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Has Globalization Superceded

Theories of International Relations?

Henry Teune

University of Pennsylvania

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*This is a substantial revision of a draft presentation at the 41^st Annual Meeting of the International Studies Association, Los Angeles, March 14-28, 2000. Further editing of the HTML coding is needed.

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Globalization trumps international relations as a concept in theories of world change. It is a process by which human societies become components of a total world system. Relations among countries today are becoming sub-systems of this system, acting both negatively and positively, on the more encompassing, stronger, and faster processes of the development of human societies. The basic argument is that general theories that have been used to explain how human societies developed into an international system of states can also partially explain why the relations among them change to create a global system. Globalization thus becomes a transitional process by which one kind of system supercedes another. This transition cannot expected to be a smooth progression, anymore than the system of European international relations came to dominate the political systems of feudal orders and empires. The international system of states, which, in the second half of the twentieth century, enveloped all other territorial political systems, was almost always either violently unstable or threatened to be so. It may again re-assert its primacy over these forms of incipient, global human organizations and even harm them. Yet no single state today can claim its superiority as the sole vehicle of human development and civilization.  Despite fears that globalization is a ruse for Americanization, development is a global process. Civilization is no longer the possession of any specific people but of human societies everywhere.

Globalization is a general historical manifestation of the developmental dynamics of increasing the scale of human social systems. In this sense, globalization of a village is the integration of families into an order system of greater diversity than any of the families or clans within them. One consequence is that the village becomes a total system. Villages, in turn, could be globalized into cities; cities into countries or civilizations Cities, the hallmark of civilizations, are places with very high densities of integrated diversity

     Theories of developmental change can be used to explain the emergence and relative importance of states, their rise, ascendance, and decline. Setting aside wars and epidemics, the theoretical and empirical societal equivalents of physical catastrophes, states emerged from the processes of development that integrated diversity. The integration of diversity at levels higher than states means that they are being superceded by another system in the processes of developmental change.

     The theoretical dynamics of increasing scale explain the great processes of modernization, which made possible the conditions for mega-urbanization and state formation that generated the system of relations among sovereign states and defined the foundations of European international relations. The rate of change and qualitative improvement of state development during the nineteenth century was so vast that the largest armies that the world had ever seen were mobilized for Napoleon’s march into Russia--about 600,000 horse assisted, pillaging troops. That army was less than those killed a century later during a single battle of the First World War. The following two decades saw another step function increase state development, manifest in the great urban manufacturing, trading, population centers as well as in the destructive capacities of the arms of nations. Theories of relations among states were used to explain the behavior of states in an international system, using the dynamics of equilibrium, conflict, and collective decision-making of relatively autonomous system actors.

     All human organizations are spatially identifiable. At least for the past two centuries, states have been defined as political systems with relatively strong jurisprudential claims to exclusive hierarchical control over territory in the principle of sovereignty--none other and none higher. As the level of development of any territorial social system increases, there is a push against its territorial constraints from processes of development from new variety. All territorial political systems have an approximate theoretical development limit, beyond which maintaining control though closure of boundaries and tightened hierarchical efforts Aruns down@ the system.  That limit diminishes relatively as the “environment, regional or global, develops. That point was reached during the past two decades happily for the populations of relatively developed countries and unhappily so for many in the less developed ones. For about the past two centuries, development, measured in terms of wealth, was a matter of the development of countries. It was both of political and theoretical importance to compare countries with more and less wealth and examine the relationships that explained economic growth.  Development for many regions and countries today has moved beyond what is expressed in the standard measures of Gross and Domestic National Products of value in market exchanges. Indeed, productivity is now associated with the general organizational framework in which work takes place. The worth of the same individual doing he same thing in two different kinds of political economies is radically different depending on the production sector within a country or a region where the work is done.

Human social development occurred in a few world regions and societies eight or so thousand years ago. Only a very few of them expanded territorially as empires and left legacies in temperament, habits, and knowledge. Empires, based on the hierarchical control of surface land, are human social organizations in the modality of ecology with its dynamics of invasion, resistance, and dominance. Although capable of massive collective human achievements, they had limited success in transforming the human societies they claimed to control. Almost all empires remained poly-ethnic political systems, despite efforts to achieve religious and ideological homogeneity. They used warfare and threat as the means to subdue local populations, expand territorial wealth, and resist invaders.

