryand, indeed, the author argues that violence or the imminent likelihoodof it is a characteristic element of reform politics generally.

It is not violence per se but rather the shock and the novelty involvedin the employment of an unfamiliar or unusual political techniquethat serves to promote reform. It is the demonstrated willingness of a social group to go beyond the accepted patterns of action whichgives impetus to its demands. In effect, such action involves thediversification of political techniques and a threat to existing political organization and procedures.404

Whether reform is to serve as catalyst or substitute for revolutiondepends upon how agriculture is reformed, according to Huntington.Urban intellectuals being consistently against public policies of anydescription, it is the response of the peasantry that is most crucial to


the success of land reforms in transitional countries. Because of theirpotentially revolutionary role, their material condition must be of primeconcern to reformers. Also, given the zero-sum nature of the landlord/peasant conflict, the former must be dispossessed if the latter is to benefit from land reforms. However, for this to occur it is necessary forthere to be a concentration of power in a non-land-owning élite plus themobilisation of the peasants in support of the reforms. Not surprisingly,the most effective means of achieving such a conjunction is throughrevolution. More surprisingly perhaps, ‘the second most effective meansof bringing about land reform is by foreign occupation’.405

While colonialism has played a massive role in altering how land isorganised in the developing world, the fundamental redistribution of landcarried out by the United States while militarily occupying Japan and to a lesser extent Korea serves as an interesting reminder that ‘[p]aradoxically,the most comprehensive land reforms after WWII were produced either bycommunist revolution or by American military occupation’.406

As a dominant force in the global system, the role of the United Statesin pushing countries towards reform generally and land reform in particular carries the danger of stimulating nationalist resentment intransitional countries and therefore of backfiring against domesticreform efforts – the former, a major danger of the current war in Iraq, thelatter, a major danger in the rest of the Middle East. In any case, as wehave already seen, Huntington warns against the presumption thatsocio-economic change correlates with political stability and the authorcalls attention to the contrast between this American presumption inthe domestic sphere with that in the international sphere. ‘Have-notclasses are assuaged, have-not governments only aroused. Domesticconcessions are good; they are called reforms. International concessionsare bad; they are called appeasement.’407

Because of the coalition of social forces needed to carry out landreform, unless a parliamentary system has a non-land-owning domi-nant political party, democracy is often incompatible with it. The lowlevel of political institutionalisation characteristic of transitional coun-tries coupled with the concentration of wealth and social status in thehands of traditional élites means that when countries do have parlia-ments they are often dominated by these groups with a vested interestin blocking reforms. ‘Democratic governments are able to enact landreforms where there are vigorous and popular executive leadership andstrong party organizations with a corporate interest in winning the peasant vote.’408 However, even in the case of India, a modern polity forHuntington, once the first stages of land reforms associated with British


rule were completed, the process slowed right down due to the influenceand wealth of major landowners.409 If peasants are in a substantialmajority, democracy is so threatening to the position of landlords thatthe only alternative for them within the system is their complete con-trol of it. Unless organisational links between government and peasantsare created and landlords are bypassed through coalitions of social forcescommitted to the enactment of land reforms, they are most unlikely tooccur. Until effective political parties are created which can accomplishthis, democracy serves the interests of traditional élites too easily. Formodernising countries, the central imperative is the concentration ofpower in the political system not the pluralisation of it. The only reasonwhy democracy is on the political agenda at all is because of the unequalnature of global development and the character of ‘world-historical-time’ that raises the prospect for social groups within transitional societies of political modernity through emulation.

Modernisation and corruption: politically functional?

One last important and extremely relevant political consequence ofsocial and economic modernisation is that of corruption (the use of pub-lic office for private gain). Huntington provides three answers to thequestion of why modernisation breeds corruption. The first involveschanges in the values and norms of modernising societies.

In particular it means the gradual acceptance by groups within soci-ety of universalistic and achievement-based norms, the emergence ofloyalties and identifications of individuals and groups with thenation-state, and the spread of the assumption that citizens haveequal rights against the state and equal obligations to the state.410

The groups to accept these new norms first, according to the author, arethose who have been exposed to foreign influences including studentsand military officers. What were previously accepted as traditional pat-terns of behaviour come to be seen as corrupt in light of modern normsand as new standards of right and wrong battle old ones, the danger isthat the legitimacy of all standards is progressively undermined. In thisway, the distinctions between public welfare and private interest,between public expenditure and the private purse and between obliga-tion to the state and to the family, become accepted only very partiallyand unevenly resulting in chaotic relations between state and society.411

The second connection between modernisation and corruption is inthe building of bridges between social groups and the state – it is


a function of the lag between the expansion of political consciousnessand participation on the one hand and the construction of effectivepolitical institutions on the other. Those with new sources of wealth buypolitical influence and are politically assimilated in the process while atthe other end of the social structure political support may be traded forjobs and favours. Either way, the very fluidity and vagueness of thenorms and rules governing relations between state and society may leadto a functional form of corruption in that it acts as a crucial source ofsocial and political mobility and partial socialisation.

Like machine politics or clientalistic politics in general, corruptionprovides immediate, specific, and concrete benefits to groups whichmight otherwise be thoroughly alienated from society … . Corruptionserves to reduce group pressures for policy changes, just as reformserves to reduce class pressures for structural changes.412

Modernisation may also be said to breed corruption by greatly multiply-ing the opportunities for it. As governmental activities and functionssuch as regulation and legislation expand so too do the opportunities forcorrupt practices. This is especially so when laws have little public sup-port, when detection and/or enforcement are difficult due to fiscal ormany other pressures and when the profits from corruption are vast.

Even though its extensiveness seems a reasonable measure of theabsence of effective political institutionalisation, there is another linkbetween corruption and political instability according to the author.This is due to the political reaction of the modernising elements in soci-ety for whom the elimination of corrupt practices is the highest goal of public action. Corruption and fanatical anti-corruption both havesimilar and ultimately destabilising effects.

Both challenge the autonomy of politics: one substituting privategoals for public ones and the other replacing political values withtechnical ones. The escalation of standards in a modernizing societyand the concomitant devaluation and rejection of politics representthe victory of the values of modernity over the needs of society.413

If the processes of modernisation encourage corruption, differences inthe extent and scope of its entrenchment are best explained by thenature of the changing traditional societies themselves, according to theauthor. The key variables suggesting lower prevalence of corruptioninclude cultural homogeneity, highly articulated class or caste structureand consequently modernising ‘feudal’ societies rather than ‘centralised


bureaucratic’ ones are apt to be less vulnerable to endemic corruption.414

The argument here is that the more ‘value systems’ there are in one soci-ety the more confusing the rules and the looser the social stratificationthe less effective the norms. However, if for no other reason than theimpossibility of accurate measurement, this approach seems rather lessthan reliable, especially when ‘mulatto’ countries are contrasted with‘Indian’ and ‘mestizo’ ones.415

Huntington is on stronger ground when elucidating more general pat-terns of causation such as the lack of multiple opportunities for privatewealth accumulation in developing countries, the obstacles to suchopportunities raised by unchecked political and economic power, theforce of example set by corrupt élites, the dominance of foreign capitaland a general disregard for the rule of law.416 All in all, the prevalence ofcorruption would seem to indicate serious developmental problems.Huntington, however, argues for a more optimistic view. First, as alreadyindicated, corruption may contribute to political stability if it serves asa source of vertical mobility and political socialisation. Second, if itsprevalence is limited to the lower levels of the political and bureaucratichierarchy, it may enhance the stability of the system by substitutingwealth for ambition. Third, although transaction costs may well beraised in the process, corruption that subverts the expansion of govern-mental regulation may actually stimulate economic development. As the author puts it, ‘[i]n terms of economic growth, the only thingworse than a society with a rigid, over-centralized, dishonest bureau-cracy is one with a rigid, over-centralized, honest bureaucracy’.417

Finally, political development may itself be assisted if governmentalbureaucracy is corrupted in the interests of political parties, rather thanstrictly for private gain. The use of public funds for the purpose of creat-ing and sustaining political parties is in the long-term interest of politicalstability, according to Huntington, because these are the principal institu-tions of modern politics whose basic function is to organise and structurepolitical participation; their effective institutionalisation ultimatelyundermines the conditions that breed corruption.418 While not denyingthe importance of such a process in the national histories of many coun-tries, if this proposition was absolutely true one would expect the formerSoviet Union, for instance, to have become impervious to corruptiongiven the state’s complete subordination to the purposes of the rulingparty. This is another clear example of Huntington’s overestimation of thepolitical virtues of communist power.419 As with the experience of ‘histor-ical communism’ in Europe so too with current practice in China,Vietnam, North Korea and Cuba; relative to the population as a whole,


quite extraordinary private privileges accrue to the party nomenclatureand the higher one is in the pecking order the greater the privileges.

Furthermore, examples of rival political parties in the developingworld retaining intimate links with thugs – of the para-military varietyor otherwise – recruited, trained and armed with the proceeds of cor-ruption are legion, for example, Guatemala, Honduras, Indonesia,Jamaica, Zimbabwe and so on. If Huntington has in mind the relativelymild type of corruption associated with Helmut Kohl’s ChristianDemocrats in Germany, it is rare indeed for it not to advance to themuch more insidious variety in most countries.

Generally, despite the ingenuity of Huntington’s arguments that cor-ruption can be politically, socially and economically functional in par-ticular periods for particular countries, it is much more likely that itsubiquity corrodes public morale and political legitimacy by convincingcitizens that the entire domain of the state is purely parasitic. In addition, the astonishing profits of the world drugs trade which havewholly transformed the context faced by public officials in all countriessince the late 1960s is a reminder of the international dimensions of cor-ruption and should give one great pause in agreeing with Huntington’spositive views of it.420 The blatant flouting of laws and norms by publicofficials for private or party gain can only serve society generally byreminding ordinary people of the illegitimacy of the state that toleratesor engages in corruption and therefore by stimulating change. Themajor dilemma is that change may thus be stimulated in a democraticdirection or in an authoritarian one.421

The global system and the prospects for democracy

For our purposes, the critical lines of Huntington’s argument are clear;modernisation is driven by the interplay between the internationalsphere and domestic socio-economic, cultural and political systems ofrule and its predominant political consequence for developing countriesis political instability. The role of the global system is crucial. It is the major contextual variable in that the differences between modern,traditional and transitional or modernising societies arise only in thecontext of the globally uneven character of development. The fact of modern and traditional features within countries attests to the ‘combined’ character of this development.422

The global system is also the source and conduit of modernisation. In this regard, Huntington clearly points to the force of example in the transmission of ideas and practices – political ideologies and


consciousness, political techniques, institutional innovations, organisa-tional modes – which forms a crucial part of the processes of transfor-mation. The role of geopolitical competition and the imperativesassociated with the maintenance of domestic security in stimulatingmodernising efforts is also well developed by the author. The role of theCold War dynamic is particularly evident, forming the backdrop to theentire analysis, when discussing the strengths of communism over thoseof the western liberal model of political, institutional organisation. The historic role of colonialism in shaping many of the contradictionsand fissures within transitional societies, the effect of war and the variedpolitical significance and impact of nationalist reaction against all typesof foreign intrusion also play an important part in the analysis.

Finally, the changing configurations of the interplay between inter-national context and domestic socio-economic and political systems in terms of ‘world-historical-time’ is fundamentally important toHuntington’s scheme.423 Perhaps more than anything else, the fact thattransitional societies in the current period face simultaneous demands(international and domestic) for increased political participation anddemocratisation, centralisation of authority, national integration, socialmobilisation, economic development and increased social welfare toname but a few, while earlier modernisers faced only a fraction of these and most often sequentially, attests to the importance of ‘world-historical-time’ as a category of social scientific understanding. Itschanging nature is that of modernity itself.

While there is nothing mentioned of the possibility of internationalinstitutions impacting on modernising societies, one can perhaps suggest that the ‘conditionality’ associated with the InternationalMonetary Fund was a few years off yet. Nevertheless, the role of theUnited Nations either in promulgating specific forms of modernity oracting primarily as a forum where states in the developing world couldjustify their regimes on the basis of common difficulties and historicallegacies could have formed part of the analysis. That the example of and‘conditionality’ associated with supra-national organisations like the EU did not feature is also understandable, especially given that theextraordinary cases of political transformations related to its develop-ment, that of Spain, Portugal and Greece, were again in the future.

Nevertheless, if Huntington’s use of the category of ‘traditional’ maybe criticised on the basis of its residual character, the same is also true ofhis conception of the global system. Even with regard to the contextualbackdrop of the text, the lack of theory and discussion on the imperialisttendencies which the Cold War itself may be said to have generatedbeyond the apparent attractiveness to developing countries of the


communist model is surprising. This was, after all, a quite unique version of geopolitical competition – one based on a bifurcated view ofmodernity, arrayed globally. The fact, for example, that many of thetwentieth-century national liberation struggles actually occurred duringthe Cold War meant that pre- and post-independence instability wasoften reinforced by international pressures associated with this rivalryand, in many cases, military intervention.

Equally important, the lack of theorisation of the international politi-cal economy – of capitalism and the myriad permutations of constraints,opportunities and structurations that result from the interface betweenthe domestic and international spheres – is a major problem. There is, for example, no conception of the economic relationship between earlyand late developers consequent upon the export of primary products as a major historical legacy of colonialism and the ‘expansion of Europe’.424

The analysis is also very weak on the impact of the First World War, theGreat Depression and the Second World War on developing countries –especially Latin American ones – and the challenge to liberalism (politicaland economic) posed by economic nationalists, populists and socialists.There is, furthermore, no engagement with the structural dependencycritique which prescribed economic self-sufficiency to combat the politi-cal and economic dominance of some states and economies over othersnamely, imperialism and give substance to political independence.425

One reason why Lenin is so clearly and explicitly preferred to Marx, itmay be suggested, is because the critique of capitalism gets second billingto the political threat of communist party mobilisation.

As for the relationship between the global system and democracy inall this, the message of the text is clear: the political instability and dis-order consequent upon modernisation makes liberal democracy a mostinappropriate form of politics rather than simply an unlikely one forcountries in the developing world. The fundamental problem withdemocracy for transitional societies is that it tends to fragment and dif-fuse power rather than concentrate it. If it doesn’t disperse power, it isoften because traditional élites have a stranglehold on the system thatmilitates against modernising reforms; if it does, the authority needed tomodernise society is dissipated and disorder ensues. Quoting Madisonapprovingly, Huntington believes the lack of authority to be the mostpressing problem for developing countries.

In framing a government which is to be administered by men overmen, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable thegovernment to control the governed; and in the next place oblige itto control itself.426


This lack of authority gives communism a distinct advantage over theWest precisely because of its rejection of democracy and pluralism. ‘Thereal challenge which the communists pose to modernizing countries isnot that they are so good at overthrowing governments (which is easy),but that they are so good at making governments (which is a far moredifficult task).’427 Closing this ‘political gap’ was much more importantthan closing the ‘economic gap’, according to Huntington, the wrong-headed priority of American policy-makers. If democracy was ever to beas successful as communism for transitional societies in the context ofthe latter half of the twentieth century, the construction and institu-tionalisation of political parties had to be attended to first.

As we have seen, political parties are the necessary instruments formobilisation; elections and parliaments by contrast are the instrumentsof representation.428 The latter are quite compatible with traditionalsociety so long as they basically serve to represent the dominant forcesin the social structure. The one ray of hope given to democrats byHuntington is the suggestion that once political parties are effectivelyinstitutionalised and social and economic modernisation proceeds, thedemand for political participation may extend to the demand for uni-versal representation. ‘Organisation is the road to political power, but itis also the foundation of political stability and thus the precondition ofpolitical liberty.’429 Nonetheless, pluralism being essentially problema-tised, the role of working-class movements not to mention other socialmovements such as women’s rights and human rights groups in pro-moting sustainable pluralistic politics plays no role in Huntington’sanalysis.

Conclusion

The preceding analysis argues against the optimistic view of theprospects for democracy associated with liberal internationalism, atleast in the foreseeable future, due to the consequences of modernisa-tion for transitional societies. This view has much to commend it, notleast the fact that so few developing countries have actually managed tosustain democratic polities despite many attempts to do so or that thestruggle between modernisers and their opponents is so evident inregions of the developing world like the Middle East. Furthermore, thecentral thesis that it is transitional societies – neither ‘fully industri-alised’ nor ‘pastoral or hunter-gatherer’ – that are politically problematic,both domestically and internationally, is shared by many who havethought long and hard on this subject.430


Ultimately, however, the problem with assigning legitimacy to author-itarian regimes on the basis of their ostensibly greater ability to deliverpolitical stability, as Huntington clearly does, is not so much that atten-tion is directed away from political agency, sectional interests andresources as crucial dimensions of political hegemony as one mightexpect. Huntington is actually very thorough on these counts. The prob-lem is rather that political legitimacy can never be assumed and must betested rigorously through the very processes most often rejected byauthoritarian regimes. The fact that so many of the non-communist aswell as communist dictatorships proved to be unstable in the longer run suggests, as liberal internationalism argues, that the concentration of political power, certainly a pre-condition of modern politics, is notthe only key to the problems of ‘changing societies’ but that politicallegitimacy is also necessary for long-term stability.

To be fair to its author, much of his intellectual energy since its publication in 1968 has been expended on trying to explain why thenumber of democracies in the world has actually increased. In his lastmajor contribution to this issue-area he suggested that the most signifi-cant factor correlating with democratic transitions was that of increasedprosperity associated with global economic growth since the 1960s(higher living standards, increased education and expanded middleclass). Other factors included ‘the deepening legitimacy problems ofauthoritarian regimes’, the actions and policies of institutions and gov-ernments ‘external to that country’ (specifically, the EU, the Vatican, theUnited States and the Soviet Union) and the demonstration effect ofother successful democratic transitions.431 Clearly, the internationaldimension cannot be ignored when assessing the prospects for democ-racy but the pessimism of the conclusions of Political Order in ChangingSocieties in this regard should serve to remind us of the profoundchanges that have taken place since its publication and of the obscurityof the imminent in human history.


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5David Held’s ‘Democracy and the Global Order’432

Introduction

The purpose of this chapter on David Held is to generate insights into therelationship between democracy and the global system from a text thatis explicitly concerned with the interactions between the domestic andinternational domains, the historical origins and development of liberaldemocracy and the prospects of its survival in the context of globalisa-tion. The author argues that the liberal democratic form of state is theproduct of several interrelated factors including the development ofsocial struggles associated with demands for collective and individualautonomy, the development of capitalism and the development of lib-eralism in the context of the interaction between the international anddomestic domains.

While it is evident that much of this can be made to fit liberal inter-nationalist thought – democracy arising out of the nature of man, ofdomestic politics and capitalism, and of the interstate system – thechapter argues that Held’s analytical framework offers some importantadvances on this thought. The major advance arises precisely from thecontextualising of domestic socio-economic and political change withinthe global system and from the complexities that result from domestic/international interactions. This suggests, for example, that the liberaldemocratic form of state is, as with Barrington Moore’s analysis, asmuch the result of inter-state rivalry and competition, including thepreparation for and prosecution of war, as it is of the force of examplefrom a successful transition to democracy in any one state – a Realistroute to Kantianism.

Despite there being a lack of sustained interest in the question of whysome states failed to result in the liberal democratic form, the chapter

nevertheless argues that Held’s analytical framework is highly judiciousand allows for more convincing explanations for this than does liberalinternationalism. Nevertheless, to make up for this shortfall in thecumulative development of the argument against liberal international-ist optimism with regard to the diffusion of democracy worldwide, italso critically assesses two other frameworks – ‘dependency theory’ andthe theory of ‘Bureaucratic Authoritarianism’ – which attempt in part toexplain the lack of democracy in the developing world. This chapterargues that the contingency at the heart of ‘uneven and combineddevelopment’, including as it does the concept of ‘world-historical-time’, makes it a more appropriate theoretical framework for under-standing dynamic changes at the domestic and international level thanthe determinism of these approaches.

Finally, this chapter offers a number of points that while not neces-sarily contradictory of Held’s major arguments nevertheless representattempts to make them more relevant to the limited purposes of thisthesis. These include the suggestion that definitions of the state mustdistinguish more robustly between its ideologically loaded ideal and itshistorically contingent reality, both of which are necessary for an under-standing of politics, and the suggestion that many of the globalprocesses and forces associated with limiting the efficacy of the liberaldemocratic form of state may also be seen as actually promoting itsinternational diffusion. Ultimately, it is argued here that the domesticinstitutionalisation and consolidation of liberal democracy is itself aprecondition to the establishment of a cosmopolitan democracy whichHeld’s analysis is designed to promote.

Democracy and the global order

David Held’s book Democracy and the Global Order is an extremelyambitious work. In it, among a great many other things, the authoroffers an account of the historical development of the modern nation-state and of the international states-system, an assessment of historicalmodels of democracy, a critique of the limits of the dominant form ofstate – the liberal democratic state – and a detailed prescription for over-coming many of these limitations in the form of a cosmopolitan insti-tutional order. From the perspective of this study, what is perhaps mostappealing about it, besides its evident scholarship, is its consistent con-textualisation of democracy, in both theory and practice, ‘within the sys-tem of nation-states, international legal regulation and world politicaleconomy’, namely, the global system.433 As the title makes plain, this is

Held’s ‘Democracy and the Global Order’ 137

fundamentally a study of the relationship between democracy and theglobal order.

As with the previous chapters, it is perhaps best to be clear from thestart about the divergence between Held’s ‘problematique’ and the over-arching thesis question of this study. While the author is primarily con-cerned with reformulating democratic theory and practice in light of theforces of globalisation, this thesis is primarily concerned with the international/transnational forces that may be said to promote or hinderthe spread of liberal democracy to polities across the globe. Perhaps thisis an ‘old’ paradigm approach stuck as it is with a conception of democ-racy anchored in functional terms within domestic institutional complexes – even if constituted by the interaction between domestic andinternational/transnational forces and processes – rather than above and across polities. My view is that these are complementary approachesrather than contradictory ones. After all, Held’s project for cosmopolitandemocracy is clearly more appropriate for the politics of advanced lib-eral democracies such as those of the current European Union (EU) thanfor the majority of states, which do not have functioning democraticregimes domestically. In this sense, the differences in our respectiveinquiries may appear contradictory as when, for example, a point whichseems to suggest the diminution of state authority in light of globalisedforces may actually bode well for democratisation, if not for the demo-cratic state’s ability to absolutely determine its fate. As Held suggests,‘there is a striking paradox to note about the contemporary era: fromAfrica to Eastern Europe, Asia to Latin America, more and more nationsand groups are championing the idea of “the rule of the people”; butthey are doing so at just that moment when the very efficacy of democ-racy as a national form of political organization appears open to ques-tion.’434 And yet, precisely because so many of the world’s states areundemocratic, the reduction in their room for manoeuvre stemmingfrom international and transnational pressures may in fact herald newpossibilities for political openings to oppositional forces. The two sidesof the paradox, in other words, may have common causes.

Either way, there is much in Held’s approach that relates specifically tothe thesis question investigated here. Essentially, the virtue of contextu-alising democracy within the global system is that it shifts the focus onsocial forces and processes away from an exclusively endogenous orexogenous orientation to one concerned with the interrelationsbetween the two. If the global system does play a crucial role in socialand political change then the interaction between the international anddomestic spheres must be centre stage. Held’s major lines of argument


with regard to the interrelated nature of the historical development ofthe modern nation-state and of the international states-system, hisaccount of the international dimensions of the development of the liberaldemocratic state – how liberal democracies have ‘crystallized at the inter-section of national and international forces’435 – as well as his views of thedynamics of the current global system and its various effects on societiesand polities are all extremely relevant sources of insight for this study.

The rise of liberal democracy

Before embarking on an assessment of the so-called ‘challenges’ todemocracy posed by the global system currently – thereby giving us agood idea of how the author conceives of the international and transna-tional forces acting upon polities and, crucially, how they interact witheach other – it is important to understand how and why one variant ofdemocracy, the liberal democratic one, came about and, indeed, came toachieve hegemonic prominence internationally. As one might expect,the answers to these questions are extremely complicated and, apartfrom a careful theoretical and practical (historical) consideration ofthree models of democracy, namely, the republican, liberal and Marxistmodels, Held takes the reader from ancient Athens through dozens ofcenturies of European political theory and practice – from early feudal-ism to the emergence of sovereignty, Absolutism, constitutionalMonarchies and Republics, to the rise of the modern nation-state and itsvarious forms including the liberal democratic nation-state – in threeextremely compact and trenchant chapters.436 For our purposes, how-ever, we can begin with Held’s understanding of what constitutes themodern state – its fundamental features – before assessing the causalexplanations as to the determination of the liberal democratic variant.

Noting the inevitable controversy of definitions in political analysis,Held defines the modern state as follows: ‘Modern states developed asnation-states – political apparatuses, distinct from both ruler and ruled,with supreme jurisdiction over a demarcated territorial area, backed by aclaim to a monopoly of coercive power, and enjoying legitimacy as aresult of a minimum level of support or loyalty from their citizens.’437

The most salient conceptual and institutional innovations approxi-mated by the modern state, namely, territoriality, control of the meansof violence, impersonal structure of power and claims to legitimacy areincluded in this definition.438 Yet the matter of political community –what the term ‘nation’ presumably refers to – is treated solely as an administrative and territorial category rather than a social one.


(Of course, if ‘nation’ is to refer to people or even to ‘the people’ ratherthan to the ‘unification of an administrative apparatus over preciselydefined territorial boundaries’ then it would be impossible to avoid theendless controversies associated with theories of nationalism.439) Thereason given for this avoidance is that there are numerous types ofnation-states, some of which approximate the ‘ideal-type’ of a ‘nation’constituted by a people who share ‘a strong linguistic, religious, andsymbolic identity’ which is coextensive with a state and some that donot have these features.440 However, one need not accept ‘primordial’conceptions of the ‘nation’ to suggest at least one distinction of rele-vance to the historical study of democracy, namely, that between ethnicand civic conceptions of the ‘nation’. The contention is that given thesociological reality of ethnic heterogeneity for the vast majority of coun-tries, those in which the latter form of nationalism is most prominent,with attachments to institutions as more important than to ethnicity –and all nationalisms tend to have combinations of each – often have atleast one less obstacle to the eventual establishment of an inclusive lib-eral democracy.441 This may well amount to putting the cart before thehorse, however, in that the understanding of the nation as a communityof citizens rather than as a historical and ethnic community probablyowes as much to the triumph of liberalism within specific states as toanything else.442 Nevertheless, the various historical and contempora-neous forms of the modern state are said by the author to testify to themain institutional and conceptual features outlined above. Here, Helddistinguishes between four forms, namely, the constitutional, the lib-eral, the liberal/representative democratic and the single-party state.443

The constitutional state ‘refers to implicit and/or explicit limits onpolitical or state decision-making, limits which can be either proceduralor substantive’.444 Over time, constitutionalism came to represent a keyfeature of European liberalism, namely, that the state should be limitedin scope and constrained in practice. The liberal state came to be defined‘by the attempt to create a private sphere independent of the state, andby a concern to reshape the state itself, that is, by freeing civil society –personal, family, religious and business life – from unnecessary politicalinterference, and simultaneously delimiting the state’s authority’.445 Itsfundamental institutions included constitutionalism, private property,the competitive market economy and the patriarchal family.446

After extensive social struggle for the broadening of the franchise tothe working classes, women and ethnic minorities, the liberal state wastransformed into the liberal or representative democratic state. The rules


and institutions without which, according to Held, liberal democracycannot be said to exist are as follows:

(a) The constitutional entrenchment of control over governmental policy in elected officials;

(b) the establishment of mechanisms for the choice and peacefulremoval of elected officials in frequent, fair and free elections;

(c) the right to vote for all adults in such elections (unless legitimatelydisbarred due to severe mental illness or criminal conviction);

(d) the right to run for public office;(e) an effective right for each citizen to freedom of expression, includ-

ing the freedom to criticize the conduct of government and thesocio-economic system in which it is embedded;

(f) accessible sources of information other than those controlled by government or by any other single body or group; and,

(g) an established right to form and join independent associations,whether they be political, social or cultural, that could shape publiclife through legitimate, peaceful means.447

Finally, the single-party state, on the basis that a single party can be thelegitimate expression of the overall will of the community, is consid-ered. So, how do these examples stand up to the definition of the mod-ern state provided by the author? Considering the four features outlinedabove, namely, territoriality, control of the means of violence, imper-sonal structure of power and legitimacy it is indeed quite difficult to sug-gest that many existing or historical states fit these criteria with muchprecision or at least without major qualification. For example, if controlof the means of violence suggests the full and stable pacification (demil-itarisation) of social groups, then many contemporary states do notqualify on these grounds including the United Kingdom, Spain and, ofcourse, the United States, if for different historical differences.

Equally, if impersonal structure of power is at the very least to meanthat the ‘rule of law’ (whether or not this entails private property andcontract law) rather than the ‘rule by law’ is not in question then, again,very many countries, including but not exclusively single-party states,do not qualify. Furthermore, the problem with smuggling legitimacyinto the very definition of the modern state is that one needs to differ-entiate between different types of legitimacy – something which theauthor has been particularly good at in other work448 – and, of course,that as a key concept, legitimacy directs attention away from political


agency, sectional interests and resources as crucial dimensions of politicalhegemony.

Finally, the criterion of territoriality, like the others, is more of a claimthan a reality for many states. These difficulties indicate not only that thegiven definition of the modern state seems to be ideologically loadedwith liberal aspirations – which one can subscribe to quite legitimately asit were – but that very many states in the world, perhaps even a substan-tial majority, have simply not developed along the lines implied by thisdefinition. It seems then that at best only successful, stable liberal demo-cratic states are truly modern – a misconception that demonstrates theimportance of distinguishing, in definitions of the state, between its idealand its historically contingent reality. That its ideal is in part the productof contentious ideological conviction needs also to be made explicit.

For all this, a crucial theoretical conclusion is reached – which canhelp us understand why modern states do not, in fact, fit easily with anyhomogenous definition – in response to the questions earlier, namely,that three ‘macro-patterns’ can be seen as causally related to the rise ofthe modern liberal democratic nation-state and its international hege-mony; these are, war and militarism, the emergence of capitalism andthe struggle for citizenship.449 All three patterns, which will be consid-ered in turn, clearly involve domestic and international interactionswith distinct dynamics in terms of the institutionalisation of liberaldemocracy or otherwise. Quite rightly, Held first warns against simplis-tic unilinear determinations.

These macro-patterns all involve deeply structured processes ofchange taking place over long periods; they cannot be collapsed intoa single historical narrative, because they all developed according todifferent historical time scales, the intersection of which helped generate the rise of the modern liberal democratic state.450

It will be argued that they also helped generate other non-democraticforms of state as well.

War and militarism: the first ‘macro-pattern’

According to Held, the ‘nature’ and ‘form’ of the modern states systemas well as the ‘shape’ of the state, in terms of its ‘size’, ‘external configu-ration’, ‘organizational structure’, ‘ethnic composition’, ‘material infra-structure’ and so on, were largely determined at the intersection of theinternational and national spheres.451


At the heart of the processes involved was the ability of states to secureand strengthen their power bases and, thereby, to order their affairs,internally and externally. What was at issue, in short, was the capacityof states to organize the means of coercion (armies, navies and otherforms of military might) and to deploy them when necessary.452

That the military functions of the state were of principal importance inits development is demonstrated by analyses of state finances over manycenturies. Taking the case of the development of the English state, thefigures indicate that ‘from about the twelfth to the nineteenth century,between 70 and 90 per cent’ of its financial resources were devoted tothese functions, especially to the preparation and prosecution of foreignwars.453 Despite the character of the state in question, whether it was‘absolutist’ or ‘constitutional’, the very high proportion of expendituredevoted to the military was apparently quite uniform. Given the struc-ture of states (their dependence on resources extracted from society, thecontested basis of power and authority etc.), and of the states-system(political units in a competitive and adversarial, ‘self-help’ framework),‘the development and maintenance of a coercive capability were centralto the development of the state’ and to their chances of survival.454

By this account, then, the institutional development of the modernstate in terms of its administration, bureaucracy and coercive capabilitycan be traced back to the interaction between increasingly territoriallybound and limited systems of rule and an international sphere charac-terised by potentially deadly rivalry. To compete successfully interna-tionally meant to organise effectively domestically and vice versa.

The process of state-making, and the formation of the modern statessystem, was to a large degree the result, as Poggi has observed, ‘of thestrenuous efforts made by rulers, each by means of his/her apparatusof rule, to widen and secure their power base and to increase theirown effectiveness and discretion in managing and mobilizing socie-tal resources.’455

This escalating need to co-ordinate and control subject populations,given the increasing scale of war, can also be related to the emergence ofa more consensual state. As Göran Therborn probably overestimates, thedemocratisation of the modern nation-state was largely a ‘martialaccomplishment’.456 The logic of this dynamic is that the more the staterequired of society in terms of men, food, all manner of supplies, and, ofcourse, of finance, the more potential leverage did social groups have in


relation to the state. Held quotes the following passage from RobertDahl to great effect.

