The Problem of Order in the Global Age: Systems and Mechanisms

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The Problem of Order in the Global Age

Previously published books by the author Coeditor with E. Helleiner, Economic Nationalism in a Globalizing World (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005). Editor, Systems and Mechanisms: A Symposium on Mario Bunge’s Philosophy of Social Science, Philosophy of the Social Sciences, Vol. 34, No. 2 (June 2004) and No. 3 (September 2004). Co-edited with Frank Bönker and Klaus Müller, Postcommunist Transformation and the Social Sciences: Cross-Disciplinary Approaches (Boulder, CO: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002). Co-authored with Helmut Wiesenthal, The Grand Experiment. Debating Shock Therapy, Transition Theory and the East German Experience (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1997). Radical Transitions: The Survival and Revival of Entrepreneurship in East Germany (Boulder, Col.: Westview Press, 1992).

The Problem of Order in the Global Age Systems and Mechanisms Andreas Pickel

THE PROBLEM OF ORDER IN THE GLOBAL AGE

© Andreas Pickel, 2006. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. First published in 2006 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN™ 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 and Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, England RG21 6XS Companies and representatives throughout the world. PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN-13: 978–1–4039–7244–6 ISBN-10: 1–4039–7244–3 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Pickel, Andreas. The problem of order in the global age: systems and mechanisms / Andreas Pickel. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1–4039–7244–3 1. Sovereignty. 2. Social structure. 3. Nationalism. I. Title. JC327.P4347 2006 320.1—dc22

2006041591

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First edition: August 2006 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America.

For Anne and Lauren

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Contents

List of Figures

ix

Acknowledgments

xi

Permissions

xiii

Introduction

1

Part I

Tools for the Study of Order

1

Framework: Systems and Mechanisms

17

2

The Problem-Oriented Approach to Order: The Case of the Theory of Sovereignty

45

Homo Nationis: The Psychosocial Infrastructure of the Nation-State Order

67

3

Part II

The Challenge of Postcommunist Transformation

4

Changing Orders: Theory, Strategy, Ideology

5

Explaining and Designing Order: Social Science and Social Technology

93 111

viii

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Contents

Part III

The Challenge of Globalization

6

Nationalizing Mechanisms in a Globalizing World

133

7

Nation and Social Order in the Global Age

157

Notes

169

References

185

Name Index

203

Subject Index

207

List of Figures

1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 4.1 6.1 6.2 7.1

General Causal Relations in Social Boundary Mechanisms Mechanisms of Postcommunist Property Transformation Explaining with Systems and Mechanisms Types of Explanation Types of Problems and Levels of Discourse Major Social Systems in the Nationalizing Mechanism: State, Society, Nation The Systemic Framework Fundamental Dimensions of the Problem of Order

31 37 41 42 96 138 142 165


Acknowledgments

T

he idea for this book originated from a favorable comment by my long-time collaborator and friend Klaus Müller (Berlin, Cracow) on an early version of chapter 2, which appeared in 1989 in the Canadian Political Science Review as one of my first scholarly publications under the title: “Never ask who should rule: Karl Popper and Political Theory.” The article was centrally concerned with the problem of order in the case of the theory of sovereignty. Rereading this paper, I realized that much of my work since—whether on postcommunist transformation, globalization, or nationalism—has continued to revolve around fundamental problems of political order. I decided then that this was to be the theme for a book. In the roughly three years during which the manuscript in its present form took shape, it became clear that I might have set myself too ambitious a task. The comments and criticisms of several anonymous readers who saw some promise in the project but considered it insufficiently developed energized me with the right amount of frustration and inspiration to keep working at improving the manuscript. I believe that it is a much better book for that, especially its first part, “Tools for the Study of Order,” which over time has grown from one chapter into three. In addition to the reviewers who will have to remain unnamed, there are several colleagues and students who have made significant contributions to the project along the way. Special thanks for their ideas and comments should go to Mario Bunge, Eric Helleiner, Lawrence McFalls, Klaus Müller, and Jacqui True. Several of my research assistants over those years have worked with me on the manuscript. I am grateful to Sarai Nunˇez-Ceron, Jamie Levine, Antulio Rosales and Nicolas Sternsdorff for their help in various stages of the manuscript. For many years I have been fortunate to receive funding from the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC).


Permissions

Permissions granted by the original publishers for the following is gratefully acknowledged. Chapter 2 is a revised version of “Never Ask Who Should Rule: Karl Popper and Political Theory.” Canadian Journal of Political Science 32, 1 (1989), 83–105. Chapter 3 was previously published as “Homo Nationis: The psychosocial infrastructure of the nation-state order.” Global Society 18 (2004), 325–46. Chapter 4 is a revised version of “Neoliberalism, Gradualism, and some typical ambiguities and confusions in the transformation debate.” New Political Economy 2 (1997), 221–35. http://www.tandf.co.uk An earlier version of Chapter 5 was published as “Between Social Science and Social Technology: Towards a Philosophical Foundation for Postcommunist Transformation Studies.” Philosophy of the Social Sciences 31, 3 (2001), 459–87.


Introduction

T

he phrase “the problem of order” does not refer to a specific problem but to a large and complex problem context. This problem context encompasses some of the most fundamental questions in social and political thought. “It” is in this sense a perennial problem. As generic and transhistorical as “the problem of order” therefore is as a descriptor, this handy phrase is ultimately misleading. There is no one general problem of order, and the problem context to which the phrase refers is broad, diverse, and fundamentally historical. I have chosen the book’s title in spite of its potential to be misleading because it is at the same time extremely evocative. It suggests that the problem of social order goes beyond questions of human social order since all gregarious animals exist in social orders. The problem of order also goes beyond questions of social order since it simultaneously refers to symbolic orders—from mathematical systems and scientific theories to religious beliefs and political ideologies. And both the animal nature and the reflexive capacity of humans play a prominent role in problems of human social order. Here are some analytical dimensions and questions that illustrate the complexity of the problem and indicate some of its contours. What holds social systems together; how do they change? What social order is desirable and defensible? What social order is achievable, suitable, and feasible? The specific instances of the problem of order are shaped situationally and vary by time and place; the types of social systems—political, economic, cultural, biosocial— in which they appear; and the level of order from the global to the local at which they occur. The problem of order is an empirical-theoretical problem in all the social sciences. It is a normative-moral problem in political theory and practice. It is an ideological problem in political contention and a technological problem in policy making and implementation. This study examines some basic aspects of the problem of order in a variety of historical contexts and contemporary debates. Its primary goal is to contribute

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The Problem of Order

conceptualizations, analytical tools, and perspectives that may be of use in the many different situations in which the problem of order is salient. The three major contributions are (1) “systemism” as an analytical framework and “mechanism-based explanation” as basic methodological tools for the crossdisciplinary analysis of problems of social order; (2) a problem-oriented approach, that is, a way of dealing with the question of what kind of problem or problems we are dealing with when confronting “the” problem of order; and (3) a particular “model of man,” homo nationis, that reconceptualizes the individual in the global age. The study’s major goal will not be pursued through an abstract philosophical-methodological account. Rather, the general contributions I try to make will “unfold” in my discussion of three major contemporary debates: on sovereignty, postcommunist transformation, and globalization. It is therefore my hope that the subject matter of this book will appeal not only to those with a more general philosophical interest in the problem of order, but also those who are in one way or another engaged in these contemporary debates as social scientists and political actors. Contexts A study such as this should start by situating itself in the context of key historical developments, relevant debates, and scholarly literatures. Given the scope of the problem of order, this is an almost impossible task. I take this as licence to comment only briefly on some aspects of debates, approaches, perspectives, and traditions that are particularly relevant for the subsequent discussion. This section is designed to sketch out some fundamental aspects of the study’s historical and theoretical problem context. While the earliest discussions of the problem of order can be found in the pre-Socratics, systematic treatments of social and political order appear first in the works of Plato and Aristotle almost 2,500 years ago. From among the long tradition of political philosophy, we will encounter the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century early modern theorists of sovereignty—Bodin, Hobbes, and Locke (chapter 2). One of the major characteristics of classical political philosophy lies in a particular combination of elements that may strike us as odd and unusual from a contemporary perspective. This is the combination of historical, empirical, and philosophical analysis of problems of order, on the one hand, and the putting forth of normative and political solutions, on the other. Put simply, political philosophy has revolved around two closely connected, fundamental imperatives: explain what is going on and propose what can and should be done. Marx in the nineteenth century may have been the last great political philosopher who fit this characterization, though he

Introduction

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3

considered himself above all a social scientist rather than a political philosopher. The emergence of the modern social sciences as institutionalized academic disciplines in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries—first economics, next sociology, then political science—gave rise to a scientific ethos that was strictly opposed to philosophical speculation and normative judgments (Weber 1922a; Merton 1968). While severely tested and criticized, the regulative ideal of value-neutral social science remains largely intact. It is often violated, though not always by design. More seriously, it is instrumentalized by extrascientific interests precisely because of its reputation as objective knowledge, in the process undermining that reputation. That it remains a central ideal is illustrated by the fact that the scientific status of scholarly work is compromised as soon as any hidden normative or ideological presuppositions are exposed.1 With the rise of the modern social sciences, two major divisions of labor emerged in the fields of knowledge traditionally ploughed by political philosophy: (1) between the social sciences, on the one hand, and nonscientific, philosophical or political studies and doctrines, on the other; and (2) within the social sciences between individual disciplines. What was gained through specialization and professionalization was in part offset by what was lost with the historical obsolescence of the older practice of political philosophy: a comprehensive perspective on problems of social order, and a direct, explicit linkage to normative and political responses. As a result of this division of labor, political philosophy has a more marginal existence as sophisticated commentary on problems of contemporary social order.2 The professional practice of diagnosis and prescription is in the hands of empirical social scientists and policy experts. Just as applied natural science deals with questions of translating scientific knowledge into technology, so there is a broad range of applied social science dealing with questions of social technology—such as policies, institutionbuilding, organization and management, law, ideological critique, and programmatic alternatives to the status quo. The boundaries between social science, applied social science, social technology, and ideology can be fluid in practice,3 as the discussion of the postcommunist transformation debate in chapters 4 and 5 shows. This is mainly because dealing with fundamental problems of social order requires a wide spectrum of knowledge production and application, a range that the classic political philosophers simply took for granted, and one that for contemporary specialists is simply overwhelming. It is this enormous expansion and specialization of knowledge production since the late nineteenth century that contains specific challenges for finding the “right” approach to problems of order today. Identifying and conceptualizing this fragmentation of knowledge and drawing out some major implications for policy and practice are a major goal of this book. Ultimately, of course,

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problems of social order are not created by internal developments in the structure of professional knowledge production. Social science is very much part of larger historical processes in which fundamentally new social, political, and economic realities give rise to new problems of order. A rough sketch of key historical changes and new realities most relevant to the present discussion of the problem of order may therefore be useful. The study’s historical problem context is the early twenty-first century. The most important historical developments shaping present-day problems of order occurred in the period between World War I and the collapse of communism in 1989–91, the Short Twentieth Century. However, chapter 2 goes back further to revisit the early modern political theorists of sovereignty of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The doctrine of sovereignty continues to be at the core of modern political order both factually and normatively, even though its historical obsolescence is a standard claim in the globalization debate. Although the problems of order originally addressed by the theory of sovereignty were specific to sixteenth-century France and seventeenth-century England, the solution, that is, the doctrine of sovereignty, was universalized in the course of the following centuries. The solution, in short, is the modern state, the sovereign territorial state that in its democratized form evolved into the territorial nation-state based on popular sovereignty and is the global norm today.4 The historical process giving rise to a new world order of nation-states was closely related to the process of decline and disintegration of empires. Most British, Spanish, and Portugese colonies in the Americas achieved independence in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and constituted themselves as sovereign states. The European latecomers Germany and Italy were not constituted as unified territorial states until the 1870s. World War I marked the end to the Ottoman, Habsburg, and Russian empires, precipitating another major wave in the establishment of new nation-states in Central and Eastern Europe. Germany’s and Japan’s final unsuccessful attempt at imperial expansion led to World War II, from which the United States and the Soviet Union emerged as the new global superpowers. The second half of the twentieth century saw the greatest increase in the number of nation-states as the old colonial powers gradually withdrew from their former African and Asian territories.5 Until 1989, the cold-war international order compelled most nation-states, old and new, to line up behind one of the two superpowers in their global systemic competition and military confrontation. With the collapse of the communist bloc, the global contest ended in an ideological and political victory for the Western model. The most recent wave of new nation-states in the early 1990s emerged from this “imperial” collapse, that is, the dissolution of multinational federal states in the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia.

Introduction

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5

With these new sovereign states of the late twentieth century, the historical process of establishing nation-states may have run its course.6 Territorial boundaries in this global system of nation-states are considered sacred by leaders of both more- and less-powerful states. Sovereign states constitute the foundation of the United Nations and international law. Independence movements that already have a territorial, quasi-state (though not sovereign) basis, such as in Quebec or Kosovo, could conceivably still produce a small number of additional full-fledged nation-states in the twenty-first century. In any event, the fundamental point is that the world’s population now lives in sovereign nation-states that, in spite of great cultural, economic, and political diversity, all follow the same basic model (Meyer et al. 1997). How can such an apparently self-evident observation claim to be fundamental? The simple observation that the world is composed of nation-states, it would seem, is not only abundantly evident but at the same time also becoming increasingly outdated in an age of globalization. Part of the answer lies precisely in the apparent obviousness of this observation, that is, in the fact that a particular view of the nation-state is so widely taken for granted as a quasi-natural political order. When the modern social sciences were established in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the nation-state model was already a well-established reality in advanced parts of Europe and America, where these disciplines were first institutionalized. As a result and unsurprisingly, the national state, the national economy, and the national society and culture became the fundamental units of analysis. They provided the basic coordinates and represented the fundamental social realities within which theorizing and explanation would take place. Political science was primarily interested in questions relating to the governing of the nation-state from above. Sociology favored a view from below, examining questions relating to the integration of individuals into national society. Economics derived its laws from an abstract model of the national economy. While most social scientists dealt with internal or domestic questions in one country, some undertook comparative work in which the units of comparison were contemporary national states, societies, and economies. In political science, moreover, a strong subdiscipline of international relations was established specializing in the study of external or foreign activities of nation-states. The development of modern social science in the twentieth century was thus closely tied to a model of state, economy, and society that was an abstraction from a particular West European and North American historical experience. This model was (and is) a highly problematic abstraction because it had little historical specificity, as social scientists searched for highly general laws and regularities in their specific fields, using “the national level,”

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meaning contemporary state-societies,7 as the unquestioned unit of analysis. This practice was followed in the analysis of new nation-states as they emerged from a premodern, and in most cases colonial, past. The concept of development itself became synonymous with Western-style national political, economic, and social development. As early as the late 1950s, this model was challenged by some scholars studying “nation-building” in the new postcolonial states who realized the model’s fundamental problems stemming from its tacit abstraction from specific historical paths of development in Western countries (e.g., Bendix 1964, Gerschenkron 1962, Lipset 1963). Another wave of critical scholars emerged in the 1960s, many of them working in a Marxist tradition, exposing the role of liberal (and not so liberal, e.g., Huntington 1968) values in supposedly “value-free” social science research. One of the strongest challenges to the implicit national model came from Latin American scholars (Frank 1967; Prebisch 1971) who refused to conceive of national and international systems and processes as fundamentally separate from each other. Another sustained challenge has come from world systems theorists who insist on the primacy of the global system (Wallerstein 1974, 1999). The 1970s brought further challenges to the abstract nation-state model as scholars turned to a historical analysis of the modern state (Miliband 1969; Tilly 1975, Skocpol 1979; overview in Knuttila 1992), demonstrating the historical and cultural specificity of the generalized Western model. The 1980s gave new impetus to studies of nationalism that problematized the national dimension of the nation-state model (Anderson 1983, Gellner 1983; overview in A.D. Smith 2001). However, this literature has had only a limited impact in the social sciences generally, in part because it has tended to reinforce a view of nation and nationalism that leads many scholars in the first place to dismiss national ideologies and identities as historically obsolete, politically objectionable, and largely irrelevant for the social sciences. As a result, the study of nations and nationalisms remains very much its own, somewhat isolated, subfield.8 This helps explain how it has been possible to build theories and explanations on the implicit analytical basis of the national state, society, and economy, while at the same time ignoring specific national (as opposed to national-level) processes. The use of nation as synonymous with country, state, and society has further muddied the waters. The power of the implicit nation-based model in the social sciences is reinforced by the general lack of awareness among social scientists that not only the states, societies, and economies they analyze and live in, but also the practice of social science itself, are embedded in and significantly affected by particular national contexts (Stichweh 1996; Wagner et al. 1991). The fact that the national is so firmly established as (merely) a level of analysis thus helps