      The bureaucratic hierarchies of nineteenth and twentieth century secular states supplanted empires as the engines of development through organizational intensification of production and trade, transformation of human societies through nationalism, and massive urban concentration through construction, communication, and transportation technologies. By the end of the twentieth, an international system of states had triumphed over the last of the large empires. For most of their existence, the most developed states were involved in wars of national autonomy and subjugation of adjacent territories, reaching outward to seek and maintain access to resources in colonized areas and for security. Today, development is global. That is what is meant by globalization--developmental processes that are taking place in the world as a single, poly-ethnic human system society. [1]

The world as a single human system has no external enemies, except those imagined from outer space, weather disturbances, and cracks in the earth’s surface. It does have weakly integrated components. It does not yet have a single hierarchy and it is unclear whether it will acquire stability with a strong concert of national political systems to subdue local conflicts or a central control center.

 

Why Development Explains Globalization.

 

     A general theory of development supercedes theories of international relations for the following reasons: 1) it explains the emergence and relative importance of system components, why states form, ascend, and recede; 2) it sets the framework for system transformations, why principalities merge into empires, empires bread down into territorial states, and incipient international and transnational institutions emerge; and 3) it provides a foundation for understanding the belief systems that are used to explain and justify social, economic, and political relations, both secular and sacred, why nationalism underpinned the state, as universal human rights now seem to be doing for a global system. A general development theory is inclusive of historical processes, at least those since the beginnings of identifiable civilizations @ their durability, and their rates of change. Development is a general dynamic of human social systems that increase their scale. ^[2]  As such it provides a framework for predicting the future.

Development drives human activities to more inclusive relations. More encompassing systems develop by generating variety at a rate higher than those of smaller scale. That variety is integrated faster in more developed rather than less developed systems, in turn leading to yet more innovation, integrated at even a faster pace. The arena with the most variety today and the one with the greatest possible scale is the global human system. That is the current developmental, territorial limit even though we aspire to find other human like societies in the universe.

     All systems are more or less developed which can be described as their level of complexity. The most important fact about change in any human system is whether or not it develops, whether or not it is a developmental system. Only some human systems are developmental, that is, contain processes by which they autonomously increase their complexity. All living systems have evolved in ways still poorly understood. They grow, survive, and decay, but do not autonomously develop except through adaptation. Human systems have a hypothesized psychological process of Aself-actualization@, or the will to become. A few human social systems invented and changed themselves by acts of will and imagination, and choose their future. Even a fewer of them got Abetter@ because of choice. Indeed, almost all identified human systems of the past disappeared.

 

     The international system of states that took form in Europe with the collapse of feudalism was a simple system. By the late nineteenth century in most of western and central Europe, as well as Italy, developmental dynamics were engaged at the state level, rapidly aggregating production and distribution at levels higher than villages, cities, and regions. Integration was Aforced@ through the instruments of strong internal coercive institutions, distribution of wealth through welfare, and the construction of infrastructures for exchange and transportation. Creating systems of greater scale through the design and application of hierarchy is the main modality of modernization. Along with these hierarchical control agencies based on coercion were those of persuasion in constitutions, symbols of nationhood, and political parties. Because of the disruptions from industrialization, all early-industrialized states of Europe established strong national bureaucracies. The trans-Atlantic counties were latecomers because of the Afederal@ realities of their great size.

 

     Even after the increases in number of states after the two major wars of the twentieth century, relations among them were relatively simple: wars, diplomacy, subversion, exchange, alliances, and public expressions of approval and disapproval. However subtle, the international system had about the level of complexity of a village of a hundred families. The level of development, the sheer strength, of a few of the states, of course, was sufficient to either do a lot of harm or good to the weak ones. International institutions, clubs of various kinds, were established at the end of the nineteenth century for various purposes, often specific ones and the processes of contemporary globalization began, interrupted by wars, and accelerating after the weakening of the Soviet Union in the 1970s.