…to see oneself as a member of a nation, a privilege for which one wasexpected to make sacrifices, could also justify one in making a moreexpansive claim, including a right to a fair share in governing…or atany rate [as] entitled to the franchise. Countries with massarmies…ushered in the Age of Democratic Revolutions. It was underthese historical conditions in which military organisation and technol-ogy were more favourable to democratisation than they had been formany centuries that…the institutions of polyarchy [liberal democracyas defined by Held on p. 51] took root in one country after another.457

The allusion here to membership of a political community (the nation)is also vital to the argument. There is every indication that war itselfwas/is instrumental to the development of national consciousness andthat a heightened sense of national belonging – obviously useful forstates – has in many circumstances coincided with demands for politicaland even social equality to bring about quite radical change.458 We havealready commented on the socially transforming power of war espe-cially with regard to the extension of the franchise and the developmentof welfare states in previous chapters. This is frequently related not sim-ply to the organised demand for changes on the part of distinct socialstrata or groups, nor solely to the institutional and organisationalrequirements of states, but also to related broad attitudinal shifts in society at large. According to Amartya Sen:

The expansion of programs of support for nutrition, health care andso on in Britain was not uniformly fast over the decades. There weretwo periods of remarkably fast expansion of support-oriented policiesin [the 20th] century; they occurred during the two world wars.During the First World War, there were remarkable developments insocial attitudes about ‘sharing’ and public policies aimed at achievingthat sharing … During the Second World War also, unusually sup-portive and shared social arrangements developed, related to the psy-chology of sharing in beleaguered Britain, which made these radicalpublic arrangements for the distribution of food and health careacceptable and effective.459

Despite all these possible connections between war/militarism and theeventual development of liberal democracy, Held rightly reminds the


reader of the variety of historical trajectories leading to this outcome.States such as Austria, Germany, Italy and Japan institutionaliseddemocracy ultimately not through the stimulus provided by massmobilisation warfare but through defeat or imposition. Furthermore,preparation for war and a heightened sense of nationalism were/are, asoften as not, opportunities for states to deny any concessions to opposi-tion forces and for military organisations to increase their influence onpublic policy. In addition, even if one accepts these historical connec-tions as feasible for mainly Western European states, the vast majority ofcountries and territories from the late eighteenth to the mid-twentiethcenturies experienced precious little democratic practice at the hands oftheir domestic and foreign rulers. The extension of the franchise toworking-class males in Europe more or less coincides with ‘the age ofempire’.460

This brings us to a crucial point. If there is such a thing as a true pre-requisite for the establishment of democratic politics it is this; statepower must first be consolidated before ‘institutional contestation’ cantake place.461 To the extent that the processes and dynamics exploredhere are related to the consolidation of modern states then they alsorelate to the achievement of this prerequisite. But these processes anddynamics are also implicated in the delaying and challenging of stateconsolidation internationally and therefore in undermining theprospects for democracy.

Clearly, the logic of mass mobilisation warfare, despite its potential to‘politicise’ large numbers of people, to provide an impetus towardsgreater social and political equality, and to shift the balance of powerbetween state and civil society towards the latter, cannot be said on itsown to explain the advent of liberal democracy nor its internationalhegemony, though it does help in shedding light on some of the broaddevelopments associated with the emergence of modern states.

The development of capitalism: the second ‘macro-pattern’

Held begins this section with a string of characteristically cogent questions.

1. How does consideration of economic relations, and of the impact ofthe development of capitalism … affect the view of states as compet-ing geopolitical entities under pressure to extend the process of representation to all those called upon to serve them?


2. Did the modern state system shape and constrain the modern capitalist economy as it developed after AD 1500?

3. Or was the formation of the capitalist economy on a progressivelymore international basis a, if not the, prime determinant of the scopeor limits of the modern state?

4. As state boundaries became more fixed, did the state’s formal rulers‘rule the roost’, or was the ‘roost’ impinged upon more and more bythe rising economic classes?

5. In short, what was the effect upon state organizations and representativeinstitutions of the development of the modern economic system?462

Following Braudel and Wallerstein, Held argues that capitalism origi-nates from the period of ‘the long sixteenth century’, namely, from 1450to 1640, and that it was ‘from the beginning an international affair’.463

In broad terms this development is said to have ushered in a ‘funda-mental change in the world order’ in that, for the first time, ‘genuinelyglobal interconnections among states and societies’ were made possibleand, as distant corners of the world were penetrated, ‘far-reachingchanges to the dynamics and nature of political rule’ were broughtabout.464 While distinguishing between merchant and industrial capi-talism, the latter signalling for the first time convergence between theactivities of capitalists and the capitalist system of political economy bythe mid-eighteenth century, Held argues that ‘[i]t was a combination ofagricultural and navigational opportunities’ as well as ‘the continuouscompetition for resources, territory and trade’ which helped stimulatethe European economic dynamic.465

As the intertwining of geopolitical and economic objectives becameincreasingly discernible the ‘state slowly became more embroiled withthe interest of civil society’.466 The increased fiscal demands induced bymilitary commitments are said to have triggered, throughout the seven-teenth and eighteenth centuries, a growing ‘coordinating’ role on thepart of the state with respect to the activities of civil society. With ‘thespread of competing claims to property rights and the demands of sub-altern groups’, the developing capitalist economy also required a moregeneral regulating role to protect the economic basis of the state itself.467

There were also dynamics working from civil society to the state.

The other side of this process was, of course, the growing enmeshmentof civil society with the state; for the latter’s capacity in principle tostabilize and enforce law, contracts and currencies – to provide a coor-dinating framework for the new, emerging, capitalist economy – made


it a growing object of attention for the powerful groups and classes ofcivil society who hoped to shape state action to suit their own interests.468

Acknowledging the contingency at the heart of the relationshipbetween state organisations, representative institutions and socialclasses in the era of state formation, Held nevertheless argues that cer-tain ‘patterns’ are discernible due to the filtering of state developmentthrough the social structure of societies – ‘the particular constellation ofsocial classes and groups, organized around different kinds of resourcebase, which were either cooperative with or resistant to state-makers’.469

For example, following the work of Rueschemeyer, Stephens andStephens, Held suggests that the extension or denial of state representa-tion to subaltern social strata can be causally explained, in part, by ref-erence to the ‘capital-intensive’ or ‘coercion-intensive’ productionmethods of a region or country.470

In fact, where an economically significant class of landlords, depend-ent on a supply of cheap labour, had control of or a significant influ-ence on the state apparatus (as they did in the Russian Empire, forinstance), particularly fierce resistance was generated to the exten-sion of any form of representative or democratic rights.471

By contrast, in ‘capital-intensive’ regions (‘areas of marked commerce,where market and exchange relations prevailed’), capitalists and mer-chants had good self-serving reasons and the necessary power to strug-gle for the extension of representation to include their interests.472 Tothe extent that this was achieved by reform rather than revolution,there appears to be reasonable grounds for accepting that in some of these ‘capital-intensive’ areas, not withstanding intense conflictwithin and between social strata, an alliance between state modernisingélites and emerging bourgeois classes against the remnants of feudalprivilege was constructed successfully ‘up to and during the first phaseof the industrial revolution’.473 Nevertheless, there were limits to thisalliance due partly to the capitalists’ struggle to ensure the economy’sfreedom from arbitrary political interference.

It is at this juncture that the emerging economic classes often becamethe reforming classes of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,seeking to conjoin the struggle for an independent economic spherewith the struggle for representative government. The chief connecting


mechanism was the attempt to establish civil and political rights…Thepursuit of [which] over time reconstituted the nature of both the stateand the economy – driving the former towards a liberal democraticpolity and the latter towards the capitalist market system.474

That the bourgeoisie’s role in democratic reform was essential is widelyaccepted and most trenchantly put by Barrington Moore’s injunction of‘no bourgeois, no democracy’. While the exact meaning of citizenshipmay have remained contested for decades to come the interests of capi-talists in ‘setting the direction of state action’ and thus forcing ‘the insti-tutionalisation of contestation’, increased as the state’s coordinatingrole expanded and ‘became more involved in determining the condi-tions of civil society’. Yet a major conclusion reached by Rueschemeyer,Stephens and Stephens is that capitalist development contributes todemocracy not because of the interests of capitalists in reform but ratherby altering the balance of class power in favour of subordinate interests –specifically, by creating and strengthening the working class and weak-ening the landed upper class.475 According to these authors:

The respective positions of the bourgeoisie and the working classshow that capitalism creates democratic pressures in spite of capital-ists, not because of them. Democracy was the outcome of the contra-dictory nature of capitalist development, which, of necessity, createdsubordinate classes, particularly the working class, with the capacityfor self-organisation. Capitalism brings the subordinate class orclasses together in factories and cities where members of those classescan associate and organize more easily; it improves the means ofcommunication and transportation facilitating nationwide organiza-tion; in these and other ways it strengthens civil society and facili-tates subordinate class organization. Though the working class hasnot proved to be the gravedigger of capitalism, it has very frequentlybeen capable of successfully demanding its own incorporation andan accommodation of at least some of its substantive interests. Noother subordinate class in history has been able to do so on anywherenear the same scale. … [D]emocratic capitalism rests on a class com-promise between labor and capital in which the interests of bothsides are to varying extents accommodated.476

Held’s contention, however, can be fully justified in broad terms, as hisargument at this point is that the development of capitalism and the riseof the bourgeoisie created the context in which the struggle for democracytook place over several centuries.


Liberal democracy and citizenship: the third ‘macro-pattern’

Given the old as well as new forms of social and political stratification, thefinal ‘macro-pattern’ concerns the struggle on the part of groups andclasses for the achievement of ‘degrees of autonomy and control overtheir lives’. The author sees this as a struggle for citizenship or member-ship of the political community, decisively shaped by the changing con-tours of liberalism. ‘Throughout the formative phase of the modern state,the struggle for membership in the political community has largely beensynonymous with the attempt to establish a form of popular sovereigntythrough the entrenchment of civil and political rights.’477 The establish-ment of civil rights (‘liberty of the person, freedom of speech, thoughtand faith, the right to own property and to enter into contracts, and theright to be treated equally with others before the law’) in turn fosterednew freedoms such as those associated with territorial mobility andrelease from occupational restrictions. That these rights were essential tothe burgeoning capitalist economy of the eighteenth century is clear;modern contract, the basis of waged labour, factory ownership and news-paper proprietorship, for example, are hardly conceivable without indi-viduals ‘free and equal’ under the law.478 Moreover, the attainment of civilrights was a step in the development of political rights; ‘for when theindividual agent was recognized as an autonomous person – that is, as aperson able to reflect upon and take decisions about the basic conditionsof life – it was easier to think of that person as, in principle, capable ofpolitical responsibility.’479 No less important, a population withentrenched civil rights, however rudimentary these were in comparisonto current ‘best practice’, could more easily and effectively agitate for‘political rights’ – ‘those elements of rights which create the possibility ofparticipation in the exercise of political power as a member of a politicalassociation, or as an elector of the members of such an association’.480

While the extension of political rights throughout the nineteenth andtwentieth centuries owed much to the active struggles of social move-ments including those of the organised working class, for women’s suf-frage and for equal representation of ethnic minorities, the author furthersuggests that the convergence of at least ‘three critical factors’ provideclues as to how citizenship crystallised in the form of civil and politicalrights and how it was that liberal democracy triumphed over its alterna-tives. The first, termed ‘reciprocity of power’, refers to the recognition thatnational systems of regulation increasingly depended on the cooperationof subject populations, and not simply during national emergencies.481 AsRueschemeyer, Stephens and Stephens argue, under industrial capitalism


certain subordinate social strata achieve new and unintended capabilitiesthat were often transformed into socio-economic and political leverage.The resulting social interdependence combined with entrenched civil andpolitical rights – in part the result of the interdependence – altered thesocial and political landscape beyond recognition, leaving a more con-tractual basis of political authority than traditionally constituted.

The second related critical factor concerns the exhaustion of tradi-tional forms of political legitimacy. ‘The legitimacy promised by systemsof representative democracy was based on a recognition of a reciprocalrelationship between governors and governed, in which, on the onehand, the latter had a duty to respect the law and the authority of thestate and, on the other hand, the former had a duty to act fairly in accor-dance with the broad mandate of “the people”.’482 Liberalism, based asit is on individualism, may have always contained the possibility of for-mal political equality in latent form, but in Europe this was onlyachieved with the diffusion of social power contingent with industrial-ism and often vigorously pursued by those who desired to transcendboth liberalism and capitalism. In other words, the principled argu-ments, which helped transform political liberalism, were themselvestransformed in part by the rise of new social forces created by industrialcapitalist development. Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to creditindustrialism with so crucial a development for liberal democracy as thesecularisation of political authority and legitimacy. In this regard, long-term trends associated with the Enlightenment and the development ofscientific rationalism – with which capitalism is inextricably bound –would have to figure as well as the various political ideologies of mod-ernism that rejected theological bases of political authority.

The final critical factor refers to the compatibility of liberal democracywith the capitalist economy in that as long as ‘democracy’ was notextended to the organisation of production, it could be ‘made safe’ fora market society. Only with the separation of the political from theeconomic sphere, in other words, could liberal democracy have beensuccessfully institutionalised. Since liberal democracy has only everdeveloped under broadly capitalist conditions, the stressing of this com-patibility between democracy and capitalism is often used to suggesteither the hollowness of democracy or alternatively the continued desireof subaltern social strata for the continuation of capitalist development –otherwise, the latter, through their representatives, would have usedtheir democratic rights to radically alter capitalism. Both these positionshave merit but tend to underestimate the mutual transformation thatactually occurred. If democracy was made safe for capitalism then capi-talism has been made safe for democracy – the ‘taming’ of capitalism


through legislation evidenced by the development of the welfare stateand the success of many struggles for equal opportunities and treatmentis a familiar enough story as is, on the other side, the ‘embourgoisement’of a large proportion of advanced capitalist society.

If these considerations sound somewhat too materialist in not giving sufficient regard to the role of ideas in transforming social andpolitical affairs, Held’s ‘principle of autonomy’ rightly corrects this presumption.

Struggles for citizenship and democracy have been guided by theanticipation of a political order which does not arbitrarily shape andconstrain choices for individuals and groups. The urge to obtain thisorder is an urge towards a fuller measure of autonomy … an urge torealize what I call ‘the principle of autonomy’ – a principle that recog-nizes the indispensability of ‘equal autonomy’ for all citizens … Theanticipation of autonomy for each and all constitutes a regulative idea –an idea which has guided conflicts over the institutionalization ofdemocracy. It is an idea, moreover, which has provided a normativestandard which could be turned against existing institutions, as it hasbeen by working-class, feminist, anti-racist and anti-colonial activists,to reveal the extent to which the principles and aspirations of equalliberty and equal political participation remain unfulfilled.483

Not unlike the concept of ‘thymos’ employed by Francis Fukuyama (aswith Plato or Hobbes), this ‘urge’ is itself a quite global phenomenonwhich, given the force of example demonstrated by the relative politicaland economic success of the advanced liberal democratic state, helpsexplain at least partly the widespread and popular calls for the emula-tion and replication of liberal democracy.484

Taken together the three ‘macro-patterns’ of war and militarism, thedevelopment of capitalism and the evolving conceptions of citizenshipconstitute a highly judicious framework for analysing not simply thedevelopment of the liberal democratic nation-state but of modern formsof state sui generis. In order to highlight further the role of the globalsystem in this development and, more importantly, the current work-ings of the global system, one needs to assess Held’s views on the challenges to democracy posed by globalisation.

Globalisation and the challenges to democracy

The book itself begins with an analysis of the challenges facing demo-cratic theory and practice from a contemporary perspective – though he


often reminds the reader of the mythic qualities of historic justificationsfor democracy or, to put the point rather differently, of the accommo-dations in practice to the fact that many such limitations, such as thefrequently constraining power of international factors, were alwaysthus. Nevertheless, Held believes that the contemporary condition her-alds not simply an opportunity to clarify inherent tensions within tra-ditional models of democracy but poses fundamental challenges thatmust be addressed if democracy is to ‘survive and prosper’.485 Moreover,according to the author, the dangers of failure in this regard are alreadyvisible in the ‘current revival of sectarian politics and the use of force,evidenced in the resurgence of right-wing politics in Europe, the inten-sification of racism and the spread of ethnic and political separatismthroughout the world’.486

As we have seen, the mutual determination of the local and the interna-tional has been especially marked in the modern era. The development ofthe concept of globalisation, popularised in the last two decades or so butstill not without conflicting interpretations, signals a deepening, wideningand speeding up of the forces and processes which are its sources. DavidHeld has been among the leading interpreters of this phenomenon.487

Positioning himself between the ‘hyperglobalists’ and the ‘sceptics’,Held argues that contemporary globalisation is distinguished by ‘uniquespatio-temporal and organizational attributes; that is, the extensivity,intensity, velocity and impact of global flows, alongside distinctive pat-terns of institutionalization, modes of contestation, stratification andreproduction’.488 These socio-economic, political and cultural processes,it is argued, represent a unique challenge to the Westphalian principle ofsovereignty by articulating ‘overlapping networks and constellations ofpower which cut across territorial and political boundaries’.489 As aresult, the three key traditions in democratic theory namely, republi-canism, liberalism and Marxism are unable to cope with many of the following developments associated with globalisation:

(a) The manifold dynamics of the global capitalist economy which pre-clude the vast majority of states individually from exercising even amodicum of control over their effects;

(b) the proliferation of new forms of collective decision-making involv-ing states, intergovernmental institutions and international pressuregroups all responding to the rapid growth of transnational links;

(c) the expansion and intensification of transnational communications;(d) the proliferation of military technologies and weapons as a ‘stable’

feature of international relations, and;


(e) the development of urgent transnational problems which do notrecognise national boundaries for example, the degradation of theenvironment.490

So long as democracy, in both theory and practice, is exclusively embed-ded within the domestic sphere of nation-states, the international andtransnational processes that constitute globalisation will increasinglychallenge its continued salience, effectiveness and, ultimately, legitimacy.If ‘at the core of the self-image of the modern state lies its claim to be a“circumscribed impartial power”, accountable only to its citizen body’,then the realisation of the strength of transnational constraints and pres-sures acting upon it will eventually shatter this illusion.491 Moreover, theincreasing divergence ‘between the totality of those affected by a politicaldecision and those who participated in making it (however indirectly)within a democratic state’ is at the core of the contradiction betweennational/domestic models of democracy and a globalised world.492

Intellectually, the task of mounting a coherent critique against thecurrently limited conceptions of democracy involves transgressing the‘old disciplinary grounds’ of political knowledge. As Held puts it:

For too long the concerns of political theory, political economy,international relations and international law have been kept sepa-rate, with persistently disappointing outcomes. Significant begin-nings have been made in recent times to reinstate elements of thesedisciplines, but a great deal of ground remains to be covered. At issueis rethinking the nature, form and content of democratic politics inthe face of the complex intermeshing of local, national, regional andglobal relations and processes.493

Notwithstanding the importance of this task, for the purposes of thisinquiry, we can move to Held’s assessment of the global system.

After a careful analysis of the evolution of the global system fromWestphalia to the present, the picture that emerges contains some quitetraditional conceptions and quite a few novel ones, if clearly a part of anhistoric process. Held summarises this section with the following points:

1. The inter-state system developed in the context of two keyprocesses: the assertion of the state to sovereignty and the spread ofnew economic relationships on a global basis via capitalist eco-nomic mechanisms. States faced both inwards towards their popu-lations and outwards towards the states order created andmaintained by the states themselves. The Westphalian model of


state sovereignty granted each state an entitlement to rule in itsown territories while endorsing ultimately the principle of effectivepower; thereafter, the ‘security dilemma’ of the state locked allstates into a process of actual or potential conflict with each other.

2. The development of the United Nations system did not funda-mentally alter the logic and structure of the Westphalian order.Powerful states had their authority enhanced through the grant-ing of special powers. Nevertheless, the UN system containswithin it legal and political developments (e.g., providing an inter-national forum in which all states are in certain respects equal anda vision of a new world order based upon a meeting of govern-ments and, under appropriate circumstances, of a supranationalpresence in world affairs championing human rights) which pointto the possibility of a new organizational principle in world affairs.This vision, however, is in marked tension with the form anddynamics of the state system itself.

3. Globalization, a process reaching back to the earliest stages of theformation of the modern state and economy, continues to shapeand reshape politics, economics and social life, albeit unevenlywith differential impacts on individual countries. The stretching ofsocial relations across space and time, via a variety of institutionaldimensions (technological, organizational, legal and cultural), andtheir intensification within these institutional domains create newproblems for and challenges to the power of the state and the inter-state system. Against this background, the effectiveness andviability of the sovereign, territorially bounded nation-state seemsto be in question. [Nevertheless] … the nation-state continues tocommand loyalty, both as an idea and as an institution.494

As for the analysis of the varying impact of the global system on domes-tic polities and societies, this is usefully arranged in terms of a series of‘external disjunctures’ ‘between the idea of the state as in principle capa-ble of determining its own future, and the world economy, internationalorganizations, regional and global institutions, international law andmilitary alliances which operate to shape and constrain the options ofindividual nation-states’.495 These disjunctures help clarify just whatconstitutes the most salient features of the current global system andhow they interact with domestic systems of rule. As such, they provideat least some basis of judgement as to whether the institutionalisation of democracy at the domestic level can be said to have any necessaryrelation to the workings of the global system.


The issue at the heart of the ‘disjunctures’ is not whether the complexinternational environment shapes and constrains the options open toindividual nation-states; clearly, it does. The central question for Held iswhether the global system taken as a whole is shaping and constrainingthe state to such a degree as to fundamentally alter the ‘relevant com-munity’ or ‘relevant constituency’ for democratic systems of rule. Heanswers in the affirmative and goes on to construct a cosmopolitandemocratic framework or architecture that reassembles such a relevantconstituency. For us, on the other hand, the question is whether theshaping and constraining is aiding and abetting the institutionalisationof democracy at the national level or otherwise.

Disjuncture 1: international law

If there is one area where developments at the international level seemto be moving in the same direction as many if not all of the proponentsof democracy desire, it is that of international law. The transition in thetwentieth century from a conception of international law as exclusivelybetween states – safeguarding the central Westphalian principles of statesovereignty and non-interference – to one which recognises individuals,governments and non-governmental organisation as subjects, has beenremarkable. In particular, from the precedents of the InternationalTribunals at Nuremburg and Tokyo, the Preamble and Article 13 of theUnited Nations Charter, the European Convention for the Protection ofHuman Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, the American Conventionon Human Rights, to the Organisation of African Unity’s adoption ofthe Charter of Human and People’s Rights, the extraordinary growth of humanitarian international law has challenged the presumption ofnation-states, both ethical and legal, to unfettered national sovereignty.As Fred Halliday has argued:

The growth of international humanitarian law has set up not only abody of law, but a set of standards and criteria by which all countriesin the world may be judged, in their domestic as in their interna-tional conduct. Against those who claim that all invocations of theinternational interest, or authority, are nebulous, it can be arguedthat international law is substantial and specific. It relates to suchmatters as the conduct of war, and the rights of individuals and com-munities. International humanitarian law has, since the 1940s, accu-mulated over ninety instruments and conventions. Negotiated bystates, this body of law constitutes an authority that is superior to the


interests, or customs, of nations. It is in clear contradistinction to theethical principles of nationalism.496

In an era of ‘intensified social reflexivity’ and revolutionised communica-tions, the standards by which the conduct of states are judged are increas-ingly accessible, not least to those who have good reasons to demandpolitical pluralism of the sort associated with liberal democracy.497

Though controversial, international law has also driven the interna-tional community – or at least those states within it which take thesematters seriously and whose leaders have calculated that they have littleto lose in doing so – to increase the accountability of political leaderswho breach international humanitarian standards while in office. Thishas begun to have an impact as the case of General Pinochet, amongothers, has illustrated – it is indeed unlikely that he would have beenstripped of his domestic legal immunity were it not for his protracteddetainment by Britain.

There are also, within international legal documents, increasinglyexplicit references to democracy as the prime legitimate political frame-work. The European Convention on Human Rights, the conditions ofmembership to the EU as well as the declaration of the HelsinkiConference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) fall into this category.498 In addition, of course, Article 21 of the UniversalDeclaration on Human Rights stipulates the right to take part in gov-ernment through free and fair elections. Because of democracy’s ideo-logical and practical affinity with many of the most prevalent humanrights issues, as well as its increasingly perceived links with security concerns (see Disjuncture 3), the marginalisation of non-democraticregimes is a key trend of humanitarian international law. While obvi-ously not insurmountable, this marginalisation can serve as an obstacleto the further political and economic integration into the global system,the forgoing of which, particularly under globalised conditions, may besaid to exact an increasing cost.

Disjuncture 2: internationalisation of political decision-making

This issue-area relates to the ‘rapid expansion of transnational links, thegrowing interpenetration of foreign and domestic policy, and the corre-sponding desire by most states for some form of international gover-nance and regulation to deal with collective policy problems’.499 Theresulting proliferation of international regimes and organisations has


led, in turn, to new forms of multilateral and multinational politics and‘distinctive styles of collective decision-making’ whereby states interactwith other institutions in an increasingly dense web of political relations.

Unlike the more technical international agencies and organisa-tions such as the Universal Postal Union and the InternationalTelecommunications Union, organisations like the World Bank, theWorld Trade Organisation (WTO), the IMF, and the UN are ‘preoccupiedwith more central questions of the management and allocation of rulesand resources’ and therefore have been ‘highly controversial and politi-cized’.500 This is especially so because, as Held rightly argues, the latterhave ‘benefited over the years from a certain “entrenchment of author-ity” which has bestowed on some decisive powers of intervention’.501

Along with these institutions are the more informal ‘global networks ofpolitical co-ordination’ such as the Group of 7/8 (G7/8). Taken together,the growth of such organisations clearly demonstrates the increasingcomplexity of the international environment within which states nowoperate but is there anything in this condition of ‘complex interde-pendence’, which might suggest the promotion of liberal democracy?

Much has been said and written about the injurious impact of theIMF’s ‘conditionality’ and ‘structural adjustment’ programmes not leastof which is the charge that the living standards of the least advantagedwithin the countries affected have declined, primarily though not exclu-sively through cuts in public expenditure. We will look at these mattersmore closely when considering the disjuncture between the formalauthority of the state and the operation of the world economy (seeDisjuncture 5). For now, although it is apparent that all the ‘disjunc-tures’ are closely related and overlap in various ways, it is perhapsenough to register the fact that the major international governmentalinstitutions broadly reflect the interests, values and ideas of the wealth-iest and, in most respects, the most powerful countries in the world.Economically, this currently entails the promotion of neo-liberalism –the determination of prices for the factors of production (land, labourand capital), distribution and exchange by the operation of ‘free’national and international markets and therefore for a reduced role forthe state in this regard, and for the integration of national economiesinto the international capitalist system through ‘free trade’.502

Politically, a commitment to liberalism by the major governmentalinternational institutions is also increasingly marked.503 The end of theCold War has helped in raising the issue of ‘good governance’ to a cen-tral plank of development policies. Without the overriding geopoliticalconcern with losing client states to the ‘enemy camp’, the leading liberal


democratic states have been much more inclined to use their considerableinfluence and leverage to promote political reforms in the developingworld in return for assistance. The loss of assistance from the SovietUnion, its successor state’s current commitment to democratic norms –however inconsistent and partial – and the consequent evaporation ofan alternative political model upheld by a major European power haveadded to this considerable pressure.

That the restraints and conditions are being set by a ‘dominant coalition’ which ‘effectively control’ the major institutions of global governance and regulation, is without doubt.504 Nevertheless, the‘nationalist’ and ‘anti-imperialist’ response that is often generated as aresult of this and other types of ‘conditionality’ would have greatermoral and political purchase if the affected states were themselves moreaccountable to democratically organised domestic forces. After all, whenthe political community is itself severely restricted internally by anauthoritarian political system, it is ironic that élites should complainabout the infringement of self-determination by international politicalagents – an irony devalued by the centrality of the international rule ofsovereignty/non-interference. Furthermore, the problem is not exclu-sively with élites as anti-imperialist/anti-foreign sentiments are notwithout appeal and reassurance to more popular audiences. Moreimportantly, the loss of assistance or, in the more extreme cases, of theimposition of economic sanctions means that the costs and burdens ofadjustment fall on those least able to influence the distributional poli-cies of states. For this reason even the threat of foreign pressure can beused for popular mobilisation against it although there have been casessuch as those of South Africa and Burma where oppositional leadershave themselves supported international sanctions along with sizeableproportions of their followers.

Another significant factor at work in the promotion of ‘good gover-nance’ by international institutions is the growing belief among devel-opment academics and activists in the practical benefits of democracyfor the prospects of social and economic development. Perhaps the lead-ing academic in this area is Amartya Sen whose offering, Development asFreedom, makes a convincing case for democratic government as themost effective political framework for the promotion of most aspects ofdevelopment.505

Arguing against those who support various types of authoritarian–bureaucratic regimes on the basis that they can fulfil the economicneeds of the masses more effectively by focussing on economic rather


than political and civil ‘rights’, Sen calls for the ‘general pre-eminence’of the latter due to the following considerations:

1. their direct importance in human living associated with basic capa-bilities (including that of political and social participation);

2. their instrumental role in enhancing the hearing that people get inexpressing and supporting their claims to political attention(including the claims of economic needs);

3. their constructive role in the conceptualization of ‘needs’ (includingthe understanding of ‘economic needs’ in a social context).506

Beyond these considerations are a number of arguments such as that theempirical evidence suggests no correlation between economic growthand authoritarianism, as well as that the evidence of popular strugglesfor democratic freedoms ‘in South Korea, Thailand, Bangladesh,Pakistan, Burma and elsewhere in Asia’ suggests the absurdity of theproposition ‘that poor people in general do not care about civil andpolitical rights’.507

As for the proliferation and impact of international non-governmentalorganisations (INGOs), some of the best known ones tend to be those institutions such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch,and so on with solidly progressive agendas which serve in a crucialrespect to raise awareness of the authoritarian and indeed brutal natureof many states and of the often incredibly heroic actions of individualsand groups struggling to reform them. Though it is extremely uncom-mon for Western academics to speak in these terms about them, theseliberal-minded INGOs can also be said to be placing pressure on theautonomy or ‘practical sovereignty’ of states through their effect oninternational and domestic public opinion. Beyond the issue of ideolog-ical sympathy, however, this relative silence is perfectly reasonable andunderstandable given the fact that the international environment is lit-tered with INGOs whose intentions, practices and resources have at bestan ambiguous relation to ‘progress’ and ‘development’ and at worst arethe antithesis of these. In the former category some would place inter-nationally organised religious and business groups – though manywould not be so charitable given the centrality of issues such as birthcontrol and, of course, capitalist exploitation – while in the latter thevarious Mafia would surely fit without controversy given the immeasur-able social and individual costs associated with the illegal trade in drugs,guns, pornography and human beings.


As for the INGOs concerned with environmental issues such asGreenpeace, the fact that the major polluters in the world are the devel-oped liberal democracies – essentially the Organisation for EconomicCo-operation and Development (OECD) countries – means that differ-ences between democracies and dictatorships are often obscured or donot in fact come into play in their campaigning efforts. After all, from astrictly environmental perspective, though its people may be trying tosurvive on grass, North Korea is destroying the world’s environmentmuch more slowly than the United States or Brazil. Much of the radicalecological analysis focuses on the economic organisational differencesbetween capitalism and socialism and their respective ecological out-comes while ignoring the specific political dimensions of each.508

Nevertheless, there is considerable evidence to suggest that democraticpolities are more responsive to social concerns and are therefore morelikely to incorporate environmentally sensitive policies more quicklythan authoritarian ones, though obviously not necessarily adequatelyenough to avert calamity. According to John Dryzek, not only was thedegree of environmental degradation in the industrial areas of much ofthe former Soviet bloc considerably worse than in the world’s capitalistdemocracies, but also in some of the latter the environmental impera-tive has actually had a democratising effect.

In fact, as environmental regulation has grown over the past two ormore decades it has been accompanied, at least in North America, byincreased democracy in policy making. Far from being characterisedby deals between regulators and polluters behind closed doors, envi-ronmental policy has featured a variety of process innovationsdesigned to increase the level of informed public participation in pol-icy making. Examples include right-to-know legislation, public hear-ings of various kinds, and impact assessment procedures that specifyopportunities for public comments on written documents and sub-missions to formal hearings. The environmental movement itselfconstitutes not only a public interest lobby but also a channel for theparticipation in politics of large numbers of people motivated bysomething other than material self-interest.509

As with the first disjuncture, the only conclusion to be drawn is therecognition of a trend towards the explicit support of political democ-racy by the major international institutions. The above reasons given forthis support by the more important governmental institutions and atleast the more progressive non-governmental ones are in no way


exhaustive but do point to an increasingly instrumental position andnot simply an ideological or ethical one, however important the lattermay be. Though the explicit support for liberal democracy is not with-out contradictions and countervailing tendencies – the most obviousones being the outweighing of political imperatives by economic ones(see Disjuncture 5) and the centrality of the international rule of sover-eignty/non-interference – it is nevertheless significant.