Introduction

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7

explain why actual national dimensions of social reality at the same time can go unnoticed. The argument presented here tries to convey a particular understanding and conception of the national that differs sharply from its general use as a concept and analytical category. The alternative conception developed and discussed at length in subsequent chapters (especially ch. 3, 6–7) views nation and the national as historically specific cultural processes taking place in and between institutions of state and society. The basic point of this reconceptualization is to shed new light on a variety of social processes in which the role of the national has been overlooked. To this extent the present study participates in what has been described as the “cultural turn” in the social sciences (Steinmetz 1999). In another important sense, this study is more “countercyclical” in its opposition to the widely held but simplistic thesis commonly advanced in the globalization debate according to which the national is in serious decline–a thesis that some in the scholarly debate on globalization have shown to be problematic and exaggerated (Paul et al. 2003). The recent debates on globalization, postcommunist transformation, and the restructuring of the welfare state have raised problems of order not only as theoretical problems but also as challenges to applied and practical knowledge about the conditions, possibilities, and limits of “social change by design” and as political opportunities for the ascendancy of new ideologies and social movements. All of these debates have been dominated by neoliberal ideology, which recommends a universally applicable, radical program of market reforms and institutional change, which has been pursued in a large number of countries (Bönker et al. 2002). Politically, advocates and critics of neoliberalism represent the two major, opposing camps in these debates.9 The end of communism did not end ideological contention and political conflict, as it briefly seemed to some in the aftermath of 1989.10 But the contours of contention and conflict have clearly shifted. With the widely shared perception that we live in a new age of globalization, new problems of order have moved to the forefront. If they are not considered global themselves, they are being presented and read through a global perspective. Thus the restructuring of national welfare states and formerly communist states has been discussed primarily in terms of global economic competitiveness and international integration. The supranational integration of Europe is closely observed as a precursor to or model for postnational forms of political organization. The UN system is developing, albeit haltingly, some of the institutional machinery to advance global forms of governance. Antiglobalization and oppositional social movements are pioneering new forms of political resistance. Others are returning to older forms of transnationally staged, spectacular acts of violence. The world’s only remaining superpower currently pursues a global

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antiterrorist policy through unilateral military interventions in blacklisted states with the aim of bringing about regime change. The three overarching themes of the present study are firmly rooted in this historical problem context. First, the radical shift in attention from the national order to the global order calls into question what has long been a taken-for-granted reality: the fundamental nature of national political, economic, and cultural orders. But regardless of how radical the global shift may be in reality, it is necessary to systematically review our conceptions of the national foundations of modern order: political structures (the global nationstate system), normative-legal structures (sovereignty), and their psychocultural foundations (homo nationis). Second, postcommunist transformations along with many aspects of globalization demonstrate the need to reconceptualize systematically the fundamental dimensions of the problem of order, in particular the problem of explanation, the problem of social technology and policy design, and the problem of political and ideological framing. Third, a major task for social science is to develop and refine macro approaches and analytical frameworks capable of providing adequate cognitive resources for dealing with problems of order in theory, policy, and politics in the global age. This represents the larger agenda to which the present study seeks to contribute. Chapter Overview Chapter 1 presents the first of three basic sets of methodological tools for the analysis of problems of order. “Systems and mechanisms,” as its place as the book’s subtitle underlines, is the central and most fundamental of the three. The two concepts represent a basic analytical framework (“systemism”) and a particular mode of explanation (“mechanismic explanation”). The systemic ontology is based on the philosophical foundations of scientific realism and emergentist materialism.11 This position is at odds with methodological individualism (e.g., rational choice) as well as methodological holism (e.g., structural functionalism), and with all forms of idealism (e.g., social constructivism) as well as reductionist materialisms (e.g., historical and cultural materialism). Mechanismic explanation differs from most standard modes of explanation employed in the social sciences: the neopositivists’ “covering law” and variable-oriented model of scientific explanation, the interpretive approach of the hermeneutic or Verstehen school, as well as functional and teleological modes of explanation. Chapter 1 introduces and explicates this ambitious ontology and methodology as well as provides illustrations from various areas of social science research. Chapter 2 presents a second basic methodological tool—the problemoriented approach. This chapter is situated in the context of a long-standing

Introduction

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9

debate with much contemporary relevance surrounding the theory of sovereignty. Territorial sovereignty as first conceptualized by early modern political thinkers like Jean Bodin, Thomas Hobbes, and John Locke is the normative foundation of modern forms of domestic political order, while an international system of sovereign nation-states is the major defining characteristic of the global order. Sovereignty is thus one of the central modern solutions for the problem of political order. The limitations and weaknesses of the theory of sovereignty more than three-hundred years after its original conception are widely discussed in contemporary debates on globalization. Chapter 2 develops around a critical exploration of Karl Popper’s challenge to political theory: his critique of theories of sovereignty. Political theorists since Plato, he argues, have usually asked the wrong question about political order, namely, “who should rule?” Who rules is ultimately of minor importance— the crucial question is how to control the holder of political power. “Never ask who should rule” sums up Popper’s unconventional alternative answer to this question, an application of his fallibilist philosophy of knowledge to political theory. This chapter sketches Popper’s argument and examines it in the historical context in which the doctrine of sovereignty emerged—a context not widely understood in contemporary debates. For this purpose I employ Popper’s own problem-oriented approach—an approach that calls for a careful reconstruction of the “logic of the situation” in and for which a theory has been formulated prior to subjecting it to criticism. This chapter highlights some of the most fundamental problems of political theory— order, legitimacy, and accountability. It also presents and applies Popper’s problem-oriented method, perhaps one of his most important contributions to the social sciences. By exposing the weaknesses of Popper’s critique, the chapter’s historical and philosophical account sheds a different light on contemporary debates on how much sovereignty nation-states actually have, and how adequate a normative foundation the theory provides for global political order. These questions will also be at the center of chapters 6 and 7. Chapter 3 introduces a novel conception of the individual in the global age: homo nationis. The chapter highlights another dimension of contemporary social order that is rarely discussed. It offers, as it were, a view from below. It is generally accepted that the global nation-state order rests on structural, institutional, and normative foundations. However, it is rarely recognized that it also rests on psychocultural foundations. This is an aspect that our generally ahistorical approaches to individual and society systematically ignore. Both homo oeconomicus and homo sociologicus suffer from this weakness. It is only during the last half century that the global nation-state order has come to encompass virtually the whole of humankind. Notwithstanding the great differences between individual state-societies, all are set up as

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nation-states. This, I argue, has strongly affected dominant personality structures, which are now to a significant extent shaped by one’s national culture. I refer to this type of twenty-first century person as homo nationis. The chapter tries to make the case for the significance of national habitus in larger social processes, including in processes of globalization. It marshals evidence from a variety of scholarly literatures that recognize and attempt to conceptualize aspects of this reality, some from perhaps unexpected quarters such as business studies. The phrase “changing orders” in the title of chapter 4 has the double meaning of a social order that is changing, and one that is actively being changed. Here I move from the historical contexts sketched in part I to a still ongoing change process, that of postcommunist transformations. The scale of changes in postcommunist countries since 1989 is reminiscent of earlier major social transformations, from those occurring in Western Europe between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries that were addressed by the theorists of sovereignty, to those of colonization and decolonization. As in all earlier social changes of such sweeping scope, political actors and theorists caught up in postcommunist transformations have been confronted with the problem of changing orders as both acting subjects and acted-upon objects. The revolutions of 1989–1991 were certainly less violent than the religious wars of early modernity and the anticolonial struggles of the twentieth century, but they constituted a similarly fundamental collapse of a previous social order and the resulting challenge to build a new order. What is quite remarkable, then, is that the intellectual challenge of the transition away from communism has not raised the problem of order in the same fundamental way as was the case for the early modern theorists of sovereignty in the transition to modernity and the theorists of decolonization and development. In fact, the problem of order apparently posed few theoretical problems as the change processes under way in Central and Eastern Europe were defined as transitions from an old, defunct social order (communism) to an existing, successful alternative (Western capitalist democracy). Thus the fundamental questions of particular interest to social science about the sources of stability and change, alternative institutional arrangements and reform approaches, and their suitability to different conditions were considered to be satisfactorily answered with reference to the Western model. The central question was not what social order to establish, but how to establish liberal democracy and the market economy. The postcommunist transformation debate, especially in its first few years, represented a confusing mix of arguments and claims about the “how,” variously uttered by social scientists (above all economists), policy experts and technocrats, as well as professional communicators and politicians. This debate was structured by the distinction between reform

Introduction

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radicals and gradualists. Useful and attractive as this distinction may have been for political purposes, it spelled only further confusion for the social sciences. What relevant knowledge, if any, did social science have to contribute to the practical task of transition? And were social scientists acting as advisors or reformers justified in deriving political authority from their professional expertise? These are fundamental problems faced by any social scientist interested in producing not only theoretical knowledge about how social orders have changed in the past, but also knowledge relevant for “making change” in the present and future. Chapter 4 takes the preliminary step of reconceptualizing the different types of problems and discourses generally involved in debates on social change that all too often are conflated or confused. The basic analytical distinction proposed is threefold: between (1) science (describing and explaining), (2) ideology (framing and mobilizing), and (3) policy (designing and intervening). I argue that, to each of the three discursive and institutional contexts correspond typical but divergent sets of problems. Professionally trained individuals and particular institutional complexes specialize in dealing with one or another of these sets of problems—universities and research institutes in science; political media and communications agencies in ideology; and state bureaucracies and other societal organizations in policy. The same doctrine, say reform gradualism, may make an appearance in all three contexts. But since each context has its own typical problems and goals, practices and standards, procedures and solutions, it is unlikely that such a doctrine will meet with the same success or ever have the same significance in all three contexts. Much confusion in both theory and practice, most of it unintended, stems from a failure to appreciate the important distinctions between different types of problems. This is the argument that is developed and discussed with reference to the postcommunist transformation debate in chapter 4. The basic threefold distinction proposed should be of use for approaches to the problem of order in any of its diverse forms. The argument also represents an application of the problem-oriented approach introduced in chapter 2. Chapter 5 extends this reconceptualization of different types of fundamental problems of social change to another set of questions raised in debates on order to which allusion has already been made. The first of these concerns the intersection between theory and practice, or as I refer to it, social science and social technology. The way in which postcommunist transformations were framed as a transition from plan to market helps explain the prominent role played by economists as advisors in the reform process. It was widely assumed that since economists have the most advanced scientific knowledge about how markets work, they would be competent to guide the

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marketization process. However, as became eventually clear to most observers, the transition from communism to capitalism was little more than a suggestive phrase for a complex process of social change that no narrow conception of market economy could possibly capture. A national economy’s embeddedness in a historically specific context and the multitude of political and cultural processes with which it is intertwined at local, regional, and global levels mean that in order to understand such broad transformations, and perforce to contribute to the design of reform technologies, the combined wisdom of all social science disciplines is required. Alas, a correspondingly encompassing interdisciplinary perspective bringing together the relevant knowledge has not been available. The fact is that social science was unable to deliver the kind of integrated approach and overarching perspective that the practical problems of transformation called for. The closest the transformation debate came to an interdisciplinary dialog centred on the somewhat simplistic distinction between radical and gradualist approaches to change. In their impatient and uncompromising marketization approach, the radicals seemed closer to Bolshevism than to Friedrich Hayek (1989, 1962), whom many of them claimed as their intellectual godfather. Gradualists, basically those united by a rejection of the radical position, took some of their philosophical inspiration from Popper’s critique of utopian social engineering and his defense of piecemeal reform approaches. When the radicalism-gradualism controversy fizzled out during the latter part of the 1990s, social scientists returned to their disciplinary agendas. Chapter 5 retraces this strand of the transformation debate and shows how a fragmented social science has only a marginal influence on the development of social technology when it is confronted with a strong and purposeful ideology such as neoliberalism. The chapter then sketches the outlines of a philosophy for an integrated social science capable of dealing with the fundamental problems of social order and change in a comprehensive fashion. The fundamental ideas of systemism as analytical framework along with a mechanism-based approach to explanation introduced in chapter 1 are further developed in part III of the book. Part III takes us to another contemporary debate animating the social sciences, the globalization debate. Globalization, like postcommunist transformation, refers to a bundle of change processes in political, economic, and cultural orders at all levels of social life. Every discipline in the social sciences and humanities is responding to the “challenge of globalization,” that is, the challenge of integrating specialized knowledge into a larger framework that can match the scale and scope of globalization. The need to bridge or even transcend traditional disciplinary boundaries is increasingly widely accepted, at least in principle. In practice, only small steps have been taken to develop the frameworks and approaches needed to more closely connect, let alone

Introduction

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integrate, individual disciplines, not all of them successful (Bunge 2003). To be sure, the fragmentation goes beyond merely disciplinary boundaries, as even subdisciplines have consolidated and institutionalized their distinct fields of study. Though in fairness it is important to point out that a number of such subfields bring together rather than further fragment different disciplines. An example is the field of international political economy. Political scientists, sociologists, political economists, international relations scholars, geographers, historians, and others contribute to this lively research area. Chapter 6 focuses on one particular story of subdisciplinary division and attempts at bridging it. It is a division most pronounced within political science, though not unknown to sociologists and economists. It is sometimes referred to as the “level of analysis” problem. This problem is more serious than it sounds, for the levels we are talking about—supranational, international, transnational, on the one hand, national and subnational, on the other—have become more than mere levels of analysis. They have consolidated into institutionalized subdisciplines with their own approaches, problems, and discourses in and on which academic organizations and careers have been built. International relations, on the one hand, comparative politics, on the other, for example, have become firmly established subfields in political science. It is one of the great unintended consequences of the globalization debate that the intellectual raison d’etre of such disciplinary and subdisciplinary boundaries has seriously been called into question. The historical and empirical processes at the centre of the globalization debate defy any easy categorization into the existing specialized academic fields and call for a reformulation of the problems of order. Chapter 6 further develops the systemic framework and mechanism-based explanation as basic elements for an interdisciplinary approach to globalization. In brief, the systemic framework encompasses political, economic, cultural, and biosocial systems at global, regional, national, and subnational levels. Mechanism-based explanation facilitates the identification and explanation of social processes that go on simultaneously in different systemic dimensions and at different levels. The central example presented in this chapter is the “nationalizing mechanism.” Chapter 7 attempts to recast the problem of order in the age of globalization, further elaborating the question of the role of nationalizing mechanisms for social order today. Although the globalization debate has opened up new perspectives and challenged well-established views, it has led many to embrace a questionable position according to which national states, economies, and cultures are declining as their global counterparts are emerging. Notwithstanding impressive instances apparently confirming this position, there are numerous counterexamples of globalization processes actually enhancing the importance of the national. The recasting of the problem of

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order under globalization attempted in this chapter reaffirms the centrality, scope, and depth of nationalizing mechanisms under globalization. Far from neglecting new globalizing or regionalizing forces, I argue that their relative significance and functioning can only be explained in the context of nationalizing forces. This chapter explores some of the implications of this general claim by reexamining the fundamental dimensions of the problem of order under globalization discussed in preceding chapters: the theory of sovereignty; national habitus; types of the problem of order; the relationship between social science and social technology; levels of analysis and disciplinary boundaries; and the diversity of systems and combinations of mechanisms.

