LIBERALISM 14 page

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 380.

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incentive to enter broader political unions. The drift towards the construction of a ‘federal Europe' was thus, in part, brought about by a fear of Soviet aggression and by a perceived loss of European influence in the emerging bipolar world order. A third factor is geographical size. It is no coincidence that many of the territorially larger states in the world – USA, Canada, Brazil, Australia, Mexico and India – have opted to introduce federal systems. The final factor encouraging the adoption of federalism is cultural and ethnic heterogeneity. Federalism, in short, has often been seen as an institutional response to societal divisions and diversity.

One of the chief strengths of federal systems is that, unlike unitary systems in which sovereignty is concentrated in a single, central body, they give regional and local interests a constitutionally guaranteed political voice. The states and provinces exercise a range of autonomous powers and enjoy some measure of representation in central government, usually, as pointed out above, through the second chamber of the federal legislature. The second advantage of federalism is that, in diffusing government power, it creates a network of checks and balances that help to protect individual liberty. Third, federalism has provided an institutional mechanism through which fractured societies maintain unity and coherence. In this respect the federal solution may be appropriate only to a limited number of ethnically diverse and regionally divided societies; but in these cases it may be absolutely vital.

On the other hand, federalism has not been able to stem the general twentieth-century tendency towards *centralisation. Since the mid-1960s, for instance, the US system has been described as one of ‘coercive federalism', in that the federal government has increasingly brought about the compliance of the states by passing laws that pre-empt their powers, and imposing restrictions on the states and localities in the form of mandates. Moreover, structures intended to create healthy tension within a system of government may also generate frustration and paralysis. One of the weaknesses of federal systems is that, by constraining central authority, they make the imposition of bold economic or social programmes more difficult. Finally, federalism may breed governmental division and strengthen centrifugal pressures within the state. Some have argued, as a result, that federal systems are inherently unstable, tending either towards the guaranteed unity which only a unitary system can offer, or towards greater *decentralisation and ultimate collapse.

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GLOBALISATION

Globalisation is the emergence of a complex web of interconnectedness that means that our lives are increasingly shaped by events that occur, and decisions that are made, at a great distance from us. The central feature of globalisation is therefore that geographical distance is of declining relevance and that territorial boundaries, such as those between *nation-states, are becoming less significant. By no means, however, does globalisation imply that ‘the local' and ‘the national' are subordinate to ‘the global'. Rather, it highlights the deepening as well as the broadening of the political process, in the sense that local, national and global events (or perhaps local, regional, national, international and global events) constantly interact, as indicated in Figure 8.1. Economic globalisation refers to the integration of national economies into a larger global economy, reflected in the growing importance of international trade and capital movement and the prominence of transnational corporations, sometimes portrayed as ‘Macdonaldisation'.

Significance

The term globalisation is used to draw attention to a set of complex and multi-faceted changes that started to take place in the second half of the twentieth century. In the first place, global interdependence was one of the results of the superpower rivalry that characterised the Cold War period. The capabilities and resources of the post-1945 superpowers (the USA and the USSR) were so overwhelming that they were able to extend their influence into virtually

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Figure 8.1 Global interdependencies

every region of the world. Second, the spread of international trade and the transnational character of modern business organisations brought a global economy into existence. In particular, the collapse of *communism gave impetus to the emergence of a global capitalist system. Third, globalisation has been fuelled by technological innovation. This has affected almost every realm of existence, ranging from the development of nuclear weapons and the emergence of global pollution problems such as acid rain and ozone depletion to the introduction of international telephone links, satellite television and the internet. Fourth, globalisation has an important politico-ideological dimension. One aspect of this has been the spread of Western liberal political values, sometimes portrayed as the worldwide triumph of *liberal democracy, but it is also linked to the growth of Islam as a transnational political creed and to burgeoning interest in green ideas and philosophies.