Disjuncture 3: hegemonic powers and international security structures

In this section, Held is primarily interested in highlighting the con-straints on the kinds of defence and foreign policies imposed by theglobal power hierarchy as well as by the forms of collective security associated with military alliances.

The Cold War period provides clear examples of what Held refers to asthe ‘internationalisation of security’ both with regard to NATO’s jointand integrated military command structure and, even more obviously,to Soviet control of the Warsaw Treaty Organisation – the sovereigntyand autonomy of member states’ policies were more than ‘qualified’ inthe latter group while, in part, the evident competition ‘for scarceresources, arms contracts, international prestige and other means ofnational enhancement’ in the former camp resulted in a process ofnegotiation of state sovereignty and autonomy.510 The extent to whichthe Warsaw Treaty Organisation in general and the ‘Brezhnev Doctrine’in particular came to be associated with ‘containing and policing’ theSoviet bloc is evident from the more or less immediate consequences ofthe adoption by Gorbachev of the ‘Sinatra Doctrine’ namely, theRevolutions of 1989.

Apart from these considerations, of course, the sometimes tacit andsometimes open support provided by the United States and its demo-cratic allies on the one hand and by the Soviet Union or China on theother for ruthless and anti-democratic regimes in Europe and the devel-oping world throughout much of the Cold War amounts to a grandalliance against pluralist politics. The end of ‘bipolarity’, as Held rightlyargues, has not eradicated the constraints on state security policy butrather reconfigured them. North Atlantic Treaty Organisation’s (NATO’s)establishment of the North Atlantic Cooperation Council (NACC) aswell as the Partnership for Peace suggests the continued recognition ofthe limits of state autonomy and sovereignty or the perceived need forpooling these attributes.511


Underpinning all these concerns with the ‘corrosive consequences’for state sovereignty and autonomy of the structure of internationalsecurity is the ostensibly inherent ‘security dilemma’ of the inter-statesystem.

The interconnectedness of states and societies means that one coun-try’s national security policy has direct consequences for that ofanother; and the dynamics of the security system of the global orderas a whole has consequences for each and every nation. In makingnational security decisions, a government not only governs for itselfbut governs for others. If a country feels threatened, it might increaseits ability to threaten others, which will in turn have security impli-cations for those beyond the immediate parties involved.512

Combined with the advent of weapons of mass destruction and theirinternational proliferation, it is clear that what is at stake is not just theautonomy of states but also the very survival of the human species. Heldalso argues that the logic of statist security ‘denies democracy interna-tionally by reinforcing the sense of the separateness of sovereign states[and] erodes democracy within nation-states by legitimating institutionswhich are hierarchical’.513 Furthermore, in the context of the Cold War,this statist logic locked Third World countries ‘into an arms race andsecurity posture which mimicked the great powers, especially the UnitedStates and the Soviet Union’.514 That the resources expended in this fash-ion could have been better spent elsewhere is, of course, irrefutable.

However, if there is one element missing from these deliberations it isthat of the debates around the nature of regime types. Held’s pessimismwith regard to the intractability of the ‘security dilemma’ is arguably duein part to the lack of engagement with questions arising from the rela-tionship between regime types and international security and conflict. Itis the undoubted interdependence of security, as with so much else,which has given the concern with promoting democracy its newurgency in the post-Cold War context. The break up of a number ofstates – most notably Yugoslavia and the former Soviet Union – and thereturning spectre of civil war in Europe partly as a consequence of thenew fluidity in world politics, has led to resurgence in the internationalconcern with the question of domestic political legitimacy. Despite dif-ferences in approach, strategy and policies among the dominant coali-tion of states, their belief in liberal democracy as the only long-termlegitimate and stable political order – especially for European states asthe criteria for EU membership makes clear – is significant.


The resurgence among the hegemonic powers of what Kenneth Waltzreferred to as ‘second image’ reasoning is matched by the growth ofscholarly attention given to the ‘democratic peace’ thesis whereby mili-tary conflict between established liberal democratic states is argued to beexceedingly unlikely.515 Whatever side one takes on this thesis, the factthat war between the major liberal democratic states does appear to beextremely fanciful and, furthermore, that the domestic stability of thesestates appears reasonably secure merits serious consideration given thehistory of the modern world. The reduced autonomy resulting frominternational pressures for political reform would seem to be a verysmall price to pay for results as unambiguously positive as the thesis sug-gests namely, ‘the end of international relations as power politics’.516

Besides pressure from the hegemonic powers and the accumulation ofacademic arguments, as we have seen from the previous sections, thepromotion of democracy is not just a matter of the dearth of alternativemodels. Public opinion in democracies against cutting deals withauthoritarian states as much as public opinion within these states infavour of political reform suggests a coincidence of the strategic and theethical. According to Timothy Garton Ash, dictatorships display ‘aremarkable family likeness’ with ‘endless lying in state controlledmedia’, ‘the violence behind the lies’, ‘the sheer intractability of coun-tries that cut themselves off from more civilised neighbours’ and ‘theunpredictability that comes with a silenced people who one day will cry:Enough!’517 Given the renewed belief that undemocratic regimes makeparticularly unpredictable and violent neighbours, it seems most likelythat cosmopolitan democracy is itself contingent upon the stabledomestic institutionalisation of democracy.

Disjuncture 4: national identity and the globalisation of culture

Beginning with an analysis of the relationship between the formation ofnational identities and advancing communications technologies andsystems, Held argues convincingly against the simplistic thesis that theglobalisation of mass culture will lead inevitably to global homogenisa-tion. On the one hand, the argument is that ‘national cultures and iden-tities are deeply rooted in ethno-histories and are thus quite unlikely tobe stamped out by the imprint of global mass culture’.518 On the other,the argument is that the globalisation of mass culture itself generatesbacklashes against the dominant Western forms of culture by enhancingawareness of difference and by ‘[making] possible a denser, more intense


interaction between members of communities who share common cultural characteristics, notably language; and this fact enables us tounderstand why in recent years we have been witnessing the re-emergenceof submerged ethnic communities and their nationalisms’.519

So, not only may domestically hegemonic national identities bestrengthened by the communications technologies and systems that area key component of globalisation but also that of sub-national groups aswell. If the challenges are from above and beyond the nation-state aswell as from below it, the result, according to Held, is nevertheless ‘indeterminate’.

… [W]hile a growing disjuncture can be noted between the pull ofnational identities and the diverse orientations of contemporary cul-ture and communication systems, it is far from clear what the exactoutcome will be. It is improbable either that a global culture willemerge or that national identities will persist unaltered by theirenmeshment in wider communication structures … Certainly, theoutcome itself is beyond the immediate control of individual nation-states and of their infrastructural reach. The cultural space of nation-states is being rearticulated by forces over which states have, at best,only limited leverage.520

From the perspective of the spread of democracy, the globalisation ofmass communications technologies and systems can clearly be seen in afavourable light – assuming, of course, that one shares in the desire to seesuch a process take place. First, as previously indicated, at the broad socio-economic and political level, despite vast cultural differences, the spreadof the modern form of state (and nation) as well as the transformations ofpre-capitalist economic organisation throughout the world are testamentto a truly remarkable global homogenisation – the result of coercion, competition, imitation, defensive modernisation and influence.521

Second, in the context of the particular institutional and politicalforms associated with liberal democracy, the increasing ‘awareness ofdifference’ intensified by the globalisation of communications systemsmakes the ‘force of example’ argument more not less compelling. Veryfew can take ‘nationalist’ pride in their country being associated withwidespread and institutionalised repression. The role of mass communi-cations in revealing to ordinary citizens of the former Soviet bloc thegap between the reality of life in the West and that of the official versionmay well be indicative of the potential for political reform (and revolu-tion) of globalised mass communications.522


Finally, the fact that it is indeed ‘the images, artefacts and identities ofWestern modernity, produced by the cultural industries of Western soci-eties (including Japan!), which dominate the global network’, may meanthat, to the extent that any political model in the broadest sense is rein-forced as ‘normal’ internationally, it is likely to be a democratic one.523

This is not in any way to suggest that what is considered ‘Western’ is notin fact more the product of global, transnational interpenetrations of cul-ture than it is a product of endogenous formation but rather to invitecurrent political and ideological comparisons. After all, what would thelikely political content of global communication systems be if SaudiArabia, Burma or China had the dominant influence?

As with the previous disjunctures, the loss of the state’s ‘practical sovereignty’ due to the increased complexity and impact of internationalforces – in this case the forces associated with global communications sys-tems – is not an incontrovertible loss from the point of view of the spreadof democracy. Nevertheless, the push and pull are clearly not in one unam-biguous direction and the next section will deal with the source of manyof the evident contradictions, namely, the world capitalist economy.

Disjuncture 5: the world economy

This section deals with the globalisation of economic forces and theirlimiting effects on ‘the competence and effectiveness of national politi-cal authorities’.524 Concentrating mainly on two aspects of internationaleconomic processes partly associated with multinational corporations(MNCs), namely, the internationalisation of production and finance,Held makes a convincing case for supposing that under globalised condi-tions ‘a government’s capacity to pursue independent macroeconomicstrategies effectively is, at best, tightly circumscribed’.525

The major reasons for this are essentially to do with developments thatsuggest that states and societies increasingly depend on private sources ofinvestment and production for the creation of wealth (employment andrevenue); that thanks partly to technological developments in the fieldsof communications and transportation, the functions associated withprivate ownership are increasingly organised globally, and; that the con-sequences for polities and societies include the misfit between invest-ment and production decisions on the one hand and local and nationalconditions on the other, the erosion of boundaries ‘which were a neces-sary condition for independent national economic policies’, and gener-ally, increasing vulnerability to capitalist disinvestments, national andinternational, namely, to the decisions of private corporations.526


Clearly, although this is not part of Held’s analysis in this section, forthe first two conditions to apply, political support was essential. As KarlPolanyi argued, ‘[t]he road to the free market was opened and keptopened by an enormous increase in continuous, centrally organised andcontrolled interventionism’.527 The paradox of state power in pursuit ofgoals whose consequences serve partly to limit its future scope of actionmay seem stark but it is not uncommon. It clearly mirrors the submis-sion of states, such as it is, to international law and to collective securityarrangements, for instance. It is only paradoxical if one takes the pri-mary goal of states to be the maximisation of autonomy. But states maybe said to have many goals such as security, wealth, social cohesion andsocial justice, which may not be easily reconcilable.528 To put mattersthis way, however, is to risk falling into the trap of treating the state as aheuristic device.529 Furthermore, from the perspective of this study, suchan approach would miss the salience of democracy precisely because itassumes that those who control the state simply reflect the interests anddesires of the people as a whole.

Therefore, before assessing the impact of the world capitalist economyon the prospects of democracy and on the way it may be said to affectthe previous disjunctures, consideration will be given to two well-established theories which place particular emphasis on the role of theinternational economy in greatly limiting the scope of domestic politicsfor developing countries and yet do not assume the state to be inde-pendent of social forces, namely, ‘dependency theory’ and GuillermoO’Donnell’s theory of ‘bureaucratic-authoritarianism’.530

The challenge of dependency theory

Trying to make sense of the complex interactions between the interna-tional economy and domestic political economy, which is at the heart ofthe globalisation debate, is not, of course, a new endeavour. Outliningsome of the major criticisms to the approaches above, generated over thepast several decades, may help to shed light on the limits to the threatposed to state sovereignty by globalisation or at least to highlight someof the theoretical/analytical pitfalls which abound in this area of debate.

Despite the risks involved in summarising the arguments of a greatmany writers – such as imparting more coherence to the approach thanit possesses – Bill Warren has enumerated the major contentions of‘dependency theory’ convincingly in the following six points:

1. Dependency is ‘the conditioning structure of poverty’ (Dos Santos).2. Poverty is the result of (or is equated with) underdevelopment.


3. ‘Development and underdevelopment are partial, interdependentstructures of one global system.’ The development of the core coun-tries is the consequence of the underdevelopment of the periph-ery; the underdevelopment of the periphery is the consequence ofthe development of the core (Dos Santos).

4. In other words, the global system is such that the development ofpart of the system occurs at the expense of other parts.

5. Underdevelopment is not simply non-development, but is a uniquetype of socio-economic structure brought about by the integrationof the society concerned into the sphere of the advanced capitalistcountries (Frank).

6. Thus: ‘Dependence is a conditioning situation in which theeconomies of one group of countries are conditioned by the devel-opment and expansion of others. A relationship of interdepend-ence between two or more economies or between such economiesand the world trading system becomes a dependent relationshipwhen some countries can expand through self-impulsion whileothers, being in a dependent position, can only expand as a reflec-tion of the expansion of the dominant countries, which may havepositive or negative effects on their immediate development.’531

With its preponderant emphasis on international economic processesone may be forgiven for concluding that ‘dependency theory’ containsa radically ‘determinist’ approach to politics. Indeed, in so far as the theory’s argument suggests the inconsequential character of formal polit-ical independence as well as the impossibility of economic and politicaldevelopment for ‘underdeveloped’ countries, so long as exchange rela-tions with the world capitalist system are neither severed nor radicallyaltered, this deterministic approach has proved to be its Achilles’ heel.532

Nevertheless, its theory of state, implied either explicitly or implicitly, isbased on alliances of local, national and transnational classes – foreigncapital, ‘comprador’ bourgeoisie, feudal or semi-feudal landed interestsand national industrial capital all controlling the state and ensuringcontinued ‘underdevelopment’ in varying alliances while workers, peas-ants, intellectuals and sometimes a progressive industrial bourgeoisie arelined up as the ‘objective’ opponents of oligarchy who must be eitherrepressed, bought off or both.533 Unlike previous ‘late-developers’ whoactually used state power to promote development in the face of com-petition from abroad, current underdeveloped countries are said to facefar stronger ruling-class alliances, domestic and international, which actto direct state power towards narrow oligarchic interests and to make


the revolutionary usurpation of political power by their opponents bothmore likely and desirable.

The major criticisms of this approach are based on the general growthof industrialisation in the developing world since the Second World War(including the quite astonishing industrial development in a number ofthese countries), the very unevenness of economic development –which may suggest any or all of the following: a less than monolithicstructure of the world capitalist economy, complex combinations ofmodern and pre-modern features, as well as the availability of a widerrange of policy options than expected logically – and the unimpressiveeconomic and political record of ‘socialist’ countries.534

According to Bill Warren, one of the most damaging legacies of‘dependency theory’ and indeed of most post-Leninist Marxism is itstotal abandonment of the ‘capitalism as the bridge to socialism’ thesisand within this the importance of the achievement of liberal democracy.

It was not the mere existence of the working class as the principalexploited class of capitalism that made it the historic instrument ofsocialism, but the specific social and cultural characteristics, andpolitical experience, that the conditions of capitalism tended to giveit. Most notably, these were the increased independence of the indi-vidual workers from customary personal relationships of servitudeand the collective organization encouraged by their aggregation inlarge factories. Furthermore, parliamentary democracy was consid-ered the characteristic political form of bourgeois rule and, up to theRussian revolution, was regarded as both the best political environ-ment for the functioning of the socialist movement and the neces-sary training ground for the working class to acquire the skillsrequired to run a socialist society.535

For ‘dependency theory’ generally, the lack of liberal democracy in theunderdeveloped world is taken as suggestive of the need for naked coercion to maintain rates of surplus extraction and to provide anappropriately ‘safe’ environment for private property, investment andaccumulation of capital. The complex social alliances, international anddomestic, which collude to sustain such conditions, constitute a struc-tural bulwark against political pluralism. The actual achievement ofdemocracy in many parts of the underdeveloped world, perhaps espe-cially Latin America that provided the backdrop for most of these theo-rists, runs completely counter to theoretical expectations.

Nevertheless, the institutionalisation of democracy cannot in and ofitself be said to alter the structural relations of dependency unless and


until ‘autocentric’ or ‘anti-systemic’ strategies become state policy.Although arguably such strategies did develop under the guise of importsubstitution industrialisation (ISI) with populist coalitions at the helm ofstates for some time, the fact that most developing states, democratic orotherwise, seem to be moving in the opposite direction – towards eco-nomic liberalisaton – may be taken as confirmation of the theory’s corebelief that political democracy is an ‘epiphenomenon’. In any event, so theargument runs, bourgeois democracy is hardly an achievement worth sus-taining because, where it exists in the underdeveloped world, it invariably(pace Barrington Moore’s analysis of Indian democracy) serves to furtherthe interests of the oligarchy and its very existence in the metropolitancountries has been made possible only by the continued impoverishmentof the Third World. True democracy, ‘humanity’s control over its own life’,the only variety worthy of political commitment and theoretical consider-ation cannot exist under systemic capitalist conditions but must await‘armed revolution leading to socialist development’.536

If it seems incredible that no consistent theory of democracy wasposited by the ‘dependency’ approach it should be remembered that iftaken as a serious sign of political progress, democratisation underminesthe basic premise of its argument. Even leaving aside the point aboutprogress, why the particular class alliances and balance of class forces inthe core countries can lead to liberal democracy while this outcome hasbeen much less common in the periphery seems a matter worth consid-ering, but only if the political form itself is taken to be salient. Generallyspeaking, both ‘dependency theory’ as well as much of post-LeninistMarxism has concluded that it is not.

As Amartya Sen has argued, this is a major problem on several counts –instrumentally, constructively and ethically.537 Furthermore, by devaluing the salience of the form of state, ‘dependency theory’obscures an important dimension of the consequences of interactionbetween the international and domestic systems. The analytical prob-lems of accounting for the unevenness of economic developmentthroughout the periphery are compounded by the lack of engagementwith the variation of political systems.

Bill Warren’s criticisms of ‘dependency theory’ revolve around twomain points. First, its origins in Bolshevik expediency carries the cost ofbetrayal of classical Marxism, namely, its diagnosis, prescriptions andprognosis are badly wrong, failing to grasp even the most obvious fea-tures of the post-Second World War period such as the historicallyunprecedented improvements in the productive forces throughout theworld or the associated consequences of population growth. Second, the popularity of its analysis derives from it being psychologically


satisfying to nationalist (anti-foreign) sentiment and, echoingSchumpeter, to the ‘populist leftism’ of bourgeois intellectuals.538

However, just as ‘dependency theory’ suffers largely from its determin-ism, the same can be said of Warren’s analysis. If for the former all thatis bad and unjust with the world, and this includes just about every-thing, is the direct fault of capitalism, for the latter, too much that isconsidered good and historically progressive is also the direct result ofcapitalism.539 In other words, the role of political ideologies and move-ments, institutions, policies and personalities are denied salience inshaping social reality.

The key implication for current globalisation debates is not that classanalysis is an inappropriate methodology for assisting our understand-ing of the world but that the basic framework of ‘dependency theory’ –its fundamental assumptions and propositions – is too rigid to makegood use of it and fails ultimately to capture what are probably the mostimportant features of the world capitalist political economy, namely, itscomplexity and dynamism. On both counts, Warren’s analysis is supe-rior to its rival. What is clear is that deterministic approaches to the rela-tionship between economic and political development, by excludingthe importance of contingent factors such as political agency, are ulti-mately too simplistic to shed much light on these matters.

The challenge of bureaucratic-authoritarianism theory

Seeking to explain the return of authoritarian governments, particularlyin the more advanced countries of South America during the 1960s and1970s that seemed totally at odds with modernisation theory’s majorlines of argument, Guillermo O’Donnell’s theory of ‘bureaucraticauthoritarianism’ placed great emphasis on the responses of the stateand of class-based politics to the problems engendered by these coun-tries’ dependent position in the international capitalist system.540

According to Rueschemeyer, Stephens and Stephens, the core argumentsof the theory are as follows:

Import substitution industrialisation (ISI) had expanded the urbanmiddle and working classes and brought to power populist coalitionswhich deliberately activated popular forces, particularly throughlabor organisation and included them in the political process.Economic growth underwrote the costs of social welfare policies.However, the progress of ‘easy’, or ‘horizontal’, i.e. consumer goodsimport substitution behind high tariff walls depended on growing


imports of capital goods, paid for by exports of primary goods. Thisdevelopment strategy ran into trouble when foreign exchangereserves accumulated during World War II were exhausted and bothprices and demand for Latin America’s primary exports declined afterthe 1950’s. The severe balance of payments problems caused domesticinflation [and] [a]ttempts to impose stabilization policies hurt thepopular sectors, divided the populist coalitions, and created politicalcrises. The growth of ISI had also enlarged the number and range oftechnocratic roles in the public and private sectors [whose interestslay in] ‘deepening’ industrialisation i.e. creating a capital goodsindustry … [S]uccessful pursuit of this strategy entailed reduction ofpopular consumption in order to generate higher domestic invest-ment levels (as taxation of the wealthier sectors was not even consid-ered as a realistic alternative), and attraction of foreign capital. Thecrucial obstacles in this path were militant labor movements andpopulist politicians. This constellation led to the formation of a coupcoalition among civilian and military technocrats and the big bour-geoisie. They discarded democracy as incompatible with further economic development and installed bureaucratic-authoritarianregimes. These regimes insulated economic policy makers from pop-ular pressures and deactivated unions and left-wing political parties,by force if necessary. Thus, it was exactly in the more advanced of theLatin American countries that particularly harsh authoritarian rulewas imposed in the 1960’s and 1970’s.541

Unlike ‘dependency theory’ (and reminiscent of Huntington’s analysis),the political form of state, the dynamic formation of class and thechanging balance of class forces are seen as intimately interrelated to theinternational capitalist system and are key variables in the political out-comes. Nevertheless, the analysis seems to share with the dependencyapproach an expectation of similar results from countries at similar lev-els of development, despite differences in the timings of these authori-tarian transitions. As Jeffry Frieden has suggested, the reason for this isthat both approaches ‘assert a simple relationship between starting levelof development and subsequent economic and political outcome’ andboth ‘rely for the explanation on structural characteristics of the domes-tic and/or international orders’.542

Assessing the theory’s economic predictions, the expectation of ‘deep-ening’ import substitution industrialisation by authoritarian regimes iseasily repudiated for the simple reason that military regimes such asthose of Chile and Argentina – precisely the ones most closely associated


with the ‘crisis of easy import substitution’ – were resolutely opposed todeepening ISI. What is more, extending the logic of the analysis forwarda few years, rather than lead to a collapse of democracy in Mexico andVenezuela as the theory would seem to imply, the severe balance of pay-ments crisis of the 1980s actually led to a collapse of authoritarianism inBrazil and Argentina.543

In a comparative political economy study of Argentina, Brazil, Chile,Mexico and Venezuela over the 20-year period from 1965 to 1985, JeffryFrieden concludes the following:

[The study] rejects structural hypotheses about democracy andauthoritarianism, but does not suggest equally uncomplicated alter-natives. No simple relationship existed between economic growthand political openness, between position in the international politi-cal hierarchy and domestic repression, or between economic crisis andbureaucratic authoritarianism. Where democratization took place itwas largely because dissatisfaction with the economic situation –especially business dissatisfaction – was not addressed satisfactorilyby military regimes, causing demands to escalate from calls for policychange to calls for regime change. Democracy did not grow out ofstructural conditions faced by nations or groups, but rather out of thecontingent interaction of groups in a political arena in which contention over policies came to affect debates over regime types.544

There are several implications for the globalisation debate of the forgo-ing discussion. First, the conception of a class of owners of the means ofproduction, the bourgeoisie or even the more limited ‘technocracy’ as aunified and coherent grouping with more or less identical political andeconomic interests that is able to direct public policy is only very excep-tionally an analytically useful one. The modern political economyapproach, which stresses the importance of economic policy to eco-nomic outcomes, insists on the centrality of political pressures in thedetermination of these policies and argues for the crucial importance ofeconomic interests to political behaviour, would seem to be much betterserved by the addition of sectoral interests based on internal cohesionand asset specificity and concentration.545

As an example of this approach and in a specific contribution to thedebate over the determination of economic liberalism internationally,Frieden argues that trade liberalisation, privatisation and other market-oriented trends in the economic policies of many developing countriesshould be understood as neither the result of external political pressures


nor of domestic technocratic ascendancy. Rather, the trend towards economic liberalism should be seen as the result of several interactiveelements. The first is the reduction in external resources available to thepublic sectors of developing countries in the wake of the 1980s ‘debt cri-sis’. ‘In this sense the reduction of budget deficits throughout the developing world is a predictable response to the disappearance of inex-pensive foreign finance.’546 The second is sectoral political demandsfrom firms and individuals that stood to gain from more liberal policies.‘Real currency depreciation and domestic stagnation drove many LatinAmerican producers to search for overseas markets. The resulting export-ing interests tended to exert anti-protectionist pressures on policy, in the developing world as elsewhere; the same was true of the accumu-lation of overseas assets by LDC nationals.’547 Finally, because in a few ofthe Latin American cases that Frieden looks at intense class conflicttended to reduce sectoral pressures on policy-makers in favour ofdemands for a hospitable investment climate more generally, this over-all decline in specific sectoral demands was said to be a factor in pro-moting liberalisation.548 In other words, by the 1980s intense classstruggle in the Southern Cone resulted in more economic liberalism notless. In addition, there must be room in any analysis of the trendtowards economic liberalism for what may be termed ‘political learn-ing’. That is, the struggles by socio-economic and political forces tochange policy direction are partly informed by the shortcomings of previously tried developmental models.

The specific international pressures towards economic liberalism asso-ciated with the IMF and World Bank – their research, analyses, adviceand financial leverage (from their own lending to the potential capitaltheir ‘green-light’ can mobilise in the private sector internationally aswell as its opposite, the denial of these) no doubt has a critical impor-tance. The fact that a liberal economic model supported by the domi-nant powers exists, must itself surely help in foreclosing policyalternatives for developing countries. Moreover, the demonstrationeffect of successful export-oriented industrialisations, in terms of eco-nomic growth and equity, such as those of the Asian Tigers reinforcesthe appropriateness of these trends.549

Turning specifically to democracy, it is clear that the level of demo-cratic development cannot be simply read off from the level of capitalistdevelopment. The variability of social structure, of relations betweendominant and subordinate classes and of these to policy-makers, of ide-ological commitment, of political leadership, of historical and currentrelations with the world economy and so on help explain what is


plainly obvious, namely, that democracy now exists in very differentdevelopmental contexts.

As already stressed, countries do not face identical international eco-nomic conditions. Even when, for example, broadly similar interna-tional financial conditions can actually be said to exist, as with theabundance of investment capital in the wake of 1970s ‘oil crisis’ and theconsequent recycling of petro-dollars, the differences in countries’exports and imports, their underlying endowments, their social struc-ture, political systems, institutional legacies and their historically estab-lished ties with other states mean that massive differences arise in theuse to which such funds are put if they are borrowed at all.550 In otherwords, the contingency at the heart of ‘uneven and combined develop-ment’ would seem to make it a more appropriate theoretical frameworkfor understanding dynamic changes at the domestic and internationallevel than the determinism of the dependency or bureaucratic authori-tarianism approaches.

One final point is that both approaches ignore the dynamics associ-ated with interstate competition generally and with the Cold War specif-ically. The latter is a spectacular oversight given the extent of political(including military), economic and ideological mobilisation – on bothsides of the divide both domestically and internationally – which thisprecipitated.551 Again, the privileging of the socio-economic level ofanalysis, even if predicated on domestic and international interaction,runs the risk of leaving too much out of the analysis.

Disjuncture 5 (continued)

Held’s analysis of the impact of globalisation on the scope for politicalaction is both sensitive to differences at the national level and insistenton the point that the internationalisation of economic forces has nar-rowed the options for policy-makers generally.552 The trend towardsregionalisation, it is argued, is a clear indication of this diminution ofautonomy at the national level.553 Of course, from Held’s perspective, asstate autonomy is challenged by globalisation so democracy is whatneeds to be reconfigured internationally and rescued. But is there anysense in which one can reasonably argue that economic globalisation isactually promoting the institutionalisation of democracy domestically?Might it not be the case that as states increasingly open their societies upto or are opened by the various economic forces associated with global-isation their options in terms of political systems are also narrowed?This brings us back to the central paradox identified by Held that just as


states and societies are increasingly vulnerable to international forcesmore of them are becoming constitutionally democratic.

We have already noted two arguments that suggest strong causal cor-relation between capitalist development and democratic government,namely, those of Rueschemeyer, Stephens and Stephens and Bill Warren.While there are important differences between them, both seem to takethe view that capitalism diffuses power and organisational capacities tosubaltern social strata, which have stronger interests in democratisationthan do capitalists themselves. Held’s analysis also suggests that thestruggle of capitalists to differentiate the economic from the politicalsphere at a particular historical conjuncture was conjoined by the strug-gle for political and civil rights and that this helped push modern statestowards liberal democracy. Moreover, many of the civic rights associatedwith the transition to a capitalist economy had potentially democraticpolitical implications that were often reinforced by technologicalchanges and improvements such as those in the area of communica-tions associated with capitalist development. Clearly, unless globalisa-tion reverses these trends, it seems reasonable to suggest their continuedvitality. Indeed, since globalisation has actually been caused rather thansimply accompanied by the dismantling of national barriers to interna-tional economic forces by political authority, there is every reason toexpect their increasing vitality.

However, the many domestic contingencies that have been referred to,constituted partly by interaction with the international sphere, suggesthighly complex and quite unpredictable socio-economic and politicalaccommodations with these globalised economic forces. In addition,given the dynamism of technological and organisational change underbroadly capitalist conditions, any accommodations will of necessity betemporary. John Gray’s comments on the demise of corporatist accom-modations in Britain, for instance, are illustrative of this point; ‘… the tri-angular coordination of economic policy by government, employers andtrade unions – [by 1979] had become an engine of industrial conflict andstrife over the distribution of the national income rather than an instru-ment of wealth creation or guarantor of social cohesion.’554

As the previous century has demonstrated all too clearly, there arealmost countless socio-political and economic conditions includingsharp ethnic, sectarian, ideological and class rivalries that help explainand are often used to justify the lack or suspension of democracy. What’smore, the social divisions prevalent in many countries including those ofclass, gender and ethnicity are often generated and/or reinforced by theoperation of the world capitalist economy, historically and currently.


This is why a major international appeal of established and stable liberaldemocracy is its ability to politically cushion, absorb and process endemicsocial change through institutional means as much as, if not more so,than its ability to actually direct it. Since economic globalisation is gener-ally construed as the strengthening and accelerating of key forces respon-sible for endemic social change, the international political appeal ofdemocracy has been enhanced under such conditions.

Another potential connection between democracy and economicglobalisation relates to regionalisation – a growing political economicresponse to globalisation.555 As more states come to see their participa-tion and membership in regional economic blocs as in the vital interestsof the major sectors and groupings within their societies, the strongerthe effect of the democratic political conditionality associated withmany of them.556 The pooling of sovereignty entailed even in the mosteconomically focused regional associations seems to demand high levelsof political homogeneity.557 Indeed, this is an important part of the‘level playing field’ in that competitive advantages could potentiallyaccrue to countries whose states relied less on consensual rule and moreon coercive rule – consider, for instance, how sensitive the issues of tax-ation, labour market regulation/flexibility and social charters have beenin the EU and Mercosur. Of course, if the regional association includeslabour mobility as well as that of capital the potential political refugeeproblems are obvious.

More generally, if, as Held argues, the loss of political economicautonomy associated with globalisation is fundamentally challengingthe legitimacy of the nationally constituted democratic state, it is likelythat this challenge extends to authoritarian states as well. Given the‘normality’ associated with democracy, it is much more likely to be so.Furthermore, the rather strong association of authoritarianism with policy-makers energetically (often maniacally) focused on attaining andpreserving very high levels of national or even partial internationalautonomy (in the case of many historical communist regimes or politi-cal Islamists, for instance) from capitalist or just foreign forces should atleast raise the possibility that democracy is more likely if open to theseinternational forces. Of course, many are of the opinion that the conse-quences of capitalism or Western modernity are socially, politically andethically worse than those associated with dictatorship, especially whenthe dictatorship in question is seen to be put to the service of humanwelfare, materially or spiritually. Since the only basic way to maximisehuman safety and welfare from market forces is through politicalagency, ‘enlightened despotism’ has been justified by both the radical


Left and Right in varying historical contexts. On the other hand, if theconsequences of such political regimes are considered worse than thedisease they are ostensibly attempting to inoculate their people against,in raising the relative costs of highly autonomous economic develop-ment, economic globalisation may well be working against these typesof political projects.