PART I

Tools for the Study of Order


CHAPTER 1


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his chapter presents the first of three basic sets of methodological tools for the analysis of problems of order. “Systems and mechanisms,” is the central and most fundamental of the three. The two concepts represent a basic analytical framework (“systemism”) and a particular mode of explanation (“mechanismic explanation”), outlined in this chapter and employed in subsequent chapters. Social scientists are routinely confronted with essentially contested concepts—like “democracy,” “nationalism,” or “free markets.” Such concepts tend to be widely used in political or other “non-scientific” discourses as well as in scholarly analysis, fulfilling different functions in each and carrying multiple meanings. One way of dealing with essentially contested concepts is presented in chapter 4 in the context of the postcommunist transformation debate, in which concepts such as “transition,” “shock therapy,” and “gradualism” were of central but also essentially contested significance. Are “systems” and “mechanisms” essentially contested concepts? The answer to this question is yes, which is why their presentation as analytical framework and explanatory approach is prefaced with some conceptual clarifications and cautionary remarks, asking the reader to suspend instant a priori judgments that this nomenclature may evoke. In contrast to such ideologically loaded concepts as democracy and nationalism, “systems” and “mechanisms” seem harmless enough, even if they are widely and ambiguously used in scientific and nonscientific discourses. The latter, however, are theoretically and philosophically loaded. That is to say, “systems” and “mechanisms” have a history in the social sciences and as a result are quickly associated with particular approaches and theories that have little in common with the approach presented here. Mechanistic explanation

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poses the lesser obstacle in this respect since the main problem here is its confusion with mechanical explanation and worldviews popular in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. However, as Mario Bunge (2004, 203) points out, “[t]here are thermonuclear, thermomechanical, electromagnetic, chemical, biological (in particular neurophysiological), ecological, social, and many other mechanisms as well. This kind of explanation is usually called mechanistic. I prefer to call it mechanismic, because most mechanisms are non-mechanical.” Well-known instances of social mechanisms are inclusion and exclusion, conflict and cooperation, participation and segregation, coercion and rebellion, imitation and trade, migration and colonization, technological innovation, diffusion, and the various modes of social control. Mechanismic explanation, as I argue, is of such central methodological significance since it differs from most standard modes of explanation employed in the social sciences: the neopositivists’ “covering law” model of scientific explanation, the interpretive approach of the hermeneutic or Verstehen school, as well as functional and teleological modes of explanation. Systemism is a particular ontology that underlies the systemic analytical framework used in this study. The single most important point to be stressed in these preliminary comments is that a systemic view of reality must not be confused with systems theories such as Parson’s structural functionalism, Luhmann’s theory of autopoietic systems, or Wallerstein’s world-systems theory.1 Although phrases such as “political system,” “energy system,” and “national systems of innovation” are widely used, albeit in a loose fashion, they do not entail any methodological commitment to systems theories. In contemporary social science, social wholes or social entities are variously and confusingly referred to as structures, institutions, networks, fields, spaces, sites, configurations, situations, et cetera. Mario Bunge’s systemism is employed here because it provides an overarching, logically consistent, and sufficiently open conception of social wholes:2 “Some concrete systems change swiftly, others slowly; some assemble themselves, others are made; some are closed and self-regulated, most are neither; some have shapes (geometric boundaries), others do not” (Bunge 1996, 21). Systemism maintains that social systems are material or concrete and should be distinguished from both conceptual systems, such as scientific theories, and other semiotic systems, such as ideologies—fundamental distinctions that in much of social science remain unclear or are rejected altogether. With these remarks in mind, it is now possible to introduce systemism and mechanismic explanation in more detailed and specific terms. Systemism Systemism can be situated in a conceptual space demarcated, on the one hand, by systems theories, and by general but loose usage of the concept of

Systems and Mechanisms

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system, on the other. Systems theories purport to explain how social systems work. Think, for example, of world systems theory, which is not merely a description of the world in terms of systems but rather aims to explain how fundamental social, economic, and political changes everywhere are driven by a global historical dynamic, in a theory that assigns causal primacy to top–down processes from the world system to all lower systems. Similarly, autopoietic systems theory is more than a set of descriptions of various social systems with an emphasis on their communication systems. Rather, it makes the theoretical claim that the core dynamics of modern societies should be sought in the workings of discrete communications systems that self-organize corresponding more or less autonomous societal subsystems such as politics, the mass media, education, arts, and law. There is a myriad of examples for loose uses of the term system, and for most purposes such loose usage will be sufficiently precise. The more important point is that since the term “system” is so widely used and familiar, most of us seem to believe in the existence of systems of one sort or another, or at least in the usefulness of the concept. Analytical philosophers of course have a field day with such commonsense terms and familiar concepts and, I presume, could demonstrate that they are analytically useless or meaningless. I derive a more encouraging conclusion from this state of affairs. The “system metaphor” has general currency without requiring any knowledge of and commitment or opposition to systems theory. I therefore suggest that we take the loose usage area of the conceptual space as our point of departure while ignoring the systems theory area for the purposes of the following exposition. In fact, systems theory is of no particular further significance for the present study. A long-standing philosophical debate in the social sciences is over the primacy of individualism or holism. Rational-choice theorists, for instance, are strict methodological individualists, whereas structural-functionalists are methodological holists. Their disagreements stem in part from fundamentally different conceptions of social reality. Is a society a whole transcending its members, or is a society simply an aggregate of persons? The methodological implications of this basic ontological disagreement are the source of unfruitful division and unfortunate confusion in the social sciences.3 Bunge’s solution to this problem, implicitly practiced by many who intuitively sense the inadequacies of both positions, is to reject yet affirm both. This dialectical solution is called systemism. The twin concepts of system and mechanism are so central in modern science, whether natural, social, or biosocial, that their use has spawned a whole ontology, which I have called systemism. According to this view, everything in the universe is, was, or will be a system or a component of one. For instance, the electron that has just been knocked off an atom on

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the tip of my nose is about to be captured by a molecule in the air. Likewise, the prisoner who just escaped from the county jail is about to be either recaptured or absorbed by a family or a gang. There are no permanent strays or isolates (Bunge 2004, 190). What is a system? [A] system is a complex object whose parts or components are held together by bonds of some kind. These bonds are logical in the case of a conceptual system, such as a theory; they are material in the case of a concrete system, such as an atom, cell, immune system, family, or hospital. The collection of all such relations among a system’s constituents is its structure (or organization, or architecture). (Ibid., 188, italics in original) What are concrete or material systems? Depending on the system’s constituents and the bonds among them, a concrete or material system may belong in either of the following levels: physical, chemical, biological, social, and technological. The semiotic systems, such as texts and diagrams, are hybrid, for they are composed of material signs or signals, some of which convey semantic meanings to their potential users. (Ibid.) Concrete social systems such as multinational corporations, universities, or hospitals, not to mention entire societies and civilizations, are exceedingly complex entities. In the most basic terms, they can be modeled as having components, structures, mechanisms, and environments. In the systemic view, concrete systems are real, but of course they can be conceived, described, and explained only in conceptual terms, that is, through models and theories. While people experience (being part of ) social systems directly,4 they identify and understand social systems through symbolic, in particular semiotic, systems, such as shared social representations. Such actors’ models are a central part of any human social system5 and play a central role in the mechanisms that make the system work. In contrast to a concrete system, which is in constant flux, a model of this system is a snapshot in time and space. Let us take a few examples to illustrate the basic elements of a system model. Bayer, a multinational corporation, is a social system composed of specialized divisions manufacturing and selling a range of pharmaceutical and agrochemical products and services on a global scale. The corporation’s structure or architecture is that of a hierarchical bureaucratic organization, with a general holding company managing more or less autonomous subgroups or divisions. In other


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words, this multinational corporation is composed of subsystems held together by a formal governance structure. The corporation’s social environment consists of economic partners, competitors, and clients (i.e., various “markets”); state agencies, international organizations, media, and publics (i.e., “politics”); and national, regional, and industry-specific knowledge and skills clusters (i.e., “cultures”). The corporation influences and is itself affected by a host of natural environments. The central mechanism or process that “makes the corporation what it is” is the production and sale of its specialized goods and services. Of course this is a very thin and superficial model of a multinational corporation, but it “touches on the major bases.” That is, although composition, organization, mechanism, and environment of this corporation are all considerably more complex, all four elements are basic to an understanding of how this particular social system functions. Any model leaving out one or more of these elements is likely to lead to misinterpretations of what is actually going on that may subsequently give rise to faulty social technologies (e.g., economic policies, management fads, counterproductive labor-saving initiatives, or costly mergers). Let us take another example from a world most academics will be personally familiar with. The social system in question is a political science department in a small university in the province of Ontario, Canada. The department is composed of several faculty members holding a Ph.D. in political science, each having certain areas of expertise within the discipline. The structure of the department is formally nonhierarchical, with members taking turns serving as a department head (primus inter pares), who has certain limited though not insignificant administrative responsibilities related to teaching load assignment, promotion, and hiring. As a subsystem of the larger university by which faculty members are employed, the department’s environment is the university as an organization, the students taking departmental courses, the larger professional community of political scientists, as well as departmental ties with other individuals and organizations inside and outside the university. The central mechanism making the department what it is is the teaching of a range of political science courses and provision of a formal program of study for students who want to major in the discipline. This once again basic model only barely touches upon what may be the central bonds holding this particular social system together, and therefore what keeps the central mechanism (teaching) going in this structure which, unlike business firms, is formally nonhierarchical. While all faculty members have the same rights and obligations, fundamental differences in employment status do create a de facto hierarchy based on the degree of job security. At the top of the hierarchy are tenured professors, followed by those in tenurable positions, with faculty on temporary contracts at the bottom. While job uncertainty among the nontenured provides some additional

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incentives for cooperation, similar threats are not available to ensure cooperation among tenured faculty. As a result, informal processes based on trust, goodwill, and norms of reciprocity and civility come to play a central role in the stability of the structure. Anyone familiar with the potential viciousness of intradepartmental conflicts, in which trust and goodwill quickly disappear, reciprocity turns into revenge, and civility takes the form of civil litigation, may question the validity of my basic model. Something important must surely be missing in light of the fact that most university departments are relatively stable and discharge their teaching functions more or less adequately. I believe the basics of composition, structure, mechanism, and environment of the departmental model presented here are sound. One crucial piece of information, however, needs to be added: the degree of cooperation required in order to keep the system’s central mechanism going is in fact quite low since faculty members have a great deal of autonomy in the design and delivery of their courses. From a functional point of view, the bonds between members of the system can be relatively weak without endangering the operation of its basic mechanism (teaching). At the same time, however, scholarly and professional performance differences among tenured faculty, such as in terms of publication records and popularity among students, are at odds with the formal equality among members of this social system and a potential source of resentment for high and low performers, who each in their own way may not feel properly recognized in their status. In order to further deepen this analysis, it would be necessary to examine the nature of the symbolic systems operating in this particular social system (e.g., values, beliefs and professional standards held by members), the degree to which they facilitate a working consensus on status criteria, and the practices through which the potential explosiveness of status uncertainty or difference is diffused (Lazega 2001). The basic point here is to stress that symbolic systems (cultures, knowledge systems, ideologies, etc.) are a crucial part of the systemic approach without which neither a social system’s structure nor the working of its central mechanism(s) can be adequately modeled. In cases in which social systems like university departments become seriously dysfunctional, they may have to be reformed by employing social technologies such as professional conflict mediation, disciplinary action, or the rebuilding of trust, goodwill, and norms of reciprocity and civility that in addition to legal norms and formal rules ensure the functioning of a nonhierarchical social system of this sort (Machado and Burns 1998). The problems of order of most interest for the present study concern much larger, more complex social systems, namely modern societies, regional entities such as the European Union, and global systems. There are different ways in which the same social system can be modeled. This does not imply that social


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systems are created by our models. A multinational corporation such as Bayer can be modeled as an economic system, a political-economic system, a cultural system, or a sociotechnical system with emphasis on legal, managerial, or specialized knowledge aspects. (It is of course all of the above.) The fact that different models of the same social entity can be, and usually are, in circulation is in large part a result of the fact that social systems cannot be directly observed. They are real, but partly hidden—and therefore also more easily concealed. The systemic approach tells us only what to look for—composition, structure, mechanism, and environment of a social thing—but little more. Is it therefore, as is usually claimed for approaches like this, at best just another heuristic? The claim for systemism is more far-reaching since it is presented here as a fundamental ontology of natural and social things. It stakes out an alternative position in a long-standing philosophical debate in the social sciences over the primacy of individualism or holism. Systemism is a general solution to this fundamental problem in the social sciences, one that is implicitly practiced by many who are dissatisfied with both positions. As any ontology, systemism poses its own methodological challenges. Although it postulates that social systems are concrete entities, this does not somehow make them self-evident, easily observable things, as the above two examples indicate. Rather, social systems have to be conjectured and modeled. The central methodological implication of systemism, however, is that while a major dimension of social reality is composed of actors’ models, models and theories do not create or constitute social reality but rather are part of it. This applies also to scientific models and theories, which differ from other actors’ models primarily with respect to the standards and social systems in and according to which they are developed and criticized. In conclusion, the systemic analytical framework presented here is not a direct challenge to macro-theories of politics, economics, and society; it remains a framework or approach. However, it does pose an indirect challenge by confronting such theories with an explicit ontology that claims to be applicable to all the sciences. As such, it is particularly useful for critically examining any theory pertaining to problems of order by focusing on its implicit ontological assumptions. In addition to this critical function, the systemic analytical framework is also a fundamental tool in the development of theories and explanations. In brief, it instructs us to look for concrete social systems and find out how they work. Mechanisms-based (or mechanismic) explanation is the core of such a methodology complementing systemism. Mechanisms Widely used phrases such as “political mechanisms” or “institutional mechanisms” suggest that mechanisms are the same as policies and institutions or

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systems. For instance, parliamentary and presidential systems can be seen as particular mechanisms of representative democracy. This usage, however, is misleading since the concept of mechanism and the concept of system are fundamentally different in the explanatory approach presented here. Note that our definition presupposes a distinction between system and mechanism: the latter is a process in a system. This distinction is familiar in natural science, where one is not expected to mistake, say, the cardiovascular system for the circulation of the blood or the brain with mental processes. But it is unusual in social studies. . . . Mechanism is to system as motion is to body, combination (or dissociation) to chemical compound, and thinking to brain. (Bunge 1996a, 270) The distinction between social systems and social mechanisms is fundamental, but at the same time not always easy to make. Take the example of the concept of “market.” The concept is used both in the phrase “market system” and in the phrase “market mechanism.” What then is a market? Is it a system, a mechanism, both, or neither? The concept of market generally does not refer to a concrete social system. The statement “Russia has a market economy” refers to the Russian economy as a concrete social system, with the concept of market serving as a qualifier. That is, it suggests that Russia’s economy is of a particular type, namely, the market type. Types or categories are conceptual; they are applicable to many different concrete social systems. Thus we can speak about the Ukrainian or Polish or Hungarian market economy. Well-known examples of such usage are the market model employed in neoclassical economics and the capitalist mode of production in political economy. Models, of course, may be more or less accurate in representing concrete economic systems, and more or less useful for particular purposes such as political propaganda, government regulation, or economic reform initiatives. The main point here is that the concrete social systems are the economies of these countries, regardless of how fitting the concept of market economy may be for them. When we speak about the “market for land in Russia,” are we in this instance talking about a concrete social system? I think we are, but the concept of “market” is not essential in referring to the concrete social system composed of “landed interests” such as state farms, cooperatives, private farmers, and other, nonagricultural users of land, as well as related public and private regulatory bodies. The bonds making up the structure of this system are economic interests, legal norms, as well as informal understandings and practices. The system’s central mechanism is the control and disposition of land. Its social environment consists of other social systems, such as local


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authorities, “mafias,” banks, residents, and users of the land—all embedded in local and national “cultures” (i.e., symbolic systems).6 Land is a natural resource and part of a larger natural environment and specific ecosystems. This social system existed prior to and during communist times, though its composition, structure, and environment have since changed.7 The concept of market can also refer to a mechanism, that is, a kind of process. This use of the concept would focus on the major processes going on in a concrete economic system during a specified period, such as the market for land in Russia mentioned above. The central question would be how the processes of control and disposition of land operate in the system in question in which “market elements” have been introduced. In this sense, however, “market” would refer to a class or type of mechanisms (i.e., “market mechanisms”) that may or may not be present to various degrees in concrete social systems. One can also speak of types of mechanisms at various levels of generalization, say typical market mechanisms in a particular territory at a particular time. Examples from the political economy literature are the “Soviet model” referring to centrally planned economies of the Soviet type; the “Rhenish model” referring to specific ways in which the post–World War II West German system worked; or the “East-Asian model” referring to United States sponsored, statist, export-led development processes in countries such as Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan during the same period. The most general model of market mechanisms is the neoclassical equilibrium model, in which the interplay of supply and demand factors constitutes the central mechanism. The concrete systems themselves are usually not empirically examined and theorized in this model. The neoclassical “systemic” model is quasiuniversal in claiming applicability not only to modern capitalist economic systems, but to all social systems, past and present. It is in fact not a model of any concrete social system but rather a model of a type of person, homo oeconomicus, whose individual and collective actions are supposed to explain the broadest range of social phenomena. The central mechanism in this psychological system, that is, the individual person, is a somewhat mysterious rational utility-maximizing process going on in individual brains. This illustrates a crucial difference between methodological individualism and the mechanismic explanatory approach presented here, in which social mechanisms in concrete social systems make up the core of explanations of social phenomena. This method encompasses both social structure (methodological holism) and individual agency (methodological individualism) but goes beyond both of these basic methodological approaches. [In the systemic view,] agency is both constrained and motivated by structure, and in turn the latter is maintained or altered by individual action.