Much of the debate about globalisation focuses upon its impact upon the *state and its implication for national politics. Some have argued that globalisation implies the ‘death of politics' and the irrelevance of the state. If national economies have effectively been absorbed into a larger global economy, and if information and cultural exchanges are now routinely transnational, national *government is perhaps an anachronism, even though effective supranational bodies have yet to emerge. The alternative interpretation is not that the state has become irrelevant but that its functions have changed. In this view, economic globalisation has fostered the emergence of ‘competition states', states whose role is primarily to develop strategies for national prosperity in a context of intensifying transnational competition. Globalisation is also significant because it has unleashed countervailing forces, in the form of ethnic politics and particularist *nationalism. In an increasingly globalised world, *ethnicity may replace nationality as the principal source of social integration, its virtue being that, whereas *nations are bound together by ‘civic' loyalties, ethnic and regional groups are able to generate a deeper sense of ‘organic' identity.

Finally, there is debate about whether globalisation should be embraced or resisted. Its supporters highlight the prospect of rising prosperity and technological advance; its opponents warn against the spread of capitalist values, the deepening of inequality and loss of identity. Some, indeed, suggest that globalisation is largely a myth, exaggerated by politicians who wish to portray market-driven shifts in economic policy as necessary or inevitable.

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IMPERIALISM

Imperialism is the policy of extending the *power or rule of a *state beyond its boundaries. In its earliest usage, imperialism was an *ideology that supported military expansion and imperial acquisition, usually by drawing upon nationalist or racialist doctrines. The term is now more commonly used to describe the system of political domination or economic exploitation that the pursuit of such goals helps to establish. The key feature of imperialism is therefore the asymmetrical relationship between the imperial power and its client territory or peoples. A distinction is often drawn between imperialism and colonialism. Some treat colonialism as a distinctive form of imperialism, in that colonies are territorially ruled directly by the imperial power whereas empires may allow client rulers to continue in power and enjoy significant discretion; others point out that imperial territories may be inhabited by members of the same ethnic group whereas the inhabitants of colonies are typically ethnically distinct from their colonial rulers; and others emphasise that colonies have been settled or ‘colonised' and have not merely been subject to imperial conquest. What is called neo-imperialism or ‘neo-colonialism' refers to the process through which industrially developed powers control foreign territory by economic or cultural domination while respecting the territory's formal political independence.

Significance

The phenomenon of imperialism has been ever-present in politics. Empires have, in fact, been the most common supranational bodies, ranging from the ancient empires of Egypt, China, Persia and Rome to the modern European empires of Britain, France, Portugal and the Netherlands. Although colonies continue to exist – for example, Tibet's subordination to China – the collapse of the USSR in 1991 brought to an end the last of the major empires, the Russian empire. Modern imperialism therefore usually takes the form of neo-colonialism and operates through structures of economic and cultural domination rather than overt political control. Debates about the merits of imperialism have also largely been abandoned. Nineteenth-century justifications for imperialism, in terms of the

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capacity of European colonisers to bring about moral and social development in Africa and Asia in particular, are now exposed as crass self-justification. Quite simply, the acceptance of modern ideas such as *democracy and national *sovereignty means that imperialism is universally condemned as a form of oppression or exploitation.

The major debates about imperialism centre upon its causes and the forms it takes. In the Marxist tradition, imperialism is seen as an economic phenomenon that typically results from the pressure to export capital. Lenin (1870–1924) was the principal exponent of this view, arguing that imperialism is the ‘highest' (that is, the final) stage of capitalism. However, rival views suggest that imperialism is often fuelled by political rather than economic factors and is more commonly linked to popular *nationalism than to the desire for profit; that imperialism is not confined to capitalist states but has been practised by pre-capitalist as well as socialist ones; and that imperialism may prove to be an economic burden to imperial powers and not a boon, most commonly in the form of ‘imperial overreach' (the tendency of expansionism to impose increases in military expenditure that outstrip the growth of the domestic economy). Debates about modern imperialism are dominated by the neo-Marxist emphasis upon the structure of global capitalism and the growing power of transnational corporations. In this view the global structure of production and exchange has divided the world into ‘core' and ‘peripheral' areas. Core areas in the industrialised North are technologically advanced and better integrated into the global economy, while peripheral areas, such as the less developed South, provide a source of cheap labour and are characterised by underdevelopment and a simple product mix.

