Abstract
This chapter will develop a theoretical framework from which one can begin to conceptualize how developments at local or national scales can have real consequences on the institutional materiality of global governance institutions. This will be done by working through Gramsci’s concepts as well as reviewing the neo-Gramscian school of international relations theory. In so doing, this chapter will seek to resolve some important theoretical difficulties that have plagued attempts to apply Gramsci’s core concepts to a historical context that is very different from his own, with the emergence of global governance institutions accompanied by the expansion and deepening of capitalist social relations. One of the major contradictions surrounding the contemporary application of Gramsci’s concepts is the salience of the concepts of civil society and the state at geographical scales, situated beyond the national one. Specifically, there is controversy whether one can apply the concept of civil society to contemporary contexts without reference to a state. More to the point, authors such as Randall Germain and Michael Kenny questioned whether neo-Gramscian theory could speak of a global civil society in the absence of an equivalent global state while remaining faithful to the overall thrust of Gramsci’s work.1
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Notes
The problematic treatment of the concept of the “integral state” by Gramscian approaches to international relations and international political economy had previously been brought up directly by Germain and Kenny. Notably, they were concerned that concepts that were developed specifically for the realities of the “nation-state” were being used to theorize the existence of global civil society as being “disembedded” from the nation-state. They argued that the main contribution of the “Gramscian turn” in international relations was to conceptualize a global world order without the conceptual constraints of state-centric approaches. Notably, neo-Gramscians created a theoretical framework from which to understand how hegemony came not as a result of interstate conflict but from the “battleground” of global civil society. That being said, Germain and Kenny indicated that the concept of civil society loses much of its value without reference to a state. Specifically, in reference to Anne Showstack Sassoon’s work on Gramsci, they argued that the meaning of civil society, as it is used by Gramscian approaches to international relations and international political economy, was developed specifically with reference to the emergence of the twentieth-century state. Civil society, from this perspective, is a sphere organically tied to the state through a wide range of functions that range from the creation of collective identities to the repartition of coercion and consent essential to the concept of hegemony. These are functions, they argue, that Cox’s global “nebuleuse” cannot fulfill vis-à-vis a global civil society. Furthermore, they argue that supranational institutional entities of any kind do not constitute a genuine international or global state, as nation-states, with their legal entitlement of sovereignty, have the ultimate decision-making capacity and authority in relation to supranational entities. Therefore, global civil society gains its meaning not in relation to an international state but rather in relation to the “nation-states” through which the world market operates. Consequently, according to them, the “nation-state” remained a central category in world politics, and Gramscian theory remained better suited to theorize politics within the national state. The approach explored in this chapter will try to go beyond this difficulty by reexamining elements of this controversy. Randall Germain and Michael Kenny, “Engaging Gramsci: International Relations Theory and the New Gramscians,” in Antonio Gramsci: Critical Assessments of Leading Political Philosophers, ed. James Martin, vol. 4 (New York: Routledge, 2002), 377–88.
In his discussion of national state apparatuses, which, as we will see, has ramifications for other institutional apparatuses as a result of his reference to the integral “State,” Nicos Poulantzas explains that “the establishment of a State’s policy must be seen as the result of the class contradictions inscribed in the very structure of the State (the State as a relationship).” Nicos Poulantzas, State, Power, Socialism (London: Verso, 2000), 132.
Tilottama Rajan, “The Mask of Death—Foucault, Derrida, the Human Sciences and Literature,” Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities 5.2 (2000): 216.
Peter Thomas, The Gramscian Moment: Philosophy, Hegemony and Marxism (Boston: Brill, 2009).
The use of the term “dialectical” in this book does not refer to a deterministic relationship. Ian McKay explains that there has been an important tension between “structure” and “agency” within the Marxist tradition. This is derived, explains McKay, from the effort to approach the possibility of social transformation “on the most rigorous understanding of the massive network of relation that make us unfree so that our critique of those relations can be all the more effective.” Ian MacKay, Rebels, Reds, Radicals: Rethinking Canada’s Left History (Toronto: Between the Lines, 2005), 16. In relation to this tension, as highlighted in the Gramscian tradition of Marxism, there is an excess in existing social structures that opens up the “possibility” for transformation through meaningful political action. Specifically, Stephen Gill explains that within a Gramscian framework, the dialectical aspect of relationships, such the one between structure and superstructure, is “historical: although social action is constrained by, and constituted within, prevailing social structures, those structures are transformed by agency (for example through collective action in what Gramsci called ‘the war of position’).”
Stephen Gill, “Epistemology, Ontology, and the ‘Italian School,’” in Gramsci, Historical Materialism and International Relation, ed. Stephen Gill (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 23.
Philip Cerny, Susanne Soederberg, and Georg Menz explain that there are two basic, interrelated elements that make up the definition of national sovereignty. The first element is endogenous and refers to the institution(s) that constitutes the highest authority within a particular state. Examples include monarchs in constitutional monarchies or the people and/or nation in republican states. The second element is exogenous and is based on the mutual recognition of different sovereignties. Sovereignty as such has been increasingly constrained, argue Cerny et al., by multiple factors including the appearance of multilateral agreements such as the World Trade Organization (WTO). Philip Cerny et al., “Different Roads to Globalization: Neoliberalism, the Competition State, and Politics in a More Open World,” in Internalizing Globalization: The Rise of Neoliberalism and the Decline of National Varieties of Capitalism, eds. Philip Cerny et al. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 4. In this sense, the reassertion of national sovereignty or dignity implies the reaffirmation of the decision-making capacity of national institutions, increasingly hobbled by supranational and subnational institutions and actors that embody a popular sovereignty in republican states or a sense democratic accountability in constitutional monarchies.