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In other words, social mechanisms reside neither in persons nor in their environment—they are part of the processes that unfold in or among social systems. . . . All mechanisms are system-specific: there is no such thing as a universal or substrate-neutral mechanism. (Bunge 1999, 57–59) In neoclassical economics and neoliberal ideology, so-called market mechanisms are represented as “universal or substrate-neutral” mechanisms. However, as argued above, market mechanisms are general types of mechanisms, that is, conceptual categories that need to be distinguished from the actual mechanisms at work in concrete social systems. Contrary to the postulates of positivism and the practices of empiricists, most of reality is unobservable. As a result, most mechanisms are concealed, so that they have to be conjectured. As Bunge (2004, 206) points out, the builders of modern atomic physics ironically paid lip service to this same phenomenalist and descriptivist dogma of positivism while ignoring it in practice. Thus rather than being mere concepts that can be applied to empirical reality, mechanisms are real processes that are for the most part hidden. But since we have to use concepts regardless of whether we assume that reality is systemic, constructed, or unknowable, what difference does a mechanismic method make for scientific practice? Let us briefly look at two popular approaches to explanation in the social sciences to illustrate this difference. Theoretically oriented empirical social science frequently adopts the socalled covering law model of explanation. That is, a particular generalization (“law”) is considered valid if the empirical instances to which it applies are consistent with it. This approach recommends the search for generalizations— the more widely applicable the generalization the better. Thus, for instance, if it were possible to subsume all postcommunist countries under the category of market economy, generalizations that hold for all market economies could then be applied. The search for generalizations is not necessarily inconsistent with the mechanismic approach—if by market economy we mean a set of mechanisms at work in a particular social system. In fact, a generalization of this sort may help us understand how the social system in question actually works by facilitating examination of the extent to which a particular set of mechanisms (e.g., “the market economy”) is responsible for particular outcomes in a concrete social system. But a commitment to generalization as such does not entail a commitment to look for actual social mechanisms.8 The more common approach is to hypothesize causal relationships among a set of variables that can be tested against particular empirical cases—say the relationship between economic growth and degree of central-bank independence, openness to trade, financial liberalization, private ownership, et cetera.


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If the resulting correlations between variables are taken as the central result of analysis, there is no incentive to examine how causal processes actually work in the particular social systems under study. Moreover, while variables may serve as stand-ins for mechanisms, actual explanation and deeper understanding require that those mechanisms be elucidated. To what extent a set of variables matters is a different question than how a social process works. A second basic explanatory approach directs our primary interest to the understanding of what social actors think—what I referred to as actors’ models earlier. There is no doubt that the reconstruction of actors’ models can provide significant clues to how a particular social mechanism works. This is especially true if such models are investigated empirically rather than postulated in basic assumptions about rational utility maximization or rule following. In any event, actors’ models are not themselves social mechanisms, though, clearly, collective beliefs can at times decisively influence the course of a social process. It is therefore important not to mistake actors’ models by themselves for social mechanisms because the former have an effect only in and through concrete social systems. The first serious and explicit treatment of social mechanisms is credited to Robert Merton.9 As he explains in his paradigmatic essay, “Manifest and Latent Functions,”10 in which he lays out his framework for functional analysis:11 Functional analysis in sociology as in other disciplines like physiology and psychology, calls for a “concrete and detailed” account of the mechanisms which operate to perform a designated function. This refers, not to psychological mechanisms, but to social mechanisms (e.g., role segmentation, insulation of institutional demands, hierarchic ordering of values, social division of labor, ritual and ceremonial enactments, etc.). (Merton 1967, 106)12 Merton conceived of mechanism-based explanation in the context of “theories of the middle range” situated between abstract grand theories and atheoretical descriptive accounts (cf. also Boudon 1991): This type of theory cuts across the distinction between micro-sociological, as evidenced in small-group research, and macro-sociological problems as evidenced in comparative studies of social mobility and formal organization, and the interdependence of social institutions. . . . Total sociological systems of theory—such as Marx’s historical materialism, Parsons’ theory of social systems and Sorokin’s integral sociology—represent theoretical orientations rather than the rigorous and tightknit system envisaged in the

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search for a “unified theory” in physics. . . . As a result, many theories of the middle range are consonant with a variety of systems of sociological thought. (1967, 68) Charles Tilly’s work provides rich illustrations of mechanismic explanation and demonstrates that “theorizing at the middle range” does not exclude the search for very general social mechanisms. He explains the difference between mechanismic explanation, on the one hand, and individualist and structuralist explanations, on the other, in the following terms: Analyses of inequality have suffered from reliance on various forms of individualism (in which the attributes, propensities, and actions of one person at a time aggregate into patterned inequalities among persons) and on various forms of holism (in which society, the economy, capitalism, or some other such collective entity serves itself by creating inequalities). No one will understand inequality-generating processes well without taking relations among actors seriously as starting points for analysis. The causal mechanisms this paper identifies are neither individualistic nor holistic, but relational. (Tilly 1996, 7) Tilly’s quotation is consistent with the approach presented here, though I have not used the concept “relational” in my account. “Relational” is used much more frequently than “mechanistic” in recent social science literature,13 but I believe it proposes a similar process-oriented perspective. (Compare with Bunge: “social mechanisms reside neither in persons nor in their environment—they are part of the processes that unfold in or among social systems” quoted above). Following a mechanismic approach is challenging for the general reason that the ontology of mechanisms as processes in social systems is unfamiliar— it is simply not a well-established schema in the social sciences. It therefore requires a special conceptual effort in order to be applied. There are three additional challenges. First, many social mechanisms are well known or even trivial, and therefore are not good examples of original explanation. Consider basic social mechanisms such as cooperation and conflict, command and participation, or work and trade. Mechanisms of this general type occur in numerous and diverse social systems, from the international system to firms and families. Obviously, mechanismic explanation has to go beyond merely identifying general social processes. Second, even in less-complex social systems, more than one important social mechanism will be at work. A multinational corporation (MNC), like any other firm, makes and sells products or services, but a particularly important mechanism that distinguishes MNCs


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from other firms is the integration of production sites and markets on a global scale. Thus the challenge for mechanismic explanation is to identify and model the key mechanism(s) of a particular (type of ) social system. Third, since social mechanisms in most social systems occur not in unstructured clusters but in particular configurations, the specific combination or concatenation of such mechanisms may be crucial. For example, every capitalist economy will prominently feature private-property rights, but there will also be social rights and conventions that in their specific combination with formal property rights shape how this economy functions. In what follows, each of these three challenges are addressed with examples from mechanismic accounts taken from different areas of social science research. Many general social mechanisms may appear as trivial in a particular explanatory situation. Some, such as the ubiquitous social mechanisms of cooperation and conflict, are indeed often trivial on their own since there are few social systems in which they are not at work. But forms of cooperation and conflict differ greatly: think of constructive conflict (Hirschman 1994) as in political or scholarly debates, as opposed to armed conflict as in wars and insurgencies. So for most purposes these mechanisms need to be further specified to help explain how they contribute to the working of concrete social systems. We know, for instance, that debating can be a mechanism of peaceful conflict, but that political debates and scholarly debates differ significantly with respect to the role played by other mechanisms. Thus debates in political systems are in large part driven by power considerations, such as gaining or maintaining particular positions or offices. By contrast, debates in academic systems are in part driven by the scholars’ search for recognition from their peers. Thus trivial general mechanisms can be concretized into nontrivial, more specific mechanisms—such as from conflict in general to particular forms of peaceful conflict. And general mechanisms combine with other, more or less specific, mechanisms such as the search for power or recognition. Depending on the explanatory or practical problem at hand, further concretization and combination of the general mechanism may be required. An important point to note here is that identical mechanisms can be involved in producing diametrically opposed effects in the same type of system. That is to say, the same mechanisms can have very different functions or effects. For instance, while the power mechanism can combine with forms of peaceful conflict (e.g., an electoral campaign leading to a smooth transfer of power), the same general power mechanism also easily combines with forms of violent conflict (e.g., a revolutionary uprising or a coup d’etat). The first in the following set of three examples illustrates that, while mechanismbased explanation tends to be “middle-range theorizing,” very general social

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mechanisms can be fruitfully modeled as well. The second example shows how grand theses, such as Weber’s “Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism,” can be reexamined and tested by disaggregating them into distinct social mechanisms. The third example demonstrates how the success and failure of postcommunist property transformation can be explained through a combination of macro-, meso-, and micro-level social mechanisms. Tilly on Social Boundary Mechanisms In the systemic ontology presented earlier in this chapter, a social system was defined as a concrete, material system whose parts or components are held together by social bonds of some kind. The collection of all such relations among a system’s constituents is its structure. Some social systems change swiftly, others slowly; some assemble themselves, others are made; some are closed and self-regulated, most are neither; some have shapes (geometric boundaries), others do not. (Bunge 1996a, 270) This definition does not explicitly address the question of a social system’s boundaries. All social systems have boundaries of some sort, though unlike other material systems, in social systems boundaries are in part symbolic. Like all material systems, social systems are in constant flux. However, any model of a social system will represent the system as fixed in time and space. It was this static character of their systems models that has earned structuralfunctionalists fundamental criticism. The danger, though not the necessary implication, of such static systems models is that they ignore important change processes in the real systems they model, especially if they focus on the functions and effects of processes in relatively stable social systems. Many social processes do indeed reproduce the state of a social system, but other processes alter it. Neither kind of process can be identified and explained unless the systems in which these processes occur are modeled. It is important to note that in many social science explanations, models of social systems remain implicit. Perhaps the most widely used implicit systems model is that of the “nation-state,” sometimes also simply referred to as “society” or even “country” (see ch. 6 and 7). Much has been made in the globalization debate of the weakening and decline of territorial states, the standard type of political formation in the world today. As a result, it is argued, the conventional model of the nation-state has become increasingly problematic since many of the implicit assumptions contained in the model, such as those relating to a state’s sovereignty, no longer hold true. It follows that our largely implicit


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models of social systems, like the nation-state, may need to be fundamentally revised. The systemic character of nations, states, and societies is discussed at length in the subsequent chapters of this book. Tilly is interested in discovering the most important general mechanisms underlying boundary change. He defines a social boundary as “any contiguous zone of contrasting density, rapid transition, or separation between internally connected clusters of populations and/or activity” (Tilly 2004, 214). In the conception presented here, the rather cumbersome phrase “internally connected clusters of populations and/or activity” would simply be referred to as social systems. Tilly’s analysis is significant for our purposes as an example of mechanismic explanation at a very high level of generality. Since his discussion in principle applies to boundary changes in all kinds of social systems, no particular social system model is needed. It is therefore possible for him to focus exclusively on mechanisms of boundary change. This is rarely the case in mechanism-based explanation since most social mechanisms are specific to particular (types of ) social systems that have to be modeled. Tilly distinguishes between three kinds of processes: mechanisms that cause boundary change, mechanisms that constitute boundary change, and effects of boundary change (see figure 1.1).

Mechanisms Causing Boundary Change ● ● ● ● ●

encounter imposition borrowing conversation incentive shift ▼

Mechanisms Constituting Boundary Change ● ● ● ●

inscription-erasure activation-deactivation site transfer relocation ▼

Effects of Boundary Change ●

e.g. network-based escalation of conflict through attack defense sequences

Adapted from Tilly 2004.

Figure 1.1: General Causal Relations in Social Boundary Mechanisms

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The reader interested in a more detailed explanation of these mechanisms as well as examples of their working in concrete cases is referred to Tilly’s article (2004) and his other work (see e.g., 1998, 2001, 2002). I mention here only two of his observations applying to mechanism-based explanation in general. The first is that different mechanisms can have the same effect: boundary changes may be caused by any one of the following mechanisms: encounter, imposition, borrowing, conversation, or incentive shift. However, in many instances of boundary change these mechanisms may well occur jointly. From a variable-oriented perspective, this abundance of causal mechanisms in boundary change would be viewed as “overdetermined” explanation. That is, if any one variable can bear the explanatory load, there is no point in adding further causes. Instead, the task would be to establish the relative significance of each causal variable in particular cases or classes of boundary change. A more sophisticated variable-based approach might try to discover the most frequent configurations of variables in boundary change (Ragin 2000). By contrast, a mechanismic approach is primarily interested in explaining how boundary changes arise and how they happen. Here only real mechanisms count, not variables. Of course, mechanisms can be treated as variables, such that boundary change would be the dependent variable, and encounter, imposition, borrowing, conversation, and incentive shift would be the independent variables. But not all variables represent mechanisms—take, for instance, variables such as complexity, size, or frequency. In fact, it is probably fair to say that explanatory factors or variables are usually not mechanisms, and if they happen to represent mechanisms they rarely do so in an explicit and systematic fashion. General mechanisms such as imposition or borrowing do not provide final or bottom-line explanations for social phenomena such as boundary change. Once we move below the level of social systems in general to the areas in which most social science research takes place, such general mechanisms need to be further broken down. This is Tilly’s second observation: “Stepping up the level of magnification, we can always find more microscopic mechanisms within encounter, imposition, borrowing, conversation, and incentive shift. Looking closely at conversation, for instance, we will discover improvisation, turn-taking, meaningful hesitation, code switching, and much more” (ibid., 221). One of the goals of a mechanismic research agenda is to discover and/or inventory typical mechanisms recurring in specific types and configurations of social systems. In fact, the literature is full of theoretical and empirical material that could be reconceptualized as social mechanisms. Of course, this exercise should go beyond a renaming effort that otherwise adds no new insights. In our second example, we turn to a successful effort of this kind.


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Cohen on Weber’s Protestant Ethic Few students have failed to be impressed by Max Weber’s famous thesis presented in his Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1958) in which he argues that Protestantism was an essential precondition for the emergence of modern capitalism. That a religious doctrine could have such a powerful and decisive influence on economic development, and how in general ideas can shape and condition material reality so profoundly, surely poses one of social science’s most exciting and deep intellectual challenges. While, on the margins of social theory, radical idealism or radical materialism survive in one form or another, there is a far-reaching consensus among social scientists that religion and culture do affect economic life. In a large body of literature Weber’s thesis has been dissected, endorsed, or rejected. Jere Cohen’s Protestantism and Capitalism: The Mechanisms of Influence (2002), argues that some parts of Weber’s thesis are correct, but others incorrect. The central question therefore cannot simply be whether Protestantism influenced capitalism (let alone whether ideas influence material reality). Instead, we should ask when, how, and how much Protestantism has affected capitalism. The key to dividing Weber’s thesis is found in the question of how Protestantism makes its impact. It affects capitalism in several different ways. Each of these Protestant-capitalism links is a separate mechanism of influence, and may be assessed separately. (Cohen 2002, 2) Weber’s thesis covers a vast terrain, from the work ethic, saving and investment, and the spirit of capitalism, to the rationalization of life, wealth and profit, the legitimation of capitalism, religious anxiety, and the quest for salvation. Cohen translates Weber’s thesis into a set of nine hypotheses, each containing several subhypotheses extracted from Weber’s work. In total, he presents nine sets of distinct social mechanisms. As an example, take hypothesis V on wealth and profit (Cohen 2002, 19): HYPOTHESIS V. WEALTH AND PROFIT Hypothesis Va: Protestantism approved wealth. Hypothesis Vb: Protestantism saw wealth as God’s blessing. Hypothesis Vc: Protestantism approved of the acquisition of wealth. Hypothesis Vd: Protestantism required the acquisition of wealth as a duty. Chapter 4 of Cohen’s book examines the evidence on wealth and concludes that “(t)he Puritans were mixed about wealth and gain. Although moderate

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gains could be desired, an immoderate desire for gain was sinful. Teachings were not consistent: wealth was both devalued and made a duty. Overall, the dangers of wealth were stressed more than this duty. The negatives of wealth limited and ultimately outweighed its positives” (ibid., 247). In general, Cohen found fewer mechanisms at work than Weber had identified in his study. The mechanisms that could be confirmed were not as strong as Weber had suggested and had less of an impact on society. [T]he Puritan contributions were not unique. . . . Puritanism’s effects were weakened by inconsistencies. . . . Puritanism was not the cause of the economic uniqueness of the Occident. It came too late to originate capitalism’s most distinctive institutions. Nor did it foster economic rationality, which was not a Puritan norm and was not backed by religious premia. If anything, its traditional business ethics restricted economic rationality. Puritanism called for no unique economic actions. Its work ethic was not unique nor were the religious premia based on it. It did not enforce economic actions by making them proofs of election; they were minor proofs at best. Rather, it used moral force to secure compliance with economic duties, and that mode of enforcement was far from unique among the world’s religions. (Ibid., 259) Cohen’s analysis clearly refutes Weber’s thesis in its strong form, according to which Protestantism was one, or even the, essential precondition for the emergence of capitalism. At the same time, many of the mechanisms Weber specified did contribute to the emergence of capitalism in the West. By rendering Protestantism a more consistent and unambiguous doctrine than it really was, he overestimated the direct influence of religious doctrines on the economic behavior of the faithful. There are at least two general mechanisms by which a specific set of ideas or doctrines affects social reality. First, a doctrine or ideology motivates and guides the behavior and actions of its adherents directly and explicitly. Second, a doctrine or ideology becomes incorporated in other larger cultures in modified form and thus indirectly affects the thinking and actions of those belonging to these cultures. Cohen reinterprets Weber’s thesis precisely in this way. Through the first, direct form of the mechanism, Protestantism played much less of a role in the emergence of capitalism than Weber proposed. Protestantism’s more powerful and lasting influence on capitalism came through the second, indirect mechanism: by contributing to general culture after capitalism’s take-off, reinforcing certain behaviors also among non-Protestants, and legitimating institutional characteristics of capitalism such as inequality and exploitation.


