You can pick up your papers in my mailbox!

If you wrote a final paper for SOC 4000 or 4260, you can pick it up in my mailbox in the sociology department, 3rd floor of Chilton Hall.

SOC 4260: Susan Strange notes

Dear globalists,

The Susan Strange article should be in the reader, but if it's not, then it's my mistake. In any case, I've pasted the notes below. Also, you will have options on the final exam, so you will be able to select questions on the topics you know the most about.

Susan Strange “The Declining Authority of States”

 

Susan Strange is a deceased British political scientist who wrote widely on globalization, and especially on the growth of the international financial system and its effects on states.

 

Like Kenichi Ohmae, she makes a very strong argument about state decline.

 

In this chapter of her book, she makes some very useful, specific arguments that address some criticisms of arguments like hers.

 

Basic argument:

There exists a truly global marketplace that is, in a sense, more powerful than states.

 

Communications technology has radically changed people’s lives and undermined state authority

 

Nuclear technology (the Cold War arms race) first strengthened states, as they claimed to be able to prevent nuclear apocalypse. Later, when people lost confidence that states could prevent Armageddon, nuclear technology weakened faith in states.

 

Investment in cutting-edge technology is ever-more capital intensive, requiring corporations to borrow huge sums from international lenders. The demand for foreign loans and investment is thus growing.

 

At the same time, the supply of money for loans within the international financial system has grown, as that system has become more efficient, faster, more transparent and larger.

 

Thus countries must compete for international investment. If they choose not to, someone else will absorb the available financing and outcompete them (e.g. Ohmae’s example of Hollywood).

 

Smaller countries especially are essentially victims of the global market; their real sovereignty is illusory

 

 

Strange addresses some counter-arguments:

 

      1)            increasing incursions of the state into personal life

                               a.            more rules and regulations about

i.  health, safety, housing, driving, children and family, water, food

 

But Strange argues that these are minor issues, unimportant compared with the real loss of state power

 

      2)            minorities desirous of states

                               a.            e.g. Kurds, Scots, Corsicans, Quebecois, Basques, Aboriginals, Samis, Flemish

 

Even if they achieve statehood, they cannot achieve any real control over their economy or politics

 

Minorities have to be content with the appearance of statehood

 

      3)            East Asia

                               a.            Didn’t east Asian nations modernize with strong states?

 

No, this is illusory. East Asian nations are a special case. They did not develop successfully because they globalized quickly (contra economic liberals). Rather, they are a special case because during the Cold War they were of strategic importance to the USA, who gave them huge amounts of aid money and allowed them to develop strong states with strong currency and trade controls out of the fear of communism. Today, developing countries would never be allowed such leeway.

 

This exceptionalism is already being eroded.

 

 

Authority beyond the state

 

If states have lost authority and power, who has gained it in the world today?

            Non-state actors, including:

                        Organized crime

                        Professions (e.g. insurance and accountancy)

                        Inter-governmental organizations

                        Transnational social movements

                        Transnational religious and ethnic groups

           

 

 

“ungovernance” – a power vacuum in the international political-economic system