INTERGOVERNMENTALISM

Intergovernmentalism is any form of interaction between *states which takes place on the basis of sovereign independence. Intergovernmentalism is therefore usually distinguished from *supranationalism, in which there is an authority that is ‘higher' than that of the *nation-state. The most common form of intergovernmentalism is treaties or alliances, the simplest of which involve bilateral agreements between states. The intergovernmental

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aspect of treaties is embodied in the fact that they are voluntary agreements based upon the consent of all relevant parties. The other main form of intergovernmentalism is leagues or confederations, such as the League of Nations, the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the Commonwealth of Nations. These are transnational or international organisations of states, in which *sovereignty is preserved through a process of unanimous decision-making that gives each state a veto, at least over matters of vital national importance.

Significance

Intergovernmentalism has been the most common form of international cooperation between states. Its growing significance in the twentieth century reflects both a recognition of the greater independence of states, which has spread from strategic and economic matters into political, social and cultural spheres of life, and the fact that intergovernmental bodies are easy to form. Treaties, alliances, leagues and confederations have the virtue that they allow states to work together and perhaps undertake concerted action but without sacrificing national independence. In cases such as OPEC's ability to regulate oil prices, particularly in the 1970s and 1980s, coordinated action through intergovernmental cooperation has been very effective.

However, the preservation of state sovereignty is also the central weakness of intergovernmentalism. In short, it restricts the scope of international cooperation to those areas where mutual trust exists and where national interests clearly coincide. International treaties, for instance, may be broken with impunity and, in cases such as arms control, they are very difficult to negotiate. Similarly, as member states retain their independence and are very reluctant to be bound by majority decisions, confederations have rarely been able to undertake united and effective action, sometimes being reduced to mere talking shops. This is why some confederations, such as the Confederation of Independent States (CIS), formed in 1991 by the former Soviet republics, have become entirely irrelevant, while others, such as the EEC, have gradually given way to supranational cooperation based upon the principle of *federalism.

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INTERNATIONALISM

Internationalism is the theory or practice of politics based upon transnational or global cooperation. As a political ideal it is based upon the belief that political *nationalism should be transcended because the ties that bind the peoples of the world are stronger than those that separate them. The goal of internationalism is thus to construct political structures that can command the allegiance of all the peoples of the world, regardless of religious, racial, social and national differences. The major internationalist traditions are drawn from *liberalism and *socialism. Liberal internationalism is based upon individualism. This is reflected, for example, in the belief that universal *human rights ultimately have a ‘higher' status than the sovereign authority of the *nation. Socialist internationalism is grounded in a belief in international class solidarity (proletarian internationalism), underpinned by assumptions about a common humanity. *Feminism, *racialism and *religious fundamentalism may be seen to support weak forms of internationalism, in that they highlight gender, racial and religious cleavages that cut across national boundaries.

Significance

The radical edge of internationalism is associated with its condemnation of nationalism as unnecessary and wrong. Internationalists deny the basic nationalist assertion that the nation is the sole legitimate unit of political rule, often arguing that nations are political constructs manufactured by rulers and elite groups to maintain social cohesion and political passivity. The moral force of internationalism is evident in its association with the ideas of global peace and cooperation. Such ‘one-worldism' has, for example, provided the basis for the idealist tradition in international relations, which is characterised by a belief in universal morality. Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) is often seen as the father of this tradition, having envisaged a kind of ‘league of nations' based upon the assertion that reason and morality combine to dictate that ‘There should be no war.'

The weakness of internationalism is that it has generally underestimated the potency of nationalism and failed to establish interna

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tional structures that can rival the nation's capacity to stimulate political allegiance. The dominant tradition in international relations has thus not been *idealism but *realism, which highlights the role of power politics and the *nation-state. Liberal internationalism has drawn particular criticism from conservatives and developing-world nationalists. The former allege that the idea of universal human rights simply fails to take account of distinctive national traditions and cultures, while the latter go further and argue that, as human rights are essentially a manifestation of Western liberalism, their spread amounts to a covert form of *imperialism. Socialist internationalism has been criticised on two grounds. The first is that the various Internationals that socialists have set up have either been mere talking shops or, in the case of the Communist International or Comintern, have been tools of Soviet imperialism. The second is that socialists have often overestimated the appeal of the internationalist ideal and have so missed the opportunity to link socialist goals and principles to national symbols and national culture.