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A contemporary example illustrating these two basic mechanisms of how ideas influence individual and collective behavior is the ideology of neoliberalism. There are the faithful, especially in world financial institutions, business and government, who advocate or play a role in the implementation of specific neoliberal economic policies (trade and financial liberalization, fiscal stabilization, privatization). The equally if not more-important influence of neoliberal ideology occurs via the second basic mechanism. Starting in the late 1970s, previously marginal economic doctrines and their proponents (e.g., Friedman 1962; Hayek 1962) were taken increasingly seriously by governments especially of Anglo-Saxon countries as the Keynesian consensus dissolved. Over the next two decades, neoliberalism’s general premises about the proper roles of state and market and ideas about individual responsibility penetrated cultures all over the world—not only government and business cultures but national cultures and commonsense understandings—often with powerful effects. Neither postcommunist transformations nor the restructuring of welfare states in the 1980s and 1990s could have occurred in the absence of the ideological hegemony neoliberalism established during that period. Chapter 4 examines the different mechanisms and functions of economic ideologies by looking at the various roles neoliberalism has played in postcommunist transformation processes. Verdery on Postcommunist Transformation Our final example of mechanismic explanation comes from an anthropological study of postcommunist transformation in rural Romania. The strength of anthropological and ethnographic approaches is their focus on the microlevel of analysis, the real lives of people in particular communities or locales. In a globalizing world, strength can turn into analytical limitation to the extent that micro communities are directly or indirectly tied into global networks and processes. In our systemic conception, a village in Romania in the 1990s is a social system closely related to and influenced by other social systems, from neighboring villages, counties, agricultural service organizations and banks, the central state, expatriate communities, the EU, IMF, World Bank, and others. In her excellent study The Vanishing Hectare: Property and Value in Postsocialist Transsylvania, Katherine Verdery identifies the major mechanisms through which the local system and its actors changed in the course of the transformation period after 1989, in part through their internal interactions, in part through interaction with social systems outside and beyond the village. Privatization, along with other market reforms, has been a primary mechanism of economic transformation in former postcommunist countries.

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Since the bulk of productive assets were state-owned or in the hands of collectives, creating a market economy with a significant portion of private property was one of the major policy goals of reformers. We know that a variety of different policy approaches to privatization were used, from restitution to the distribution of shares. But how exactly does such an apparently clear-cut legal-technical conversion process actually work in real social systems and with what effects beyond those measured by standard economic indicators such as growth, productivity, et cetera.? As Verdery critically remarks, “private property becomes a catch-all concept that may explain everything in its generality but obfuscates the details of how privatization produced revaluation.” We need to know the most significant economic, political, and cultural mechanisms of change that lie beneath the surface of ownership change. These details [i.e., mechanisms] enable us to link the demands of the IMF and other world financial institutions for fiscal austerity in government, which redirected capital elsewhere, with the fact that local farmers did not have the cash to make their acquisition profitable. Through such details we see how responsibility for the failure of the transition to capitalism was assigned to individuals; yet the context in which they acted denied them the potentialities of a successful transformation, and the actors responsible for those conditions evaded accountability for their actions. This is the experience of the transition to market economies for huge numbers of people in postsocialist East-Central Europe and Russia. (Verdery 2003, 361) Using the format established earlier in the chapter for Tilly’s mechanismic account of social boundary changes, I have distilled from Verdery’s analysis three sets of social mechanisms: mechanisms causing property transformation, mechanisms constituting property transformation, and effects of property transformation (figure 1.2). The italicized mechanisms under each of the three headings refer to the standard mechanisms identified or presupposed in neoliberal accounts of privatization. The major mechanism causing property transformation in this view is the collapse of communist regimes as forms of political and economic order, leaving a “clean slate” for the design and establishment of a market system based on private property. (In chapters 4 and 5 this view is discussed in greater detail.) The major mechanism for property transformation is privatization, that is, the transfer of state and collective property into private property. In the neoliberal view, this property transformation mechanism is flanked by other market-creating mechanisms, in particular internal and


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Mechanisms Causing Property Transformation ● ● ● ● ●

collapse of Communist regime, tabula rasa regime collapse in 1989/91 symbolic and ideological significance of private property neoliberal hegemony globally popular high expectations of capitalism in socialist countries ▼

Mechanisms Constituting Property Transformation ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

privatization IFI specific policy preferences and advice weak central state control early restitution of land, late privatization of state farms ineffective interest represenation by weak Agricultural Ministry government-driven pricing policy disadvantaging agriculture IMF macroeconomic stabilization plan leading to extremely high interest rates devaluing smallholders’ land by distributing land but not equipment ▼

Effects of Property Transformation ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

successful commercial agriculture in market setting demodernization: cultivators forced back into behavior resembling tradition deracination: social uprooting of villagers state retrenchment delegitimation of new political regime and private property regime devaluation of assets (land, machinery, personhood) social polarization

Figure 1.2: Mechanisms of Postcommunist Property Transformation

external liberalization and state retrenchment. The effect of property transformation in land is the establishment of successful commercial agriculture in a market setting. In a rough and general sense, this is arguably what has happened in most postcommunist countries. However, this account contains some serious oversights and errors, oversimplifying some mechanisms while completely ignoring others. First, while the collapse of communist regimes was no doubt one of the most important mechanisms causing property transformation, the case of China demonstrates that there are other mechanisms that can bring about fundamental changes in ownership. Although political regimes collapsed in a spectacular fashion in 1989/91, this did not leave a tabula rasa for redesigning a new political economy. The societies upon which a new economic system was to be grafted remained in place. Second, the major if not sole mechanism constituting property transformation in the neoliberal view is

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privatization. This, however, is a special type of mechanism, namely a “designed” mechanism, usually referred to as policy or social technology. Privatization is a legal change in ownership title, mandated and organized by laws. How such privatization policies are actually implemented, utilizing what social resources, against what political and cultural obstacles, and with what social effects is not part of this conception. Analyzing property transformation as a social process, the approach followed by Verdery, on the other hand, refers only in part to policy or “designed” mechanisms. It is for the most part interested in the actual social mechanisms that bring about, make up, and result from the intended and unintended consequences of social action (Merton 1968). Figure 1.2 illustrates that the actual mechanisms of prime importance in the property transformation process were of structural, political or cultural kinds that do not figure in the neoliberal conception. Let us look briefly at a few examples. Among the mechanisms causing property transformation, regime collapse was only one of the central mechanisms. An equally important mechanism was the symbolic and ideological meaning of private property both within communist countries and internationally at that time. Domestically, the nationalization and collectivization of productive assets had been one of communist regime’s central policy, and had formed part of the claim to the superiority of Soviet-type economies over capitalist economies. The wealth disparity between East and West had become so glaring by the 1980s that citizens of communist countries not surprisingly had immense expectations of what capitalism might bring for them. Globally, neoliberal ideas had become hegemonic among international institutions, Western governments, and increasingly among their publics. Instructive here is the case of China where market reforms were well underway in the late 1980s, so that economic growth was clearly associated with the reform policies of a communist regime. In addition, the Chinese state was, and needed to be, much less open to outside policy advice than the new regimes in Moscow, Warsaw, or Bucharest, which sought the approval and support of Western countries and the international agencies dominated by them. Turning to the mechanisms constituting property transformation, the central neoliberal “mechanism” of privatization is, as mentioned above, an ideological concept rather than a social mechanism. The set of social mechanisms identified as crucial in Verdery’s analysis of ownership transformation in “her” village in Transsylvania demonstrates how a complex social process of this sort actually works. The policy preferences and advice of the IMF, World Bank, and Western governments played a major role in how postcommunist transformation processes were defined and approached—a mechanism that is familiar from many other contexts. The collapse of the old regime weakened


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central state control over the decollectivization process, giving room for often ineffective or even criminal practices in local-level privatization agencies. The Agricultural Ministry remained a weak advocate for the specific needs of the transforming farming sector. Because collective farms were privatized first, state farms and their managers enjoyed significant economic advantages. Government pricing policy kept agricultural prices artificially low, while an IMF-sponsored macroeconomic stabilization program led to extremely high interest rates that combined made it impossible for most small farmers to invest and survive. The land of smallholders was further devalued by the state’s policy of distributing land but not the equipment necessary to work it. After more than a decade of rural transformation, studied by Verdery, the result was indeed, as intended by neoliberal reform policies, the emergence of commercial agricultural enterprises succeeding state and collective farms and the elimination of the many small farms created in the early process of property restitution. Romanian agriculture, moreover, has become increasingly integrated into the world market—one reason why the existence of many of the new private farming operations remains precarious. However, the broader effects of property transformation that are either ignored, assumed to be benign, or seen as just inevitable in the neoliberal view readily become apparent against the background of a mechanismic analysis of the property transformation process. Many new private farmers were forced into what appeared to be traditional farming methods when ownership reforms made it difficult to combine land, labor, machinery, and marketing in a modern fashion. The transformations led to the social uprooting of villagers, while the state increasingly abdicated responsibility for the social welfare of its citizens. The new political regime in general, and the private-property system in particular, consequently lost much of its initial legitimacy. Property transformation effected a general devaluation of assets—land, machinery, and social identities. It led to growing polarization of rural society. [A] condition of commercial farmer’s [sic] success was the gradual impoverishment of villagers, a process to which he himself, along with numerous other groups, organizations, and policies, had contributed. That is scarcely news for social science. In this context, however, the process has taken a course specific to postsocialist Romania, with its slow decomposition of socialist property forms. (Verdery 2003, 353) Thus a general mechanism at work in the commercialization of agriculture in different types of farming systems in modern history is the impoverishment of small-scale and subsistence farmers—from the English “enclosures” to postcommunist decollectivization. However, this general mechanism needs

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to be further broken down in order to explain the different ways in which the process actually works in different social systems. In the case of postcommunist property transformation, land reform was part of a radical and comprehensive political and economic restructuring in which the complete privatization of farm land and the marketization of a centrally planned and “closed” economy were primary goals. Another common feature of postcommunist property transformation was that socialist property forms had a peculiar relationship among themselves that compared to property forms under capitalism could be described as “fuzzy boundaries.” Clearly, a structural peculiarity of this kind, giving rise to its own set of mechanisms, would pose particular challenges for a radical change in property regime. At the very least, it is something reformers might want to take into account. The shared structural-problem situation of postcommunist countries, however, is accompanied by many crucial differences. In the case of land reform, for instance, the restitution of land to its former owners, followed in many countries, seems to have generated problems such as extreme fragmentation that a different privatization approach, such as that followed by Hungary, might have avoided. But other structural differences between reforming countries, such as prospects for or stage of EU integration, have powerful effects on the fate of the agricultural sectors of individual states, constitute their own sets of mechanisms while affecting the working of others. Here we come back to the question of how general specific (types of ) mechanisms are, and what (types of ) systems work in the same or a similar fashion. These are to a large extent empirical questions, of which some are explored in the subsequent chapters. By way of concluding of this chapter, let us review some general points made about systems and mechanisms. The systemic framework presented here distinguishes between material, semiotic, and conceptual systems. The natural world is composed of concrete systems—from molecular to social. Semiotic systems are systems of symbols used by groups of people or communities (i.e., by members of social systems). Conceptual systems are systems of ideas “by themselves,” such as scientific theories, religious doctrines, or ideologies. All conceptual systems ultimately belong to semiotic systems, that is, symbolic systems used by particular communities. However, it is possible to treat conceptual systems as separate from their communities, that is, in conceptual analysis. Modern science depends upon this methodological convention in order to develop, test, confirm, or refute theories. There are two kinds of misunderstanding to be avoided. First, the methodological convention does not turn conceptual systems into real or concrete systems that have a life of their own (pace Popper’s World 3 and other idealist or Platonic philosophies). No community, no conceptual system. Second, the fact that conceptual systems are ultimately semiotic systems, that is, their creation,


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modification, use, and rejection are always also social acts, does not mean that semiotic systems such as modern science could be adequately studied as if they were nothing but social conventions (as radical constructivists in the philosophy of science have done). The implication for social science is that since it studies social systems that contain semiotic systems, it is often necessary to study the role of ideas in how a social system works. The role of ideas may be small or large in any given instance, but it is never exclusive (ideas do not act). Social and semiotic systems each have a particular kind of mechanism (see figure 1.3). A conceptual system, by contrast, does not have its own mechanism, though its construction and modification are subject to standards and conventions.14 Conceptual systems cannot “work” without the mental activities of real people. In this sense, conceptual systems are “driven” by semiotic communities (e.g., composers of classical music or theorists of society). A semiotic system is driven by communication among the members of a community (a social system) through, with, or about symbolic or conceptual systems. A social system is driven by social mechanisms. Conceptualization and communication are among the mechanisms of social systems, but not all social mechanisms have a significant conceptual or symbolic component (e.g., a basic social mechanism such as the unintended consequences of purposive action identified by Merton). How do we study each kind of system? How do we explain how it works? The common method for all three kinds is to model the system in question and to identify its major mechanisms. In the case of a conceptual system, say a religious doctrine, we could model its basic system of ideas and examine its “internal logic”—internal consistency, relationship to other bodies of knowledge, et cetera. In the case of a semiotic system, say a religious community, we could model it as a communication system (composition, structure, environment) and try to identify the central mechanisms in its communication processes. The underlying conceptual system, that is, the religious doctrine, would become a central part of this model of a semiotic system. In the case of a social system, say an urban community, we could model it as a system composed of various religious subcommunities. (Of course an urban system is composed of more than religious subsystems, especially political and ONTOLOGY conceptual semiotic material

SYSTEMS kinds of systems symbolic systems concrete systems

Figure 1.3: Explaining with Systems and Mechanisms

MECHANISMS [none] communication social mechanisms

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economic subsystems.) Semiotic systems, and by implication conceptual systems, may or may not be significant to how a social system works. For instance, in order to explain the depopulation of a city in a period of war, the residents’ attempt to survive by moving to a safer environment with better food sources would be a central mechanism not in need of supplementation by explanations based on symbolic systems. Of course, by definition, all the city’s residents belong to semiotic communities. And the modeling that has been proposed here has itself conceptual, semiotic, and social dimensions, which in turn could be modeled. What sorts of explanation can we expect from this approach? What does it mean to say that mechanismic explanation is neither too general or abstract nor too thick or descriptive? Figure 1.4 illustrates four types of mechanismic explanation, in each of which generalization plays a different role. Type 1 represents the most specific kind of mechanismic explanation. However, it differs from so-called thick description insofar as it models concrete systems and mechanisms rather than just describing events and situations in less-systematic terms. Many good historical explanations are of this kind. They are interested in explaining specific events but will attempt to do so by identifying and laying out the “logic” of the most important systems and mechanisms. In other words, the primary goal in this type of explanation is not to derive lessons or generalizations from the case under study, but rather to apply a general method and utilize available theoretical knowledge for the purpose of explaining a series of historical events. Type 1 explanations thus are historical-empirical explanations with no independent theoretical interest. Type 2 is interested in explaining by identifying concrete mechanisms that occur in a particular type of system. For instance, in comparative politics the most important type of system is the nation-state/society/country, and the goal of analysis is to discover how nation-states in general or a group of states with common systemic characteristics15 works by identifying specific processes. Thus, while all nation-states in the twenty-first century are subject to the forces of globalization, the concrete mechanisms that determine their interaction may be specific to a group of states or each individual state. A type 3

1. 2. 3. 4.

concrete system type of system concrete system type of system

Figure 1.4: Types of Explanation

⫹ ⫹ ⫹ ⫹

concrete mechanism concrete mechanism type of mechanism type of mechanism


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explanation reverses the roles played by systems and mechanisms: it is interested in explaining by identifying concrete systems in which a general type of mechanism occurs. For instance, in political economy the general mechanism of competitive setting of tax rates (“beggar thy neighbor”) as a way to attract investment occurs to varying extents in different jurisdictions (i.e., political systems). By analyzing a concrete political system (say the province of Ontario in Canada), it is possible to explain whether, how, and to what extent this general mechanism works as a result of that system’s particular characteristics (the system’s institutional characteristics, historical relationships between major political and economic actors, cultural dimensions, and political and economic environment). Types 2 and 3 are thus historical-empirical explanations with a particular theoretical interest. The interest may lie in examining the working of a type of system or a type of mechanism. The studies of Cohen and Verdery discussed above are of these types. Type 4 represents the most general kind of mechanismic explanation. The main goal here is to elucidate the working of general types of systems and mechanisms. Concrete historical cases or empirical instances are used for illustration or for testing the validity of generalizations about types of systems and mechanisms. Type 4 thus consists of theoretical explanations with no specific historical-empirical interest. Tilly’s analysis of boundary mechanisms discussed above is of this type. Take, as another example, what is central for this study especially in part III, that is, the analysis of general mechanisms reinforcing or undermining the sovereignty of nation-states in the global age. The theory of sovereignty in its original historical context is at the centre of the next chapter, which will introduce the problem-oriented approach as a powerful methodological tool for the social sciences.