 

     Western Europe may have been more Aintegrated@ before the fragmentation following the rise of strong nation-states and than today. But in fact what appeared to be unity came from uniformities among small segments of the population in Latin languages, Christian religions, and Roman laws. The European system was low on inclusion and the range of activities it could impact. It may be true that a greater share of national wealth marked the beginning of the twentieth century in international trade, higher rates of inter-state labor mobility, and easier financial transactions than today. But the world then was not made up of anything like the Aequality@ of peoples and nations that justify an assessment of the world as a total system. The nature and speed of exchanges and communications were limited; the quality of what was exchanged crude; and, of course, the definitions of what constituted international trade, labor mobility (working in a place rather than in an organization), and currency transfers very different.

 

     The development of the world as a single system is again, as it was in the institution of national governmental bureaucracies in the early industrializing countries, reflected in sectoral integration. The production and distribution of scientific knowledge, today the main source of new variety, essential for developmental change, are largely controlled by the norms and activities of international and global scientific societies. Matters of preference and taste in art, style, literature, and music are considerably influenced by world trends. Political ideologies involving human rights, a good environment, and just criminal procedures have spread from international institutions and groups. Although these examples do not make the case for an irreversible transformation to a global system, what can is the absence of acceptance of any state claims to exercise its sovereignty free of the Aopinions@ and norms of other states or international organizations or groups. Those making such assertions are on the defensive in making or preparing for war on others or on their own peoples.

 

     As a global system emerges and dominates and incorporates the international one, instability, some of it leading to violence, can be expected. In addition there are several competing Aglobal political economies@, some organized regionally, the European Union, NAFTA, ASEAN and others by sectors, the stock exchanges, the energy industries, the telecommunication groups. Challenges will come from the Aold order@ of states, especially those believing that they were denied full recognition of their rights of sovereignty. Indeed, patterns of human societies that were long submerged in the processes of state formation will find an opportunity for renewal, substantiating an image of the world as a single global system, but made up of thousands of tribes. Part of that image is shaped by extreme nationalism and sensitivity to autonomy of the new states that never got their anticipated full legitimacy in the international system of sovereign states. What is happening at the global level is that individuals are Adifferentiating@, becoming Acitizens@of the world while seeking to retain the security of older identities. The Anew global age@ is a mix of cosmopolitan new localisms and old identities.

 

Developmental and Globalization Processes

 

     Developmental processes are distinguished from growth.^[3]  Development increases the scale of systems; growth, their size or the number of their elements. Both can lead to system Acrises@. At certain points the ecological limits of development systems require system Atransformations@ to move to a higher level of development, along with Acreative destruction@ of parts of the old structures. ^[4]  The responses of growth systems approaching their Aphysical limits@ are retreat, decay, and decline. Developmental systems change their components and relationships at the same time, transforming themselves into something different by re-defining their social space or structure. If they do not, they collapse. Growth systems are limited by physical space and their capacity to invade and dominate other niches. Developmental systems can continue to develop, by re-structuring their social space, even if their physical space shrinks. Growth systems, typified by biological systems, are those where the nature of the components and their relationships remain the same but the number of components increases or decreases. Development is innovation driven. Growth is achieved by intensification of reproduction, production, or incorporation of components from other systems at rates exceeding those of de-composition or decay. Development occurs because of new items and relationships. A smaller Germany after 1950 was more developed than the larger one of 1939. A small Switzerland is more developed than a large India; a big Russia is less developed than a small Netherlands. Nation-states, up until very recently, were primarily systems of growth and limits that convinced their leaders ideologically that either they had to organize better or use force to produce more and extract resources and labor from others, or else face stagnation and decline.

 

    The logic of growth and limits means competition among nations with state power over people, land, and physical resources. Development, as the integration of diversity and the creation of new variety in material things and ideas of structure and organization, has no known limits or inherent scarcities. The former is a Azero-sum@ game; the latter a positive sum one. A poor country in a global system gives no advantage to a rich one other than from psychological satisfactions from disputed invidious comparisons.