Nevertheless, to the extent that the politically mobilising capacities of social and political movements espousing highly autonomous modelsof development are actually enhanced by the international enmeshing ofsocieties and cultures as well as by the socio-economic dislocations asso-ciated with globalisation, the expectation must be one of oscillationbetween high and low levels of intensity with regard to engagement withand retreat from international economic participation. Whether or notdemocracy can survive in many countries under such circumstances orindeed whether it can serve as an institutional framework for changingpolicy orientation will be determined partly by the way internationalforces are articulated with domestic ones; that is, by contingent factors.

This brings us to the point in the analysis where the balance mustshift to doubting the contribution economic globalisation can make tothe institutionalisation of democracy. Three areas of criticism in partic-ular will be analysed, namely, economic liberalism’s very unequal distri-bution of wealth within and between countries, the corrupting ofdemocratic political considerations by economic interests, and the waysin which the dynamics of the globalised capitalist economy are inter-twined with other international processes and factors.

Held’s analysis of inequality is highly sensitive to its multiple sourcesand forms, and critical of both Marxist and liberal traditions.558 In thecontext of a ‘democratic thought experiment’ designed to generate ‘thenecessary background conditions for the pursuit of democratic politics’,he argues the following.559

Any domain of action which disrupts systematically people’s equalinterest in autonomy, that is, their standing as citizens with equalentitlements to self-determination, requires critical examination. Thecompatibility of democratic autonomy has to be explored withrespect to any organization of life-chances and participative opportu-nities which systematically stratifies collectivities or groups in rela-tion to a wide array of phenomena, including: their security ofpersonhood; physical and psychological wellbeing; opportunities tobecome active members of the community; security of cultural iden-tity; ability to join civic associations; capacity to influence the


economic agenda; ability to participate in political debate and electoral politics; and ability to act without becoming vulnerable tophysical force and violence.560

The point here is that the capitalist economy is one of the main sourcesof stratification and ‘nautonomy’ (‘the asymmetrical production anddistribution of life-chances which limit and erode the possibilities ofpolitical participation’).561 And, given that globalisation itself is said tobe eroding the capacity of governments to pursue socially and politi-cally ameliorating policies independently, its ‘nautonomic’ effects pro-vide a major reason and justification for contemplating a cosmopolitandemocratic framework.

Now, from Held’s perspective, this is clearly logical. Nevertheless, ifeconomic globalisation is indeed exacerbating inequality and inequalityis unfavourable to democracy and democratisation, why is it that morestates are becoming democratic? To take the first matter first, that levelsof inequality are rising inexorably in the world as a whole is hotly con-tested. According to one authoritative account, it seems that c. 1950 wasthe high point of world income inequality, reaching a Gini coefficient ofabout 40.562 The major reason for its decline over the following decadesis said to be due to the explosive economic growth experienced by eastAsia including Japan which, because of the number of people involved(4 billion), has dwarfed the terrible results in Africa (1 billion) where asa whole Gross National Product (GNP) per head in real terms is probablylower now than it was in the late 1960s.563 Highlighting this enormousvariation in economic performance across the globe, Paul Ormerod provides the following example.

The Ivory Coast is by no means unsuccessful in African terms, but thetransformation of South Korea has been stupendous. Even as late as1970, the two countries had very similar levels of output per head,with Korea being about one-third higher. But it is now nearly ninetimes higher – around 1,000 per cent.564

If there is evidence of declining world income inequality, there is alsoevidence, as with the case above, of countries and regions of the worldbecoming poorer in relative and absolute terms. Both large parts of sub-Saharan Africa as well as parts of the former Soviet Socialist Republicsand Eastern Europe fall clearly into this category.565 The future of worldincome inequality depends in large part on whether the former com-munist states of Europe achieve sustained economic growth.


This brings us to the second point, namely, that inequality isunfavourable to democracy and democratisation. It is noteworthy, atleast for the Revolutions of 1989, that the perceived inequalitiesbetween the countries of Central and Eastern Europe and those of thecapitalist West was a major cause of the upheavals.566 In other words,economic inequality between countries may actually call forth demandsfor democracy if authoritarianism is itself blamed for poor economicperformance and compared unfavourably with liberal democraticeconomic success.

As for inequality within countries, there is ample evidence to suggesta strong causal link between economic liberalism and increased inequal-ity, at least in the short-term.567 The dismantling of corporatist arrange-ments, the privatisation of industries, the declining efficacy andreduction of protective measures such as subsidies and tariffs as well asvery high debt repayments in much of the developing world has been amajor cause of increased levels of unemployment and of rising incomeinequality. As The Economist put it: ‘Inequality is bound to grow whenthe guiding principle for sharing out resources shifts from entitlementto competition.’568 Furthermore, because states’ distributional policiesunder capitalist conditions are highly influenced if not necessarily dic-tated by the interests of property-holders, they have often dealt with thefinancial consequences of declining state revenues by reducing publicexpenditure in areas such as infrastructure investment, health care andeducation.569 Of course, these priorities have also been reinforced inter-nationally by the policies and recommendations of institutions such asthe World Bank and the IMF. As Amartya Sen reminds us, these policieshave been myopic and counterproductive because ‘the market mecha-nism has achieved great success under those conditions in which theopportunities offered by them could be reasonably shared’.570 Economicglobalisation has all too often led to the marginalisation of regions,groups and individuals from economic participation rather thanincreasing their shared opportunities. Whether in the context of shrink-ing revenues or otherwise, global markets and policies promoting mini-mal state intervention in the economy are said to ‘fracture societies andweaken states’, making any kind of governing framework more and notless problematic.571

However, as we have seen from the industrialisation of the advancedcapitalist countries, the consequent inequalities were a major cause ofthe organising efforts by subaltern classes, women and minorities for theextension of democratic rights, and the achievement of more equal eco-nomic development the consequence partly of this extension. Why, then,


would inequality within countries of the developing world not lead tosimilar organisational forms and political demands? The answer is thatin very many cases this is exactly what has occurred but these efforts,where they have failed, have done so for a variety of reasons.

The theories which attempt to explain the causes of the failures toinstitutionalise or sustain democracy and which we have looked atthroughout this paper vary enormously – from those who believe thatdemocracy has been denied because for much of the post-Second WorldWar period radical socialist leaders of subaltern groups articulated goalsthat went beyond ‘capitalist democracy’ and therefore brought onauthoritarian responses, to those who see the relative underdevelop-ment of the working class as critical, to those who point to the impor-tance of cultural factors, to those who point to the temporal andpolitical timing of development as critical. The fact is that socio-economic inequality itself is not a necessary or sufficient condition forthe failure to achieve or to sustain democracy. If the continuation andspread of inequality is an important reason to question the salience ofnationally based democratic forms under globalised conditions, it alsoprovides the major historic and contemporary reason to institutionaliseand to deepen democracy domestically.

The second criticism of globalisation is the undermining of demo-cratic political considerations by economic interests. Although we havealready looked at ‘dependency theory’ and the theory of ‘BureaucraticAuthoritarianism’ both of which locate the problems of political devel-opment in the context of countervailing economic interests, there areless misleading and dogmatic ways to demonstrate this central point. Tothe extent that economic growth serves to legitimate political authority,any and all economic relations with authoritarian states can be saideither to undermine the aim of promoting democracy or at least toremove economic leverage from the choice of policy measures at thedisposal of democracies to achieve this goal. Of course, democracies donot always have much choice in the matter as with their dependence onoil from extremely reactionary Gulf States. The point is that the opera-tion of the world economy does not simply reinforce democratic politi-cal frameworks but generates contradictory pressures. Nor is this evidentonly in authoritarian states. Almost all contemporary liberal democra-cies have their share of corruption – US campaign finance issues; HelmetKohl’s role in garnering finance for the Christian Democratic Union(CDU); the trial of former French foreign minister, Roland Dumas; thecriminal investigation of Jean-Christophe Mitterrand, the son of the lateFrench president, accused of taking millions of pounds in commissions


for brokering illegal arms sales to Africa; the allegations againstPresident Jacques Chirac; the allegations against Silvio Berlusconi ofItaly and so on.572 All these cases, and many more besides, demonstratethe insidious role that wealth and the personal (or party political) pur-suit of it can have on any and all types of politics.

A complementary point made by Rueschemeyer, Stephens andStephens and Jeffry Frieden is that states which are able to attain highlevels of autonomy in relation to domestic social forces by relying onforeign sources of revenue, as with several of the oil-producing states, aremost likely to be able to insulate themselves from democratic pres-sures.573 Economic globalisation may provide greater opportunities forstates to circumvent domestic constituents – taxpayers – and therebyreinforce authoritarianism.

A more direct way in which the economic imperative may serve tosubvert democracy is through political intervention by MNCs. The eco-nomic power of these organisations can translate into political power,especially when allies are available either in the form of the state or themilitary (host and foreign) as well as sectoral and factoral (class) forces.The most infamous case of such involvement was that against the dem-ocratically elected government of Chile’s Salvador Allende.574 Althoughthis case had the added dynamic of Cold War politics, it serves to illus-trate an argument made by Leslie Sklair among others that MNCs are‘indifferent to democracy in the Third World as long as the people donot elect left wing governments!’575

Another example of how the economic imperative may serve to sub-vert potential forces of democratisation is that of multinational mediaconglomerates cutting deals with authoritarian states over the limitingof politically critical content.576 While these states are probably fightinga losing battle given the proliferation of global media and their deliverysystems, it is nonetheless true that international profit-seeking organisa-tions tend only to reinforce democratic forces through unintended con-sequences. Again, their primary concern is that of protecting theirinvestments.

If in the Cold War era political considerations – combating communism –often overrode other imperatives including economic ones to the detri-ment of democracy generally, the promotion of democracy is likely also torequire the overriding of economic imperatives for the simple reason that‘free markets’ and ‘free politics’ are so often in contradiction with eachother. The lessons of the Weimar Republic should not be forgotten.

This brings us to the last area of criticism which is the ways the dynam-ics of the world economy are intertwined with other international


processes and factors. Perhaps a good way to approach this is to suggesthow some of Held’s ‘disjunctures’ often combine in ways to hinder ratherthan promote the development of democracy within states. The rela-tionship between international law, the states system and the interna-tional capitalist economy, for instance, is obviously highly complex andhistorically dynamic. Nevertheless, that the ‘logic’ of the latter two canundermine the efficacy of the former and lead also to diminished politi-cal pressures on authoritarian states to democratise is clear. For example,the recent granting of most-favoured-trading-nation status to China bythe United States is precisely designed to facilitate trade between thesecountries without the yearly congressional criticisms of China’s humanrights violations and illegal occupation of Tibet.577 Notwithstandingarguments about reforming China from within and keeping the pressureon in more subtle ways, the contradictions are manifest.

With regard to the transnational power of hegemonic states, it is evi-dent that economic power is a major constitutive element of hegemony.While the suggestion that this may bode well for democracy has alreadybeen made it should be remembered that the democratic credentials ofthe dominant powers are essentially brand new.578 What’s more, theextraordinary rigidity in the membership of the club of rich states forover a century suggests that the achievement of relative wealth andpower is anything but specifically correlated with full democracy.579 Justas in the past, how long élites and popular social forces will supportdemocracy in the long run will probably depend to a large extent onwhether it can deliver the goods.

Also, the more international factors reinforce the possibility of statessustaining relative autonomy from domestic social forces, throughexternal military support and economic assistance for instance, thehigher the likelihood of their being able to withstand domestic chal-lenges for political reform.580 It was only after Gorbachev repudiated theBrezhnev Doctrine that power seriously ebbed away from the commu-nist parties of Central and Eastern Europe. If throughout the Cold Warboth East and West helped sustain anti-democratic regimes in just thisway, its dissolution has not eradicated the phenomenon. Weapons salesto regimes such as those of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait are financiallyrewarding and may even be necessary in the face of military threats fromneighbours but they nonetheless help buttress deeply anti-democraticregimes. In short, not only do the forces that may be said to underminesovereignty such as those suggested by Held express contradictory pres-sures on the prospects for democracy but so too do many of those thathave traditionally been associated with actually sustaining it.


Assessment of text

While the points above in no way exhaust the arguments that the interaction between the international and domestic systems of powerpromote and/or hinder the prospects for democracy they do suggest thecomplexities and contradictions involved. David Held’s analysis andaccount of the historical development of the modern nation-state andof the international states-system, of historical models of democracyand of the limits of the dominant form of state, the liberal democraticstate, in the context of globalisation as well as his detailed prescriptionfor overcoming many of these limitations in the form of a cosmopolitaninstitutional order represents a serious contribution to several social scientific debates of critical relevance.

Particularly useful is the author’s judicious framework for analysingthe development of the nation-state and of the liberal democratic stateassembled from the three ‘macro-patterns’ of war and militarism, thedevelopment of capitalism and the evolution of the conception of citi-zenship. Equally insightful is his elaboration of the disjuncturesbetween the ideal of autonomy (individual and collective) on the onehand and various domains and manifestations of international power –law, ‘governance’, hegemony and security, culture, the world economy –on the other. It is here above all where the author’s conception of thecurrent global system as well as its interaction with domestic systems ofrule is revealed. Far from being the only important political agents,states are seen as increasingly constrained in their policy options by acomplex international environment that includes international institu-tions, businesses, markets and cultures. In short, Held’s conception ofthe global system is sensitive to the various paradigmatic approachesfound in the academic study of International Relations yet, quite appro-priately, detached and critical of them.

From the perspective of this study, the central argument that theautonomy or practical sovereignty of states is being quite radicallyreduced by the forces and processes of globalisation proved useful inhighlighting just what these may be said to be and how they may beimplicated in relation to all domestic systems of rule. Nevertheless, if theearly sections point clearly to the notion that the mobilisation ofdomestic forces for international competition including war was animportant dynamic of democratisation, as we have seen, it is also possi-ble to argue that this dynamic was also implicated in the developmentof non-democratic regimes. Likewise, if the development of capitalism,especially of industrialism, in combination with some of the major


tenets of political liberalism was critical to the development of liberaldemocracy then Held’s emphasis on their contingent relation to itsdevelopment suggests strong obstacles in the way of its diffusion world-wide even if not in the automatic way implied by dependency theoryand the theory of Bureaucratic Authoritarianism.

Now, what was in retrospect historically useful for the development ofliberal democracy for some states is often neither feasible nor desirable inthe present – nor was it feasible in the past for those who failed to achievedemocracy, of course. Given the destructive capabilities of modernweapons technology, for instance, one can hardly trumpet the possibleadvantages of war. Furthermore, while there is every reason to be confi-dent of the onward march of inclusive conceptions of citizenship inestablished liberal democracies, the collapse of states and the resurgenceof ethnic and sectarian violence in many parts of the world remind usthat political power must be thoroughly consolidated and effective,indeed, potentially legitimate to withstand the alternating governmentsand organised opposition that are key features of democracy.581 Thereasons why even this most elementary prerequisite is not universallyfulfilled are themselves often related to the historical processes of stateformation as well as the continuing pressures and constraints associatedin the broadest sense with modernity. What this in part demonstrates isthe confusion arising from the failure to distinguish clearly the ideal ofthe modern nation-state from its historically contingent actuality.

Conclusion

As one might well expect, the balance sheet of the disjunctures providedby Held is mixed. If there are clear pressures promoting the institution-alisation of democracy then there are also manifest counter-tendencies.What was often taken by the author to signify marked reductions ofautonomy or practical sovereignty – and this was one of his mainfocuses, of course – looked at from a different angle could potentiallybode positively for the prospects of democracy in authoritarian states.As the study of revolution has demonstrated, the material and/or ideo-logical weakening of the state are often a prelude to its transformation.

The one strong conclusion is this: if the extension of moral and polit-ical community through cosmopolitan democracy is indeed necessaryfor the regulation of transnational forces and the amelioration of their‘nautonomic’ effects, the prior establishment of domestic or nationallybased democratic systems is required. This is a particularly obvious pointbut one worth formulating explicitly perhaps given the fragility of so


many of the ‘new’ democracies and the scarcity of this political form inmuch of the world. It is the existence of democratic zones (pace Kant)that create new possibilities for a democratic cosmopolitanism.

Certainly, in placing centre-stage the international context in whichsocio-economic and political change occurs, Held’s analysis takes usmuch closer to ascertaining the difficulties and complexities involved in the diffusion of the democratic form of state than does liberal internationalism.


186

Conclusion

Introduction

The preceding chapters attempted to generate and highlight insightsfrom some case study texts that were considered useful for a contempo-rary understanding of the relationship between democracy and theglobal system and for demonstrating the weaknesses of liberal interna-tionalist optimism with regard to the worldwide diffusion of this partic-ular form of state. As should be clear by now, the ultimate purpose ofhighlighting the obstacles to the international spread of democracy doesnot spring from conservative motivations but rather from the desire toovercome as many of these as possible.

It has been suggested that the basis of liberal internationalist weaknessis the failure to recognise the contradictory socio-economic and politicaleffects that result in part from interaction between the international anddomestic domains. It has also been suggested that the concept of‘uneven and combined development’, which includes the politicalsalience of ‘world-historical-time’, is a superior theoretical model com-pared with the liberal internationalist framework precisely because it incorporates the global system as the context within which socio-economic and political change occurs as well as the importance of international/domestic interactions.

This concluding chapter has a threefold purpose. It seeks, first, to pullthe various threads of the book together by answering the following keyquestions:

1. How do the mechanisms for the worldwide diffusion of the demo-cratic form of state associated with liberal internationalism stand upto the arguments presented here?

2. Does the concept of ‘uneven and combined development’ offer aconvincing alternative? Does it provide for a coherent sociology ofthe development of the democratic form of state?

Second, an effort is made to pinpoint five areas of international/domestic interaction that allow for a further incorporation of the salientarguments and insights of the preceding chapters. Such a frameworkshould be useful as a means of structuring further research and thoughton the relationship between the global system and democratic govern-ment and for analysing the changing prospects of its worldwide diffusion.

Finally, an attempt is made to answer the overarching thesis questiondirectly, namely, whether the current global system may be said to pro-mote or hinder the institutionalisation of democracy or whether these arein a contingent relation. Furthermore, if domestic forces, processes andstructures are in part the result of international/domestic interactions, isthere a case for suggesting that these interactions should be central to IR?

Liberal internationalism and the case studies

As outlined in the introductory chapter, there are three interrelatedstrands within liberal internationalism that attempt to explain the inter-national diffusion of the democratic form of state. In the first of these,the international diffusion of democracy is seen as the historical conse-quence of the universal interest in and demand for recognition, by polit-ical authority, of the moral equality of human beings and their interestin security and welfare. Predicated on its duty to protect life, liberty andproperty, the democratic state represents, in universally applicable insti-tutional form, the triumph of the individual and collective will to moralequality, security and welfare over the more or less pure structures ofdomination which mark most earlier if varied forms of state as well ascurrent authoritarian ones. By this account, the very nature of humanbeings (rational, self-seeking, potentially moral) drives political author-ity (also rational, self-seeking and potentially moral) through conflict,confrontation and, in a word, struggle, to adopting, over time, a con-sensual and legitimate institutional form, the liberal democratic state.

The second strand sees in the international diffusion of capitalism thelink with democracy’s worldwide spread. Here the interests in maximis-ing wealth and security for individuals, societies and states as well as theneed to cope with the individual and collective will to moral equalityare all seen as best met through the rational innovation and consciouspolitical construction of market societies. It is market society with its

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reliance on the commodification of the factors of production, the rule oflaw, freedom of choice and limited scope of public authority that pro-duces the possibility of liberal democracy in the first place.

Finally, once a few of these democratic states emerge, the spread oftheir norms to other states and the possibility and desirability of thedevelopment of effective international institutions and laws also emergeto become increasingly salient features of international relations.Through the force of example, other non-democratic states ‘will join upwith the first … thus securing the freedom of each state in accordancewith the idea of international right, and the whole will gradually spreadfurther and further by a series of alliances of this kind’.582

The one common feature of these three interrelated strands of liberalinternationalism, which relates fundamentally to its optimistic accountof the prospects for the international diffusion of the democratic formof state is their steadfast assumption of the long-term harmony of inter-est between the individual and society, between society and the stateand between states themselves.583 Clearly, the case studies presented inthis book suggest a number of criticisms to these formulations.

While Barrington Moore Jr. recognises the importance of socialdemands and struggles ‘to check arbitrary rulers, to replace arbitraryrules with just and rational ones, and to obtain a share for the underly-ing population in the making of rules’, he argues that the direction ofpolitical change is best analysed by reference to self-interest as definedby social classes and the state in the process of dynamic structuralchange (modernisation), and to the opportunities for acting upon theseby reference to the resources and capabilities of these agents.584 Ratherthan resulting in the democratic form of state, these conflicting interests,which occur in an international context, are more likely to result insome form of authoritarianism.

Authoritarianism of the Left or Right is much more likely because thethree historical preconditions for the development of democracyaccording to Moore – ‘the development of a balance [in the social struc-ture] to avoid too strong a crown or too independent a landed aristoc-racy, the weakening of the landed aristocracy and the prevention of anaristocratic–bourgeois coalition against the peasantry and workers, and a revolutionary break with the past’ – are the product of unusualconjunctures hundreds of years in the making.585 Furthermore, theinternational dimensions of capitalist modernisation in their interac-tion with domestic socio-economic and political arrangements, in thecontext of the inter-state system, are ultimately responsible for theunlikely development of these conjunctures.


For Polanyi, the tensions and contradictions between the elementaryrequirements of an organised social life on the one hand, and the inter-action of economic liberalism with class and state (geopolitical) interestsin the context of industrialism on the other, is seen as responsible forsetting the direction of political change. Again, the advent of democracyis seen as a conjunctural phenomenon – developed in reaction to theemergence of capitalism – unlikely to succeed in the medium to longterm without the abandonment at least of the international dimensionsof capitalism and the competitive elements in the inter-state system.This is so because it is the global system itself, in interaction with socialstructures, class and state interests and the ideological prescriptions ofeconomic liberalism that is responsible for directing most societies awayfrom this conjuncture.

One might be forgiven for assuming that of the five texts that makeup the case studies here Schumpeter’s would be nearer to agreeing withthe liberal internationalist position outlined above. In fact, this is farfrom the case. Although the author does link the development ofdemocracy with the emergence of capitalism, as do Moore and Polanyi,Schumpeter goes on to develop what he refers to as the conditions(social pre-requisites) for the success of the democratic method, whichensure that very few countries indeed are able to sustain the democraticform of state. The four conditions are as follows: 1. That ‘the humanmaterial of politics – the people who man the party machines, areelected to serve in parliament, rise to cabinet office, should be of suffi-ciently high quality’; 2. that ‘the effective range of political decisionshould not be extended too far’; 3. the existence of a ‘well-trainedbureaucracy of good standing and tradition, endowed with a strongsense of duty and a no less strong espirit de corps’; and, 4. ‘democraticself-control’ or ‘a large measure of tolerance for difference of opinion’.586

The reason for doubting the ability of most countries to meet thesefour conditions and consequently to consolidate the democratic form ofstate is that, according to the author, they essentially require that ‘all theinterests that matter are practically unanimous not only in their alle-giance to the country but in their allegiance to the structural principlesof the existing society’.587 As we have seen, Schumpeter argues that suc-cessful capitalism actually ensures that these interests are perceived asclashing even if they do not do so objectively and, therefore, that thelikelihood was that capitalism itself would be replaced by socialismwhich was also likely to dispense with the liberty associated with liberaldemocracy by the requirement of dictating the harmony of interestsfrom above.

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While the chapter on his work argued that his failure to theorise theinteractions between capitalism and democracy even within the majorliberal capitalist states led him to a much more pessimistic prognosis ofcapitalism’s historical durability than was justified and that this wassymptomatic of a larger failing, namely, to theorise socio-economic,political and ideological change in the context of the interactionsbetween the international and domestic domains, it is at least clear thatSchumpeter was not at all optimistic about the prospects of the interna-tional diffusion of democracy.

Huntington’s analysis attempts not only to demonstrate how unlikelyis the development of democracy for societies and polities undergoingthe rapid social changes associated with modernisation but also howinappropriate this form of state is for them. Democracy is inappropriatebecause it tends either to fragment and diffuse power rather than con-centrate it, which is the central requirement for avoiding political insta-bility in the transition from the traditional to the modern world or, if it does not disperse power, it is often because traditional élites have a stranglehold on the system and it is unlikely that the required modernising reforms will be achieved. Transitional societies are on thehorn of this dilemma, facing the stark choice between a confused andchaotic pluralistic political disorder that is particularly vulnerable tocommunist usurpation and a non-communist authoritarianism. The lat-ter, argues Huntington, represents the best hope of avoiding commu-nism and creating the possibility, if distant, of attaining democraticpolitical modernity. The force of example from existing and successfuldemocratic states in the global system makes it less likely that the right choice – non-communist authoritarianism – will be taken.

While David Held’s text in part focuses on why it is that some states attained the democratic form and not on why it is that others havenot, his analytical frameworks of ‘macro-patterns’ in the development ofdemocracy and of ‘global disjunctures’ are a major advance on liberalinternationalism precisely because they contextualise domestic socio-economic and political change within the global system and incorporatethe complexities that result from domestic/international interactions.Both of these frameworks allow for the development of arguments thatspeak for and against liberal internationalist expectations.

Finally, the two other theoretical frameworks which attempt in part toexplain the lack of democracy in the developing world – ‘dependencytheory’ and the theory of ‘Bureaucratic Authoritarianism’ – also clearlypoint to the utopian quality of liberal internationalism’s expectation ofthe diffusion of this form of state worldwide even if not entirely convincingly so.


On the whole, the case studies provide little comfort to liberal internationalist expectations of the international diffusion of the demo-cratic form of state. While some agree with the notion that humanbeings do indeed long for and often demand changes in a democraticdirection, they are much more concerned with demonstrating the vari-ous contexts – domestic, international and in part resulting from theirinteraction – that militate against the attainment of democracy. Thiswas especially marked in the interpretations by Moore and Polanyi of the transnational impact of capitalism but also for Schumpeter (in apurely domestic setting) and certainly implied in the usage of ‘moderni-sation’ by Huntington. For Held, of course, capitalism’s global ‘nauto-nomic’ effects were deemed to bode unfavourably to the continuedefficacy of the democratic form of state. Again, though capitalism wasseen as creating the possibility of democracy it was just as surely seen,because of its international and transnational effects in the context ofthe inter-state system, as foreclosing this possibility for most countries.Clearly, the idea that the force of example is a sufficient condition forthe international spread of democracy is countered by the fact that itoperates in conjunction with structures, processes and forces that arepulling in other directions.

Now, does the conceptual framework of ‘uneven and combined devel-opment’ represent a superior orientation to liberal internationalism? Inassessing the five case study texts, the suggestion has been made that themost important disagreements with and/or advances on liberal interna-tionalism arose from analyses that attempted to place domestic socio-economic and political change in the context of the global system andas, in part, the result of the interaction between the international anddomestic domains. Whether the specific problems associated with thetransnationalism of capitalism were highlighted, or those associatedwith the competition of the inter-state system, or those related to thedifferent timings of change and the global ideological and political con-text in which they occurred, it was this contextualisation which sug-gested far more complicated structures, processes and forces at workthan does liberal internationalism. Furthermore, it was precisely thesecomplexities that pointed to the contingency of the development of theliberal democratic form of state and to its unlikely consolidation in mostof the countries of the world.

By combining both the notion that domestic development or change occurs in a global context – which is critical in structuring theopportunities, constraints and choices available to individuals andgroups, including those in political authority, seeking change – and theway in which international and transnational structures, forces and

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processes interact with domestic ones to produce unique conjunctures –social, economic, political, ideological/cultural – ‘uneven and combineddevelopment’ not only allows for the contingency and complexity inthe analysis of politics and change that is lacking in liberal internation-alism, it is designed to deliver them. By providing a historicallygrounded sociology of the development of forms of state, democraticand non-democratic, it does indeed constitute a potentially superior ori-entation to that of liberal internationalism. How, for example, couldone account for the simultaneous existence of what Robert Cooper hascalled the ‘post-modern’, ‘modern’ and ‘pre-modern’ state if not withsome version of ‘uneven and combined development’.588 Furthermore,the major challenges of our time such as the combination of globalisa-tion and deepening interdependence, of the proliferation of weapons ofmass destruction, of failing economies and states, of threats from anti-modernist terrorists, of rapacious dictatorships, of how to deal withthese in a coordinated, multilateral and united fashion all arise from theuneven and combined character of historical development.

This brings us to the major problem with the concept of ‘uneven andcombined development’ itself, namely, that while it provides coherentarguments for explaining and understanding differences between coun-tries or social formations more generally, it is very much less adept at coping with trends towards convergence. The one way in which this problem can be overcome (pace Trotsky) is to stress the so-called‘advantages of backwardness’ whereby specific technologies or ‘stages ofdevelopment’ are ‘leapfrogged’ by those trailing the more advancedthrough, for example, the availability of historically unprecedented levels of foreign direct investment. And, indeed, there is certainly somemerit to this. However, this does not go far enough in conceding theextent to which other social and political phenomena, not necessarilydirectly the consequence of capitalism so much as articulated with it, are needed to retain its relevance and salience or in acknowledging the open-ended quality of the concept itself. It is quite impossible, for example, to explain the extent of socio-economic and politicalhomogeneity in the advanced countries without reference not only to a capitalism that seems to be universalising practice more than splinter-ing it, as Marx and Warren suggested, but also to direct political agency. In other words, dogmatic interpretations of ‘uneven and combined development’ as following an inexorable logic or iron lawsrather than as a contextual framework within which extremely variedpossibilities exist lessen its potential for fostering explanation andunderstanding.


Nevertheless, in spite of the overwhelming disagreement with liberalinternationalist expectations of the worldwide diffusion of the demo-cratic form of state represented by the case study texts as well as theapproach adopted to them here, the question which needs to beaddressed is that if these expectations are so very idealistic, why is it thatthe world has witnessed many democratic transitions since the middleof the twentieth century? In order to further assess this matter and toincorporate more of the salient arguments and insights of the precedingchapters an effort is made to pinpoint five areas of international/domestic interaction that should allow for this. As already mentioned,such a framework should also be useful as a means of structuring furtherresearch and thought on the relationship between the global system anddemocratic government and for analysing the changing prospects of itsworldwide diffusion.

Democracy and the global system: a framework for analysis

Along with the assessments of the case studies in this book, the study ofthe international causes of social revolutionary transformation has alsosuggested five main areas of analysis that, with some modification, lendthemselves well to the explication of the relationship between the globalsystem and democratic government.589 They do so not only becausedemocratic government is often itself ushered in by socio-economic andpolitical upheaval, as with the Revolutions of 1989 in Central andEastern Europe but also because the medium to long-term internationaltrends and causes identified by the comparative study of revolutionsseem to correlate with many of the non-revolutionary transitions todemocracy. In other words, they serve generally to identify domains ofcausation with regard to social and political change that are relevant tointernational and domestic interactions.590 The five categories are:

1. Socio-economic change2. Inter-state competition and co-operation3. International war4. Focused political action5. Force of example

Most of these categories, as we have seen from the case studies, representareas of analysis that are necessary for understanding the relationshipbetween democracy and the global system. On their own, each onelends itself to a quite partial view of the salient forces, processes and

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domestic/international interactions implicated in this relationship butif taken as essentially interrelated or intertwined, they should help todeepen understanding of this complex relationship.

The specific interpretations of the framework, which follow, areinformed by the arguments set out in the introduction and developed inthe body of this work. These are that the form of states should be seen asconjunctural outcomes derived in part from socio-economic, politicaland ideological interactions between the international and domesticdomains and that ‘uneven and combined development’, including as itdoes the notion of the importance of ‘world-historical-time’, representsan indispensable conceptual framework for understanding and explain-ing these outcomes.

Socio-economic change

The complexity implied by the relationship between democracy and theglobal system can perhaps be illustrated by suggesting that this first cat-egory, which relates fundamentally to the nature of the world capitalistsystem, its relations to the other components of the global system, theircombined effects on social structure and the state as well as to changesin the global system itself brought about by the continuous feedback ofthe preceding chain of causation, is almost coterminous with at the veryleast the fields of historical sociology, international political economyand a good deal of politics and IR.591 It is precisely for this reason thatthe methodological approach used here was chosen rather than a moredirectly empirical one.

As we have seen from the analysis of the texts, a central weakness ofthese accounts has been the lack of integration between ostensiblytransnational capitalist forces and processes and those more often associated with the other components of the global system. For exam-ple, Barrington Moore’s implicit conception of ‘uneven and combineddevelopment’ along with his explicit references to the role played bydefensive modernisation in the history of specific states (pace Trotsky)comes close to integrating a Realist emphasis of the dynamics of thecompetitive states-system with a particular Marxist understanding ofinternational capitalism. Schumpeter’s analysis of capitalism, on theother hand, is divorced from his earlier work on international issues andremains entirely within domestic confines and quite devoid of interna-tional political, economic or ideological pressures.