CHAPTER 2

The Problem-Oriented Approach to Order: The Case of the Theory of Sovereignty

T

here are two major ways in which recent debates have called into question the theory of sovereignty. The first points out that regionalization and globalization processes, especially economic ones, have severely diminished the sovereignty of the nation-state. The second argues that sovereignty as a normative doctrine underpinning the international political order stands in the way of realizing universal human rights, prosecuting war crimes, et cetera.1 Is sovereignty an irrelevant or pernicious theory? Has it always been so? According to Karl Popper’s more than half-acentury old fundamental critique of the theory of sovereignty, the answer is yes. His critique serves as this chapter’s point of departure into a reconstruction of the way in which the theory of sovereignty was developed in response to the problem of order in a particular historical context. Like many of today’s critics, Popper held that sovereignty, or the question “who should rule,” has been a pseudo-problem to which many political theorists have proposed solutions that have missed the real problem. I show that Popper’s critique was ultimately mistaken as a result of his failure to adequately formulate the problem of order in general as well as in the original problem-context of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe. Although his critique of the theory of sovereignty is unsuccessful, his philosophy contains other elements of particular relevance for the social sciences in general and the problem of order in particular. I present and illustrate his problem-oriented method as one of his fundamental contributions by applying it to his own critique of the theory of sovereignty. If successful, this chapter will do two main things: first,

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refocus on how the theory of sovereignty relates to basic problems of political order, both domestically and internationally; and second, introduce the problem-oriented approach as a powerful methodological tool for social science and philosophy. The idea of sovereignty as first conceptualized by early modern political thinkers from Bodin to Locke is the normative foundation of modern forms of domestic political order—both democratic and nondemocratic. It underlies the idea of the modern state as the ultimate political authority in society and as its only legitimate representative externally. Sovereignty also forms the normative foundation of the global order, the international system of sovereign nation-states. Sovereignty, in short, is the modern solution to the problem of political order. While the theories embodying this normative solution were conceived three or four centuries ago, the historical completion of a global order consisting entirely of sovereign nation-states is very recent. The majority of the world’s population entered this system as citizens of newly independent nation-states only after World War II. Probably much better known than the historical origins of sovereignty are various problems often associated with the doctrine, such as its use in legitimating wars, its role in fostering global and regional instability, or in protecting human-rights violators from international prosecution. These and other aspects of the theory of sovereignty are widely discussed in contemporary debates on globalization, explored in the subsequent chapters. This chapter returns to the origins of the theory of sovereignty in the civil and religious wars of early modern Europe. It develops around a critical exploration of Karl Popper’s fundamental challenge to political theory presented in his two-volume work The Open Society and Its Enemies. Political theorists since Plato, he argues, have usually assigned priority to the wrong question about political order, namely, “Who should rule?” Who rules is ultimately of minor importance, Popper contends, since the crucial question is how to control the holder of political power. “Never ask who should rule” sums up Popper’s unconventional answer to this fundamental question of political theory. This methodological recommendation is, as I show, an application of his fallibilist philosophy of knowledge to political theory. The present chapter sketches Popper’s argument and examines it in the historical context of the emergence of the doctrine of sovereignty. In order to establish whether theorists of sovereignty from Bodin to Locke really did ask the wrong question, I employ Popper’s own, not widely known, problem-oriented approach—an approach that calls for a careful reconstruction of the “logic of the situation” in and for which a theory has been formulated prior to subjecting it to criticism. Applying this approach to Popper’s critique of the theory of sovereignty leads to a rejection of his central arguments. The analysis presented in this chapter,

The Problem-Oriented Approach

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however, is not primarily about Popper’s views on political theory, which I do not consider particularly significant. Rather, these views provide the material for a demonstration of Popper’s problem-oriented method, which I believe to be very significant for the social sciences and philosophy in general. Applying this method will provide a first opportunity in this study to sharpen the problem of order by discussing the theory of sovereignty as a solution to the fundamental problems of political order. Popper’s Critique of the Theory of Sovereignty Popper’s basic argument is both simple and powerful. Plato and all who share his assumption that the fundamental political problems of power and authority are solved once an answer to the question “Who should rule?” is found have failed to see that all rulers are fallible. They tacitly assume what Popper calls “the theory of (unchecked) sovereignty,” according to which the holders of power can virtually do what they will. It is this assumption about the nature of power that elevates the question “Who should rule?” into the central problem of politics. “If this assumption is made, then, indeed, the question ‘Who is to be the sovereign?’ is the only important question left” (Popper 1966, Vol. I, 121). Popper attempts to show that this assumption is weak on both empirical and logical grounds. Let us briefly look at the empirical side of his argument before focusing on his more important logical argument. Popper’s empirical argument is deceptively simple. “No political power has ever been unchecked, and as long as men remain human (as long as the “Brave New World” has not yet materialized), there can be no absolute and unrestrained political power” (ibid., 121–22). But is this argument particularly relevant in the early twenty-first century? Has the demise of communism not demonstrated that even the most monolithic and well-entrenched authoritarian system has potentially fatal weaknesses? Have authoritarian regimes around the world not eventually collapsed? Is liberal democracy not the only game in town? Even the most powerful tyrant depends upon his secret police, his henchmen, and his hangmen. This dependence means that his power, great as it may be, is not unchecked, and that he has to make concessions, playing one group off against another. It means that there are other political forces, other powers besides his own, and that he can exert his rule only by utilizing and pacifying them. This shows that even the extreme cases of sovereignty are never cases of pure sovereignty . . . And in an overwhelming number of cases, the limitations of political power go much further than this. (Ibid., 122)

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In an age where only so-called rogue states might be seen to possess this kind of overwhelming political power internally, the argument that power is in fact always limited seems hardly controversial. We now know that, notwithstanding the assumptions of yesteryear’s Kremlinologists and theorists of totalitarianism, communist systems were neither monolithic nor stable and immune to challenge. With respect to capitalist systems, almost all scholars working in the Marxist tradition have abandoned the kind of simplistic class analysis that would be affected by Popper’s empirical criticism. We ascribe such awesome powers at best to impersonal forces and large-scale processes such as globalization, while only conspiracy theories and other, similarly naïve conceptions of power would speak of anyone possessing unlimited or unchecked political power. Popper is surely right, but it seems that this side of his argument no longer has any serious targets at a time when the progressive weakening of the nation-state’s internal sovereignty is perceived to be a central problem. However, the other side of Popper’s critique of sovereignty may well lead us to conclude that this is a misperception, that sovereignty is in any event a solution to a pseudo-problem. In other words, if sovereignty does not matter, why should we be worried about its decline? Popper’s second major argument poses a much more fundamental challenge to political theory in general, and the doctrine of popular sovereignty in particular. It consists in “a kind of logical argument which can be used to show the inconsistency of any of the particular forms of the theory of sovereignty” (ibid., 123). It is an application of a similar argument used by Plato in his criticism of democracy. It can be summarized in the question: “What if it is the will of the people that they should not rule, but a tyrant instead?” (ibid.). This is admittedly not merely an idle philosophical point but a real possibility with numerous historical precedents. It creates, according to Popper, a fundamental dilemma for all democrats, whose position is ultimately founded on the principle of majority rule and popular sovereignty. On the one hand, the principle they have adopted demands from them that they should oppose any but the majority rule, and therefore the new tyranny; on the other hand, the same principle demands from them that they should accept any decision reached by the majority, and thus the rule of the new tyrant. The inconsistency of their theory must, of course, paralyse their actions. (Ibid.) We can, however, avoid the dilemma and remain democrats at the same time, Popper suggests, if we abandon the principle of majority rule and popular sovereignty in favor of the principle of democratic control. This view of democracy, he contends, “is not based upon the principle that the majority


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should rule; rather, the various equalitarian methods of democratic control, such as general elections and representative government, are to be considered as no more than well-tried and, in the presence of a widespread traditional distrust of tyranny, reasonably effective institutional safeguards against tyranny, always open to improvement, and even providing methods for their own improvement (ibid., 125).” The principle of popular sovereignty, accordingly, is not only superfluous. More important, it is a source of confusion and inconsistency for democratic theory as well as poses a political dilemma for democrats. And the theoretical inconsistency and the political dilemma will not arise if we abandon the question “Who should rule?” Popper’s strong claim that “All theories of sovereignty are paradoxical” (ibid., 124, emphasis in the original) is not convincing. This contention is more fully supported in the historical section below. But an initial argument undermining his own claim is supplied by Popper himself in his treatment of the analogous paradoxes of freedom, tolerance, and democracy. The doctrine of unlimited freedom, for instance, is paradoxical because it undermines the very conditions necessary for the preservation of freedom by granting unlimited freedom to its enemies. Similarly, unlimited tolerance makes it impossible to restrain the intolerant. As principles of unlimited freedom, tolerance, or democracy, they are clearly self-defeating. Notice in the following quotation that Popper does not reject the principles of freedom, tolerance, and democracy even though they are as paradoxical as the principle of sovereignty. He rejects their paradoxical formulation but not their valuable substantive content. He writes: All these paradoxes can be easily avoided if we frame our demands in the way suggested . . ., or perhaps in some such manner as this. We demand a government that rules according to the principles of equalitarianism and protectionism; that tolerates all who are prepared to reciprocate, i.e. who are tolerant; that is controlled by, and accountable to, the public. And we may add that some form of majority vote, together with institutions for keeping the public well informed, is the best, though not infallible, means of controlling such a government. (No infallible means exist.) (Ibid., 265–66) Now it is unclear why we could not just as easily avoid the paradox of sovereignty without giving up the theory of sovereignty. Analogously, this would require making institutional provisions for the purpose of safeguarding against the abuse of power by the sovereign body. There are two objections that might be raised against this proposal. One is historical-empirical: the

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theory of sovereignty has been and is used in its absolute or unlimited sense; and it could not play its role if modified in a similar fashion as Popper has proposed with respect to the principles of freedom, tolerance, and democracy. The other objection is methodological and political: since the theory of sovereignty creates much confusion and fails to solve any fundamental problems in political theory, it should be discarded. Either objection,2 if valid, should move us to give up the theory of sovereignty. More importantly, it should lead political theorists to abandon the question “Who should rule?” once and for all and give serious consideration to Popper’s alternative. Popper’s Solution to the Problem of Knowledge and the Problems of Political Theory The theory of sovereignty in the form presented by Popper is indeed selfcontradictory. But we have just seen that a different formulation is possible, one that does not give rise to the logical contradiction Popper identifies. Before considering the specific formulations of the theory of sovereignty as proposed by Bodin, Hobbes, and Locke, it is necessary to sketch some of the basic elements of Popper’s philosophy, in particular his problem-oriented method. This method is used here to critically assess Popper’s own approach to political theory. It is the second of the three basic methodological tools introduced in this study. The concept of sovereignty has been central to modern political theory since Bodin. This would appear to lend strong support to Popper’s thesis that political theorists have faithfully adhered to a tradition that asks the wrong question. The question “Who should rule?” in political theory, like the question “How do you know?” in the theory of knowledge, begs authoritarian answers. Why is this so? Popper argues that the rise of modern science was accompanied by an optimistic epistemology that he refers to as the doctrine that “truth is manifest.” (Popper 1968). In its classical empiricist (Bacon) and rationalist (Descartes) versions, sense-perception and intellectual intuition, respectively, were declared to be sources of certain knowledge. Hume dealt the most fatal blows to this optimistic epistemology, while Kant demonstrated that neither observation nor reason could deliver knowledge that is certain. Neither epistemological authority could guarantee the truth. Attempts to solve the problem of knowledge—we seem to have knowledge but we have no way of ultimately justifying its truth—have taken various routes. There are those moderately optimistic philosophies that have constructed compromise solutions, such as conventionalism, instrumentalism, and pragmatism. Then there are those that have abandoned the idea of


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truth, such as relativism and skepticism. Popper has proposed a solution to the problem of knowledge that identifies the fundamental question “How do you know?” (Popper 1979) itself as the basic obstacle.3 What all these ultimately unsuccessful attempts at providing a secure foundation for knowledge have in common is their search for an answer that provides an authority or criterion by which the truth or falsity of a knowledge claim can be justified. Popper refers to them accordingly as justificationist theories of knowledge. Relativism, although it has abandoned the idea of truth, nevertheless is part of the same justificationist metacontext (Bartley 1984).4 Popper accepts that we cannot have any certain knowledge; all our knowledge is fallible. But he rejects the conclusion that we cannot have any true knowledge, or that we should abandon the search for absolute truth. This is an apparent contradiction, and Popper’s way of resolving it represents the crucial step in his solution to the problem of knowledge. The contradiction can be resolved if we abandon the assumption that only certain knowledge, or justified knowledge, can be considered knowledge. Popper suggests that any knowledge claim, regardless of its source, may be true, but we have no way of knowing for sure: it is a conjecture. This, however, does not mean that all knowledge claims are equal, or that their validity now becomes merely a matter of social convention. We can never conclusively verify any claim; to this extent they are indeed equal. However, some stand up more successfully to criticism than others; and this is why they can be considered closer to the truth than others. It is for this reason, Popper argues, that we should try to improve and expand our knowledge by criticizing rather than by justifying our theories, by searching for refutations rather than confirmations. We learn from our mistakes. Knowledge grows through a process of conjectures and refutations in which truth plays the crucial role of a regulative principle. The question “How do you know?” invites a justificationist answer that is not available. And it impedes the growth of knowledge because it leads to a futile search for justification instead of a constructive search for refutations that force us to develop new and better theories. This is the direct link between Popper’s solution to the problem of knowledge and his solution to what he suggests is the fundamental problem of political theory. No epistemological authority can guarantee the quality of our knowledge; no bearer of political authority can guarantee the quality of political rule. Just as the history of Western philosophy in general has searched in vain for a secure foundation of knowledge, the history of political theory has sought salvation in finding the right answer to the question “Who should rule?” Popper’s solution to the fundamental problem of knowledge consists in a shift from a justificationist to a nonjustificationist or fallibilist approach. It is not difficult to recognize this shift in his reformulation of the

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basic problem of political theory. “Never ask who should rule” is the equivalent to his proposal “never ask what is the certain foundation of knowledge.” The question concerning ultimate political authority is as unfruitful and misleading as the question concerning an ultimate epistemological authority. Fallibilism in general calls for institutions and practices promoting criticism of all claims to knowledge regardless of their source; the fallibility of political rulers calls for firm institutional controls whoever the rulers may be. Before examining the fruitfulness of this shift for political theory in general terms and with reference to specific examples from the history of political theory, there is another aspect of Popper’s philosophy that is perhaps less-widely understood than his fallibilism. It is this aspect that in the present chapter provides a strategy for criticizing his approach to political theory. Popper’s falsificationism can be easily mistaken as a new, albeit negative, authority for assessing knowledge claims; that although we can no longer hope to conclusively verify our theories, we can at least conclusively falsify them. However, neither conjectures nor refutations are final. The reason is that there are no epistemological authorities that could guarantee the certainty even of a critical or falsifying claim. Thus while an observed fact, for example, may be said to conclusively refute a particular hypothesis, the observation statement itself can be subject to a variety of criticisms. All knowledge claims remain forever open to criticism. Nonjustificationism is therefore a philosophy as well as a method of criticism. It is important to note that criticism is not confined to empirical falsification. Popper’s reputation as a positivist stems from a misrepresentation of his argument according to which only empirical statements should be considered knowledge claims. Metaphysical or moral claims, on the other hand, are not falsifiable, therefore not open to criticism, and hence irrelevant for the growth of knowledge.5 If this were an accurate charge, his philosophy would indeed be of only marginal significance for any area of knowledge such as political theory that is not an empirical science. However, not only empirical hypotheses but also any conjecture, be it metaphysical, moral, or political, may be erroneous and open to criticism. Moreover, empirical falsification is only one among several strategies of criticism. W.W. Bartley has distilled four major strategies of nonjustificational criticism—that is, ways of criticizing empirical theories, metaphysical beliefs, or political norms that do not rely on any epistemological authority. We have at least four means of eliminating error by criticizing our conjectures or speculations. These checks are listed in descending order according to their importance and the rigor with which they may be applied. (1) The check of logic: Is the theory in question consistent? (2) The check of sense