 

     Developmental systems generate something new and integrate it, yielding yet something else new. That is the core of the internal dynamics of developmental change. Often this Ajust@ happens but now comes regularly from conscious individual and collective action based on learning. The result is Atechnology@ of two functional kinds. It either integrates something at a higher, more encompassing level, a transportation system or an better-engineered automobile, or it produces something new, things and ideas and their applications, that change the system. One links the components of a system together with less effort, time, and error; the other yields something unique, at a particular point in time and for a specific system. This distinction is based on the main contribution of what is new to either the integration or the diversity of the system.

 

     Three main intertwined, integrative processes are the first leg of development: 1) strengthening the relations among the components; 2) including more components into the system; and 3) encompassing more of what each component has into the system. A group is better integrated as a system to the extent that the behavior of its members is predicted by the group, that all individual members are equally affected by the group, and that more of what each individual is and has is impacted by the group. A perfectly integrated Agroup@system, then, is one where everything all individuals are and do was and is determined by the group. Something like this is only nearly approximated empirically in designed physical systems of expensive watches and computers. Apart from wealth, the level of integration of states is a decisive distinguishing characteristic of Adeveloped and underdeveloped@ countries. A wealthy Saudi Arabia is a poorly integrated, underdeveloped political system. Lots of valuable things distributed across a politically claimed territory can yield nothing, little, or only time for their decay.

 

     The second leg of development is diversity. In order to develop, a system must integrate increases in diversity. There are two sources of diversity for any system: variety taken in from other systems or generated internally. In either case, diversity derives from the distribution of new variety. It must be integrated for the system to develop. The first of these, the imports, are relatively easy to understand, even if their consequences are difficult to predict. Diffusion of innovations is one way of describing this process. A new item of variety gets into a system, is adopted or taken on by some components, increases in number, and is distributed. The second way is inventing something new or different or innovation of some new arrangement, including seeing something not seen before (discovery). Both involve complex processes and nurturing environments. Variety comes from combining two or more objects together, wheels and sticks into a cart linked to a combustion engine, or fusing two or more ideas, chemistry and biology to materials.

 

      From these combinations and fusions, the substance of patents and intellectual property, two new kinds of items--objects and ideas--are generated. The first of these can be called object properties, things that individuals, organizations, and groups can Apossess@ or have some exclusive or priority access to. They are items of limits: they must occupy some place in time and space; they compete with other items; and people compete over which of them are located where and about rights of access, either exclusive or shared. They are at the core of modern economic theories of goods and services, exchanges and markets. The second are ideas, including those of truth and beauty—properties proper--that can be everywhere and used to produce new Atechnologies@ or consumed, enjoyed, directly. Their distribution or use does not diminish their value; on the contrary, the more widely they are distributed, the more valuable they are. The greater the distribution of software or the address of a web page, the more valuable each becomes. In fact, unlike, objects, they do not decay but readily meld into other ideas. A shift in value from exchanges in things to flows of ideas is one mark of an acceleration in the processes of globalization. Whereas relations among states were dominated by competition and conflict and winners and losers; a global system dominated by a flow of ideas involves the politics of queuing, who gets what first.

 

     Up to the point where half of the components of a system have or acquire access to that object or idea, diversity within the system expands but at a diminishing rate. When over half of the components have that property, then it becomes an item of similarity, something shared. As more items are shared by the components of a system, the base for interacting with others expands, contributing to potential integration. When all components have that property, then it ceases to add to diversity and becomes a defining property of the system. Yesterday automobiles, today computers, were imported into most countries, and initially only a few people had them. As those properties become inclusive, it is becomes what makes the system work. The country is electrified, Aspeaks@ Spanish, or is an automobile society.

 

     Importing what is already present in the system may simply maintain the system, if nothing different comes from it. Importing what is different may even block the development if it is not distributed and integrated. A small political elite with access to imports from everywhere may deter the integration of that variety in their country as well as prohibit its acquisition by others to prevent it from becoming an agent of change and development. Importing items, however, that either adds to the diversity of a system or contributes to its integration is developmental, whether or not they are made in the system. Developmentally, the issue is whether or not the item increases the diversity or integration of the system.