Most of the texts stress the complexities involved in historical state formation in general and the development of liberal democracy in


particular but there is wide variation as to the extent to which the worldcapitalist system, interacting with domestic contexts and in combinationwith other features of the global system, is implicated in their analyses.Here, Held’s ‘macro-patterns’ of ‘war and militarism’, ‘the developmentof capitalism’ and the development of ‘liberal democracy and citizen-ship’ as well as their interrelations are extremely relevant and useful. Forhis part, Huntington warns against optimistic expectations of the insti-tutionalisation of liberal democracy in the developing world because ofthe destabilising political consequences of socio-economic change. Hisanalysis clearly implies the uneven and combined character of historicaldevelopment but with little explication of the transnational mechanismsat work and with no references to capitalism or imperialism, as such.

Polanyi’s account of the social and political consequences of capitalisttransformation is widely and rightly seen as exceptional but his analysisof the way the territorial division of political authority, the developmentof the modern state, class interests and ideologies interrelate to producemarket societies is also crucial.

All of the authors argue that while capitalism created some of thebasic conditions for the eventual development of democracy – such asthe re-articulation of social classes, the institutionalisation of privateproperty, the formal equality entailed by waged-labour and capitalistcontract, the development of new ideologies like liberalism, socialismand feminism – the transition to capitalism itself did not occur easilyand certainly not in the same way or in the same order as it did in theoriginal British case. Barrington Moore’s reminder of how very brutalthis transition was – involving judicial murder on a massive scale, incar-ceration, civil war, colonialism, slavery and international war – is a crit-ical corrective to liberal historiography generally.592 He is also very clearthat the way capitalism develops transnationally makes democracy an unlikely outcome for very many states. Two out of the three majorpolitical systems, which he sees as the product of capitalist modernity,are non-democracies.

Huntington is adamant that developing countries are most unlikely todevelop democratic systems of government due to the speed and depthof socio-economic change relative to political institutional develop-ment. Polanyi’s ‘double movement’, like Marx’s ‘dialectical material-ism’, seems to suggest a more optimistic prognosis but one at best basedon development well into the future. Projecting this optimism into the contemporary scene we may suggest that the rise of democraticmovements in parts of South East Asia, for example, may have much todo with rising levels of education and welfare, at least until very recently

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afforded by economic integration with the international market. Also, itis likely that the communications infrastructure that is the product ofmodern capitalism is highly functional for the mobilisation of opposi-tion forces, as the upheavals in Suharto’s Indonesia seem to haveshowed. This example is instructive in that moves towards democracydo not necessarily correlate precisely with rising living standards but onthe contrary, as with some revolutionary transformations, may be morelikely in the context of sharp reversals in economic conditions.593

I do sustain the view of a link between capitalism and democracy.However, throughout I have tried to suggest some of the pitfalls of link-ing the development of democracy too closely with that of capitalism,especially the argument that it is the particular creation of the bour-geoisie, partly because of the need to account for capitalism’s articula-tion with other aspects of the global system and partly because of theimportance of subordinate class, gender and minority movements inparticular to the development of democratic polities. Since moderndemocracy is most often clearly the result of social groups demandingformal political equality and an impersonal, representative, transparentand impartial state, it should be seen primarily as the result of consciouspolitical struggle and agency frequently by those in opposition to ‘bour-geois rule’. The role of trade union movements as instruments of massmobilisation against authoritarian states, for example, is increasinglysignificant in the developing world as evidenced by South Korea or con-temporary developments in Zimbabwe and earlier ones in South Africaand Zambia.594 As industrial production continues to grow in manyparts of the developing world, however unevenly, so too can this trendbe expected to do so.

It is also important to register the fact that among those who insistthat democracy can only come after economic development or that a‘strong hand’ is needed for national development, such as Huntington,are the very leaders of states like Myanmar, Singapore, Malaysia andmany others who sit more or less comfortably at the top of politicalhierarchies.

Nevertheless, Moore, Polanyi, Schumpeter, Huntington and Held allargue that at least for the British case the extension of the vote to theworking classes came only after the risks to the owners of capital of shar-ing formal political power ceased to be excessively high – when onlymoderate demands were made and deemed affordable. As we have seen,due to the uneven and combined development of capitalism the widevariety of social structures within countries of the developing world has


rarely if ever replicated this condition. Though the relationships betweensocial structure and political institutions are clearly complex and histori-cally contingent, it is possible to generalise by suggesting modestly thatthe difficulties of sustaining democracy in the developing world are oftenrelated to these complex variations. Also in this context it is possible toargue that in so far as the transnational diffusion of radical anti-capitalistmodels of development threatened stable capitalist social relations ofproduction this also worked against the achievement of class compro-mises associated with liberal democracy. An instructive example perhapsis the abolishing of Apartheid in South Africa on the heels of the finalcollapse of the Soviet model and the diminished possibility that majorityrule should necessarily entail radical redistributions of wealth throughstate ownership. This is not to suggest that the anti-Apartheid struggle –itself an international movement – was not of paramount importance inthis victory but, as with the democratisation of Spain and Portugal, toplace the response of the élite also in the wider global context.

In some countries the development of industrialism has led to varie-gated and dynamic economic and social structures and dense civil soci-eties in which concerted claims to civil and political rights by differentbut interdependent social groups have moved states, interested in main-taining order and maximising resources in part for international compe-tition, towards mechanisms of rule that balance these claims andobjectives in an orderly and legitimate way. Yet in many countriesindustrialism itself is still at best an unrealised objective. An importantconclusion of this analysis is that the bias among the major capitalistpowers and international institutions towards liberal market reformsmay itself undermine efforts to institutionalise democracy due to the typical consequences – at best only short term – of economic lib-eralisation. These include the generation of high levels of unemploy-ment, rising prices for previously subsidised goods and services,increased poverty and inequality. While these may not provoke anti-democratic sentiments so much as anti-ruling party ones, the fragility ofdeveloping states makes these reforms exceedingly difficult. On theother hand, if the legitimacy of the political system is strengthened bythe advent of democracy, which depends in the short-run partly on theextent to which the previous regime was discredited, these liberalisationprogrammes may be more feasible politically than otherwise, as theexample of the liberalising reforms carried out by the Peronist gov-ernment of President Menem of Argentina demonstrates. Either way, it is a serious dilemma for the prospects of sustainable democracy.

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(As Huntington argued: ‘economic development increases economicinequality at the same time that social mobilization decreases the legiti-macy of that inequality.’595) Although, with the benefit of hindsight,Schumpeter’s prognosis for democratic capitalism in the developedworld was unduly pessimistic, the extent of its precariousness in thepost-war period, and the austerity of the preconditions for the success ofdemocracy as he saw them, serve to remind us also why so few countrieshave achieved both prosperity and democracy.

To suggest that the denial of democracy and active suppression ofdemocratic movements by many states in the developing world is due tothe lack of power of social groups within civil society relative to the stateas a result of economic underdevelopment may be correct. There are no guarantees – and as our texts indicated, many suggestions to the contrary – that economic development will proceed as it has in theadvanced industrial states and produce political pluralism. But since theuneven and combined development of capitalism has not and cannotstop social groups in developing countries from demanding democracy –world-historical-time waits for no one – to understand the internationalcauses of these demands and democratic transitions in the context ofthe developing world it is necessary to suggest other links: these wouldinclude the force of example associated with liberal internationalism,the pressures of inter-state competition and co-operation, direct politi-cal and economic pressures to democratise and/or the consequences ofwar and military intervention. Despite the uneven spread of capitalismand industrialism, the fact is that democratic systems of rule now existin all the major continents of the world.

As we have seen, the fragility and precariousness of democracy, likethe suppression of democratic movements in many developing coun-tries, may indeed be related to the lack of economic development andworld capitalism’s difficulty, given its uneven and combined character,to provide for it. Nevertheless, as Fred Halliday has put it:

Capitalism has, in the past, been charged with being ‘incapable’ ofproviding a number of things which it later turned out to be able toyield: universal suffrage, legal equality of men and women, decolo-nization, industrialization in the Third World, the end of warbetween developed states. It has, on the other hand, had manychances and made many fine promises, which it has not fulfilled. Itremains an open question whether, five centuries on from its initialexpansion, this system can achieve the potential which its advocatesascribe to it, and to diffuse its opportunities across the world: until,


and unless, it does, then globalization will be but another word forthe hegemony of a minority of rich states over the rest. This timeround, capitalism has no excuses.596

Inter-state competition and co-operation

Beyond the role of defensive modernisation, Schumpeter’s analysis inparticular can be criticised for not paying sufficient regard to the com-petitive and co-operative features of the international political systemand its articulation with the other dimensions of the global system. Interms of the competitive side of international politics, the dynamicmost commonly associated with the Realist view of the states-system –zero-sum strategic rivalry – may be taken as detrimental to the diffusionof democracy due to the need by states to concentrate their internalpower. But geopolitical pressures and their impact on state/society rela-tions can take a variety of forms not all of which may be harmful to theprospects of democracy. As states extract resources from society for thepurpose of geopolitical competition, compromises with contendingpower sources within society are sometimes successfully achieved in ademocratic direction, a point especially well examined by Held andBarrington Moore. The former communist states of Central and EasternEurope, for instance, have developed their still very fragile democraciesin the wake of the reforms launched by the Soviet Union which evidently had much to do with inter-state competition.597 Even the suggestion that the dynamics of the Cold War helped to foster a moreauthoritarian ‘national security state’ in the United States may be coun-tered by reminders of the democratic gains made during this period suchas those associated with the civil rights movement and feminism not tomention the social reform throughout the West during this period ofchallenge from communism, the alternative model of modernity.598

Nevertheless, the interests of states in assuaging the conflictingdemands of domestic constituents as well as in meeting the challengesof external rivals mean that the concern for the democratic rights ofindividuals and groups within the societies outside of their borders isclearly less than paramount. For example, in the wake of the terroristattacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the United Statesmoved quickly to enlist the support of Pakistan by removing sanctionsagainst it, providing its military government headed by General PervezMusharraf with a $500 million credit line and the promise of debt for-giveness. According to an American diplomat in Islamabad: ‘This hascatapulted U.S.–Pakistan relations. We are now working very closely

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with them. Doors have been opened. Programs have begun. Some of thedistrust is beginning to go away.’599 Similarly, Uzbekistan’s autocraticregime led by president Islam Karimov, who has publicly declared hiswillingness to shoot political Islamists himself, has also benefited polit-ically and economically by allowing US troops to station there.600

Clearly, the promotion of liberal democracy is often in conflict withother foreign policy objectives.

That the most influential domestic constituents of the major capital-ist powers are often those who carry the primary responsibility for pro-viding employment and ‘creating wealth’ also makes this predicamentespecially intractable. Many of these organisations increasingly operatein several countries simultaneously (MNCs), and the pressure on thehome states from business groups is often either to limit the meddlinginto the internal affairs of others or, as the Allende case demonstratedspectacularly albeit in the context of the Cold War, to place the overallbusiness environment before demands for democratic accountability.

During the Cold War, it may be argued that strategic concerns moreoften than not dovetailed with material ones – that as long as a regimehad a pro-capitalist, pro-Western orientation, the desire on the part ofthe major liberal democracies for pluralist politics internationally wasput aside. Indeed, a major argument of the book is that the material andideological support given to authoritarian capitalist regimes by Westernstates, along with the support provided by the Soviet Union for its ‘fraternal republics’ constituted a grand alliance against the interna-tional diffusion of democracy.

As Held’s analysis makes clear, the increasing costs associated withmilitary competition led often to compromises between states and soci-eties in democratic directions – with increased parliamentary control ofstate expenditures and more widespread political participation. Modernstates also came to conceive, or were forced to conceive of, theireconomies in terms of military resources to be husbanded and nurturedrather than simply plundered. In this context, the Cold War system ofpatronage – the providing of resources to states to keep them onside –along with the various limitations on war in this period can be argued tohave greatly weakened if not entirely suspended the democratisingdynamics associated with foreign military competition described above.As long as dictators such as Mobutu of Zaire, for example, could rely on US revenues in return for co-operation in the struggle against communism in southern Africa, not only were domestic democraticcompromises unnecessary to his continued rule but also he and hisextended entourage could actually plunder the wealth and resources of


the country with complete impunity. As Robert Bates has argued:

Propped up by the forces unleashed by the Cold War, local elites inthe developing world did not fear falling, should they becomeunpopular; nor, supported by transfers of aid from abroad, did theyneed to bargain with their citizens to secure public revenues. Theytherefore did not need to be responsive to their people or democraticin their politics, for want of the kind of pressures that in the past hadcompelled governments to become democracies. The United Statesmay not have been attracted to dictators, then; rather, it may havecreated them, or at least arrested the forces of accountability that inan earlier era might have made them democratic.601

However, as indicated by Huntington’s central prescription thatstrengthening the bases of non-communist political order should be theprimary objective of US foreign policy towards the developing world,there has been a long-standing tension within and among the majordemocratic states between this line and another which argues againstyielding too much of a freehand to pro-Western dictatorships. Today the conflict between support for authoritarian market-friendly regimes such as China and those who oppose ‘normal’ relations with (certain)non-democracies still exists but there is a ‘new’ strategic dimensionemphasised that is informed by the so-called ‘democratic peace’ thesisaccording to which liberal democracies do not fight wars against eachother. As President Bush’s administration has made clear in itsSeptember 2002 national security strategy document, even for manytraditional Realists, by raising the issue of democratic governance to thelevel of national security policy the debate has at least moved on to such matters as what appropriate policies for the international diffusion ofdemocracy may entail.602 The rejection by France, Germany and Russia,of the democratic possibilities in Iraq and the wider region consequentupon the ousting of Saddam Hussein’s regime, demonstrates in part,however, the difficulties involved in fostering multilateral agreement.On this front, one of Polanyi’s important arguments is certainly instruc-tive, namely, that despite the clearly discernible lessons of the causes ofthe First World War, the lack of support (and financial punishment) forthe fledgling new democracies of Central Europe was a major contribut-ing factor in the eventual outbreak of the Second World War. In otherwords, though we have seen that inter-state competition does notnecessarily correlate with diminished prospects for democracy and in fact that even war has sometimes been responsible for creating the

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conditions for its institutionalisation, there exist, as in the past, lessdestructive alternative possibilities through international collaboration.

Moving to this side of the argument, the historical development of co-operative features of the international political system including the conventions of diplomacy and international law, which have beenpursued at least in part to strengthen international order and minimiseconflict have led to re-conceptualisations of international legitimacydue to ‘top-down’ as well as ‘bottom-up’ pressures. Both Polanyi andHeld in their very different ways reflect on the conditions which makeco-operation possible and desirable, the former stressing the exceedinglyshaky material and ideological foundations associated with nineteenth-century economic liberalism and the prospects of an international orderthat transcends these limitations, the latter more current in terms of the possibilities and imperatives of international co-operation associ-ated with globalisation. Again, both authors are clear about countervail-ing tendencies and pressures – from the precariousness of a globalsystem predicated on systematically organised violence as the finalarbiter of disputes to the proliferation of weapons of all descriptions duein part to the existence of a very profitable international market whereinthe major liberal democracies, who account for the lion’s share, competeso aggressively. Nevertheless, that there has been a discernible shifttowards de-legitimating the inviolability of sovereignty is clear even if the Bush administration’s doctrine of ‘pre-emption’ and the case ofmilitary intervention in Iraq has seriously divided the major statesincluding the major liberal democracies. I have argued that the erosionof state impunity, however faltering, insecure and politically divisive haspotentially enhanced the prospects of democracy and that cosmopoli-tan democracy is itself clearly predicated upon its consolidation at thedomestic level.

International war

As with inter-state competition but with the addition of much greatermobilisations by states of military personnel, labour and capital, as wellas much greater sacrifices called upon the citizenry, war has had aston-ishing social, economic and political consequences. Military defeatshave led to lasting democratic impositions in Germany, Italy and Japanand democratic transition in Argentina, while military intervention inHaiti and Afghanistan by the United States, and in Serbia and Kosovo byNATO have arguably also had welcomed results in terms of the prospectsfor democracy – the military intervention in Iraq is currently underway


so judgement here is not yet possible even if the pledge to democratisethe state in the post-war period is clear. The domestic impact of war hasbeen related to greater participation in politics by women in the Westand to deeper institutionalisations of welfare states.603 In short, thatmost awful of international phenomena whose understanding is thevery raison d’être of International Relations will probably continue togenerate social pressures, which often aim at, and sometimes achieve,changes in democratic directions. It does so by radically altering the balance of domestic and international forces.

Domestically, those held responsible for defeat, from a ruling clique toan entire political system, lose credibility and legitimacy, if not at firstdirect power, which in turn creates much more favourable conditionsfor oppositions groups. Something like this is even perceivable withinestablished liberal democracies. The defeat of the United States in theVietnam War, for instance, may be said to have had domestic demo-cratic effects including the advent of the ‘Vietnam Syndrome’ with itsheightened sensitivity to the number of casualties suffered in conflict byUS military personnel. Despite the complications and paradoxes arisingfrom this such as the limitations on arguably useful and perhaps increas-ingly necessary humanitarian interventions, which are real and impor-tant, conflating this sensitivity with political cowardice undervalues theachievement and service that an earlier generation of anti-war demon-strators bequeathed to the following ones – as if one needed reminding,the problem historically has been too few limitations on the martialappetites of states.604

Internationally, the defeat of fascism in the Second World War was adecisive victory for liberal democracy in Western Europe as well as else-where and a key basis for the current standing of the liberal democraticmodel worldwide. The socio-economic and political reforms that fol-lowed in its wake and related to the Cold War were also crucial in thisregard. Furthermore, in the period after the Second World War startingwith the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the GenocideConvention, the awareness of the atrocities committed by NaziGermany generated pressures to create conditions that would workagainst the repetition of such behaviour in the future – a decent hope inthe context of the current war in Iraq is for a similar process to occurthere. The international resolve associated with the idea that thereshould be explicit limits on what a government can do in its relationswith the people living within its boundaries was given a new impetus by the Second World War. While there is some evidence that this isincreasingly apparent – the case of Pinochet, the military intervention

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in Kosovo, for instance – there is also clear evidence that the commer-cial, strategic and domestic political interests of ruling politicians andstates continues to pull in the opposite direction – the case of PresidentsChirac and Putin with regard to Iraq.

It is important, however, not to be too optimistic about war’s link withdemocracy not only because of its proven destructiveness but alsobecause of its uncertain and unpredictable consequences. As BarringtonMoore, Schumpeter and Polanyi point out, if not for the First World War,Bolshevism as well as fascism would probably not have triumphed. Also,the Second World War may have saved parts of Western Europe andJapan from dictatorship (Spain and Portugal remaining under authoritar-ian control until the 1970s), but it also helped to produce the communistregimes of Central and Eastern Europe, Vietnam, North Korea and Chinaas well as the Cold War. For Europe then, the Revolutions of 1989–90may be seen as the fulfilment of 1945.605 Furthermore, the war may have contributed decisively to de-colonisation in the Third World, as theFirst World War did to ending of the empires within Europe, but it alsoopened up political opportunities to new, indigenous, despots. Similarly,the leaving of Saddam Hussein in power after the ousting of his troopsfrom Kuwait in 1991 made necessary the US bases in the Arabian penin-sula which helped give rise to al-Qaeda – Hussein’s final removal, even ifcompleted as desired by the British and American governments, may yetproduce unfavourable consequences which no one has yet envisaged. Forgood reasons then, the humanitarian aversion to international conflictmakes sense, as does the perhaps increasing need by the political leadersof the liberal democracies to justify participation in war on universalistgrounds.

Focused political action

This category relates to actions or policies by states, international organisations and global civil society groups in support of what are at least perceived by them to be democratic forces or practice. With the partial exception of Held’s text – some of the following argumentsare discussed in the analysis of that book – and, very tangentially that ofHuntington’s, this area does not figure in the arguments of the others.Though there are historical precedents especially with regard to US foreign policy, this is clearly a very current approach to the relationshipbetween democracy and the global system.

In the literature on social revolutions, quite appropriately, the conceptof subversion bears the most resemblance to this category. While there


is every indication that subversion is historically the least importantcause of revolutionary transformation if not the least troubling for status quo powers, the sheer scale and number of forces ostensiblyarrayed in opposition to dictatorships and their practices makes this category a crucial area of concern.

The first Clinton administration, which proclaimed the promotion ofdemocracy ‘the successor to the doctrine of containment’ and pledgedto make the ‘enlargement of democracy’ a guiding principle of its for-eign policy, captured perfectly the renewed liberal optimism of the post-Cold War era.606 Given the coherence and salience of the ‘democraticpeace’ thesis, this policy orientation may be said not simply to reflectthe continuation of the idealist side of US foreign policy but is arguablynewly and firmly premised on Realist considerations. Either way, as withthe Blair government’s ‘ethical’ foreign policy in Britain, all policiesrelated to other countries would be assessed in terms of their possibleimpact on democratisation and democracy related assistance wouldbecome a significant component of foreign aid.

Representing roughly a fourth of the global economy, the UnitedStates alone would seem to possess quite extraordinary leveragingpotential in terms of influencing the direction of political change inother countries. Combined with the states of the EU, the UN’s humanrights mandate and the depth of the global trend towards economic liberalisation – thereby increasing the political leverage entailed by possession of the largest capital and consumer markets – a conscious and co-ordinated ‘promotion’ of democratic governance would appearto stand a better chance of success today than at any other time in history.

Furthermore, operating through multilateral institutions such as theWorld Bank and IMF, the major liberal democratic states have increas-ingly applied the ‘conditionality’ principle to democratic reform.Probably the greatest successes to date in this area are the democratictransitions of Portugal, Spain and Greece whose conviction, on the partof the influential sectors of these societies, that joining the Europeanproject was the best course available to them, spurred them on to insti-tutionalise democracy. As examined in the previous chapter, the explicitdemocratic criteria for joining regional political and economic organisa-tions such as the EU and Mercosur could be an increasingly significantfactor in the diffusion of democracy. Paradoxically perhaps from thepoint of view of traditional concerns with the emancipation of the ThirdWorld, it is often those states who, partly because of their strategiccontrol over key resources (e.g. the Gulf states), potentially lucrative

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consumer markets or geopolitical weight and positioning (e.g. China),have achieved high levels of independence from the major liberaldemocracies, that are often least susceptible to outside political or eco-nomic pressures to reform – clearly, the prospects of democratic reformin the Middle East consequent upon the ousting of Hussein’s regime inIraq have been raised by the coalition partners arrayed against it. Ifdependency has a silver lining, the susceptibility to political pressurecould be it so long as the promotion of democratic reform is backed withtangible commitments on the part of the major states.

As we have already noted, however, the commercial and geopoliticalpressures which run counter to such an approach are considerable and,quite rightly, expose its champions to the charge of double standards.There are, of course, a variety of other difficulties here like actually co-ordinating such an approach internationally given the competition andlack of consensus between democratic states;607 knowing what the effectof democratic orientated policies will be; ascertaining the limitations oftheir impact; the constraints of economic and political resources avail-able for promoting democracy; preventing the commitment to democ-racy from allowing ‘new’ democrats to get away with murder (e.g.Moscow’s intervention in Chechnya); judging and admitting defeat of policies; knowing with any certainty whom to trust with the task ofcarrying out democratic reforms; accepting that the commitmentneeded by such a strategy is a long-term one, as the economic sanctionson South Africa demonstrated, and not particularly popular if innocentpeople are directly or indirectly hurt by them as also in Iraq, and finally;of knowing when a democratic system is in fact sustainable – the list ofcountries which have apparently institutionalised democracy at leasttwice being long indeed and growing all the time.608

States, however, are not the only relevant actors in this category. Therole played by global civil society groups, from raising public conscious-ness about the plight of those suffering under dictatorship, highlightingbrutal practice, to helping organise elections and applying pressure on democratic governments, especially in their dealings with stateswhich have active but heavily repressed democratic movements, are allimportant.609 Again, as I argued in the previous chapter, there is everyindication that such activity will continue to expand in scale and inimportance. Despite the contradictions, tensions and countervailingtendencies, it is difficult not to suggest that the combined effect of thefocused political action adds significantly to the ethos and underlyingreality that the norm of political organisation worldwide is biasedtowards democracy.


Force of example

The force of example or demonstration effect is the final area of analysisthat, as liberal internationalism suggests, is necessary for assessing therelationship between democracy and the global system. It is fair to saythat, as defined here, this concept is not analysed explicitly or systemat-ically by our authors with the exception of David Held for whom, aswith Kant’s ‘second definitive article’ of the ‘pacific federation’ ofrepublics, it is to be a critical effect of the successful institutionalisationof a cosmopolitan democratic framework, and Samuel Huntington forwhom the existence of democratic states made it more difficult for tran-sitional societies to achieve a stable non-communist polity while theexample of communist stability raised the likelihood of its emulation bythese countries.610

The force of example is closely related to the concept of ‘world-historical-time’ as an evolving picture of modernity, the multipledimensions and interpreted meanings of which affect social practicetransnationally. Beyond the transmission of emancipatory struggles and their particular means and methods – for example, civil rightsmovements, women’s suffrage, feminism, anti-war movements, anti-globalisation movements, civil disobedience, non-violent direct action,use of the internet as organising tool, guerrilla war and so on – this cate-gory also involves the international attractiveness or lure of models ofends; exemplars of socio-economic and political organisation havingbeen successfully achieved or perceived to have been. In our terms, there-fore, it takes seriously suggestions that democratic transitions in one ormore countries, like ‘successful’ revolutions, generate significant demon-stration effects elsewhere as arguably Latin America witnessed in the 1980s – the proximate similarity of socio-economic and political contexts is probably most relevant to the potential force and impact ofthe demonstration effect.

However, as in many areas of the social sciences generally, there isalways a real danger of oversimplification and wishful thinking here.There is every possibility that the negative power of example is just aspotent as that of the positive one. The experiments with democracy inAlgeria or Cambodia, for example, will not have necessarily givenregional neighbours the confidence to pursue their own democratictransitions. Similarly, it is not only progressive models that are trans-mitted internationally by the force of example. The denial of politicalpluralism like the conscious fomenting of ethnic or cultural rivalries and antagonisms by political leaders also has transnational purchase.

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Finally, as we have had reason to comment throughout this work, liberaldemocracy is itself open to honest and just criticisms such as the mas-sive gap between its promise of equality and the reality of endemicinequality or the corrupting role that money plays in shaping the polit-ical process at every level. Furthermore, as is often remarked in the con-text of the Asian Tigers or, retrospectively, in that of many formerdictatorships, the perception of increased criminal activity concomitantwith liberal democracy does not necessarily inspire emulation.

Nevertheless, the current lack of coherent world-historical challengesto liberal democracy with potentially universal application – unlike, for instance, political models based on interpretations of particular religions – as well as the unrivalled political and economic success of themajor liberal democratic states makes the force of example an importantinternational cause of domestic demands for political reform. This doesnot say anything, of course, about the likelihood of its institutionalisa-tion anywhere. As the history of revolutions has shown, not every transition to a ‘new’ form of politics and society survives. Typically,failed revolutions far outnumber those that succeed in a particular waveof revolutionary transformation and a similar type of process is probablytrue of those associated with democratic waves. For example, despite thedissolution of the USSR in 1991, most of the 15 former Soviet Republics’democratic credentials are today at best seriously in doubt – these would include Belarus, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgystan,Kazakstan as well as the Transcaucasian states.611 Similarly, the surge away from one-party regimes and towards multi-party democracy in sub-Saharan Africa, though arguably still advancing, has witnessed a greatmany ‘reversals’ through coups, civil war and ruling party manipulation –Nigeria, Gambia and Niger for the first, Rwanda, Burundi and Sierra Leonefor the second, Kenya and Zimbabwe for the third. As Huntington’s analysis so clearly suggests, ‘transitional’ states, putting aside the criticalquestion of ‘destination’, are the least politically stable of all.

Finally, the role of the United States in the context of the force ofexample is worth particular consideration. Arguably the most multicul-tural and civic – as opposed to ethnic – of all nations today, the UnitedStates sees itself and is seen by many throughout the world as havingdemonstrated the universal applicability of liberal democracy. If Asian-Americans, African-Americans and all other hyphenated Americans canmake this system work in the United States, why cannot liberal democ-racy be made to work in their countries of origin? While there are, ofcourse, many answers to this question which this book has attempted to highlight, the evident optimism and tenacity of American liberal


internationalism is perhaps best seen in light of the historically excep-tional character of this country.612

Conclusion

In analysing the above five categories of international/domestic inter-action with the aid of the case studies, it is clear that there are currently a number of features associated with the promotion of the liberal dem-ocratic form of state and some with its hindrance – democracy is verymuch in contingent relation to the global system even if its currentinternational hegemony has significantly altered this contingency.613

While the end of the Cold War has strengthened the global hegemonyof liberal democracy, the perception of US ‘unilateralism’, particularly inrelation to the military intervention in Iraq but also with regard to theKyoto Treaty and the International Criminal Court, has helped call intoquestion the coherence of the democratic ‘zone of peace’. The divisionsevident in the UN Security Council, in NATO, in the EU and throughoutthe world has raised the spectre of global realignments that, thoughunlikely to develop, could indeed fracture current arrangements justwhen the strategic necessity of multilateral co-operation has becomemore evident than ever.

Clearly, to strengthen the coherence of the democratic ‘zone of peace’,much greater internationally co-ordinated political effort needs to beexpended in raising the benefits to societies and states which have madeor are making genuinely democratic changes in terms of the distributionof economic opportunities and wealth as well as security. As the tragedyof 11 September 2001 has demonstrated, no state, however peripheral tothe main economic, cultural and political processes of the global systemshould be left aside. As our case studies make clear, however, no oneshould be under any illusions that such a course of action is necessarilyachievable. Besides the familiar, if periodic, feature of declining terms oftrade associated with many primary product exporters, it is estimatedthat developed countries’ farm subsidies – in part, of course, a product ofliberal democratic settlements – are worth some $30 billion more thanAfrica’s entire Gross Domestic Product (GDP).614 Meanwhile, the elimi-nation of North American, European and Japanese barriers to importsfrom sub-Saharan Africa, a region facing particularly harrowing socio-economic and political conditions, would increase its annual exports by$2.5 billion.615 Similarly, as a recent UN-sponsored comparative analysisof the Arab world makes evident, 250 million people surviving on acombined GDP equivalent to that of Spain’s is hardly fertile ground for

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liberal democracy even if the very lack of democracy is a major source ofthe problem.616

Nevertheless, according to Amartya Sen, asking what makes a countryfit for democracy is the wrong question. ‘A country does not have to bedeemed fit for democracy; rather, it has to become fit through democ-racy.’617 Despite the forces arrayed against the conjunctural developmentof the democratic form of state highlighted by this book, the fact thatthese are established in all the major habitable continents of the worldand the apparent success achieved by the leading states, however recently,as liberal democracies, may well make him right. Being much more atten-tive to the multitude of ways in which the workings of the global systemaffect the prospects of consolidating democracy is a necessary beginning.There is little point in accepting liberal internationalist expectations of its diffusion when so many obstacles are clearly discernable.

This is particularly so because of the real and potential value of democ-racy. To the extent that politics matter, that the collective power of thestate can be used for inclusive or exclusive purposes, for progress or reac-tion, for individual and group empowerment or marginalisation, for waror peace, for good or bad, democracy matters. This is precisely why theinteractions between the international and domestic domains that are inpart implicated in the creation and development of forms of state shouldbe central to the study of International Relations. Furthermore, if themyriad transnational forces associated with globalisation have made the extension of political community an increasingly pressing concern,the diffusion of the democratic form of state is likely the best means for itsachievement. The spread of democratic principles along with the ethos ofhuman rights, by helping to legitimate the equal worth of individuals andgroups, are part of only a few elements in the modern global system erod-ing the superior or prior moral claims of the national community.

Our analysis suggests that the relationship between democracy and the global system is much more complex and problematic than liberal internationalism assumes. In addition, while the contingency ofthis relationship may be moving in a positive direction, the obstacles toits worldwide diffusion arising specifically from the way the interna-tional and domestic domains interact are very considerable indeed.Nevertheless, much more could be done consciously to improve thelikelihood of its international diffusion and consolidation. A genuineinternationally co-ordinated commitment to democratic governmentwould be potentially radical (revolutionary even) not only in terms ofmoving towards the transcendence of Westphalian principles but forhuman emancipation, particularly if liberal democracy is seen in termsof its own unrealised potential.


211

Notes

Preface

1. For an opposing view see Perry Anderson ‘Force and Consent – Aspects of USHegemony’, New Left Review 17, September–October 2002.