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observation: Is the theory empirically refutable by some sense observation? And if it is, do we know of any refutations of it? (3) The check of scientific theory: Is the theory, whether or not it is in conflict with sense observation, in conflict with any scientific hypotheses? (4) The check of the problem: What problem is the theory intended to solve? Does it do so successfully? (Bartley 1984, 127, italics in original) The “check of the problem” is a largely neglected element of Popper’s philosophy, as Bartley points out (ibid., 202), but it is a promising methodological tool for the critical evaluation of political theories. What does it entail? [E]very rational theory, no matter whether scientific or philosophical, is rational in so far as it tries to solve certain problems. A theory is comprehensible and reasonable only in its relation to a given problem-situation, and it can be rationally discussed only by discussing this relation. . . . Now if we look upon a theory as a proposed solution to a set of problems, then the theory immediately lends itself to critical discussion—even if it is nonempirical and irrefutable. For we can now ask questions such as, Does it solve the problem? Does it solve it better than other theories? Has it perhaps merely shifted the problem? Is the solution simple? Is it fruitful? Does it perhaps contradict other philosophical theories needed for solving other problems? (Popper 1968, 199, italics in original) It is this particular strategy of criticism that I now apply to Popper’s own approach to political theory. As Popper, quoting Karl Reinhardt, has suggested with respect to the study of the history of philosophy, “The history of philosophy is the history of its problems. If you want to explain Heraclitus, tell us first what his problem was (ibid, 159).” This basic suggestion is put to work in the next section. For the purpose at hand, it may be rendered thus: “The history of political theory is the history of its problems. If you want to explain and criticize the theory of sovereignty, tell us first what the problem was it came to solve.” The Limitations of Popper’s Formulation of the Fundamental Problem of Political Theory Popper’s alternative approach to political theory, according to which the institutional control of rulers is the most fundamental problem of political theory, ignores two problems that political theorists have considered equally if not more fundamental in a variety of different problem situations: the problem of order and the related problem of legitimacy. The assumption here is not that

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these standard or perennial problems of political theory are necessarily more important than that of institutional control or other conceivable problems (e.g., political, social, and economic equality, or collective rights versus individual rights). But I focus on these because they are the two fundamental problems for which the theory of sovereignty was designed. The first problem is important because before we can begin discussing mechanisms and institutions for the control of political rulers, there must first be a viable framework of political power, that is, a political order. Where there is no effective power structure, there are no rulers to be controlled (though in all likelihood there will exist warlords and bandits). The best example is perhaps the so-called international order, in which war and instability are the result not of the abuse of power by the sovereign ruler but of the absence of such a power, that is, the lack of an overarching and effective formal political order (ch. 6 below; Held 1995). The second problem is important since, however intellectually convincing our arguments in favor of such values as individual freedom, tolerance, and equality, in order to provide a basis for political authority they must be found sufficiently acceptable by the members of the society or societies in question, that is, they must be considered legitimate. Where significant portions of a society do not sufficiently identify with liberal values, a political order based on these values will not easily survive, especially if they are perceived to be at odds with other fundamental values. This problem has become even more acute with the rise to global dominance of neoliberalism. Hence only if the problems of order and legitimacy have been solved or for the time being happened to be unproblematic could one claim that the problem of the institutional control of rulers is the most fundamental problem of political theory. The problems of order and legitimacy have traditionally been discussed under the heading of who should rule. Whether and to what extent the answers proffered by political theorists are adequate depends primarily on the problem situation at hand. While it is quite acceptable to speak of perennial problems in political theory—such as the problems of order and legitimacy as well as the effective control of the rulers—it makes little sense to speak of perennial problem situations. The relative importance of one or the other problem is primarily a historical or empirical question. And it follows that the relevance of any conceptualization and problem solution provided by a political theory is subject to the same historical and empirical limitations.6 Popper’s claim that the question of who should rule has dominated political theory is uncontroversial. His criticism, however, that it has been the result of a mistaken problem formulation is unacceptable in so far as a given problem situation includes the problems of order and legitimacy. Both, as


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the following historical section demonstrates, are different types of problems that cannot simply be reduced to the problem of institutional control. As a result, Popper’s critique is in an important sense misdirected. The theory of sovereignty presents a solution to political problems the fundamental importance of which he failed to recognize. More specifically, his strong claim that “every theory of sovereignty omits to face a more fundamental question—the question, namely, whether we should not strive towards institutional control of the rulers by balancing their powers against other powers” is problematic for at least two reasons. First, it is historically inaccurate in assuming that there is somehow a necessary relationship between employing a theory of sovereignty and ignoring the problem of institutional control. Second, it violates his own problem-oriented method by assuming that regardless of problem situation the problem of institutional control is always the most fundamental question. The remainder of this chapter focuses predominantly on demonstrating the historical inaccuracy of Popper’s claim by reconstructing the problem contexts of the early theorists of sovereignty. However, an equally important purpose of my critical assessment is to demonstrate the relevance and fruitfulness of the problem-oriented method for the social sciences and philosophy. Many classic political theories were written in times of fundamental crisis and profound change when the existing political order and traditional ideas of legitimate authority were under siege. Where the problem situation is thus characterized by a chronically unstable political order and an absence of workable alternatives; where the sources of political authority are fundamentally contested; and where political violence and civil war rather than the abuse of power by traditional rulers hold society in a state of profound insecurity or even anarchy—in such a situation, the problems of order and legitimacy will always be fundamental. However, Popper might nevertheless be correct in claiming that the problem of institutional control for these same reasons was ignored, and with the familiar, potentially fatal consequences. As this chapter demonstrates, this problem was not even ignored by those who appear to be the most uncompromising proponents of the doctrine of unlimited sovereignty. It was, however, discussed within a problem context that prominently included the problems of order and legitimacy. The adequacy of any specific solution proposed by political theorists of course remains open to criticism. Such criticism, however, cannot proceed as if no other fundamental political problems in addition to that of institutional control ever existed. It is a method of criticism that, as Popper himself has proposed, begins by reconstructing the problem context and attempts a critical evaluation of a proposed solution in the light of available alternatives.

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Order, Legitimacy, and Control: Bodin, Hobbes, and Locke This argument can perhaps be most effectively supported by briefly considering some general aspects of Bodin’s and Hobbes’s theories and their problem situations—two political theorists who defended the theory of sovereignty in its most radical and absolute form and who share a reputation of having been oblivious to the problem of the institutional control of rulers. I begin with a very general account of some common features in the problem situations faced by these two theorists in order to show why and how the problems of order and legitimacy presented themselves with such urgency— as a result of the “logic of the situation” rather than as a result of mistaken questions (cf. Popper 1985, ch. 14; Popper 1966; Moessinger 1999). Both Bodin and Hobbes witnessed personally the violence and chaos of civil and religious wars. This would appear to provide a simple explanation for why they advocated absolute political power for the ruler. Their theories might thus be considered excessive responses to exceptional circumstances. Both theorists, however, while responding to the manifestations of political disorder and fierce ideological struggle, did not simply advocate absolute power for the ruler. Rather, they fundamentally reconceived the traditional foundations of order and legitimacy that had failed to contain these conflicts. The traditional power structure in the Middle Ages, in most general terms, was multilayered and fragmented, composed of the universal secular and religious authorities of pope and emperor, the territorial ruler or monarch, and the nobility. “The older view of rule and power incorporated men’s acceptance of the sway of authorities external to the community—of Pope and Emperor. This acceptance itself followed, however, from the segmentary condition of the community, a condition which involved the belief that the community and its ruler were subordinate to God and the law” (Hinsley 1966, 100) F.H. Hinsley has pointed out in his classic study of sovereignty that in most of the kingdoms of Europe throughout the Middle Ages the king’s specific title to rule . . . was obtained from the consent of the community itself in the form of its election of the monarch. . . . The ruler was absolute by modern standards . . . but the principle remained: a monarch who in the judgment of the community transgressed the law of the community ipso facto forfeited his right to rule, deposed himself. . . . the need for consent whenever he departed from custom and existing law was strengthened at the same time, and in proportion, as the need for consent in the form of election at his accession was being weakened. . . . In their early struggles with their resisting communities, the monarchs were in practice too weak to set the principle of consent aside. (Ibid., 102–103, 106)


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In the late Middle Ages, the question of who should rule centred on the problem of demarcating the political authority of secular and religious rulers. One of the central problems of political theory in the thirteenth and early fourteenth century was the relationship between religious and secular powers, that is, the demarcation of their respective domains of authority. It was among the central problems of Thomas Aquinas, Dante, and Marsilius. De facto political power was dispersed and the legitimacy of political rule was debated in a framework of an overarching religious consensus. Hinsley has further suggested the following: An actual balance of power between government and community prolonged into the sixteenth century both the belief that the Crown shared power with authorities external to the community and the conviction that within the community not even the monarch was released from the obligation and legal duties which an external law imposed on every man. It was for this reason that the traditional conception of Christian society as being in some way a single political community was not seriously challenged until then . . . It was for the same reason that monarchical no less than ‘constitutional’ and populist theory within the regional community stopped short of the claim to total power until the same date. (Ibid., 109–110) Political conflicts increasingly undermined the stability of the traditional power structure and turned into civil war with the complete breakdown of the religious consensus. Even the most fanatical and sectarian religious doctrine was advanced with the claim for uniformity in religion according to its own standards. “[A]rguments justifying tyrannicide, based on the old popular right of resistance but sharpened now by ideological zeal, were at last put into practice in religious wars; and . . . in their turn, the advocates of the royal position at last claimed for the monarch that absolute Divine Right to govern and make law which had not belonged to him historically” (ibid., 115). The traditional political order, being fast outgrown by social and economic processes of differentiation within communities, had also lost its hitherto uncontested universal basis of legitimacy. The question of who should rule thus emerged once again as the paramount problem. The question was how much power could be legitimately claimed, respectively, by the ruler and by the people. There is an important assumption, which was taken for granted, that further explains why the question was posed in this way and not in the manner suggested by Popper. This was that the ruler and the people were seen as two distinct personalities, each having had a legitimate claim to traditionally

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independent spheres of political power. As these separate spheres of authority and privilege increasingly came into conflict with each other, this medieval dualistic conception of political order proved divisive, presenting a major obstacle for a viable settlement of the opposing claims to supremacy. The legitimacy of the medieval dualistic order was based on a unified conception of Christian community, which in the course of the Reformation had become essentially contested. The problem of order was thus compounded by the problem of legitimacy. Machiavelli took a crucial step toward resolving the dilemma inherent in this dualism by removing it from its religious context of legitimation and providing a purely secular conception of political power. His bad reputation as an apologist of amoral political rule can be explained in terms of this radical shift in legitimation contexts. The moral standards to which political rule was to aspire were not traditional Christian virtues but secular political virtues that would maintain order and territorial integrity in changing historical problem situations. An equally radical secular legitimation of political authority was not to be proposed again until Hobbes, whose political doctrines encountered a similarly unfavorable reception. It is clear, however, that this was a theoretically (if not yet politically) promising route, circumventing what had become the explosive ideological ingredient in the political situation. The greater direct influence of Bodin on early modern political thought may in part be due to the fact that he succeeded in dealing with the dilemma inherent in the medieval dualism of ruler and people—the problem of order—without fully cutting it off from its religious context.7 Another important reason of course was that Hobbes, in contrast to Machiavelli, completed the conceptual breakthrough toward a theory of the impersonal sovereign state. Machiavelli’s conception of the state was still based on the medieval dualism, that is, political power held either by the prince or by the people (republican government), or through an institutional power sharing based on the classical mixed constitution (cf. Mansfield 1983). Bodin’s theory of sovereignty can be easily misinterpreted as a resolution of this dilemma in favor of absolute supremacy for the monarch at the expense of the people. Although Bodin did argue for monarchical sovereignty and was convinced that political power came from God, he was not a defender of the Divine Right of absolute monarchical rule. The concept of sovereignty provided the basis for a new way of conceptualizing the nature of political community and political power.8 The central thesis of his theory of sovereignty is that political power cannot be divided, that puissance publique must be unitary and singular, and that it is inseparable from the state. The assumption that fundamentally distinguished this thesis from the Divine Right doctrine concerns the nature of the political community. In the old view, the community


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was conceived of as consisting of two personalities. The Divine Right thesis, by investing all power in the personality of the ruler, was a claim for absolute power of the ruler over the people.9 In Bodin’s view, the dualism is replaced with a unitary conception of the body politic as composed of both ruler and ruled. The claim for sovereign power is therefore not a claim for the absolute supremacy of one part over the other. Since the political community is conceived of as one undivided and inseparable whole, the sovereignty of public power is an expression of the character of the political community. This reconceptualization had far-reaching implications. Declaring all authority to rule within the community as puissance publique and subjecting it to the disposition of the sovereign meant that no one could any longer claim an independent right to rule. In the actual situation of the sixteenth and later centuries (not only in France but in continental Europe as a whole) it concretely meant the juridical elimination of the legally autonomous and independent rule of the nobility over land and people, the so-called feudal powers, and the end of an independent puissance publique of the churches (Quaritsch 1970, 269). As J.H. Franklin has pointed out, “Bodin wrongly thought that this authority must be vested in what we would call the government” (Franklin 1973, 108). He preferred a sovereign monarch who ruled legitimately, that is, who would give “proper recognition in the common good to the rights of his subjects and to the customary rules and basic laws of the body politic, in which accordingly there would be accepted limits on royal power, and in which accordingly the sovereignty would be exercised through institutions which knitted the government and the community together” (Hinsley 1966, 124). Bodin’s preference, it seems, is neither logically entailed nor in any way institutionally guaranteed by his theory of sovereignty. On the contrary, Popper’s criticism would appear to be justified in that by proposing a theory of sovereignty, Bodin omitted to face the question of the institutional control of the sovereign ruler. Although not in fact ignoring this question, Bodin’s answer may certainly be considered inadequate.10 The limitations on the proper exercise of sovereign power—natural law as well as the customary law of the community and the property rights of its citizens—in no way restrict sovereign power itself. However, they led Bodin to make “that distinction which further emphasizes how markedly his theory of sovereignty advanced beyond previous doctrines of rule—the distinction between forms of body politic and forms of government” (ibid., 122–23). Sovereignty creates only a certain formal structure of power; the substantive content or the quality of sovereign rule is in this way not provided for, let alone guaranteed. Sovereignty only makes it possible that binding decisions for all can be made and implemented (Quaritsch 1970, 512).

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Popper’s criticism thus only affects the substantive content of Bodin’s political theory. Its “formal” structure, his theory of sovereignty, on the other hand, in principle is open to being filled with a content that more adequately fulfills the requirement of institutional control. Hinsley underscores this aspect: It remained possible for subsequent writers to obscure his doctrine by misusing monarchical sovereignty as the justification of absolutism or by the populist arguments which they brought against this misuse. . . . But it was not for nothing that subsequent theorists would be unable to ignore the notion of sovereignty or to alter Bodin’s statement of it to any significant extent that the further history of the concept . . . [is] a history of its use and misuse in varying political conditions and not of restatements of it in different or novel terms. (Hinsley 1966, 124–25) The argument that the theory of sovereignty itself contradicts any institutional controls on the exercise of sovereign power overlooks that it is a normative11 theory of the nature or form of political power rather than of its exercise or content. Evidence for this claim from the history of political theory is presented below. It is in this sense that Bodin’s theory of the secular structure of power provided the framework for a solution to the problem of order. His solution to the problem of legitimacy, on the other hand, with its assumption that political power comes from God, that the political order is based on a contract between ruler and people, and with its emphasis on natural and customary law, remains largely within a traditional context. Both the origin of sovereignty (the problem of legitimacy) and its exercise (the problem of institutional control), however, would be fundamentally reconceived by subsequent political theorists on the basis of Bodin’s solution to the problem of order.12 Hobbes had little to say on the exercise of sovereignty that could be considered a satisfactory solution to the problem of institutional control of the ruler. To suggest that this was simply not his problem of course does not exempt his theory from criticism—whether applied to the historical problem situation of his time or to any other context for which it may be considered relevant. According to one influential reading of his theory (Macpherson 1962; 1964; 1968), Hobbes’s sovereign state was conceived as a stable framework for an emerging market society freed from traditional political obstacles for a life of bourgeois competition and acquisition. While the historical accuracy of this reading has been seriously undermined (Letwin 1972; Skinner 1966; Thomas 1965; Wood 1980), it does suggest a way of understanding a crucial aspect of his theory of sovereignty. In Hegel’s well-established