 

      Structural and distributive inequalities can be overcome by forced or subsidized distribution or access. To integrate a region or political system into a country, it must share similarities with that system it is becoming part of. If it is a trading system, then similarity in banking, currency valuations, and contracts of buying and selling must be assured. A division between automobile or computer owners and those without, in so far as those items are part of, are integrated into, a society, will create barriers to development. The low level of development of early European feudal security societies divided the population between nobles and vassals on the basis of possession of horses with stirrups When everyone has a particular property, then they all can be included into the system on that shared property. The system has become more integrated because an item of difference has become a property of similarity. Literacy and general education has been among the greatest of means of creating both diversity and similarity among individuals in modern societies.

 

      Social systems can be characterized by which of these two kinds of properties, things or ideas, dominates their behavior. Agriculture is the management of biological reproductive processes. Manufacture is harnessing animate and inanimate power to processes of shaping and putting together things. Administration is the organization of human activities. Science is tied to ideas that provide the bases of organizing and re-arranging all kinds of things, people, and ideas. A modern labor force is divided developmentally into primary, secondary, tertiary, and quaternary sectors, with a fifth, still awaiting general standing as a common expression. The key difference is in the complexity of knowledge of what is Aproduced@, including their specificity: the wheat, the tool, the administrative rule or Aservice@, the research and development, or the item of entertainment. The fundamental difference is whether the item is an object that derives its value from its location and scarcity or a property proper that can be assumed or accessed by any individual regardless of who else has it and where. Whereas the value of the first is driven by competition among various goods and activities and their distribution; the value of the second depends on abundance. The more people know about the ideas, the more valuable and useful they are. A characteristic of the globalization of economies is a rapid increase in the value of labor in the quaternary and the fifth sectors. This is also a significant difference between the old globalization of trade and new one of transactions and flows.

 

      One of the main issues about current international relations theories is whether the world of human activity has moved from one of scarcity and zero-sum to one of positive sum. The latter is more apparent today than it probably ever has been. A few countries and world regions are innovation driven and have global Areach@. The industrial revolution was about the design of mechanical systems to produce objects at ever decreasing costs, lower inputs yielding more outputs. Today even this is a more a matter of ideas and design rather than more power and more resources. A service economy tailors limited skills to particular individuals or organizations, a messy combination of ideas and activities focused on change. What is important about services is the distribution and application of @information@. Innovation driven systems are idea generating, yielding variety both to produce more variety and as a value in itself. What is new and different is inherently valued. The United States is a center in a system of states not because it manufactures better than others but rather because of its science and innovations, design and complexity, especially those that globally integrate finance, insurance, transportation, and problem solving. These examples constitute the problem for research on globalization: integration of architects, construction engineers, and construction sites; integration of all producers of automobile parts into a single distribution network; integration of publishing, live entertainment, and picture and sound records. They point to integration on a global scale, but what each represents as indicators of human development around the world is unknown. If it were, that would be valuable.

 

Systems, Developmental Systems, and International Relations Theories

 

     Theoretically, the world of systems can be divided into three kinds. The most familiar of these are mechanical. Most of these are constructed, but some can be Afound in nature@ such as waterfalls pushing against floating logs. This kind of system has components and the relationships among them do not change. They can collapse either by some external intrusion or by wearing out. A lot is known about designed mechanical systems and the engineers that make them. It is relatively easy to evaluate both the machines and their designs as good or bad.