2. Michael Parenti, ‘To Kill Iraq: The Reasons Why?’ www.michaelparenti.org.3. Parenti’s view of capitalism is cogently stated as follows: ‘The “global econ-

omy” is another name for imperialism, and imperialism is a transnationalform of capitalism. The essence of capitalism is to turn nature into commodi-ties and commodities into capital. The live green earth is transformed intodead, gold bricks, with luxury items for the few and toxic slag heaps for themany. The glittering mansion overlooks a vast sprawl of shanty towns,wherein a desperate, demoralized humanity is kept in line with drugs, televi-sion, and armed force.’ See, Parenti’s Against Empire (San Francisco, City LightsBooks, 1995) p. 208.

4. A similar justification was present also in the military interventions inYugoslavia, Kosovo and Afghanistan.

5. Bernard Crick, Political Thoughts and Polemics (Edinburgh: EdinburghUniversity Press, 1990) p. 146.

6. As will be clear from the introductory chapter, the ‘liberal’ in liberal internation-alism is not that used in the United States as indicating ‘left-wing’ but rather amuch more heterogeneous philosophical category covering much of the centreground of modern politics including most Republicans as well as Democrats. Thesame heterogeneity of liberalism is true of British politics today as well.

7. One will recall that the presidential candidate George W. Bush expressed aclear disinclination for ‘nation-building’ and global police actions that tosome extent characterised the Clinton administration’s foreign policy. Forthe Left, the dilemma of opposing US led military action without necessarilydefending the status quo in Iraq and the Middle East, as in Afghanistan, isserious if often seemingly unconscious. The most compelling voice on theLeft that supports the current military intervention in Iraq, as inAfghanistan, both for the presumed affect on Western security as well as forthe progressive domestic consequences for the people of these states isChristopher Hitchens. See ‘The Christopher Hitchens web’ for the dozens ofhis relevant articles.

8. Of course, the goal of institutionalising democracy will not be allowed totrump all other considerations as, for example, if it seems to run counter tonational interests as in present day Pakistan where ‘free elections’ could wellplace political Islamists in power. For the Bush administration’s justification of‘pre-emption’, see ‘The National Security Strategy of the United States ofAmerica’, September 2002.

9. For differing assessments of the prospects of democratisation in the Middle East consequent upon the current war in Iraq see the essays by

Adam Garfinkle, Fouad Ajami, Robin Banerji, Ahmad Khalidi and KennethPollack in Prospect, April, 2003.

10. See the essay by John Grey in ‘The New Statesman’ 31 March 2003. See alsothe essay on de Maistre by Isaiah Berlin in his The Crooked Timber of Humanity(London: John Murray, 1990).

11. See Chapter 4 for an extended assessment of these arguments.12. See Michael Ignatieff’s ‘The Burden’ in The New York Times Magazine,

5 January 2003.13. The support of Hussein’s regime in the current crisis, throughout the

Arab and, indeed, Muslim world, is a symptom of a pathological political culture formed in part at the fulcrum of international and domestic interaction.

Introduction

14. Quoted in Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Pandaemonium (Oxford University Press,1993) p. 53. In a joint statement 13 years later, the presidents of the UnitedStates and Russia, George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin, said the former adver-saries now had, ‘a new relationship … founded on a commitment to the val-ues of democracy, the free market and the rule of law. The United States andRussia have overcome the legacy of the Cold War. Neither country regards theother as an enemy or threat’. Los Angeles Times, 14 November, 2001.

15. While this is by no means an exhaustive list, perhaps the most prominentbooks so far include Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man(London: Hamish Hamilton, 1992); Bruce Russett, Grasping the DemocraticPeace: Principles for a Post-Cold War World (Princeton University Press, 1993);Samuel P. Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the TwentiethCentury (University of Oklahoma Press, 1991); Noam Chomsky, DeterringDemocracy (London: Vintage, 1991); John Dunn, Democracy, The UnfinishedJourney 508 BC to AD 1993 (Oxford University Press, 1992); David Held ed.,Prospects for Democracy (Polity Press, 1993); David Held Democracy and theGlobal Order (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995); Miroslav Nincic, Democracy andForeign Policy (Columbia University Press, 1992); Georg Sorensen, Democracyand Democratization (Westview Press, 1993); Geraint Parry and MichaelMoran (eds) Democracy and Democratization (London: Routledge, 1994); DaidPotter, David Goldblatt, Margaret Kiloh, Paul Lewis (eds) Democratization(Cambridge: Polity Press, 1997).

16. Freedom House estimates that currently ‘there are 86 Free countries (2465.2billion people; 40.69 percent of the world population) in which a broadrange of political rights are respected; 59 Partly Free countries (1442.2 billionpeople; 23.80 percent of the world’s population) in which there is a mixedrecord with more limited political rights and civil liberties often accompa-nied by corruption, weak rule of law and the inordinate political dominanceof a ruling party in some cases characterised by ethnic or religious strife.There are 47 countries rated Not Free (2151.1 billion people; representing35.51 percent of the globe’s population), in which basic political rights andcivil liberties are denied.’ The State of Freedom: 2000 (Washington: FreedomHouse, 2000).

212 Notes

17. See Evan Luard, Basic Texts in International Relations (London: Macmillan,1992) pp. 417–23 for Kant and pp. 51–3 for Paine. For Kant’s analysis see also Michael Doyle ‘Liberalism and World Politics’, American PoliticalScience Review, Vol. 80, No. 4, December 1986. For Montesquieu see Norberto Bobbio, ‘Democracy and the Global System’ in Daniele Archibugiand David Held (eds) Cosmopolitan Democracy (Cambridge: Polity Press,1995) pp. 20–1.

18. Ibid., pp. 53–6 for de Tocqueville and 57–8 for Cobden.19. Ibid., pp. 267–70.20. James Mayall, World Politics: Progress and its Limits (Cambridge: Polity Press,

2000) p. 153.21. For a thorough, if perhaps dated, account of the role of sovereignty and non-

intervention in world politics see R.J. Vincent, Non-intervention andInternational Order (Princeton University Press, 1974). To the extent thatRealism is supposed to concentrate on threats to the security and territorialintegrity of states, it has failed to theorise the reality that internal problems,civil wars or revolutions, for example, often spill over on to other states. For adiscussion on the weakness of Realism in this regard see Fred Halliday, ‘ “TheSixth Great Power”: On the Study of Revolutions and International Relations’,Review of International Studies (Vol. 16, No. 3, July 1990).

22. For a recent account of the moral arguments involved here see MichaelWalzer, Thick and Thin: Moral Arguments at Home and Abroad (University ofNotre Dame Press, 1994).

23. For an account of this thesis see Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politics(New York: Random House, 1979). See also, Andrew Linklater, Beyond Realismand Marxism: Critical Theory and International Relations (London: Macmillan,1990) and Martin Hollis and Steve Smith, Explaining and UnderstandingInternational Relations (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990) for excellent exegesesand critiques of this approach.

24. For a critique of Realism that is based on an understanding of socio-economic structures see Justin Rosenberg, The Empire of Civil Society (London:Verso, 1994).

25. See Margot Light and A.J.R. Groom (eds) International Relations: A Handbook ofCurrent Theory (London: Pinter Publishers, 1985) for such a survey.

26. This situation is not static, however, and there is increasing influence in par-ticular of historical sociology on IR. Two very recent contributions include J. Hobden and S. Hobson (eds) Historical Sociology of International Relations(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), and B. Buzan and R. Little,Global Systems in World History: Remaking the Study of International Relations(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).

27. Marxist and neo-Marxist accounts are important exceptions to the lack of modern theoretical work on the relationship between international rela-tions and socio-economic and political structures. Apart from this literature, within IR the work of Fred Halliday, Robert Cox, David Held,Andrew Linklater, Justin Rosenberg, Jan Aart Scholte among others would need to be represented as exceptions also. My own research interestshave to a considerable degree been influenced by the questions raised in FredHalliday’s ‘International Society as Homogeneity: Burke, Marx, Fukuyama’,Millennium (Vol. 21, No. 3, 1992) pp. 435–61. As to the work in Sociology

Notes 213

and Political Science I am particularly thinking of Theda Skocpol’s States andSocial Revolutions (Cambridge University Press, 1979); Michael Mann’s States,War and Capitalism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988), The Sources of Social PowerVols I & II (Cambridge University Press, 1986 and 1993 respectively); LeslieSklair, Sociology of the Global System (Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991); and DavidHeld ed., Prospects for Democracy (Polity Press, 1993). Most of the works citedin note 15 fall into these disciplines.

28. That the interaction between ‘exogenous’ and ‘endogenous’ forces was primarily responsible for the collapse of communist power in Central andEastern Europe has been argued thoroughly by a number of authors. The case of Argentina’s transition to democracy is also quite illuminating in this regard. Not only did the Falklands War precipitate the fall of the military ‘junta’, but other longer term international processes such as economic decline, indebtedness and national sentiment associated with ‘LasMalvinas’, helped define the options available to the increasingly unpopularmilitary regime. What is more difficult to prove is that once the old order col-lapses, the choice of democracy as the alternative form of governance is insome way also determined by international processes and considerations.Nevertheless, opposition figures and movements inside authoritarian statessuch as China and Vietnam often suggest that the lack of democracy is at theroot of other problems facing their societies. Therefore, democratic alterna-tives are envisaged well before the collapse of undemocratic regimes. Thatthe reforms initiated by Mikhail Gorbachev in the former Soviet Union werein large measure in response to international comparisons is made byGorbachev himself in Perestroika (London: Fontana, 1988).

29. For assessments of studies focused on testing the hypothesis of the liberalpeace as well as refuting it see Michael Doyle, Ways of War and Peace(New York: W.W. Norton, 1997) pp. 284–99.

30. For examples of the exception see David Held op. cit. as well as his PoliticalTheory Today (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991) and Prospects for Democracy:North, South, East, West (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1993).

31. For the varieties of ‘liberal peace’ arguments see Michael Doyle, op. cit. pp. 205–12.

32. Michael Doyle, ‘Liberalism and World Politics’, American Political ScienceReview, op. cit. p. 1151.

33. Ibid., pp. 1155–7.34. Ibid., p. 1157.35. Ibid., p. 1157.36. Ibid., p. 1158. My italics to highlight the tendentious character of this notion.37. Ibid., p. 1159.38. Michael Doyle, Ways of War and Peace, op. cit. pp. 213–29. Doyle terms this

variety of liberalism ‘First Image’ or human nature liberalism after KennethWaltz’s categorisation in his Man, the State and War (New York: ColumbiaUniversity Press, 1959). Included here are John Locke and Jeremy Bentham.

39. Ibid., pp. 226–9. According to Doyle, the international institutional dimen-sion is the particular contribution of Bentham’s insights.

40. Ibid., pp. 230–50. Because peace is a by-product of capitalist democracy,Doyle terms this type of liberalism ‘Second Image’. Kant’s liberalism is the‘Third Image’.

214 Notes

41. Francis Fukuyama, op. cit.42. See Paul Cammack, ‘Democratization and citizenship in Latin America’ in

Geraint Parry and Michael Moran (eds) Democracy and Democratization(London: Routledge, 1994) p. 177.

43. Quoted in Andrew Linklater, op. cit., p. 99.44. Above all it was Fred Halliday’s MSc course on ‘Revolutions and IR’ at LSE

which helped point me in these particular directions.45. See Jack Goldstone ed., Revolutions 2nd edition (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich

College Publishers, 1993) for the dearth of IR specialists.46. Theda Skocpol, op. cit., p. 22.47. Ibid., p. 23.48. Ibid., p. 23. The words in brackets replace revolutions and revolutionary

leaderships respectively.49. For an exquisite elaboration of the importance of ‘partial judgements’ on pol-

itics see John Dunn, The Cunning of Unreason: Making Sense of Politics(London: Harper Collins, 2001).

50. Ibid., pp. 209–10.51. For the increasing need and existing bases of international cooperation see

Michael Edwards Future Positive: International Co-operation in the 21st Century(London: Earthscan Publications, 1999).

52. Fred Halliday, The World at 2000 (London: Palgrave, 2001) p. 133.53. Leon Trotsky, The History of the Russian Revolution (New York: Monad Press,

1980 first published in 1932). See especially chapter 1. He also deploys on thevery first page what is in fact a major conclusion of Michael Mann’s first vol-ume of The Sources of Social Power (ibid.) namely, that, as Perry Andersonwrote, ‘the essential precondition for the emergence of civilization andacceptance of its discontents was a “closing of escape routes” or ecological“caging” ’. See Perry Anderson, A Zone of Engagement (London: Verso, 1992) p. 77. For a similar ‘tripartite’ conception of the global system as well as anengagement with ‘uneven and combined development’ see Fred Halliday,Revolution and World Politics (London: Macmillan, 1999) pp. 311–22.

54. Leon Trotsky, ibid., pp. 6–7.55. Ibid., chapter 1.56. Ibid., pp. 4–5.57. Ibid., p. 5.58. See Andrew Linklater, op. cit. for an assessment of the problems associated

with such privileging by Marxist and neo-Marxist theory.59. See Norberto Bobbio, Liberalism and Democracy (London: Verso, 1990)

pp. 31–5.60. Perry Anderson, op. cit., p. 109.61. Ibid., pp. ix–xiv.62. See Quentin Skinner The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, Vol. 1

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978) pp. ix–xv.63. Anderson, op. cit., p. x.64. As examples, Polanyi’s text and central thesis is used and quoted extensively

by John Gray’s False Dawn: The Delusions of Global Capitalism (London:Granta Books, 1998), while some of Schumpeter’s ideas appear in the highlypopular book The Lexus and the Olive Tree (New York: Anchor Books, 1999) byThomas Friedman.

Notes 215

65. William E. Connolly, Political Theory and Modernity (Ithaca: CornellUniversity Press, 1993) p. 5.

66. Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999)pp. 146–59.

1 Barrington Moore’s ‘Social Origins’ and the Global System

67. There are, of course, good reasons for stressing domestic obstacles and poorones. A crucial one seems to me to be the importance of secularism, summedup perhaps in the difficulty of reconciling ‘the sovereignty of the people’with ‘the sovereignty of God’. Even here, however, one should be sceptical ofarguments suggesting the eternal durability of religious authority, the purely‘religious’ content of that authority, and, of course, the analysis of theocra-cies as simply the product of domestic forces. The most commonly held poorreason for stressing domestic obstacles to the institutionalisation of democ-racy is the arrogant and imperious one which suggests the insuperable‘Western’ origins of democracy and the inherent cultural backwardness ofthe people of the Third World. A good example of this attitude is found in abook by Conor Cruise O’Brien where, pouring scorn on the US media’sreporting of ‘Operation Restore Democracy’, he suggests that ‘… mostreporters and commentators have been describing and discussing theprospects for the restoration of democracy in Haiti as if democracy were avenerable Haitian institution …’ (On the Eve of the Millennium, New York: TheFree Press, 1994, p. 142). Well, in fact, Haiti, as San Domingo, was one of the first independent republics in the Americas (1804) and ToussaintL’Ouverture, its leader, the first independent revolutionary leader of stature.

68. Barrington Moore Jr., Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (Penguin,1966).

69. As set out in the introductory chapter, I have in mind here the debate inPolitics and IR concerning ‘liberal internationalism’ and the apparent ‘zoneof peace’ established by liberal democratic states. See in particular, Michael W.Doyle, op. cit.; Wade L. Huntley, ‘Kant’s Third Image: Systemic Sources of the Liberal Peace’, International Studies Quarterly (Vol. 40, No. 1, March 1996);Bruce Russett, Grasping the Democratic Peace: Principles for a Post-Cold WarWorld (Princeton University Press, 1993); Francis Fukuyama, op. cit.; Graham E.Fuller, The Democracy Trap: Perils of the Post-Cold War World (New York:Dutton, 1991); Noam Chomsky, Deterring Democracy (London: Vintage,1991); John Dunn, Democracy, the Unfinished Journey 508 BC to AD 1993(Oxford University Press, 1992); David Held ed., Prospects for Democracy(Polity Press, 1993); Miroslav Nincic, Democracy and Foreign Policy (ColumbiaUniversity Press, 1992); Georg Sorensen, Democracy and Democratisation(Westview Press, 1993).

70. Ibid., p. xiv.71. Ibid., p. x.72. Ernest Gellner Conditions of Liberty: Civil Society and its Rivals (Penguin Books,

1996) p. 188.

216 Notes

73. Barrington Moore Jr., op. cit., p. 414. Of course, it would be just as simple toquibble over each of these points as any detailed definition. Moore actuallyexpands on what institutions are required for democratic government in var-ious places throughout the book but never in any systematic way, preferringto assume a shared understanding by his readers of what makes democraciesdemocratic. The most systematic description of democracy is as follows: ‘Keyelements in the liberal and bourgeois order of society are the right to vote,representation in a legislature that makes the laws and hence is more than arubber stamp for the executive, an objective system of law that at least in the-ory confers no special privileges on account of birth or inherited status, secu-rity for the rights of property and the elimination of barriers inherited fromthe past on its use, religious toleration, freedom of speech, and the right topeaceful assembly’ (p. 429). Arguing against the view that Indian democracyis a sham he lists the following features: a working parliamentary system, anindependent judiciary, ‘the standard liberal freedoms’, free general elections,and civilian control of the military (p. 314). Later he lists these important features: ‘the existence of legal opposition and channels for protest and criticism’ (p. 431).

74. Perhaps this is one reason why one finds so few references to Social Origins inthe works of modern democratic theorists such as David Held in Britain orRobert Dahl in the United States. For an explicit account of the relationshipbetween ideology and social movements according to Moore see the epiloguein Social Origins.

75. Barrington Moore Jr., op. cit., pp. 435–40.76. His thesis here is that the combination of declining social classes with rising

ones is a crucial variable in determining political outcomes. Ibid., pp. 453–83.77. For a clear appraisal of this debate see Michael Mann, States, War and

Capitalism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988) ch. 1.78. See Michael S. Kimmel, Revolution: A Sociological Interpretation (Oxford: Polity

Press, 1990) pp. 129–36.79. See Theda Skocpol, Social Revolutions in the Modern World (Cambridge

University Press, 1994) pp. 44–9.80. Barrington Moore Jr., op. cit., p. 5. Similarly, as Andrew Linklater (op. cit.,

p. 37) has noted, ‘Marx argued that the development of exchange relations first appeared “in the connection of the different communities withone another, not in the relations between the different members of a singlecommunity.” ’

81. Ibid., p. 8.82. Ibid., p. 6 quoting R.H. Tawney, The Agrarian Problem in the Sixteenth Century

(London, 1912).83. Ibid., p. 14. This is a crucial point and one not lost on those in the Third

World and elsewhere who are engaged in struggles to reform states with enor-mous capabilities in relation to social classes or civil society.

84. Ibid., p. 28.85. Ibid., p. 30.86. This early version of parliamentary sovereignty was, of course, the rule of the

landed upper classes with property qualifications. Ibid., p. 22.87. Ibid., p. 32.

Notes 217

88. See Leon Trotsky, op. cit., ch. 1.89. Barrington Moore Jr., op. cit., pp. 413–14. For a very stimulating discussion

of the central importance for IR of this theory as outlined by Trotsky, seeJustin Rosenberg, ‘Isaac Deutscher and the lost history of international relations’, New Left Review 215/1996.

90. Barrington Moore Jr., op. cit., p. 424.91. According to Justin Rosenberg, David Horowitz (Empire and Revolution: New

York, 1969) adds to Moore’s account ‘… the realization that these three out-comes, for all their differences, were actually not separate historicalexperiences’, but a single historical process. I would argue that Moore’sanalysis does point to separate historical ‘experiences’ but within a single historical process. See Justin Rosenberg, op. cit., pp. 11–12.

92. Justin Rosenberg, op. cit., pp. 8–11.93. Barrington Moore Jr., op. cit., pp. 250–1.94. For an account of the progress of industrialisation in the Third World

see Gary Gereffi, ‘Capitalism, Development and Global Commodity Chains’in Leslie Sklair ed., Capitalism and Development (London: Routledege, 1994)pp. 211–31.

95. Barrington Moore Jr., op. cit., p. 430.96. Dietrich Rueschemeyer, Evelyne Huber Stephens and John D. Stephens,

Capitalist Development and Democracy (University of Chicago Press, 1992) pp. 159–63. According to these authors, ‘The greater difficulties in consoli-dating state power in Latin America compared to Europe explain at least part of the comparative scarcity of stable institutionalized elite contestation and gradual inclusion of non-elite sectors’ (p. 163).

97. This point is made by most, if not all, texts on Third World politics and eco-nomics. See, for example, Christopher Clapham, Third World Politics(London: Croom Helm, 1985) pp. 1–39; and for an excellent account of this process according to Marx, see Anthony Brewer, Marxist Theories ofImperialism, 2nd edition (London: Routledge, 1990) pp. 25–57.

98. Barrington Moore Jr., op. cit., pp. 433–52.99. Ibid., p. 417.

100. Ibid., pp. 419–20.101. Ibid., p. 418.102. The modern source of this connection is Seymore Martin Lipset, Political

Man: The Social Bases of Politics (New York: Doubleday, 1960) pp. 45–76. Seealso Robert Dahl, Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition (New Haven: YaleUniversity Press, 1971) pp. 62–80; Samuel P. Huntington, The Third Wave:Democratisation in the Late Twentieth Century (University of Oklahoma Press,1991) ch. 2; for more critical responses see Ronaldo Munck, ‘Democracy andDevelopment’ in Leslie Sklair ed., Capitalism and Development (London:Routledge, 1994) pp. 21–39 and Dietrich Rueschemeyer, Evelyne HuberStephens and John D. Stephens, op. cit.

103. See Fred Halliday, The World at 2000 (London: Palgrave, 2001) p. 65.104. See, for example, Howard Handelman, The Challenge of Third World

Development (New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1996) pp. 133–54.105. Dietrich Rueschemeyer, Evelyne Huber Stephens and John D. Stephens,

op. cit., use labour ‘intensity’ rather than Moore’s notion of labour ‘repressive’agriculture as a decisive variable (pp. 163–4). I too prefer this distinction.

218 Notes

106. Barrington Moore Jr., op. cit., pp. 418–20.107. Dietrich Rueschemeyer, Evelyne Huber Stephens and John D. Stephens,

op. cit., p. 165.108. Barrington Moore Jr., op. cit., pp. 433–52.109. Ibid., p. 437.110. Fred Halliday, Islam and the Myth of Confrontation (London: I.B. Tauris, 1996)

pp. 39–40.111. Christopher Clapham op. cit., pp. 39–60.112. Ibid., pp. 93–101. It has been estimated that states with an overall tax take

of less than 35–40% of GDP are extremely unlikely to have rates of povertyless than 10% of the population. See the interview with Jorge Castañeda inNew Left Review, Vol. 7, Jan/Feb 2001.

113. Financial Times, 1 December 2000.114. Barrington Moore Jr., op. cit., p. 431.115. Tom Kemp, Industrialization in the Non-Western World, 2nd edition (London:

Longman, 1989) pp. 148–75. The following material is mainly drawn fromthis source.

116. Ibid., p. 166.117. Paul Cammack, ‘Democratization and Citizenship in Latin America’ in

Geraint Parry and Michael Moran (eds) Democracy and Democratization(London: Routledge, 1994) p. 185.

118. See Nicola Miller, Soviet Relations with Latin America 1959–1987 (CambridgeUniversity Press, 1989) pp. 42–50.

119. Obviously, military takeovers are not always explicitly justified on thesegrounds. They have been variously justified as protecting the country fromthe anti-democratic tendencies of civilian political parties, restoring the ruleof law and order or anti-terrorism, restoring moral rectitude or anti-corruption, to name but a few. See Robert Pinkney, Right-Wing MilitaryGovernment (London: Pinter Publishers, 1990) pp. 22–37.

120. See Nicola Miller, op. cit., pp. 50–7. For an analysis which stresses the ‘forceof example’ of revolutionary regimes see Fred Halliday, Revolution andForeign Policy: The Case of South Yemen 1967–1987 (Cambridge UniversityPress, 1990) pp. 228–32. For an analysis of the recent impact of the ColdWar on the Third World see Fred Halliday, Cold War, Third World: An Essayon Soviet-American Relations (London: Hutchinson Radius, 1989).

121. See Jenny Pearce, Under the Eagle (London: Latin America Bureau, 1981) pp. 51–61.

122. Jenny Pearce, op. cit., pp. 84–98. The mobilisation by US companies of sup-port against reformist regimes was particularly important in the case ofChile under Allende, of Brazil under Goulart and of Peru under Belaúnde toname but a few in South America.

123. Justin Rosenberg, op. cit., p. 10, quoting Isaac Deutscher, UnfinishedRevolution (London, 1967) p. 34.

124. Barrington Moore Jr., op. cit., p. 431.125. Samuel P. Huntington develops a scheme using ‘waves of democratisation’

including partial reversals. The dates he gives are as follows:

First, long wave of democratisation 1828–1926First reverse wave 1922–42

Notes 219

Second, short wave 1943–62Second reverse wave 1958–75Third wave of democratisation 1974–present

See Huntington, op. cit., pp. 13–26.126. Barrington Moore Jr., op. cit., p. 427. Other analyses which incorporate

‘stages’ are Dietrich Rueschemeyer, Evelyne Huber Stephens and John D.Stephens, op. cit., and Samual P. Huntington, op. cit.

127. Barrington Moore Jr., op. cit., pp. 314–410.128. Ibid., pp. 431–2.129. Ibid., p. 431.130. While the term ‘revolution’ is used here, it should be kept in mind that not

all of these states experienced the kind of social upheaval associated withsocial revolutions – see Theda Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions(Cambridge University Press, 1979) ch. 1. Clearly, the immediate cause ofthe transformations in Central and Eastern Europe was the change in poli-cies of the Soviet Union under Gorbachev. The following section focuses onthe causes which led to the final collapse of the Soviet bloc.

131. See Fred Halliday, ‘The Ends of Cold War’, New Left Review 180/1990. Thefollowing section draws mainly from this source.

132. Ibid., pp. 14–15.133. Ibid., p. 17.134. See Göran Therborn, European Modernity and Beyond: The Trajectory of

European Societies 1945–2000 (London: Sage, 1995) pp. 85–164.135. Fred Halliday, ‘The Ends of Cold War’, op. cit., p. 19.136. This term is used by Dietrich Rueschemeyer, Evelyne Huber Stephens and

John D. Stephens, op. cit., pp. 49–51. The concept of civil society is definedby these authors as ‘the totality of social institutions and associations, bothformal and informal, that are not strictly production-related nor govern-mental or familial in character’ (p. 49). For the argument that civil society isa basic precondition for democratic government see Ernest Gellner, op. cit.,pp. 184–9.

137. See E.J. Hobsbawm, Labouring Men (London: Weidenfeld & Nocholson,1968); Ralph Miliband, Parliamentary Socialism (London: Allen & Unwin,1961); George Lichtheim, A Short History of Socialism (London: Weidenfeld& Nicholson, 1970); Michael Harrington, Socilaism: Past and Future (New York:Arcade Publishing, 1989). An interesting theory which suggests that theearly achievement of the vote by US male workers made them less prone tosocialist ideology is found in Michael Mann’s ‘Ruling Class Strategies andCitizenship’, in States, War and Capitalism op. cit., pp. 192–5.

138. A wonderful exposition of the immense role of civil society in influencingthe political outcomes even in the early years of the US Republic is JohnKeane’s Tom Paine: A Political Life (London: Bloomsbury, 1995).

139. Michael Ignatieff, ‘On Civil Society: Why Eastern Europe’s RevolutionsCould Succeed’ in Foreign Affairs, March/April 1995.

140. The notion of historical culmination in the form of liberal democracy, ofcourse, was a major reason for the rancour with which Francis Fukuyama’sthesis (op. cit.) was received.

141. Barrington Moore Jr., op. cit., p. 224.

220 Notes

142. See Justin Rosenberg, op. cit.143. A challenging account of the struggles involved in the making of modernity

or the ‘proletarianisation’ of Europe and indeed the world is PeterLinebaugh and Marcus Rediker’s The Many-Headed Hydra: The Hidden Historyof the Revolutionary Atlantic (London: Verso, 2000).

2 Karl Polanyi, Democracy and the Global System

144. Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins ofOur Time (Boston: Beacon Hill, 1944).

145. There are many references to this ‘double movement’ but three of them canbe found on pp. 76, 130–4, 249.

146. Ibid., pp. 43–55.147. For the differences with feudalism see, ibid., pp. 69–70.148. Ibid., p. 72.149. Ibid., p. 72.150. For elaboration on these points see ibid., chs 14, 15 and 16 respectively.

More will be said on this matter when discussing the ‘post-liberal’ era.151. Ibid., p. 130.152. See, especially, ibid., the concluding chapter entitled Freedom in a Complex

Society.153. See, especially, ibid., Section II, Part II, Self-Protection of Society. The extent to

which contemporary politics still revolve around the ‘double movement’ isremarkable. The Left and Right of politics – within and between politicalparties, for instance – are still largely distinguished from one another bytheir position with regard to the limits and uses of market principles, mech-anisms and institutions.

154. Ibid., p. 65.155. For an elaboration of the military dimension of the Industrial Revolution see

G. Sen, The Military Origins of Industrialisation and International Trade Rivalry(London: Francis Pinter, 1984).

156. Ibid., p. 67.157. Ibid., p. 75.158. Similar points can be found in the contemporary sociological literature on

class such as Anthony Giddens’ The Class Structure of the Advanced Societies(London: Hutchinson & Co., 1973). See also, Michael Mann’s The Sources ofSocial Power Vol. II (Cambridge University Press, 1993) ch. 7.

159. ‘The fate of classes is much more often determined by the needs of society than the fate of society is determined by the needs of classes. Givena definite structure of society, the class theory works; but what if that struc-ture itself undergoes change. … neither the birth nor the death of classes,neither their aims nor the degree to which they attain them; neither theirco-operations nor their antagonisms can be understood apart from the situ-ation of society as a whole.’ Ibid., p. 152.

160. Ibid., p. 156. Polanyi’s assessment of class conflict is very close to that ofMichael Mann, see especially, op. cit., ch. 15.

161. Ibid., p. 135.

Notes 221

162. For another critique of the ‘harmony of interests’ proffered by liberalismwithin the discipline of International Relations, see E.H. Carr’s The TwentyYears’ Crisis 1919–1939 (London: Macmillan, 1939) pp. 41–62.

163. Interestingly, Polanyi essentially agrees that the Speenhamland Law didindeed worsen the position of labourers by turning them into paupers.However, the cause of this degradation is seen to lie with the commodifica-tion of labour in the first place rather than with the unintended consequences of the squire’s Law. Ibid., pp. 77–85.

164. Until the Parliamentary Reform Bill of 1832 the middle classes were not ina position to direct government policy. Thereafter, one can still argue thatthe state retained some autonomy from domestic social forces but perhapswith less impunity. The autonomy that was retained was especially in thefield of foreign policy. See especially, Michael Mann’s States, War andCapitalism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988) chs 1–4.

165. Polanyi, op. cit., p. 138.166. Ibid., pp. 192–200.167. Ibid., pp. 198–9.168. Ibid., p. 76.169. Ibid., pp. 77–85.170. For the role of the Tudors and early Stuarts see ibid., p. 38.171. Ibid., pp. 86–129.172. Ibid., p. 102.173. Ibid., p. 101.174. Ibid., pp. 80–3.175. A good example here is the introduction of the Factory Act in 1833 which

limited the use of child labour. See H.C.G. Matthew and Kenneth O.Morgan The Oxford History of Britain Vol. V: The Modern Age (OxfordUniversity Press, 1984) p. 169.

176. Polanyi’s analysis of the working-class movement is not at all extensive. Fora much more detailed description and analysis of the major points see,Michael Mann The Sources of Social Power, op. cit., ch. 15.

177. Barrington Moore Jr., Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (Penguin,1966) pp. 3–39. Only the United States faced a similar situation with regardto the peasantry, but it, of course, had eventually to deal with the issue ofslavery, ibid., pp. 111–55.

178. Polanyi, op. cit., p. 168.179. Ibid., p. 170. See also Robert Heilbroner’s The Worldly Philosophers (London:

Penguin Books, 1983) pp. 84–90.180. Ibid., p. 172. See also George Lichtheim’s A Short History of Socialism

(London: Flamingo, 1983) pp. 57–73.181. Polanyi, op. cit., p. 172.182. ‘… [H]undreds of thousands of citizens were prepared in the capacity of spe-

cial constables to turn their arms against the Chartists on that day (April 12,1848).’ Ibid., p. 173.

183. Michael Mann, op. cit., p. 524.184. A.H. Hanson and Malcolm Walles, Governing Britain (London: Fontana,

1970) pp. 23–40.185. H.C.G. Matthew and Kenneth O. Morgan, op. cit., pp. 12–27.

222 Notes

186. Polanyi considers the 1870s the beginning of the ‘collectivist’ period due tothe increasing success of anti-liberal forces. See, op. cit., pp. 181–4.

187. Ibid., p. 226.188. An excellent account of this question is Justin Rosenberg’s ‘Isaac Deutscher

and the Lost History of International Relations’ New Left Review 215,January/February 1996. See Karl Marx, Manifesto of the Communist Party(London: Penguin, 1973).