LOCAL GOVERNMENT

Local government, in its simplest sense, is government that is specific to a particular locality, for example a village, district, town, city or county. More particularly it is a form of government that has no share in *sovereignty, and is thus entirely subordinate to central *authority or, in a federal system, to state or regional authority. Although the functions of and services provided by local authorities or councils vary from *state to state and over time, they usually include some responsibility for education, planning, refuse collection, local trade and perhaps transport, leisure and recreation, and personal social services. The term local government is sometimes used to refer to all political institutions whose authority or jurisdiction is confined to a territorial portion of a state. In this case three levels of local government can be identified: a basic level (district councils in England and Wales, municipalities or towns in the USA and communes in France); an intermediate level (counties in England and Wales and in the USA, and départments in France); a state or regional level (states in the USA, Länder in Germany and régions in France).

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Significance

It would be a mistake to assume that the constitutional subordination of local government means that it is politically irrelevant. In the first place all political systems feature some form of local government. This reflects the fact that it is both administratively necessary – *centralisation ultimately involves unacceptable diseconomies of scale – and, because it is ‘close' to the people, it is easily intelligible. Central–local relationships are usually conducted through some form of bargaining and negotiation rather than by diktat from above. The balance between central government and local government is affected by a number of factors. These include the following:

The defence of local government goes well beyond its capacity to provide a convenient, and perhaps indispensable, method of delivering public services. Following J. S. Mill (1806–73), local government has been praised both as a means of guaranteeing liberty by checking the exercise of central power and as a mechanism through which popular participation, and thus political education, can be broadened. This is to defend local government in terms of its capacity to deliver local democracy, a principle that combines the idea of local autonomy with the goal of popular responsiveness. From a more radical perspective, anarchists and council communists have favoured communes as a model of local self-government, on the grounds that they constitute ‘human-scale' communities which allow people to manage their own affairs through face-to-face interaction, rather than through depersonalised and bureaucratic processes. On the other hand, local government has been criticised for entrenching a concern with parochial issues and local interests

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rather than matters of broader public importance; for promoting disunity and divisions within states; and for challenging the democratic legitimacy of national politicians.

NATION

Nations (from the Latin nasci, meaning ‘to be born') are complex phenomena that are shaped by a collection of cultural, political and psychological factors. Culturally, a nation is a group of people bound together by a common language, religion, history and traditions. There is, however, no objective blueprint for the nation because all nations exhibit some degree of cultural heterogeneity. Politically, a nation is a group of people who regard themselves as a natural political community. Although this is classically expressed in the form of a desire to establish or maintain statehood, it also takes the form of civic consciousness. Psychologically, a nation is a group of people distinguished by a shared loyalty or affection in the form of *patriotism. Nevertheless, such an attachment is not a necessary condition for membership of a nation; even those who lack national pride may still recognise that they ‘belong' to the nation.

However, such complexity has allowed quite different models of the nation to develop. Historians have sometimes distinguished between cultural nations and political nations. A cultural nation (such as the Greeks, the Germans, the Russians, the English and the Irish) has a national identity that is rooted in a common cultural heritage and language that may long pre-date the achievement of statehood or even the quest for national independence. A political nation (such as the British, the Americans and the South Africans) is bound together primarily by shared citizenship and may encompass significant cultural and ethnic divisions. Similarly, political thinkers may advance rival civic and organic views of the nation. The ‘civic' concept of nationhood, supported, for instance, by liberals and socialists, is inclusive in the sense that it places heavier emphasis upon political allegiance than upon cultural unity, and stresses that the nation is forged by shared values and expectations. The ‘organic' concept of nationhood (advanced by conservatives and, more radically, by fascists) is exclusive in that it gives priority to a common ethnic identity and, above all, a shared history. Inclusive concepts of the nation tend to blur the distinction between the

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nation and the *state, between nationality and *citizenship. Exclusive concepts of the nation tend to blur the distinction between the nation and the *race, between nationality and *ethnicity.