 

      Close approximations of international relations to mechanical systems are closed system theories of balance of power, more broadly, coalitions, or more restrictively, competitive two person games. Since the Areal world@ of competition and exchange only approximate these mechanical, closed systems, the focus of thinking is by analogies or models to the international system. The objective is to find points of equilibrium that are the basis of the dynamics of mechanical systems. Change moves either toward or away from it. Two international situations which Afit@relatively tightly with closed system logics were two country arms races, the two actor prisoners=s dilemma in game theory, and five or so Agreat powers@ in coalitions of balance. Because equilibrium and disequilibrium were known to have determined values, even though they varied and changed rapidly, and the situations were deemed so important politically, hundreds of publications were produced as international relations Atheory@. ^[5]

 

     A second kind of system is ecological, which began to be understood in the middle of the nineteenth century. The logic of ecology is that there is a more encompassing system that envelops and dominates what it contains. It is a world of shifting Aenvironments@, a logical concept of that which is more encompassing and that which is encompassed. ^[6] The controlling dynamics of such systems are competition, dominance, growth, and decay. The processes are invasion, adaptation, learning, and subordination. The components of ecological systems change; their relationships do not. Thus, rabbits multiply and feed the foxes. The foxes multiply and the rabbits decline in number. In all predator and prey Amodels@, one Aeats@or destroys the other and the other eats something else. There are winners and losers. Because the fundamental relationships are constant, the probable outcomes of competition can be calculated. War is one kind of predator behavior. Differential growth in state capacities in manufacture, manpower, and organizational coordination are forces that tripped balances of relationships among states.

 

     Change in ecological systems comes about through Arandom variations@, mutations of various kinds. Most human systems, however, not only learn, adapt, but also purposefully change, a good part of that being Atechnology@, making objects and creating ideas that make for change. In a world of hierarchical human systems that dominate or are subordinated by others, the relative growth and technological capacities of Aprojecting power@ has been one of the main concepts in theories of histories of regional systems of states and war.

 

      Most international relations theories use the logic of ecological systems in a world of niches-- economic, political, social, and cultural--the dominant, encompassing one in the modern era being states. Theories of empires are obviously of this type. One niche expands and invades others, dominating and changing them. Local resistance, intended or emanating simply from the limits of attenuating control over expansion in territory compounds with the expansion of other expanding niches. To this must be added the internal dynamics of growth/decay, births/ deaths, effective/ corrupting hierarchies. Theories of state formation follow similar theoretical lines. Centers interact with peripheries and the centers gain ascendance over them, through force, access to resources, or sheer cunning.^[7]

 

      The third kind of systems is developmental. The main theoretical question about states and nations is how some of them over the past two centuries or so were able to become systems that could generate autonomous economic growth. Not only did they grow, but they also changed their basic structures. The question of how and why these developmental systems impacted human history speaks to the central problem in international relations of war and peace. From around 1750 Europe and North America engaged processes of simple, sustained development in terms of population growth with decreasing infant mortality and increasing life expectancy, and increasing output per capita. It began the most important period of human development and the most threatening in terms of sheer capacity to destroy in the technologies of iron, steel, and then nuclear weapons. But the most important part of state capacity to destroy was its bureaucracy, By the twentieth century states could mobilize to such an extent that not only were their wars AWorld Wars@ but also made the histories of nearly all human societies, world history. That system of war and peace was the foundation of modern international relations theories.

 

Modernization, an International System of States, and Development

 

     Scal can be achieved through hierarchy. States prosper from putting together many local entities into a larger, organizational whole. Political integration is hierarchical integration. Following some of these Amore perfect@ unions, small populations have been able to conquer their neighbors and much beyond, to provide a peace with long periods of prosperity, and, indeed, to flourish in religion, art, and science. The main instrumentalities of political integration have been subordination of unruly groups, building great cities, establishing durable roads and ports, but, most notably, nurturing institutions of Agood@ bureaucratic administration throughout the Aland@. Successful territorial political entities, and Astates@ have territory and people secured by an effective army, the core of the legitimacy of any territorial political system. The business of the military is security and expansion of territorial boundaries. The central dynamics of stability of modern state development in Europe have been succession to authority and secure territorial boundaries. Neither has been very stable.

 

     Development and hierarchy are structurally in conflict. Conflicts occur at those points where hierarchy hampers development by stifling innovation, preventing the distribution of variety, resisting re-structuring social space, and deterring allocations of resources.^[8]  From a long term macro perspective, centralizing governmental functions to control money, credit, transportation, standardization of production and distribution, indeed, even the labor force by wage and eligibility of work policies can have positive functions in speeding up and stabilizing processes of development. Centralization is a process of national integration development. It is reflected in the history of legislation in the United States, which established federal bureaucracies for transportation, labor, and commerce in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In the 1930s, later than most European countries, it instituted the rudiments of a national distributive welfare state.