189. Polanyi, op. cit., p. 183.190. An interesting exception is that of the United Provinces and its very

early Republican regime. For an assessment of the ‘Bourgeois Republic’ see George Rude’s Revolutionary Europe (London: Fontana, 1964) pp. 160–77.

191. Polanyi, op. cit., p. 185.192. Ibid., p. 186.193. Ibid., p. 174.194. Ibid., pp. 173–7. The protection included Bismarck’s system of social insur-

ance, attained a good deal earlier than their British counterparts.195. Ibid., p. 176.196. Ibid., pp. 192–200.197. Ibid., p. 193.198. Ibid., p. 192.199. Ibid., p. 195.200. Otto Pflanze, Bismarck and the Development of Germany: The Period of

Unification: 1815–1871 (Princeton University Press, 1963) p. 177.201. Ibid., pp. 202–8.202. Ibid., p. 205.203. Ibid., p. 207.204. Ibid., p. 207.205. Ibid., p. 14.206. See Leon Trotsky, The History of the Russian Revolution (New York: Monad

Press, 1980) ch. 1.207. Polanyi, op. cit., p. 201.208. Curiously, there is no mention of the Civil War in Polanyi’s book. For

an excellent account of the causes see, Barrington Moore Jr., op. cit., pp. 111–55.

209. For a theory which suggests that the early achievement of the vote by USmale workers made them less prone to socialist ideology see, MichaelMann’s ‘Ruling Class Strategies and Citizenship’, in States, War andCapitalism, op. cit., pp. 192–5.

210. Ibid., p. 212.211. Ibid., p. 213.212. For a Realist theory of imperialism see, Hans Morgenthau, Politics Among

Nations, 6th edition (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1985) ch. 5. For Marxist theo-ries see, Anthony Brewer, Marxist Theories of Imperialism, 2nd edition(London: Routledge, 1990).

213. D.K. Fieldhouse, The Theory of Capitalist Imperialism (London: Longman,1967) p. xiv.

214. Polanyi, op. cit., p. 261.

Notes 223

215. Ibid., p. 7.216. Ibid., p. 9.217. Ibid., pp. 9–19.218. Ibid., p. 10.219. See E.H. Carr, The Twenty Years’ Crisis, op. cit., pp. 25–6.220. Polanyi’s treatment of the First World War is scant in the extreme. For

a superb assessment of the historical literature see J. Joll, The Origins of the First World War (London: Longman, 1984). See also, Michael MannThe Sources of Social Power op. cit., ch. 21. For the importance of the concept of ‘world-historical-time’ see the introductory chapter.

221. Polanyi, op. cit., pp. 20–1.222. Ibid., p. 187.223. For the effects of China’s development on the environment see, Richard

Smith, ‘Creative Destruction: Capitalist Development and China’sEnvironment’, New Left Review 222, March/April 1997.

3 Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, Democracy and the Global System

224. See, for example, Evan Luard, Basic Texts in International Relations (London:Macmillan, 1992) pp. 211–12, 220–3 and Michael Doyle, Ways of War andPeace (New York: W.W. Norton, 1997) pp. 241–8. The latter is perhaps themost thorough use of Schumpeter in the IR literature. For Schumpeter’s ownwork see his The Sociology of Imperialisms (New York: Augustus Kelly, 1951)and Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (London: George Allen & Unwin,1943).

225. Doyle, op. cit., p. 308.226. Tom Bottomore p. ix in Schumpeter op. cit., 1943. The first section of

Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy is a critique, sometimes sympathetic butmostly emphatically critical of Marx’s work.

227. Ibid., pp. 111–20.228. Ibid., pp. 34–7.229. Schumpeter, The Theory of Economic Development, 1911 (Cambridge: Harvard

University Press, 1934) referred to in J.K. Galbraith, op. cit., pp. 181–2.

230. See David Held, Models of Democracy (Oxford: Polity Press, 1987) ch. 5 for a comparison of Schumpeter and Weber.

231. Schumpeter’s definition of socialism is ‘… an institutional pattern in whichcontrol over the means of production is vested with a central authority –or … in which, as a matter of principle, the economic affairs of societybelong to the public and not the private sphere’. op. cit., p. 167.

232. Ibid., p. 139.233. Ibid., p. 137.234. Ibid., pp. 140–2.235. Ibid., p. 143.236. Ibid., p. 144.237. Ibid., p. 145.238. Ibid., p. 145.

224 Notes

239. Ibid., p. 145. See the section entitled ‘The Sociology of the Intellectual’ (pp. 145–55).

240. Ibid., p. 150.241. See the chapter entitled ‘The Classical Doctrine of Democracy’, ch. 21.242. Ibid., pp. 261–3.243. See David Held, op. cit., ch. 5.244. Schumpeter, op. cit., p. 269.245. Ibid., p. 269.246. Ibid., p. 283.247. Ibid., p. 269.248. Ibid., p. 270.249. Ibid., pp. 271–2. The parenthetical quotation is in the form of a footnote

(#6) on the same page. Schumpeter goes on to infer from this relation ‘considerable freedom of the press’.

250. Ibid., p. 272. This argument was used to defend President Nixon during‘Watergate’ and is now used to defend President Clinton over ‘Zipper’ or‘Forni-gate’. There is no discussion of civil disobedience in the text.

251. Ibid., p. 272.252. David Held, Models of Democracy, op. cit., pp. 165–6.253. Schumpeter, op. cit., p. 282.254. Ibid., p. 290.255. Ibid., p. 285.256. This is essentially the position of the ‘neo-pluralists’. See Robert Dahl,

A Preface to Economic Democracy (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1985). See also,David Held, op. cit., pp. 201–5.

257. Schumpeter, op. cit., p. 286.258. Ibid., p. 287.259. Ibid., p. 288.260. Ibid., p. 289.261. Ibid., pp. 296–7.262. Ibid., p. 297.263. Ibid., p. 298.264. Ibid., p. 298.265. Ibid., p. 301.266. Ibid., p. 302.267. For an account of how the Left in Britain helped keep Labour out of office

see Donald Sassoon, One Hundred Years of Socialism (London: Fontana Press,1995) pp. 692–706.

268. There are, of course, exceptions. A particularly striking one is the continuation of hereditary peers in the House of Lords.

269. Donald Sassoon, op. cit., pp. 138–9.270. Susan Strange, States and Markets (London: Printer Publishers, 1988)

p. 39.271. Schumpeter, op. cit., p. 290.272. Ibid., p. 290.273. Ibid., p. 291.274. Ernest Gellner, Conditions of Liberty: Civil Society and its Rivals (London:

Penguin Books, 1996) pp. 74–5. An interesting parallel thesis that suggests the incoherence of legal systems generally and of property law in

Notes 225

particular as the central reason for the failure of capitalism in the developingworld – in large part due to the uneven and combined development of theselegal systems – is developed by Hernando De Soto in his The Mystery ofCapital: Why Capitalism Works in the West and Fails Everywhere Else(New York: Bantam Press, 2000).

275. I’m thinking here of the writings in Sociology and Political Science spawnedby the works of Talcott Parsons in the 1950s. Primary among them for thesubject of democracy was Seymour Martin Lipset, Political Man: The SocialBases of Politics (New York: Anchor Books, 1960) but also important wasAlmond and Verba, The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in FiveNations (Princeton University Press, 1963). For a more recent account seeLawrence Harrison and Samuel Huntington (eds) Culture Matters: HowValues Shape Human Progress (New York: Basic Books, 2000).

276. Two interesting accounts of ‘social capital’ are Robert Putnam, ‘BowlingAlone: America’s Declining Social Capital’, Journal of Democracy 6 (1995);Francis Fukuyama, Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity(London: Penguin Books, 1996). Also on the Right see Lawrence Harrisonand Samuel Huntington (eds) Culture Matters: How Values Shape HumanProgress (New York: 2000, Basic Books). On the Left, the notion thatadvanced consumer capitalism essentially atomises society to the point of anightmarish Durkheimian anomie has broad support. For this view see EricHobsbawm, ‘Barbarism: A User’s Guide’ in On History (London: Abacus,1998) pp. 334–50.

277. Francis Fukuyama, The End of Order (London: The Social Market Foundation,1997) p. 4.

278. Fukuyama, 1996, op. cit., p. 356.279. See Howard Handelman op. cit., ch. 8.280. Schumpeter, op. cit., p. 292.281. See David Landes, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations (London: Little, Brown

and Company, 1998) pp. 256–75.282. Ibid., p. 260. An optimistic view of opportunities faced by late developers is

provided by Alexander Gerschenkron in Economic Backwardness in HistoricalPerspective (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962).

283. Ernest Gellner, op. cit., p. 33.284. Ibid., p. 72.285. For a thesis that suggests structural limitations necessitating foreign invest-

ment and domestic repression see Guillermo O’Donnell, Modernization andBureaucratic-Authoritarianism: Studies in South American Politics (Berkeley:University of California Press, 1973).

286. Christopher Clapham, Third World Politics (London: Routledge, 1985) pp. 183–4.

287. Schumpeter, op. cit., p. 293.288. Ibid., p. 293.289. Ibid., p. 294.290. Perry Anderson, Lineages of the Absolutist State (London: New Left Books,

1974) p. 18.291. Christopher Clapham, op. cit., p. 140. See also, Samuel Finer, The Man on

Horseback: The Role of the Military in Politics, 2nd edition (London: PenguinBooks, 1976).

292. Schumpeter, op. cit., p. 295.

226 Notes

293. Barrington Moore, op. cit., p. 486.294. Schumpeter, op. cit., p. 296.295. Ibid., p. 326.296. This, of course, is the context in which Trotsky develops his theory of

‘uneven and combined development’. See Leon Trotsky, The History of theRussian Revolution (New York: Monad Press, 1980) ch. 1.

297. Schumpeter, op. cit., p. 328.298. In a recent cross-country empirical study of the determinants of economic

growth, the following conclusion is drawn: ‘… [T]here is a strong positivelinkage from prosperity to the propensity to experience democracy, a rela-tion called the Lipset (1959) hypothesis. Various measures of the standardof living – real per capita GDP, life expectancy, and a smaller gap betweenmale and female educational attainment – are found to predict democracy.’See Robert J. Barro, Determinants of Economic Growth (MassachusettsInstitute of Technology Press, 1997) p. xii. See ch. 2 for the data and arguments.

299. F.A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (London: Routledge, 1991) first published in 1944.

300. Donald Sassoon, op. cit., p. 139.301. Ibid., pp. 189–208.302. Ibid., p. 194.303. That work is his The Sociology of Imperialisms op. cit. See Michael Doyle Ways

of War and Peace op. cit., pp. 241–50.

4 Samuel Huntington, Political Order and the Global System

304. Samuel Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies (Yale UniversityBooks, 1968).

305. Ibid., p. vii. This is actually as far as his definition of political order goesdespite the centrality of the concept for the entire thesis. A good contrast iswith Hedley Bull’s analysis in the first chapter of The Anarchical Society(London: Macmillan, 1977) where the concept of ‘order’ and its relation to‘justice’ is at least scrutinised from a number of different angles.

306. I’m thinking here of Machiavelli’s advice to ‘destroy’ an acquired state‘accustomed to live in freedom under its own laws’. The Prince (BantamBooks, 1981) ch. 5.

307. For related criticisms of the claims of ‘scientific’ empiricism in IR see FredHalliday’s Rethinking International Relations (London: Macmillan, 1994) pp. 24–31.

308. Huntington, op. cit., p. 373.309. Ibid., p. 4.310. Ibid., p. 1.311. For a much more nuanced view of political legitimacy as a continuum see

David Held, Models of Democracy (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1987) p. 182. For the classical liberal tradition from Hobbes to Locke see C.B. Macpherson The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism (Oxford:Oxford University Press, 1962).

Notes 227

312. For a classic example see W.W. Rostow, The Stages of Economic Growth(Cambridge University Press, 1960).

313. Huntington, op. cit., p. 41. This paragraph continues with a characteristicwarning about the impact of misconceived US foreign policies on develop-ing countries. ‘For two decades after World War II American foreign policytoward the modernizing countries was in large part devoted to promotingeconomic and social development because these would lead to political sta-bility. The success of this policy is, however, written in both the rising lev-els of material well-being and the rising levels of domestic violence. Themore man wages war against “his ancient enemies: poverty, disease, ignorance” the more he wages war against himself.’

314. See Ian Roxborough, Theories of Underdevelopment (London: MacmillanEducation, 1979) p. 15.

315. Huntington (op. cit., p. 32) borrows these from Daniel Lerner’s, The Passing of Traditional Society (Glencoe, Ill., Free Press, 1958). Bothauthors see the principal aspects of modernisation as bound together historically.

316. For a discussion of many of these points – detraditionalisation, simple versuscomplex modernisation – but in the context of ‘globalisation’ see AnthonyGiddens, Beyond Left and Right (Stanford University Press, 1994), ch. 3.

317. Huntington, op. cit., ch. 2.318. Ibid., pp. 32–5.319. Ibid., pp. 33–9.320. Ibid., p. 33.321. Ibid., p. 34.322. Ibid., p. 36. For conclusions which mirror Huntington’s here see Clifford

Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (London: Fontana Press, 1993), especially chs 8–12.

323. Ibid., p. 37.324. Ibid., pp. 37–8.325. Ibid., p. 39.326. Ibid., pp. 39–45. This argument also holds true for modern countries accord-

ing to the author. For example, he argues that in post-war Western countriesthe communist vote was largest in the most urbanised areas of the leasturbanised countries (p. 45).

327. Ibid., p. 46.328. Ibid., pp. 47–9. We are reminded that Britain, the first moderniser, intro-

duced free education only after industrial development had taken place forsome time (p. 48).

329. For an argument which relates the role of rapid and uneven economicdevelopment to the Iranian Revolution see Fred Halliday’s ‘The IranianRevolution: Uneven Development and Religious Populism’ in Fred Hallidayand Hamza Alavi (eds) State and Ideology in the Middle East and Pakistan(London: Macmillan, 1988).

330. Huntington, op. cit. pp. 57–8.331. Ibid., pp. 58–9.332. Huntington, op. cit., p. 57.333. Just how one measures ‘social frustration’ is not, unfortunately, addressed

by the author and even if one could measure it with some precision, given

228 Notes

the elasticity of aspiration, it would be surprising indeed to find any society,no matter how advanced, without very high levels of ‘social frustration’.

334. Huntington, op. cit., p. 55.335. Ibid., p. 159.336. Ibid., p. 159.337. This distinction is associated classically with Machiavelli but more modern

versions can be found in the works of Gaetano Mosca, David Apter and S.N. Eisenstadt. See ibid., ff. 8, p. 148.

338. Ibid., pp. 148–9. For a quite similar analysis of these traits and comparedwith other ‘agrarian civilisations’ see John Hall, Powers and Liberties(London: Penguin, 1986).

339. Ibid., pp. 145–6.340. Ibid., pp. 102–3. For an in-depth analysis of the rise of Absolutism which

comes to similar conclusions (in the case of England, much more attentionand weight is given to the domestic and Irish dimensions thanHuntington’s analysis) see Perry Anderson Lineages of the Absolutist State(London: Verso Books, 1979).

341. Ibid., p. 123.342. Ibid., pp. 96–8.343. Ibid., pp. 98–109.344. Quoted in ibid., p. 111.345. Several authors have suggested that the early achievement of ‘white’ male

suffrage was largely responsible for the lack of purchase of socialism on theAmerican labour movement. For a discussion that stresses the role of staterepression as much as early enfranchisement see Michael Mann The Sourcesof Social Power Vol. II The Rise of Classes and Nation States, 1760–1914(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993) pp. 644–59.

346. Huntington, op. cit., pp. 127–8.347. Michael Mann, op. cit., pp. 644–59.348. Huntington, op. cit., p. 135.349. Ibid., p. 136. Although Huntington suggests India (and Lebanon!) as an

example of a successful adaptation of traditional pluralism to modern politics, it may also serve as an example of the powerlessness of liberal democratic institutions in the face of feudal social structures.

350. Ibid., p. 136.351. Ibid., pp. 137–8.352. See ch. 1 entitled ‘England and the Contribution of Violence to Gradualism’

in Barrington Moore Jr., Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (Penguin,1966). Moore’s account of the centrality of the American Civil War to its sub-sequent development is also very instructive. See ch. 3 entitled ‘The AmericanCivil War: The Last Capitalist Revolution’.

353. Ibid., p. 72.354. The literature on the politics of urbanisation as well as on rural change is

vast. For a useful introduction and survey of recent research see, HowardHandelman The Challenge of Third World Development (New Jersey: PrenticeHall, 1996) chs 5, 6.

355. Huntington, op. cit., p. 77.356. Ibid., p. 77.357. Ibid., p. 78.

Notes 229

358. Ibid., p. 76.359. Ibid., p. 79. Huntington’s typologies in this section correlate quite

consciously with classical accounts.360. Ibid., p. 82.361. Ibid., p. 83.362. Ibid., p. 84.363. Ibid., pp. 91–2.364. Ibid., p. 194.365. Ibid., p. 200366. Ibid., p. 200.367. Basil Davidson The Black Man’s Burden: Africa and the Curse of the Nation

(London: James Currey, 1992). He also argues that before the imposition ofcolonialism in the late nineteenth Century, parts of Africa were well alongin the process of evolving their own models of nation-states such as withthe Asante Kingdom of modern day Ghana; a national state on its way tobecoming a nation-state with many of the attributes prevalent in earlierEurope. Tribalism in Africa, he also argues, has often been a force for good,creating progressive civil societies that were eventually undermined by alienrule and imperialist partition. Western historians stripped Africa of itstraditions and the social disintegration apparent after independence was inlarge part the result of the misfit between the model of the nation-state andthe social and territorial inheritance of colonialism.

368. Huntington, op. cit., p. 201.369. Ibid., p. 203. The examples are covered on pp. 202–8.370. Ibid., pp. 206–7.371. Ibid., p. 209.372. Ibid., p. 208.373. Ibid., pp. 219–37.374. Ibid., p. 222.375. Ibid., pp. 223–4 for various examples. A more recent example of the former

is certainly that of Algeria and the electoral victory of the FIS.376. Ibid., p. 240.377. Ibid., pp. 250–63.378. Ibid., p. 262.379. Ibid., p. 9.380. Ibid., pp. 9–10. The first two elements correspond to Cicero’s utilitatis

communio and consensus juris respectively.381. See also Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Oxford: Basil Blackwell,

1983) for an analysis of the social structural effect of modernisation as itrelates to the development of nationalism.

382. Huntington, op. cit., p. 9.383. Ibid., pp. 24–5.384. Ibid., p. 27.385. Ibid., p. 28. These quotations are from de Jouvenel’s Sovereignty (Chicago:

University of Chicago Press, 1963) p. 123.386. Ibid., pp. 28–32. For a similar approach to economic development see

Francis Fukuyama, Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity(London: Penguin Books, 1996).

387. Huntington, op. cit., p. 31.

230 Notes

388. Although one gets glimpses of this type of cultural determinism in thiswork, as is very well known, of course, Huntington makes ‘civilisational’culture highly determinant of international politics in a much more recentbook, namely, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order(New York: Touchstone, 1997).

389. Huntington op. cit., p. 32. The first sentence of this quotation is itselfquoted from Lucian Pye in Lucian Pye and Sidney Verba (eds) PoliticalCulture and Political Development (Princeton University Press, 1965) p. 51.Note also the ascription of communist public order as legitimate.

390. Revolution is defined as ‘a rapid, fundamental, and violent domestic change inthe dominant values and myths of a society, in its political institutions, socialstructure, leadership, and government activity and policies’. Ibid., p. 264.

391. Ibid., p. 266.392. For the explanations which lead to this conclusion see ibid.,

pp. 264–300. Although the Iranian Revolution was the first ‘urban’ one, theRevolutions of 1989 must also fall into ‘new’ categories. For a detailedaccount of Revolutions generally and their relationship to the global systemin particular see Fred Halliday, Revolution and World Politics (London:Macmillan Press, 1999).

393. Huntington, op. cit., p. 297.394. Ibid., p. 300395. Ibid., p. 304.396. Ibid., p. 308.397. Ibid., p. 262.398. Ibid., p. 403.399. For the revolutionaries of ‘Political Islam’, the transition to Western moder-

nity is probably a more relevant grievance than those I’ve referred to. As tothe legitimacy of their motives, to the extent that they coincide withdemands for social and political equality, democracy and human rights,then I would say that they are legitimate. Where these are contradicted, aswith the Taliban of Afghanistan, I would suggest that they are not.

400. For arguments around the topic of whether, at the end of the twentieth century, revolutionary transformation is an appropriate response to capitalist modernity see Halliday, Revolution and World Politics, op. cit., pp. 323–38.

401. For the international dimensions of revolutions see, Halliday, ibid.402. Huntington, op. cit., p. 344.403. Ibid., p. 357.404. Ibid., p. 359. For the larger discussion of the role of violence in reform see

pp. 357–62.405. Ibid., p. 386.406. Ibid., p. 386. An interesting reminder that progressive results to military

conquest by the United States are possible.407. Ibid., p. 364.408. Ibid., p. 390.409. Ibid., p. 391.410. Ibid., pp. 59–60.411. Ibid., pp. 59–60.412. Ibid., p. 64.

Notes 231

413. Ibid., pp. 62–3.414. Ibid., pp. 64–5.415. Ibid., p. 65.416. Ibid., pp. 66–72. The link with foreign capital is that foreigners are

apparently more likely to violate society’s norms and indigenous people aremore likely to see politics as a source of wealth if the economy is dominatedby foreigners (pp. 66–7).

417. Ibid., p. 69. If such ‘over-regulation’ is a cause of corruption then ‘under-regulation’ is also a contributing factor, as many of the post-communiststates have found.

418. Ibid., pp. 70–1.419. The author explicitly states that ‘[t]he weakness of party organisation is

the opportunity of corruption’ and that communist parties in power are thestrongest possible party organisation (pp. 70–1). These two propositions areonly consistent if one denies the prevalence of corruption within commu-nist parties in power.

420. See the cover story of The Economist, July 27–August 2 2003, for estimates ofthe profits involved.

421. Within liberal democracies where the environment is most often conduciveto debate and reform, corruption can become a major focus of oppositionparties such as in Argentina and Brazil in the 1990s. However, it can alsobecome a stimulus to the overthrow of civilian government by the militarysuch as currently in Pakistan.

422. See Leon Trotsky, The History of the Russian Revolution (New York: MonadPress, 1980) ch. 1 for the original use of this concept.

423. See Theda Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions (Cambridge University Press,1979) pp. 3–39 for the original use of this concept.

424. See Hedley Bull and Adam Watson (eds) The Expansion of International Society(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984).

425. See Edwin Williamson, The Penguin History of Latin America (London:Penguin Books, 1992) ch. 9.

426. Huntington op. cit., p. 7. The quote from Madison comes from TheFederalist, No. 51.

427. Ibid., p. 8. He should have added, ‘in very rare and particular historical conjunctions’.

428. Ibid., p. 402.429. Ibid., p. 461.430. See, for example, James Mayall, World Politics: Progress and its Limits

(Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000) p. 92; Robert Cooper, The Postmodern Stateand World Order, 2nd edition (London: Demos and the Foreign PolicyCentre, 2000); and Ernest Gellner, Conditions of Liberty, op. cit.

431. Samuel P. Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratisation in the Late TwentiethCentury (University of Oklahoma Press, 1991) ch. 2.

5 David Held’s ‘Democracy and the Global Order’

432. David Held, Democracy and the Global Order: From the Modern State toCosmopolitan Governance (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995).

433. Ibid., p. ix.

232 Notes

434. Ibid., p. 21.435. Ibid., p. 4.436. Ibid., chs 1–3.437. Ibid., p. 48. The controversy arises because legitimacy is written into the

definition.438. Ibid., pp. 48–9.439. Ibid., p. 49. The quote is taken from A. Giddens, Social Theory and Modern

Society (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1987) p. 172.440. Ibid., p. 49. The quoted phrases are taken from C. Tilly, Coercion, Capital and

European States, AD 990–1990 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990) pp. 2–3.441. See Michael Ignatieff, Blood and Belonging: Journeys into the New Nationalism

(London: Vintage Books, 1994) pp. 3–6.442. For varying interpretations of the concepts see the debate between Joschka

Fischer and Jean-Pierre Chevenment as well as Tom Nairn’s response toDonald Dewar and Francis Fukuyama in Prospect (August/ September 2000).For the role of liberalism in preparing the ground for democracy see JohnHall ‘Consolidations of Democracy’ in David Held ed., Prospects forDemocracy (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1993).

443. Held, op. cit., pp. 50–2.444. Ibid., p. 50.445. Ibid., p. 50.446. Ibid., p. 50.447. Ibid., p. 50.448. For a nuanced view of political legitimacy as a continuum see David Held,

Models of Democracy (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1987) p. 182.449. Held, op. cit., p. 52. See all of ch. 3 for this discussion.450. Ibid., p. 52.451. Ibid., pp. 52–3.452. Ibid., p. 53.453. Ibid., p. 53.454. Ibid., p. 54. Interestingly, according to Michael Mann, the expansion in mil-

itary spending, in proportion to overall state expenditure, that followed thechanging nature of warfare and of costs was checked by the late nineteenthcentury by three distinct processes: ‘a military that was relatively decliningand potentially insulated from civil society; increasing bureacratization,first in the military, then in the civilian, state and a civilian state perhapsconsensually increasing its scope.’ See, Michael Mann, The Sources of SocialPower Vol II, The Rise of Classes and Nation-states, 1760–1914 (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1993) p. 395. See chs 11–14 for full arguments.

455. Held, op. cit., p. 54. The quote is taken from G. Poggi, The State: Its Nature,Development and Prospects (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1991) p. 101.

456. Ibid., p. 57. The quote is taken from G. Therborn, ‘The Rule of Capital andthe Rise of Democracy’, New Left Review, 103, 1977.

457. Ibid., p. 57. The quote is taken from R. Dahl, Democracy and its Critics (NewHaven: Yale University Press, 1989) p. 247. If one considers the emergenceof mass armies in Europe from the French Revolution onwards, the adventof male suffrage, depending on the particular country observed, was onlyhalf a century or so away – the rhetoric of liberty and democracy was, ofcourse, part and parcel of the Revolution itself and of the wars that fol-lowed. For the emergence of mass armies see E.J. Hobsbawm, The Age of

Notes 233

Revolution [1789–1848] (London: Sphere Books, 1977) ch. 4. For the politicsof democracy see his The Age of Empire 1875–1914 (London: Sphere Books,1989) ch. 4.

458. For the usefulness of national identity to states, see E.J. Hobsbawm, Nationsand Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1990) ch. 3. See also John Breuilly, Nationalism and the State,2nd edition (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993) for a compre-hensive treatment of many of the issues involved here. For the links between‘civic’ nationalism and democracy see the introductory chapter in MichaelIgnatieff, op. cit.

459. Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom (Oxford: Oxford University Press,1999) pp. 49–50.

460. See E.J. Hobsbawm, The Age of Empire 1875–1914, op. cit.461. See D. Rueschemeyer, E.H. Stephens and J.D. Stephens, Capitalist

Development and Democracy (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992) p. 275. One oftheir conclusions is that the temporally closer the process of state consoli-dation was to the emergence of pressures for mass incorporation, the moreproblematic was democratisation (pp. 275–6).

462. Held, op. cit., pp. 59–60.463. Ibid., p. 62.464. Ibid., p. 62.465. Ibid., p. 63.466. Ibid., p. 63.467. Ibid., pp. 63–4.468. Ibid., p. 64.469. Ibid., p. 64.470. Ibid., pp. 64. See Rueschemeyer, Stephens and Stephens, op. cit., pp. 269–73.471. Ibid., p. 64.472. Ibid., p. 64.473. Ibid., p. 65.474. Ibid., p. 65.475. D. Rueschemeyer, E.H. Stephens and J.D. Stephens, op. cit., pp. 269–302.476. Ibid., pp. 271–2.477. Held, op. cit., p. 67. See pp. 66–71 for the elaboration of this ‘macro-

pattern’.478. Ibid., p. 67.479. Ibid., p. 67.480. Ibid., pp. 67–8.481. Ibid., p. 69.482. Ibid., p. 69.483. Ibid., pp. 70–1. The principle is stated as follows: ‘persons should enjoy

equal rights and, accordingly, equal obligations in the specification of thepolitical framework which generates and limits the opportunities availableto them; that is, they should be free and equal in the determination of the conditions of their own lives, so long as they do not deploy this frameworkto negate the rights of others’. Ibid., p. 147.

484. See Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (London: HamishHamilton, 1992).

485. Held, op. cit., p. 238.

234 Notes

486. Ibid., p. ix.487. See David Held, Anthony McGrew et al., Global Transformations: Politics,

Economics and Culture (Cambridge, Polity Press, 1999). See also John Gray,False Dawn: The Delusions of Global Capitalism (London: Granta Books,1998) and Thomas Friedman, The Lexus and the Olive Tree (New York: AnchorBooks, 1999).

488. David Held and Anthony McGrew, ‘Globalization, Regionalization and theTransformation of Political Community’ (Paper for the Political StudiesAssociation – UK 50th Annual Conference, April 2000) p. 1.

489. Ibid., p. 1.490. David Held, Democracy and the Global Order: From the Modern State to

Cosmopolitan Governance (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995) p. viii.491. Ibid., p. 97.492. Ibid., p. ix.493. Ibid., p. ix.494. Ibid., pp. 97–8. See ch. 4, ‘The Inter-State System’ for the arguments.495. Ibid., p. 99.496. Fred Halliday, ‘The Perils of Community: Reason and Unreason in

Nationalist Ideology’ Nations and Nationalism, Vol. 6, No. 2, 2000 publishedby the Association for the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism (ASEN). Oneof the ironies of the relationship between democracy and nationalism isthat as democracy legitimates nationalism it can assist in fostering amnesiawith regard to the ‘foreign’ and international sources of democracy itself,both as an ideal and as a institutional framework.

497. The phrase ‘intensified social reflexivity’ comes from Anthony Giddens,Beyond Left and Right: The Future of Radical Politics (Stanford University Press,1994) p. 42.

498. Held, op. cit., pp. 104–5. That the Human Rights Act has been enacted inthe United Kingdom, allowing British courts to rule where once only theEuropean court could, suggests that established liberal democracies can alsomove in this direction.

499. Ibid., p. 107. Within the discipline of International Relations the ‘transna-tionalism’ paradigm or school is very well established with numerous‘foundational’ texts. For a good introduction to the issues and literature seeEvan Luard, Basic Texts in International Relations (London: Macmillan Press,1992) pp. 540–74. See also See Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye (eds)Transnational Relations and World Politics (Cambridge: Harvard UniversityPress, 1981) and Power and Interdependence (Cambridge: Harvard UniversityPress, 1989) by the same authors.

500. Ibid., p. 109.501. Ibid., p. 109.502. This set of policies is often referred to as the ‘Washington Consensus’. See

John Gray, op. cit., for a critical assessment of the global and local conse-quences of these policies.

503. Examples at the institutional level include the United Nations’Interparliamentary Union which serves as a forum for democratic regimes andthe various international organisations like the UN and the EU which send‘monitors’ to oversee elections. See Kofi Annan’s speech to the presiding officersof the Interparliamentary Union reproduced by The Independent, 1/09/2000.

Notes 235

504. Held, op. cit., pp. 110–11.505. Amartya Sen, op. cit. See particularly pp. 146–59.506. Ibid., p. 148.507. Ibid., p. 151.508. See Carolyn Merchant’s Radical Ecology (London: Routledge, 1992) for

a characteristic account. Despite its ostensible commitment to politicaleconomy, there is in fact precious little differentiation of political systems and patterns, presumably because such ‘epiphenomena’ aredeemed to be of little consequence for ecological outcomes.

509. John S. Dryzek, ‘Democracy and Environmental Policy Instruments’ inRobyn Eckersley (ed.) Markets, The State and The Environment (London:Macmillan Press, 1996) p. 302. See also the arguments for democracy in thiscontext by Paul Harrison, The Third Revolution (London: Penguin Books,1993 edition) pp. 265–7.

510. Held, op. cit., pp. 114–15. For the rivalry between the major capitalist states,including NATO members, see Fred Halliday’s The Making of the Second ColdWar (London: Verso, 1983) ch. 7.

511. Ibid., pp. 116–18.512. Ibid., p. 118.513. Ibid., p. 119.514. Ibid., p. 119.515. Kenneth Waltz, Man, the State and War (New York: Columbia University Press,

1959) ch. 4. For the ‘democratic peace’ thesis see Michael W. Doyle, ‘Liberalismand World Politics’, American Political Science Review (Vol. 80, No. 4, December,1986); Bruce Russett, Grasping the Democratic Peace: Principles for a Post-ColdWar World (Princeton University Press, 1993); E. Gartzke, ‘Kant We All Just GetAlong? Motive, Opportunity, and the Origins of the Democratic Peace’,American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 42, No. I, pp. 1–27.

