Abstract
An economy may be regarded as re-enacted networks of relationships by which people produce and consume the goods and services they need or want for physical, emotional, and creative satisfaction, and make decisions about the reproduction of those activities. Politics may be regarded as action and discourse to preserve or change the terms and rewards for which people participate in relationships. Thus, political-economy is action and discourse by which the terms and rewards of participation in production, distribution, exchange, and collective decision making are contested, perhaps through debate, violence, or bargaining. International political-economy is the extension of that contestation wherever economic activity crosses national and/or formal political boundaries. In international political-economy in that sense, the configuration of the relations of production, distribution, exchange, and decision making are more real and, if so, more important than the formal configurations of territorial boundaries. In this conception of political-economy, any group or agent whose actions or ideas shape what is produced/exchanged, by whom, where, and for what rewards and fulfillment, is historically important (in the sense of causing or preventing network change).
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Notes
For a powerful statement of this shift, see Susan Strange, “The Name of the Game” in N. Rizopoulos (ed.), Sea Changes, New York: Council of Foreign Relations, 1990; also Strange, States and Markets: An Introduction to International Political Economy, New York: Basil Blackwell, 1988; or Craig N. Murphy and Roger Tooze (eds.), The New International Political Economy, Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1991.
An epistemology that applies synthesis is demonstrated elsewhere in Michael H. Allen, “Women, Bargaining, and Change in Seven Structures of World Political Economy,” Review of International Studies, Vol. 25 No. 3, July 1999, also Michael H. Allen, Bargaining and Change: The International Bauxite Association 1973–1977 Ph.D. Thesis, London School of Economics, University of London 1984.
There was, to be sure, a certain ambivalence toward both urban modernity and rural life among Africans in Southern Africa, the one associated with antiApartheid class struggle, the other with both traditionalism and rootedness. See Loven Kruger, “The Drama of Country and City,”. Journal of Southern African Studies, Vol. 23, No. 4, Dec. 1997. It had taken strong measures to pry Africans from the land to supply workers for the mines and commercial farms. Frances Kendall and Leon Louw, After Apartheid: The Solution for South Africa, San Francisco: KS Press 1987, p. 12.
On divergent Afrikaner responses in the waning years of Apartheid, see Steven Friedman, “The National Party and the South African Transition,” in Robin Lee and Lawrence Schlemmer (eds.), Transition to Democracy: Policy Perspectives, Cape Town: Oxford University Press, 1991.
See Manfred Halpern, “A Redefinition of the Revolutionary Situation,” Journal of International Affairs, Vol. 23, No. 1, 1969.
This is the fundamental question of why people act politically in ways that they do. Western statecraft in the modern era, and its resultant social sciences are used to perceiving a universal materialist outlook behind political action. This is the assumption upon which Rational Choice economic and political theories rest. This has been challenged in recent years by Feminists, Postmodernists and Neo-Gramscians, who speak of the need to account for the impact of different identities upon political outlook and action. For a NeoGramscian take, see Enrico Augelli and Craig N. Murphy, “Consciousness, Myth and Collective Action: Gramsci, Sorel and the Ethical State,” in Stephen Gill and James Mittelman (eds.), Innovation and Transformation in International Studies, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
Every liberating philosophy or theology carries the risk of ossification into dogma and empty ritual. It has happened in Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, Liberal democracy and Marxism wherein concepts that once brought empowerment were later, institutionalized for oppression. Karl Mannheim called this the movement from utopia to ideology. See Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia: An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge, New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1936.
See Ronen Palan, “The Second Structuralist Theories of International Relations: A Research Note,” International Studies Notes, Vol. 17, 1992.
The literature on globalization and its impact is vast and expanding and from different perspectives, both celebratory and critical. See for example: Thomas Friedman, The Lexus and the Olive Tree, New York: Harper Collins, 1999; S. Gill and D. Law, The Global Political Economy, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988; David Held and others, Global Transformations: Politics, Economics, and Culture, Stanford CA: Stanford University Press, 1999; and James Petras and Henry Veltmeyer, Globalization Unmasked: Imperialism and the 21st Century, Halifax, New York, London: Zed Books, 2001.
Debate continues on the character and direction of democratic attempts in postindependence sub-Saharan African countries, and whether these must rest upon national or multinational formations. See, for example, Crawford Young, The African Colonial State, in Comparative Perspective, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994; or Michael Bratton and Nicholas Van de Walle, Democratic Experiments in Africa, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
See Basil Davidson, Africa in History: Themes and Cultures, New York: Collier Books, 1974; also Robert Bates, Ethnicity in Contemporary Africa, Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1973.
See Crawford Young, “The Heritage of Colonialism,” in John W. Harbeson and Donald Rothchild (eds.), Africa in Word Politics: The African State System in Flux, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2000.
See Donald L. Horowitz, A Democratic South Africa? Constitutional Engineering in a Divided Society, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991; also Arend Lijphart, Power-Sharing in South Africa, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985.
Critical assessments of the state in developing countries include: Issa G. Shivji (ed.), State and Constitutionalism: An African Debate on Democracy, Harare, Zimbabwe: SAPES Trust, 1991; see also James Petras, Critical Perspectives on Imperialism and Social Class in the Third World, New York: Monthly Review Press, 1978.
In the Zimbabwean instance, see Scot Taylor, “Race, Class, and Neopatrimonialism in Zimbabwe,” in Richard Josephs (ed.), State Conflict and Democracy in Africa, Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1999. In Uganda, by contrast, it has been difficult for one ethnic group to control electoral politics, hence a history of instability. On Ugandan experiments, see Michael Twaddle and Holger Hansen, “Uganda: The Advent of No-Party Democracy,” in John A. Wizemann (ed.), Democracy and Political Change in Sub-Saharan Africa, London: Routledge, 1995.
Liberal South African scholars have argued that it is globalism and markets which have had the most prof ound impact upon the democratization of politics in that country. This is clearly one among several other factors which they downplay, such as class conflict, and racial and ethnic nationalism. See John Kane-Berman, South Africa’s Silent Revolution, Johannesburg: South African Institute of Race Relations, 1990. On the tension between the demands of pan-African solidarity and narrower loyalties see from different perspectives; Kwameh Nkrumah, Africa Must Unite, London: Panaf Books, 1963; and Eghosa Osaghe, Ethnicity and its Management in Africa: The Democratization Link, Lagos: Center for Advanced Social Science, Malthouse Press Ltd., 1994.
See J. D. Omer-Cooper, History of Southern Africa, London: Heinemann, 1989.
The forces that resisted Apartheid included coalitions such as the ANC, SACP, and COSATU. In each of these there was debate about what to do about capitalism. Chapter 5 develops this further.
One reading of the South African scene by Allister Sparks of fers several scenarios which could have resulted from the configuration of dynamics in early post-Apartheid South Africa. It recognizes the contingent nature of social change. See Allister Sparks, Tomorrow is Another Country: The Inside Story of South Africa’s Road to Change, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.
See again Halpern, 1969 cited in note 6 above. Even within the realist tradition, it has been recognized that bargaining is one of several forms of conflict. See for example, Anatol Rapoport, Fights, Games and Debates, University of Michigan Press, 1960. I have been critical of the purely realist or rationalist assumptions of bargaining theory in the Behavioralist tradition. See again Allen (1984) cited in note 2 later.
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© 2006 Michael H. Allen
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Allen, M.H. (2006). Theory and Context. In: Globalization, Negotiation, and the Failure of Transformation in South Africa. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403983077_2
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