Robert Cox, “Social Forces, States and World Orders: Beyond International Relations Theory,” Millennium 10.2 (1980): 145–46.
Robert Cox, “Gramsci, Hegemony and International Relations,” in Gramsci, Historical Materialism and International Relations, ed. Stephen Gill (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 61–63.
By exploring and analyzing the ramifications of Gramsci’s concepts for international relations theory, one of Cox’s major contributions to that literature was his emphasis on the importance of world orders—notably, according to Eunice Sahle, the importance of world orders and their institutions for “the production and embedding of hegemonic ideas about state formation, human security, economy production and democratization in the South.” Eunice Sahle, World Order, Development and Transformation (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 14.
International Monetary Fund, “Statement by the IMF Executive Directors Representing Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa on the Selection Process for Appointing an IMF Managing Director, May 24, 2011,” Press Release No. 11/195. (Washington, DC: IMF External Relations Department, 2011).
Alfredo Saad-Filho explains that the Washington Consensus emerged as a result of the policy convergence of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the United States Treasury Department around neoliberal policy prescriptions for poorer countries. Generally, it promulgated that economic development would be achieved through increased participation in international trade and financial circuits as well as increased liberalization of the domestic economy through the retrenchment of state intervention. Alfredo Saad-Filho, “From Washington to Post-Washington Consensus: Neoliberal Agendas for Economic Development,” in Neoliberalism: A Critical Reader, eds. Alfredo Saad-Filho and Deborah Johnston (London: Pluto, 2005), 113–14.
André Drainville, “Beyond Altermondialisme: Anti-Capitalist Dialectics of Presence,” Review of International Political Economy 12.5 (2005): 884.
Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, eds. Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith (New York: International Publishers, 2003), 181–82.
Martin Carnoy, The State and Political Theory (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), 70.
Bob Jessop, “Gramsci as a Spatial Theorist,” Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 8.4 (2005): 424.
In her work on global governance, Susanne Soederberg critiques representations of global governance structures that portray them as floating in “mid-air” vis-à-vis states and social relations. Instead of being neutral arbiters that mediate between different actors, Soederberg insists that global governance structures are “integral moments” of the power relations of the interstate system. Susanne Soederberg, Global Governance in Question: Empire, Class, and the New Common Sense in Managing North-South Relations (Ann Arbor, MI: Pluto, 2006): 33.
Nicos Poulantzas, “The Capitalist State: A Reply to Miliband and Laclau,” in The Poulantzas Reader: Marxism, Law, and the State, ed. James Martin (London: Verso, 2008), 283.
See, for example, Peter Burnham, “Globalisation, Depoliticisation and ‘Modern’ Economic Management,” in The Politics of Change: Globalisation, Ideology and Critique, eds. Werner, Bonefeld and Kosmas Psychopedis (London: Palgrave, 2000);
Leo Panitch, “Globalization and the State,” in The Globalization Decade: A Critical Reader, eds. Colin Leys and Leo Panitch (London: Merlin, 2004);
or David Adam Morton, Unravelling Gramsci: Hegemony and Passive Revolution in the Global Economy (Ann Arbor, MI: Pluto, 2007).
Nicos Poulantzas, State, Power, Socialism (London: New Left Books, 1978), 143–50.
Bob Jessop, State Power: A Strategic-Relational Approach (Cambridge: Polity, 2008), 31–37.
It is important to note that the European Union (EU) represents somewhat of an exception to the analysis that follows, as some of its institutions, such as the European Parliament, are directly related to the civil societies of the continent. Furthermore, the European Commission is nominally autonomous from member states and is composed of functionaries that are responsible for promoting the interests of the EU. However, there are a whole host of other institutions, such the Council of Ministers, that are directly responsible to the member states, which in fact mediate the autonomy of the EU’s institutions and its ability to directly shape the civil society of the hemisphere. The degree to which the EU represents an autonomous entity able to directly engage the civil society of the hemisphere is very much still open to debate. Elizabeth Bomberg and Alexander Stubb, The European Union—How Does It Work? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 11.
Erik Swyngedouw, “Authoritarian Governance, Power, and the Politics of Rescaling,” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 18 (2000): 70.
Anssi Paasi, “Place and Region: Looking through the Prism of Scale,” Progress in Human Geography 28.4 (2004): 542.
Janet Conway, Identity, Place, Knowledge: Social Movements Contesting Globalization (Blackpoint, Nova Scotia: Fernwood, 2004), 3–4.
Nicola Phillips, “The Politics of Trade and the Limits to U.S. Power in the Americas,” in The Political Economy of Hemispheric Integration: Responding to Globalization in the Americas, eds. Diego Sánchez-Ancochea and Kenneth Shadlen (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 149.
This can be contrasted with Stephen Krasner’s work on foreign policy, whereby he maintains that the state has enough a priori coherence that it can pursue an autonomously conceived “national interest” with respect to foreign policy matters, especially when military geopolitical interests are in question due to its insulation from societal pressures. Stephen Krasner, Defending the National Interest: Raw Materials Investment and U.S. Foreign Policy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978), 11. The theoretical framework presented here does not deny that the state may pursue policies that contravene the interests of powerful societal groups but rather contests the idea that the state has the a priori or inherent capacity to do so. Such capacity must be approached historically in terms of discerning the particular crystallizations of the state apparatus that allowed the autonomous decision to take place.
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Nelson, M. (2015). Gramsci, Hegemony, and Global Governance. In: A History of the FTAA. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137412751_2
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