 

     The main reason that hierarchy dampens, indeed negatively impacts developmental processes, are twofold. First, as hierarchies expand, the probabilities of mistakes being made increases. This is the problem of attenuation of control and the loss of information as it moves up and down vertical structures. A corollary of this is when there are mistakes in a hierarchy, steps are taken to correct and avoid them. Over time, the hierarchy accumulates huge investments in mechanisms to avoid mistakes and becomes Arisk adverse@. ^[9] Risk taking, of course, is one of the key elements of developmental systems. Second, as a system becomes more developed, it must open to imports of variety. It is becomes positively disposed to do so as it can integrate more variety and do so more quickly than in creating and making that variety.  As a system opens, and this is especially applicable to territorial political systems, its hierarchical control weakens. This is the Gorbachev dilemma. Open the system to develop; keep it closed to maintain control. Pursing both at the same time accelerates processes of decline to a point of system collapse.

 

     Closure and control will lead to decline relative to other systems that are open and developmental. ^[10]  As the rate of development increases with its level, closed systems in competition with others will fall farther behind faster. The easy contrasting examples are the two Koreas. One used hierarchy to integrate and develop; loosened control and opened up to move to a higher level of development; and then after a period of re-structuring regained processes of development. The other one remained closed and intensified control and is running down.

 

     This opening of states is one of the general conditions of development and its globalization. At some point the process becomes costly to reverse. The choice for countries is a stark one of opening and changing--becoming global and developing--or stagnation. There is another consequence. Not only must the state open and de-regulate but it also must decentralize.^[11] Most of the highly developed countries began to decentralize in the 1970s. Most of the former bureaucratic communist states established systems of local and regional self-governance. The consequences of this, of course, is easier penetration of state territories by global actors and local bypassing of central control, gaining new opportunities for local democratic politics.

 

 

The Reaction of the States and the International System: The New Politics of Globalization

 

     No system changes without re-arranging winners and losers. No system changes without resistance and paying homage to a weakening of previously strong components. Christian Europe kept the localities and some of the symbols of the Roman Empire. The guardians of state territorial integrity, the army, can be expected to be retained in ceremonial, if not fighting form. At this time, the world is a messy system undergoing a profound transformation, inviting strong reactions of rejection of global institutions and arrangements and efforts to re-establish the old order of state autonomy and national identity.

 

     Three counter forces to the globalization superceding the international system, can slow down or abort the processes. First, the sheer weight of the old order may delay or even bring down global developmental processes. This is part of the general ecological dynamics of change. The older order is more embedded the physical ecology of any human system. The new developmental processes are not only faster but also weaker and must be sustained with increasing rates of change to sustain themselves as they penetrate established human ecological systems. They must not only bypass the cities but must transform them, building around and on top of them. They must deal with the national regulations on airports, postal systems, and patterns of roads. They must reorganize financial institutions to get around national banks. Second, any change engenders a political response. Globalization means dislocation of peoples, breaking down established networks of human groups and associations. The fundamental political problem with change is that the old has political constituencies and the new only very weak ones. To the extent that politics is democratic, the processes of globalization can be expected to meet resistance. Third, no dynamic of change occurs without various Acrises@.  Some are uncontrollable as rapid spread of new diseases. Others come from the usual pendulum swings that get out of balance whether in Aexuberant@ markets or miscalculations in product development. Still others are part of the normal processes of the uncertainties of change.

 

     The longer-term perspective on global development is positive. It responds to variety as an opportunity rather than as a threat. It reduces the relative control of hierarchical political systems, especially that of nation-states, opening up local political space to local, hopefully democratic, politics. It provides alternatives to the scarcities of goods and services. It also provides new experiences. It also is a system of great diversity, inviting and receptive to new ideas from everywhere.

ENDNOTES