516. See Fred Halliday, Rethinking International Relations (London: Macmillan,1994) p. 123.

517. Timothy Garton Ash, The Independent, 8 September 2000.518. Held, op. cit., p. 124.519. Ibid., p. 126. The quote is taken from Anthony Smith, ‘Towards a Global

Culture?’ Theory, Culture and Society 7, 2–3, p. 175.520. Ibid., p. 126.521. For different usage of the concept of ‘homogeneity’ in IR see Fred Halliday,

op. cit., pp. 94–123.522. For an account of the role of mass communications in the collapse of com-

munism in Europe see Fred Halliday, ‘The Ends of Cold War’, New LeftReview 180/1990. For an extraordinary tale of CIA involvement with ‘TheCongress for Cultural Freedom’ see Peter Coleman, The Liberal Conspiracy(New York: The Free Press, 1989).

523. Held, op. cit., p. 127. The quote is taken from Stuart Hall, ‘The Question ofCultural Identity’ in S. Hall, D. Held and T. McGrew (eds) Modernity and itsFutures (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992) p. 305. I have added the exclamationmark next to Japan to highlight its incongruity.

524. Ibid., p. 127.525. Ibid., p. 130. Justifying the focus on MNC’s, Held, following N. Myers,

suggests that they ‘account for 30 per cent of gross global output,

236 Notes

70 per cent of world trade, and 80 per cent of international investment’ (p. 128). See N. Myers, ‘Gross Reality of Global Statistics’, The Guardian,2 May 1994.

526. Ibid., p. 128.527. Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation (Boston: Beacon Hill, 1944)

p. 140.528. See Susan Strange, States and Markets (London: Printer Publishers, 1988) ch. 1.529. See Fred Halliday, Rethinking International Relations, op. cit., ch. 4.530. There are many writers associated with ‘dependency theory’ but perhaps the

best known include Andre Gunder Frank, Capitalism and Underdevelopmentin Latin America (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1967), Paul Baran, ThePolitical Economy of Growth (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1957),Fernando Cardoso and Enzo Faletto, Dependency and Development in LatinAmerica (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), Theotonio DosSantos ‘The Structure of Dependence’, American Economic Review(May 1970), and Peter Evans, Dependent Development: The Alliance ofMultinational, State and Local Capital (Princeton: Princeton University Press,1979). For the second theory see, Guillermo O’Donnell, Modernization andBureaucratic-Authoritarianism: Studies in South American Politics (Berkeley:University of California Press, 1973).

531. Bill Warren, Imperialism: Pioneer of Capitalism (London: Verso Books, 1980)p. 160. Warren is quoting from P.K. O’Brien, ‘A Critique of Latin AmericanTheories of Dependency’, ch. 2 in Oxaal et al. (eds) Beyond the Sociology ofDevelopment: Economy and Society in Latin America and Africa (London:Routledge, 1975).

532. See Anthony Brewer, Marxist Theories of Imperialism, 2nd edition (London:Routledge, 1990) ch. 8.

533. Ibid., pp. 158–9.534. See Bill Warren, op. cit., pp. 162–70. It is interesting that Cuba, whose revo-

lutionary government has always blamed world capitalism (imperialism) forits historic underdevelopment should simultaneously blame the US eco-nomic blockade for its many economic deficiencies, providing as it does thepractical means of its development according to the theory. The case revealsjust how far Warren’s characterisation of ‘dependency theory’ as ‘national-ist mythology’ was right on target.

535. Ibid., pp. 25–6. The discussion of the importance of bourgeoise democracycontinues to p. 30.

536. For the first quote, see Immanuel Wallerstein, Historical Capitalism (London:Verso Books, 1983) p. 110. For the second, see Andre Gunder Frank, op. cit.,p. 318.

537. Amartya Sen, op. cit., pp. 146–59.538. Bill Warren, op. cit., pp. 110–21.539. Ibid., see especially pp. 18–25. Also, his characterisation of the argument

that imperialism often preserved pre-capitalist social formations which frus-trated and even imperilled ‘progressive social forces’ as ‘anti-Marxist in theliteral sense’ and therefore not worthy of serious consideration is an indica-tion of how ‘over-the-top’ his progressive thesis of capitalism is (pp. 152–6).

540. Guillermo O’Donnell, Modernization and Bureaucratic Authoritarianism(Berkeley: Institute of International Studies, 1973).

Notes 237

541. Rueschemeyer, Stephens & Stephens, op. cit., p. 22.542. Jeffrey A. Frieden, Debt, Development, and Democracy: Modern Political

Economy and Latin America, 1965–1985 (New Jersey: Princeton UniversityPress, 1991) p. 239.

543. Ibid., p. 238. By the end of the millennium, Mexico itself would see the endof its single-party democracy too.

544. Ibid., pp. 251–2.545. Ibid., pp. 15–41. ‘Sectoral cohesion flows from cooperation among capitalists

and among laborers, and from cooperation between labor and capital in thesector: the more disunited owners and workers or the more hostile labor-management relations, the weaker the sector’s political cohesion’ (p. 33).Asset specificity is used to indicate the intensity of a sector’s government pol-icy preferences. The more specific the assets of a sector – the higher the entrybarriers and the less diversified the portfolios – ‘the higher the opportunitycost of the sector not obtaining favourable government policies’ and, therefore, ‘the more likely the sector will be to seek these policies’ (p. 33).

546. Jeffry Frieden, op. cit., p. 247.547. Ibid., p. 247.548. Ibid., p. 247.549. See Howard Handelman, The Challenge of Third World Development (New

Jersey: Prentice Hall 1996) pp. 249–51.550. Ibid., p. 38.551. Ibid., pp. 43–4.552. Held, op. cit., pp. 131–4.553. Ibid., p. 132.554. John Gray, op. cit., p. 21.555. Held, op. cit., p. 132.556. This point was mentioned in the previous chapter with regard to the effect

on Greece, Portugal and Spain of the prospect of joining the EU. The sameis clearly true with regard to the Central and Eastern European states includ-ing what remains of the Yugoslav Federation.

557. Turkey’s inability to secure EU membership is undoubtedly a complex storywhich includes its very large agricultural sector and the hostility of Greece butthe European perception of the shallowness of its democracy has also playedan important part. For its part, the extended process of seeking membershiphas exasperated even moderates and the charge of imperialism against the EUhas been rather consistently made.

558. Held, op. cit., pp. 167–88. See also Amartya Sen, op. cit., pp. 111–45.559. Ibid., p. 167.560. Ibid., pp. 175–6.561. Ibid., p. 171.562. See Paul Ormerod, ‘Inequality: The Long View’ in Prospect, August/

September 2000, pp. 42–5. The contested nature of inequality does not stopwith the complexities of measuring it but continues on to the social andpolitical significance of it. For example, Michael Forster argues that inequal-ity is of less significance in the United States than in many other countriesbecause the poor there are comparatively well off. See Jonathan Freedland,Bring Home the Revolution (London: Fourth Estate, 1998) p. 112.

563. Ibid., p. 43.564. Ibid., p. 44.

238 Notes

565. See Laurie Garrett Betrayal of Trust: The Collapse of Global Public Health (NewYork: Hyperion, 2000) ch. 2 for sub-Saharan Africa and ch. 3 for the formerSoviet Union.

566. See Fred Halliday, Rethinking International Relations, op. cit., pp. 205–15.567. Paul Ormerod op. cit., p. 43 plays down the impact and historical signifi-

cance of Thatcherism on inequality but has actually to recognise it.568. ‘A Survey of India’s Economy’, The Economist, 2–8 June 2001, p. 7.569. For the link between globalisation and declining state expenditure

on domestic and international health care systems see Laurie Garrett op. cit., pp. 545–85.

570. Amartya Sen, op. cit., p. 142.571. John Gray, op. cit., p. 196.572. For the French cases see John Lichfield, ‘Has France become a Banana

Republic?’ The Independent, 26 January 2001. For Berlusconi see ‘Why SilvioBerlusconi is Unfit to Lead Italy’, The Economist, 28 May–4 April 2001. In theUnited States, the 2000 elections demonstrated once again the impact ofmoney on results. According to Arianna Huffington: ‘In the vast majority ofHouse (94.7 per cent) and Senate (82.3 per cent) races, the candidate withthe biggest war chest won.’ See, Arianna Huffington, How to Overthrow theGovernment (New York: Regan Books, 2001) p. xv.

573. Rueschemeyer, Stephens & Stephens, op. cit., pp. 277–8. Jeffry Frieden, op. cit., pp. 251–3.

574. See E. Kaufman, Crisis in Allende’s Chile (New York: Praeger, 1988).575. Leslie Sklair, Sociology of the Global System (London: Harvester Wheatsheaf,

1991) p. 37.576. An infamous case in point is Rupert Murdoch’s ‘Star Television’ in China

which agreed to drop ‘BBC News 24’ from its package of programmesbecause of the state’s sensitivity to foreign criticism.

577. The fact that the economic imperative is not uniformly followed, as withthe continued US sanctions against Cuba, leads to the quite justified chargeof ‘double standards.’

578. Essentially, given our contemporary understanding of democracy, evenstates like the United States and Britain have been full democracies for nomore than four decades.

579. See Fred Halliday, Rethinking International Relations, op. cit., pp. 232–5.580. Conversely, there are lots of examples, such as those of the Cuban regime,

to indicate that an external threat and menace can also be used by states todeny the wisdom of political reform.

581. This is perhaps the most important contribution that nationalism makes todemocracy, namely, providing legitimacy to the state where none isdeserved. Needless to say, it is also a source of immense threat.

Conclusion

582. Michael Doyle, ‘Liberalism and World Politics’, American Political ScienceReview, op. cit., p. 1158.

583. This is, of course, the basis upon which E.H. Carr attacked this position aslong ago as 1939. See endnote 149.

584. Barrington Moore Jr., op. cit. p. 414.585. See Chapter 1 of this book.

Notes 239

586. See Chapter 3 for references to pages.587. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, op. cit., p. 296.588. Robert Cooper, The Postmodern State and World Order, 2nd edition (London:

Demos and the Foreign Policy Centre, 2000).589. See Fred Halliday’s, ‘ “The Sixth Great Power”: Revolutions and the Global

System’ in Rethinking International Relations (London: Macmillan, 1994) ch. 6.590. One important divergence, or, at least, open question, is the extent to which

the assumption of a strengthened state, post revolutionary transformation,holds for contemporary transitions to democracy. It is indeed difficult to seehow the argument that the new democratic states of Europe or LatinAmerica are in some way ‘stronger’ than what they replaced, may be sus-tained. In the long run, however, it may well be that they will prove to bebetter able to withstand social change under modern conditions than theirpredecessors but with much smaller proportional stakes of national income.In this sense, contemporary revolutionary transition to democratic rule isprobably a reversal of the historical pattern of ‘stronger’ states associatedwith previous social revolutions.

591. Important debates would include modernisation theory versus dependencytheory, Marxists versus dependency theorists (productionists versus circula-tionists; the Brenner debates), intra-Marxist debates, liberals versus mercantilists versus historical materialists etc.

592. For a superb account of the role that incarceration and capital punishment played in the institutionalisation of private property in eighteenth-century London see Peter Linebaugh, The London Hanged(London: Penguin Books, 1991).

593. The argument that economic downturns are correlated with revolutions ismade by James Davies, ‘Towards a Theory of Revolution’, AmericanSociological Review, Vol. 27, No. 1 (February 1962): 7.

594. See Fergal Keane’s article entitled ‘Mr Mugabe’s Zimbabwe is Going fromBad to Worse’ in The Independent, 17 February 2001.

595. Samuel Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies, op. cit., pp. 58–9.596. Fred Halliday, The World At 2000, op. cit., p. 74. As we have seen in the pre-

vious chapter, ‘Dependency’ theory in particular has stressed capitalism’sinability to develop much of the world on the basis that the wealth of therich comes at the expense of the poverty of the poor.

597. See Fred Halliday’s ‘A Singular Collapse: The Soviet Union and Inter-StateCompetition’ in ibid., ch. 9.

598. I am grateful to Fred Halliday for making the point about the US civil rightsmovement.

599. Los Angeles Times, 5 October 2001. Since then, of course, political divisionshave opened up again due to the US military intervention in Iraq.

600. Ibid., 3 November 2001.601. Robert Bates Prosperity and Violence: The Political Economy of Development

(New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2001) p. 82.602. See ‘The National Security Strategy of the United States of America’,

September 2002, pp. 1–2.603. See Nicholas Timmins, The Five Giants (London: Fontana Press, 1996)

pp. 11–43.

240 Notes

604. Osama bin Laden apparently became convinced that the United States wasa ‘paper-tiger’ due to its withdrawal from Somalia after its troops faced serious resistance there.

605. Thanks to Fred Halliday for this point.606. See Thomas Carothers ‘Democracy Without Illusions’, Foreign Affairs,

Jan/Feb 1997, Vol. 76, Issue 1, pp. 85–100.607. The example of the way President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe was so

warmly received in France and Belgium – not to mention South Africa’s pol-icy of ‘constructive engagement’ – when other liberal democratic stateshave been counselling increased diplomatic pressure on his increasinglyviolent and anti-democratic regime demonstrates at least divergent inter-pretations of means. The same type of dilemma has been apparent withrelations over China since the reforms of Deng Xiaoping and spectacularlyapparent in relation to the treatment of Iraq.

608. Fred Halliday rightly suggests that a ‘time test’ of ‘a generation, twenty-fiveyears or so, at least’ would significantly reduce the number of bona fidedemocracies in existence to perhaps 40 rather than the figure of up to 100commonly given. See Halliday, The World At 2000, op. cit., pp. 83–4.

609. Interestingly, in the context of the military intervention in Iraq, long-standing human rights concerns have been overshadowed by opposition tothe war. Though there are those for whom the Bush administration is the new Third Reich, one could be forgiven for thinking that the intervention was against a nice liberal regime like that of Sweden.

610. For Kant’s analysis see Michael Doyle ‘Liberalism and World Politics’,American Political Science Review, Vol. 80, No. 4, December 1986.

611. Carothers, op. cit., pp. 86–7. Another example would include the Ukrainewhere President Leonid Kuchma has been questioned over his role in themurder of journalist Georgy Gongadze. See The Independent, 9 February 2001.

612. See Seymour Martin Lipset, American Exceptionalism: A Double-Edged Sword(New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1997) for a thorough comparativeanalysis of the United States.

613. All the factors favourable and unfavourable to its diffusion outlined in thepreceding section serve to define more narrowly the changed nature of thiscontingency. For example, compared with the past, democracy is now thestandard against which other regime types are measured. Internationalhumanitarian law, the increasing ‘good governance conditionality’ associatedwith international organisations, the focused political support for democrati-sation, and so on all serve to suggest the altered nature of this contingency.

614. The Economist, 24 February 2001, p. 17.615. Ibid., p. 17.616. Meanwhile, political moderates/reformers and Islamist radicals seem to be

making common cause in reaction to the intervention in Iraq. See theUnited Nations Arab Human Development Report, 2002. For an excellentand recent analysis of the causes of many of the developmental problems inthe Arab world see Bernard Lewis, What Went Wrong (Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 2002).

617. Amartya Sen, ‘Democracy as a Universal Value’, Journal of Democracy 10.3(1999) p. 3.

Notes 241

242

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248 Bibliography

249

Index

Absolutism 106, 109, 139, 229 n.340absolutist state 88, 107, 143agrarian

class 21, 27, 36, 55movement 54protection in Europe 53–4

Allende, Salvador 181American Convention on Human

Rights 155Amnesty International 159Anarcho-syndicalism 52Angell, Norman 63anti-globalisation movements 207anti-war movements 207Apartheid 197Argentina 114, 117, 171, 172, 202

democratic transition 202, 214aristocratic–bourgeois coalition 31,

32, 188asset specificity 172, 238 n.545Association for the Study of

Ethnicity and Nationalism (ASEN) 235

authoritarianism 7, 65, 159, 172,176, 179, 181, 188, 190

Bagehot, Walter 108Berlusconi, Silvio 181, 239 n.572Bismarck, Otto von 57, 223 n.194Bolshevik Revolution 66Bolshevism 63, 65, 169, 204bourgeois democracy xv, 80, 169bourgeois–military coalition 32bourgeois revolutions 21, 26, 33Braudel, F. 146Brazil 31, 32, 116, 123, 160, 172‘breakthrough coup’ 116Bretton Woods system 66Brewer, Anthony 8‘Brezhnev Doctrine’ 161, 182‘Bureaucratic Authoritarianism’ 137,

166, 170–4, 180, 184, 190

Cammack, Paul 8, 32campesino movement 123, 124capitalism, emergence/development

of 6–10, 13, 17, 23, 27, 35, 38,40–6, 50, 52–7, 60, 63–9, 70–94,133, 136, 142, 145–8, 150, 151,168, 183, 189, 191, 195–8

Britain’s transition to 50industrial 48, 49, 51, 53, 146, 149modern 60, 88, 196

Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy 70capitalist democracy 7, 21, 79, 180capitalist economy 31, 146, 149,

150, 152, 175, 177, 178, 182world capitalist economy 8, 10,

165, 166, 168, 175capitalist modernity/modernisation

20, 38, 85, 90, 98, 188, 195central banking systems 56, 58Chaco War 116Chartism, Chartists 50, 51‘Che’ Guevara 103Chirac, Jacques 181, 204Christian Democratic Union (CDU)

180citizenship 142, 148, 183, 184, 195

liberal democracy and 149–51city–country gap 111–13civil disobedience 76, 207civil rights movements 14, 207Clapham, C. 86, 88‘Classical Doctrine’ 73–6, 88

Schumpeter’s critique 73–7Cobden, Richard 1Cold War 1, 3, 7, 9, 33, 65, 90, 93,

96, 99, 132–3, 157, 161–2, 174,181–2, 199, 200–1, 203–5, 209

colonialism 3, 29, 39, 100, 127, 132,133, 195

Combination Acts 50‘combined and uneven’ development

53, 103, 110

Commercial Revolution 43, 48, 49, 56

communism 7, 10, 20, 21, 26, 27,30, 35, 37, 85, 97, 130, 132, 134,181, 190, 199, 200

‘comparative advantage’ 56‘competitive elitism’ model 74Concert of Europe (1871–1914) 62–4constitutionalism 90, 108, 140Cooper, Robert 192, 232 n.430,

240 n.588Corn Laws 51, 54corruption 87, 128–31, 180, 232 n.417cosmopolitan democracy 137–8,

163, 184, 202Crick, Bernard xvi

Davidson, Basil 116, 230 n.367defensive modernisation 11, 27, 53,

164, 194, 199de Jouvenel, Bertrand 121de Maistre, Joseph xviiidemocracy 3–6, 15–17, 20, 22, 27–8,

77, 134, 136–8, 150–1, 176, 184,187, 190, 193

and the capitalist order 78–81challenges to 139, 151–5conceptualising 15–16conditions favourable and

unfavourable 28–35and the global system 4–19,

137–9, 193–208institutionalisation of 4, 14, 15,

19, 20, 34, 154, 155, 163, 168,174, 177, 184, 187, 216

international diffusion of 187,190, 191, 200, 201

political democracy 17, 160, 169Democracy and the Global Order 137democratic capitalism 10, 94, 198democratic form of state, diffusion

5, 9, 10, 17, 28, 38, 94, 95, 136,137, 185–9, 191, 193, 209, 210

democratic government,preconditions 28, 31, 33

democratic peace thesis xvii, 163‘dependency theory’ 137, 166–71,

174, 180, 190, 237, 240de Tocqueville, Alexis 1Development as Freedom 158

‘dialectical materialism’ 195‘disjunctures’ 154–5, 157, 165, 166,

182–4, 190‘double movement’ 40–2, 44, 47, 50,

53, 59–62, 66–7, 195, 221class and ideology in 44–5imperialism and 60international political consequences

62–4structure and agency in 42–4

Doyle, Michael 4, 5, 70Dryzek, John 160Dumas, Roland 180

economic development 4, 85, 130,132, 158, 171, 177, 196, 198

social mobilization and 99–104unevenness of 168, 169

economic globalisation 174, 176,177, 178, 179, 181

economic liberalism 8, 42, 44–7, 50,54, 63, 64, 66, 172, 173, 177, 179,189, 202

Economist, The 179El Salvador 116environmental degradation 160ethnic chauvinism 102ethnic minorities 104, 140

equal representation 149European Convention for the

Protection of Human Rights andFundamental Freedoms 155, 156

European liberalism 140European Union (EU) 66, 132, 135,

138, 156, 162, 176, 205, 209

factors of production 6, 41, 157, 188Factory Act in 1833 49, 222 n.175Falklands War 214 n.28fascism 7, 20, 21, 26, 27, 29, 30, 37,

66, 86, 91, 203, 204feminism 195, 199, 207Ferguson, Adam 85feudalism 41, 55, 82, 105, 139Fieldhouse, D.K. 61First World War 32force of example/demonstration effect

5, 7, 9, 10, 17, 32, 92, 131, 136,151, 164, 188, 190, 191, 193, 198,207–8, 219

250 Index

foreign direct investment 33, 59, 192Franco-Prussian War 62‘free markets’ 46, 68, 157, 181French Revolution 34, 35, 51, 62, 71,

233Frieden, Jeffry 171–3, 181Fukuyama, Francis 7, 18, 83, 89, 151fundamentalist reaction 112–14Futardo, Celso 123

Garton Ash, Timothy 163Gellner, Ernest 22, 82, 86General Kim 118General Pak 118General Pervez Musharraf 199Genocide Convention 203global communications systems 165global governance 11, 158globalisation 19, 100, 136, 138, 151–4,

163–6, 174–81, 192, 202, 210global system x, 8–9, 17, 20–8, 32, 35,

36, 38, 98, 106, 111, 122, 124, 167conceptualising 9–14and democracy 131–4and democratic governance x, 20, 38

gold standard 46–8, 56–9, 61–5and capitalism 63

‘good governance’ 157, 158, 241Gorbachev, Mikhail 126, 161,

182, 214Great Depression 32, 60, 133The Great Transformation 40, 42Greenpeace 160‘Green Uprising’ 111–14Group of 7/8 157Guatemala 58, 116, 123, 131

Halliday, Fred xi, 11, 35, 155, 198, 213 n.21;27, 215 n.44;52;53,218 n.103, 219 n.110;120, 220n.131;135, 227 n.305, 228 n.329,231 n.392;400, 235 n.496, 236n.510;516;521;522, 237 n.529,239 n.566;579, 240 n.589;596–8,241 n.605; 608

haute finance 62–3Hayek, F.A. 92hegemonic powers 161, 163, 182Held, David 74, 76, 136–85, 190,

191, 195, 199–200, 202

Helsinki Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe(CSCE) 156

‘historical communism’ 85, 98, 130The History of the Russian

Revolution 12Holy Alliance under Metternich 62humanitarian international law

155, 156Human Rights Watch 159Hundred Years War 24‘Hungry Forties’ 52Huntington, Samuel 95, 110–35,

171, 190, 195, 198, 204, 208Huntington’s theory of

modernisation 102Huntington’s theory of the

state 119–22

Ignatieff, Michael 37immiserization thesis 70imperialism 2, 8, 60, 61, 64, 66, 94,

133, 195import substitution industrialisation

(ISI) 32, 169–72India 23, 25, 34, 84, 114, 127Indian democracy 169, 217industrial capitalism 48–9, 51, 53,

146, 149industrialism 9, 21, 36, 43, 54, 56,

150, 183, 189, 197, 198industrial revolution 42, 46, 55,

62, 147industrial working class 49, 123inequality 12, 15, 61, 77, 103,

177–80, 197, 198, 208Inönü, Ismet 118intensified social reflexivity 156, 235international gold standard 56–7, 61international law 2, 153–6, 166,

182, 202International Monetary Fund (IMF)

157, 173, 179, 205international non-governmental

organisations (INGOs) 159international political system 2,

10–12, 42, 46, 95, 199, 202International Relations 1–6, 9, 21,

27, 152, 153, 163, 183, 188, 203, 210, 213 n.27

Index 251

International TelecommunicationsUnion 157

International wars 3, 39, 62, 66, 195, 202–4

Inter-state competition 25, 27, 42–3,198, 199, 201, 202

and co-operation 199–202

James, Mayall 1, 232 n.430Japan 23, 25–8, 37, 86, 127, 145,

165, 178, 202, 204modernisation 122

Kant, Immanuel 1, 5, 7, 63, 136, 207Karimov, Islam 200Kemalist Turkey 126Kemal, Mustafa 118‘Keynesianism’ 35Khan, Ayub 118Kohl, Helmet 131, 180

labour 6, 29, 41, 44–6, 49, 67, 68, 147, 149, 157, 176, 195, 202

child 80commodification 41–2division of 61, 86foreign 31migration 93mobility 30

Labour Exchanges 50labour ‘intensity’ 29, 31, 218land 25, 39, 41, 44,48, 53, 54, 67,

68, 103, 127, 157commercialisation of 25commodification 41–2, 59, 61income-yielding investment 25mobilization 61reforms 127, 128

landed classes 24, 25, 28–32, 44, 45, 48, 57

landed élite/bourgeois alliance 29Landes, David 85landlord/peasant conflict 127level playing field 176liberal democracy xii, 6–9, 13, 14, 16,

64, 67, 80, 84, 91, 133, 136–42,144, 149–50, 156, 157, 162, 164,168, 175, 176, 184, 188–9, 194,195, 197, 200, 208–10, 220

and citizenship 149–51

institutionalisation 195rise of 139–42

‘liberal internationalism’ xii, xiii, 17, 20, 38, 63, 67, 69, 92, 94–5,134–5, 185–93, 198, 207, 211 n.6, 216

and democracy 4–6and end of the Cold War 7–9

Lipset (1959) hypothesis 227Lipset, Seymore Martin 18

‘McCarthyism’ 35macro-patterns of war and militarism

142, 151, 183, 190, 195Mann, Michael 51, 215 n.53, n.137marginalisation 156, 179, 210

of non-democratic regimes 156market driven social dislocation 50market mobilisation 53market society 41–3, 54, 56, 62, 66,

67, 150, 187opposition to 48–9

Marxism 12, 33, 52, 70, 152, 168, 169

‘mass’ praetorianism 117, 124mercantilism 43, 48, 56, 60middle-class protection 56

in Europe 56–60middle-class radicalism 96, 97Mitterrand, Jean-Christophe 180model of change (proletarian

revolution) 10model of ends (communism) 10modernisation 11, 14, 17, 22, 24–7,

34, 36, 53, 85, 95–116, 133, 134,164, 170, 188, 194, 199

and corruption 128–31impact on developing countries 104modernity versus 97–9and revolution 122–5

modern state 42, 60, 143, 145–6,153, 154, 175, 192, 195, 200

definition of 139–42rise of 42–3

Montesquieu, Baron de 1, 22Moore, Barrington 20, 50, 53, 89,

122, 148, 188–9, 191, 194–5, 204multinational corporations (MNCs)

32, 165, 181, 200

252 Index

Napoleonic Wars 51, 56national identity 107, 163, 234

n.458and the globalisation of culture

163–5nautonomy 178, 184, 191non-violent direct action 207North Atlantic Cooperation Council

(NACC) 161North Atlantic Treaty Organisation

(NATO) 161, 202, 209

O’Donnell, Guillermo 166, 170oligarchic regimes 37, 124, 126‘one more push’ syndrome 86‘Operation Iraqi Freedom’ xvi‘Operation Restore Democracy’

216 n.67Organisation of African Unity’s

adoption of the Charter ofHuman and People’s Rights 155

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development(OECD) 160

Ormerod, Paul 178Owenism 50

Paine, Tom 1, 22Palestinian war 116Parliamentary Reform Bill of

1832 49, 222 n.64Parsons, Talcott 226Partnership for Peace 161peasant revolution 21, 25, 26, 30peasantry 13, 23, 25, 31, 44, 45, 50,

54, 57, 105, 109, 113, 123, 124,126, 188

Polanyi, Karl 18, 40–5, 53, 59–60, 62,65–7, 94, 166, 189, 191, 195, 196,201, 202, 204

political change 104, 125–8in traditional polities 104

political community 16, 98, 114,124, 139, 144, 149, 158, 184, 210

Huntington’s theory of 119–22political liberalism 63, 64, 150, 184political modernity 98, 105, 106,

112, 122, 124, 128, 190American model 107–9

British model 107Continental model 106–7historic routes 106–10

Political Order in Changing Societies95, 135

political stability 114–19Poor Law Reform Act of

1834 49, 51‘populist leftism’ 170‘Praetorian’ political systems 114

oligarchical 115radical 115–18

‘principle of autonomy’ 151privatisation 172, 179protectionism 51, 57, 85public interest 98, 120, 160

racism 61, 152realism 2–3, 27, 97reform 15, 66, 92, 96, 109, 147

democratic 1, 11, 148, 205, 206electoral 15political 163, 182, 206and political change 125–8social 92, 199

Reform Movement 50religious fundamentalist movements

102republicanism 5, 33, 62, 152Revolutions of 1989 161, 179,

193, 204Ricardian trade and currency

theory 58The Road to Serfdom 92Rueschemeyer, Dietrich 147–9, 170,

175, 181rule of law/rule by law 15, 16, 130,

141, 188Russian Revolution of 1917 91

Sassoon, Donald 81, 92Schumpeter, Joseph 6, 17, 18,

69–94, 170, 189, 191, 196, 198, 204

‘second image’ reasoning 163Second World War 7, 32, 38, 41, 65,

66, 93, 94, 97, 116, 133, 144, 168,201, 203,

self-defining countries xv

Index 253

self-interest 22, 25, 160, 188self-regulating markets 44–6, 49, 51, 54

domestic and internationalinstitutions 46–8

Sen, Amartya 19, 144, 158, 159, 169,179, 210

‘Sinatra Doctrine’ 161single-party state 140, 141Skocpol, Theda 9, 11–12Smith, Adam 6, 22, 25, 60, 109social classes 22–4, 109, 111, 147,

188, 195socialist democracy 79, 86social mobilisation 132socio-economic change 127, 194–8sovereignty 2, 62, 139, 149, 152,

158, 159, 161, 176, 182, 183, 202parliamentary 25political 57state 47, 108, 154, 155, 161–3, 166

Speenhamland Law of 1795 49Stephens, Evelyn Huber 147–9, 170,

175, 181Stephens, John D. 147–9, 170, 175,

181Strange, Susan 81structural dependency critique 133suffrage 25, 108, 126

adult 16male 15, 108, 233universal 55, 79, 80, 110, 198women’s 149, 207

territoriality 139, 141–2Therborn, Göran 143Third World countries 21, 28–31, 33,

80, 97, 162, 169, 181, 198, 204thymos 151trade liberalisation 172trade union movements 50, 55, 65,

175, 196instruments of mass mobilisation

196transaction costs 130transition to democracy 24, 29,

136, 214transition to modernity 9, 21, 26,

105, 106, 110, 122, 123Treaty of Utrecht 62Treaty of Westphalia 62

Trotsky, Leon 12, 13, 14, 192tsarism 14, 90, 91‘twin-theses’ of world politics 69

uneven and combined developmentxiii, xix, 12–14, 16, 20, 26, 27, 28,30, 33, 34, 36, 40, 48, 52, 54, 55,58, 64, 67, 68, 71, 82, 90, 95, 137,174, 186–7, 191–2, 194, 196, 198,215, 226

Universal Declaration of HumanRights 156, 203

‘urban breakthrough’ 111–14urban migrants 54urban–rural power relations 113

changes initiated by modernisation113

U.S.–Pakistan relations 199

violence 21, 91, 97, 102, 116, 123,163, 178, 184, 202

control of 139, 141political 97, 99, 118uzbekistan 200, 208

wage-price for labour 49‘wage slavery’ 51Wallerstein, Immanuel 46Wall Street crash of 1929 65Waltz, Kenneth 18, 163Warren, Bill 166, 168, 169, 170, 175,

192Wars of the Roses 24Warsaw Treaty Organisation 161Washington Consensus 235‘weapons of mass destruction’

(WMD) xviiWeimar Republic 23, 71, 91, 181welfare states 34, 144, 203‘Western liberal’ states 98Westphalian principles 155, 210Wilson, Woodrow 1working class 32, 36, 37, 45, 50, 63,

66, 105, 112, 117, 148, 151, 168,170, 180, 196

males 60, 145movement 49, 51, 134protection 55women 140

World Bank 157, 173, 179, 205

254 Index

world economy 11, 12, 65, 154,165–74, 180, 181, 183

world-historical-time 10–12, 20, 40,64, 67, 68, 91, 110, 128, 132, 137,186, 194, 198, 208

world income inequality 178World Trade Organisation (WTO) 157

Zimbabwe 131, 196, 208, 240 n.594zone of peace 209, 216

Index 255

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