Significance

For over two hundred years the nation has been regarded as the most appropriate (and perhaps the only proper) unit of political rule. Indeed, international *law is largely based upon the assumption that nations, like individuals, have inviolable rights, notably the right to political independence and self-determination. The importance of the nation to *politics is most dramatically demonstrated by the enduring potency of *nationalism and by the fact that the world is largely divided into *nation-states. However, there is considerable disagreement about whether the nation plays a necessary or desirable role in political life. Supporters of the national principle portray nations as organic communities. In this light humankind is naturally divided into a collection of nations, each possessing a distinctive character and separate identity. This, nationalists argue, is why a ‘higher' loyalty and deeper political significance attaches to the nation than to any other social group or collective body. National ties and loyalties are thus found in all societies, they endure over time, and they operate at an instinctual, even primordial, level. On the other hand, critics of the national principle argue that nations are political constructs, ‘imagined' or ‘invented' communities whose purpose is to prop up the established order in the interests of rulers and elite groups. In this view nationalism creates nations, not the other way round. Those who adopt this view have typically looked beyond the nation and supported forms of *internationalism.

NATION-STATE

The nation-state is a form of political organisation and a political ideal. In the first case it is an autonomous political community bound together by the overlapping bonds of *citizenship and nationality. It is thus an alternative to multinational empires and city-states. In the latter case the nation-state is a principle, reflected in Mazzini's (1805–72) goal: ‘Every nation a state, only one state for

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the entire nation.' In practice, however, the nation-state is an ideal type and has probably never existed in perfect form anywhere in the world. No *state is culturally homogeneous; all contain some kind of cultural or ethnic mix. There are two contrasting views of the nation-state. For liberals and most socialists the nation-state is largely fashioned out of civic loyalties and allegiances; for conservatives and nationalists it is based upon ethnic or organic unity.

Significance

The nation-state is widely considered to be the only viable unit of political rule and is generally accepted to be the basic element in international politics. The vast majority of modern states are, or claim to be, nation-states. The great strength of the nation-state is that it offers the prospect of both cultural cohesion and political unity. When a people who share a common cultural or ethnic identity gain the right to self-government, community and citizenship coincide. This is why nationalists believe that the forces that have created a world of independent nation-states are natural and irresistible, and that no other social group could constitute a meaningful political community. This view also implies that supranational bodies such as the European Union will never be able to rival the capacity of national governments to establish legitimacy and command popular allegiance. Clear limits should therefore be placed upon, in this case, the process of European integration because people with different languages, cultures and histories will never come to think of themselves as members of a united political community.

Nevertheless, powerful forces have emerged that threaten to make the nation-state redundant, and there are those who argue that the nation-state ideal has always been a regressive one. A combination of internal pressures and external threats has produced what is commonly referred to as a ‘crisis of the nation-state'. Internally, nation-states have been subject to centrifugal pressures, generated by an upsurge in ethnic and regional politics. This has meant that *ethnicity or religion have sometimes displaced nationality as the central organising principle of political life. Externally, nation-states have arguably been rendered redundant by the advent of *globalisation. This has meant that major decisions in the economic, cultural and diplomatic spheres are increasingly made by supranational bodies and transnational corporations which

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nation-states have only a limited capacity to influence. Those who criticise the nation-state ideal point out either that a ‘true' nation-state can be achieved only through a process of ‘ethnic cleansing' – as Hitler and the Nazis recognised – or that nation-states are always primarily concerned with their own strategic and economic interests, and are therefore an inevitable source of conflict or tension in international affairs.

NATIONALISM

Nationalism can broadly be defined as the belief that the *nation is the central principle of political organisation. As such, it is based upon two core assumptions: first, humankind is naturally divided into distinct nations, and second, the nation is a political community in the sense that it is the most appropriate, and perhaps only legitimate, unit of political rule. There is, nevertheless, disagreement about whether nationalism is a doctrine or an *ideology. The doctrine of nationalism, or what is seen as ‘classical' political nationalism, is the belief that all nations are entitled to independent statehood, suggesting that the world should consist of a collection of *nation-states. This doctrine may, in turn, be reworked or reinterpreted when it is absorbed into one of a number of political ideologies. However, if nationalism is regarded as an ideology in its own right, it is seen to encompass a diverse range of forms, political, cultural and ethnic. Political nationalism includes any attempt to use the nation ideal to further specifically political ends, which may be highly diverse, as explained below. Cultural nationalism emphasises the regeneration of the nation as a distinctive civilisation, and thus stresses the need to defend or strengthen a national language, religion, or way of life rather than achieve overt political ends. Ethnic nationalism overlaps with cultural nationalism, but as ethnic groups are seen, correctly or incorrectly, to have descended from common ancestors, it implies a stronger and perhaps more intense sense of distinctiveness and exclusivity.