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terminology, it is Hobbes’s fundamental distinction between the state and civil society. The problem of order, at a theoretical and ideological level, resulted from the medieval dualism that located the sources of political authority simultaneously in the ruler and the people. Hobbes’s immediate predecessors13 had sought to evade the politically fatal consequences arising from the contest over the precise location of legitimate authority in practice by proposing a solution to the problem of order that did not require a definitive answer to this divisive question. [T]he legitimacy of government depended not on any a priori views about the source of political authority but on the existence of a “mutual relation of Protection and Allegiance.” Their aim, at the outset of the Interregnum, was to show that men should obey the powers that be so long as those powers performed their government function effectively. The second aim was that this “mutual relation” required that the supreme power of making laws for the political society must lie legally with the Ruler, whoever the Ruler might be and whatever forms the rulership might take . . . . (Hinsley 1966, 141) Hobbes’s logically rigorous statement of this doctrine of sovereignty was premised on a conception of the people that extinguished its corporate personality. He presented the people as a collection of individuals who by agreeing to give up their natural rights created an impersonal sovereign lawgiver, the state. This most radical solution to the problem of order is usually found politically unacceptable and morally abhorrent in its implications. (It has also become a canonical statement of the problem of order in modern sociology, as chapter 3 suggests.) In this respect, it is the single most convincing case from the history of political theory supporting the validity of Popper’s criticism of the theory of sovereignty. Hobbes’s radical statement of sovereignty, however, as subsequent theorists have demonstrated, is not the only logically consistent statement of the doctrine. (We will turn to this point momentarily.) The importance of Hobbes’s theory of sovereignty lies in its radical reconceptualization of the grounds of legitimacy. By locating the source of political authority not, as Bodin had done, in natural law or tradition but in a rational act of naturally free and equal individuals, Hobbes completed the shift from theological and “collectivist” to rationalist and individualist principles in political theory. As such, the theory of sovereignty, in addition to being a solution to the problem of order, established a new solution to the problem of legitimacy. We are, however, still confronted with Popper’s criticism: Granted that both problems may be fundamental, and that the theory of sovereignty

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as formulated by Bodin and Hobbes provides an adequate solution, it fails— and perhaps for that very reason—with respect to the problem of institutional control. Even if the theory of sovereignty is not logically inconsistent or paradoxical, it remains problematic because it is a flawed research program for political theory. That is, the problems considered fundamental do not include that of control, and theories following this approach therefore systematically fail to come to terms with it. Popper’s criticism, although no longer a logical refutation, may nevertheless have identified an endemic or paradigmatic blind spot in the theory of sovereignty. The theory of sovereignty in Locke’s constitutionalist formulation demonstrates, however, that it can provide a basis for an adequate and logically consistent solution to the problem of institutional control of the rulers—in addition to the problems of order and legitimacy. The prerequisites for Locke’s theoretical breakthrough14 are already contained in Bodin’s statement of the theory, that is, in his distinction between body politic and ruler, or political society and state. As noted earlier, Bodin wrongly assumed that sovereignty must inhere in the government. As a result, he was unable to propose effective institutional safeguards for protecting what he believed to be the rights of the citizens against infringement by the sovereign. The specific problematic for which Locke developed his theory of sovereignty can be characterized as containing all three fundamental problems of political theory in a prominent and acute form. In one sense, the problem of institutional control was perhaps the most fundamental of the three since Locke sought a solution to the problem of the right of resistance in a mixed constitution. As Franklin has described his problem situation, The Whigs . . ., refusing to acknowledge constituent power in the people as a legal entity distinct from Parliament . . . wished to hold that the king was independent of the two houses in order to account for the mixture of the constitution. They wished also to hold that a king could be removed for cause and that the law of succession could be altered. But they could not combine these two desiderata without admitting that the government had been dissolved. (Franklin 1978, 116) By vesting constituent power (ultimate sovereignty) in the people rather than in parliament, Locke was able to assign legislative supremacy (delegated sovereignty) to parliament as the representative of the people and partial supremacy to the king as the bearer of executive power. “The People was the latent and, on the dissolution of the government, the active sovereign; the legislature was the supreme organ of government so long as government endured, but could be dissolved by the People at any time; the executive


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power, held on trust, was supreme only so long as it operated within the legislature’s law” (Hinsley 1996, 146). Locke, to be sure, did not propose a theory of limited or mixed sovereignty in an attempt to exempt certain rights or spheres of authority from the reach of sovereign power by limiting or dividing constituent power itself. This would simply have recreated the problem of order the concept of sovereignty was designed to solve. Locke’s solution in principle to the problem of control through the theory of sovereignty depends on his clear and consistent distinction between constituent and ordinary power. The question of who should rule on this basis can be formulated as “Who should be the bearer of ordinary power?” The answer, whatever specific form it may take, does not give rise to the paradox of sovereignty precisely because the bearer of ordinary power is not sovereign, that is, free to determine a different form of government. The bearer of constituent power, in turn, that is, the people, for practical purposes cannot rule itself. Yet it retains the right to dissolve government and modify the constitutional principles according to which the government rules. It is thus a general solution to the problem of the institutional control of the rulers by establishing constitutional limits on the exercise of sovereign (legislative and executive) state power. It is the principle that “no representative body, no matter how democratically elected, may alter constitutional procedures, or freedoms peculiar to the system that are constitutionally reserved to individuals, without the consent of the general community. In one form or another, this principle is now accepted in all constitutionalist systems” (Franklin 1978, 124). Popper’s claim that “every theory of sovereignty omits to face a more fundamental question—the question, namely, whether we should not strive towards institutional control of the rulers by balancing their powers against other powers” must therefore be rejected. The first assumption underlying this claim—that there is somehow a necessary relationship between employing a theory of sovereignty and ignoring the problem of institutional control—is untenable. The reason, as I have tried to show in this section, is that the theory of sovereignty historically came to solve the problems of order and legitimacy. Moreover, if theorists such as Bodin and Hobbes may be criticized for having failed with respect to the problem of institutional control, it is not because they employed a theory of sovereignty. Locke’s constitutionalist statement, finally, created the framework for thinking clearly about the problem of institutional control. It was his theory of sovereignty that made the problems of order and legitimacy sufficiently unproblematic15 to focus on what Popper proposes should be the most fundamental problem of political theory. The second assumption underlying Popper’s claim—that regardless of problem situation, the problem of institutional control is always the most

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fundamental question—is also untenable. It cannot be the most fundamental problem of political theory in the absence of an adequate solution to the problems of order and legitimacy, as I believe the history of the theory of sovereignty illustrates. This substantially weakens Popper’s general case for his own approach to political theory. My critical analysis leading to this conclusion, on the other hand, reaffirms that the problem-oriented approach is a basic methodological tool in social science and philosophy. Some Contemporary Implications What was Popper’s problem situation when he wrote his critique of sovereignty? The Open Society and Its Enemies was written during World War II (it was first published in 1945) in an attempt to identify and destroy the theories and arguments that intellectually prepared the ground for totalitarianism in both its fascist and communist form. In this light, it is not surprising that he would have identified the problem of institutional control of rulers as the central problem of political theory. His was very much a defense of the classical liberal conception of order, though one that was informed neither by a careful reconstruction of that tradition nor, as we have seen, of the history of the theory of sovereignty, which he saw as so pernicious. Popper clearly distinguished two basic dimensions in the theory of sovereignty: one empirical, the other logical. As an empirical theory of power and authority, it has always been weak, and was actually never conceived as such. For even tyrants do not have absolute power. One encounters this limitations-on-power argument in the empirical claim that the sovereignty of nation-states is being eroded by globalization. However, it is a basic mistake to approach sovereignty primarily as an empirical problem. Nor does the type of logical critique Popper offers get to the core of the theory. The fundamental problems the theory of sovereignty was designed to solve were the problem of order and the problem of legitimacy. Both are normative problems, and the political theory of sovereignty offers a solution to these normative problems. True, a normative theory is not immune to criticisms based on empirical or logical arguments. But it should be immune to criticisms that misrepresent the kinds of problems with which it actually deals or fail to recognize the type of theory it represents. The significance of the theory of sovereignty lies in its normative and political claims. The central question for us today therefore is whether and to what extent the theory of sovereignty is still an acceptable normative solution for the fundamental problems of order and legitimacy in the twenty-first century. I return to this question in later chapters. By way of concluding this chapter, let me briefly touch on some dimensions of our contemporary problem context for which the theory of sovereignty seems particularly relevant. The


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question of how much power a state actually has—both internally and externally; relative to other states; in specific sectors of society and policy fields; relative to previous historical periods; in regard to nonstate actors in economy and civil society; et cetera—is at the center of the globalization debate. It is a theoretical and empirical question, and as such in fact much older than the globalization debate. Answers to this question will of course be highly relevant for any attempt to delineate our current problem situation and define the problems of order and legitimacy. But these answers will be theoretical and empirical answers, not normative ones. Thus the question, “Is the nation-state’s sovereignty being eroded?” flags an underlying confusion between the empirical and the normative.16 The question starts with the central postulate of the normative theory of sovereignty that the state should be sovereign, and then proceeds to treat it as an empirical question. As a matter of fact, a state’s sovereignty has always been more or less limited, yet this does not refute the principle of sovereignty. The fact that a normative principle is not completely satisfied in reality does not entail that it has no force or that it should be abandoned.17 However, it might suggest that it should be reexamined in light of the available theoretical and empirical knowledge. For the purpose of reexamining the adequacy of sovereignty as a solution to the normative problems of order and legitimacy, one should avoid the “descriptive fallacy” (Werner et al. 2001) implicit in the claim that sovereignty is being eroded and therefore increasingly outdated. More appropriate questions to ask would be to what extent sovereignty as a normative theory has become problematic, and what alternative theories could take its place. Moving away from a Western-centric point of view, the challenges globalization poses for the nation-state are not particularly new. A large number of postcolonial nation-states have never enjoyed a high degree of domestic or international sovereignty. This does not invalidate the principle of sovereignty, which, once achieved, few states have ever been willing to renounce,18 and to the achievement of which many nations without their own states remain committed. This strong commitment to the principle of sovereignty by even the de facto least “sovereign” of states, on the other hand, is as such no guarantee that the theory of sovereignty is an adequate solution to the problems of order and legitimacy. In the postcolonial context, for example, sovereignty in its present form is arguably one of the major obstacles to development (Sorensen 1999). The world’s currently hegemonic power, by contrast, seems to be exceedingly well served by the principle of sovereignty.19 Nor is the principle of sovereignty incompatible with far-reaching transnational integration processes, as the “pooling of sovereignty” in the EU demonstrates. Clearly, then, the theory of sovereignty as a solution to the problems of order and legitimacy has a rather mixed track record.

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As we saw in the historical analysis above, the decisive innovation of the theorists of absolute sovereignty (Bodin, Hobbes, and Locke) was their conception of a unified body politic (later to be called nation) with its own state. With the military, political, and economic success of the early sovereign states, the sovereign territorial state became and has since remained the basic template for organizing a political order. At the end of this long historical process, which was completed only in the last few decades (decolonization; dissolution of Soviet Union), the global system is now made up entirely of sovereign nation-states. As a normative solution to the problem of international order, the principle of sovereignty has many serious drawbacks. Nevertheless, as a solution to the problem of legitimacy of the domestic order, it has no serious contenders. Globalization may well be changing that, though as desirable as such change seems to some, there are few indications that the theory of sovereignty will be phased out any time soon. The globalization of the nation-state order has been “completed” only in the last half century. The next chapter argues that these large structural changes have been accompanied by psychocultural changes that are reflected in nationally distinct forms of habitus and a general personality type—homo nationis.

CHAPTER 3

Homo Nationis: The Psychosocial Infrastructure of the Nation-State Order

D

iscussions of the “modern problem of order” have as their implicit or explicit historical reference point the theorists of sovereignty we encountered in chapter 2—the early modern political philosophers whose thinking set the terms of the modern debate on order. However, what is usually of primary concern in discussions of this kind is not the theory of sovereignty, which is taken for granted, but the “image of man,” that is, the philosophical conceptions of human beings that these political theorists proposed or presupposed. The previous chapter tried to demonstrate that the propositions of theorists like Machiavelli, Bodin, Hobbes, or Locke are easily misinterpreted if they are not placed in their own historical problem context. Thus Popper, as we have seen, misrepresented and misinterpreted the theory of sovereignty because he imposed his own problem context (Nazism, Stalinism) rather than trying to reconstruct the very different contexts of the authors he criticizes. But Popper’s critique of sovereignty has not been influential.1 His own problem-oriented approach, on the other hand, introduced in the previous chapter, deserves more attention. It is utilized throughout the remainder of this book. In the social sciences today, the so-called Hobbesian problem of order is widely accepted as a foundational problem. The Hobbesian problem of order, simply stated, centers around the question, “How is social order possible?” Hobbes’s famous image of the individual in the “state of nature”— condemned to live in an unceasing, brutal war of all against all—has been elevated into a paradigmatic challenge for social and political theory. It sets

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up disorder and chaos as humankind’s natural state—a perennial threat to establishing or maintaining any stable human social order. This image of “man and society” is embodied in the homo oeconomicus that informs neoclassical economics and under the name of rational choice theory has made considerable inroads into other social sciences. More surprisingly perhaps, this view of the individual is embodied not only in homo oeconomicus but also in his traditional opponent, homo sociologicus. Both types of humans are ultimately conceived as isolated individuals in need of social order. In the economic approach, it is above all individual interests that, coordinated through particular social arrangements such as free markets and laws, produce social order. In the sociological approach, it is social norms, common beliefs, and values through which individuals are integrated into society. Whether this formulation of the problem of order was indeed Hobbes’s own is in question.2 In any event, the formulation as such has become widely accepted as fundamental. The individual “and” or “versus” society has been a constant theme in methodological debates in the social sciences for more than a century. How to conceptualize individual and collective dimensions of social life, and the corresponding implications for how to study political, economic, and cultural phenomena, do of course represent fundamental questions for social science. The problem with the “Hobbesian” conceptualization is that it reifies both individual and society, making them into two distinct entities working with or against each other. In reality, individuals (whether primates or members of the genus Homo) have never existed prior to or outside society but always as part of societies.3 Societies, in turn, do not exist apart from individuals—in fact they are entirely composed of individuals and their artefacts. We should therefore not be speaking of “society and individuals” or “individuals and society,” but in Norbert Elias’s memorable phrase, of a society of individuals.4 It is the so-called Hobbesian problem of order that turns a useful analytical distinction into a misleading ontological separation. “The problem of social order” is a generic name or category for what are always concrete, historically situated problems of order in particular social systems. In its contemporary historical context the problem of order refers above all to societies contained in sovereign states composed of increasingly individualized members.5 But “the problem of order” can refer to any social system, from the global system to the family, from organizations to loose networks, in the past and in the future. The globalization debate has called into question the future of the sovereign state framework, exposing the historical character of this basic pillar of modern social order. What has not been exposed and problematized in the same fashion is the historical character of the membership making up modern societies. In what sense are individuals historical?

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What I want to argue in this chapter is that neither homo oeconomicus nor homo sociologicus are sufficiently rich, sufficiently historicized concepts to deal with the dominant type of human beings that has emerged in the twentieth century. I propose as an alternative the historically specific homo nationis: the individual who is born and raised in a particular national culture, and who lives most of his/her life in a nation-state of which he/she is a citizen. As a product of the emerging global order composed of nation-states, homo nationis became a truly global phenomenon in the second part of the twentieth century after two world wars and numerous anticolonial struggles, all fought in the name of the nation. The globalization debate has drawn our attention to migrants, transnationals, and binationals who do not neatly fit this conception. However, it is important not to exaggerate the relative significance of such populations and ignore the larger historical trend. Homines nationis have become the overwhelming majority of the world’s population in the course of the twentieth century. I argue that this element of personality structure is not exclusive since real individuals have many additional personality characteristics, and it is not necessarily the dominant personality structure in every contemporary society since some societies have little national coherence and strong regionally, religiously, or linguistically based subcultures. Nevertheless, the “nationalized personality structure” is fundamental in most state-societies today. Homo nationis is driven, like homo oeconomicus by individual interests and, like homo sociologicus, by social norms. However, a particular nationality—or national identity in a broad sense—gives a crucial and distinct psychocultural specificity and political and economic context to people’s individual interests and social norms at the beginning of the twenty-first century. It should be emphasized again that there are many other competing and complementary elements that go beyond, or make for internal diversity in, distinct “national characters.” But for the most part “national habitus” expresses what has become a dominant habitus type in the world over the past century. The national habitus, a nationally specific personality structure, is the sociocultural complement to the nation-state structure. It has emerged gradually at different times in different places under different political and economic conditions and is constantly evolving. Being historically specific, it is unlikely to remain a dominant social habitus in the long run as globalizing political and economic forces seem to be weakening the foundations of the national habitus—the sovereign state, the national economy, national culture. It is unclear, however, when and how this shift will occur. One future scenario is the gradual eclipse of the national by transnational or global forms of habitus and postnational identities, another the further fragmentation of the modern self into a variety of postmodern identities. A third is the survival of national habitus alongside, or in combination with, transnational and

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postmodern forms of habitus. Of course all three may come together in particular combinations. In other words, these different forms of habitus are not mutually exclusive. The focus of this chapter is on revealing just how pervasive and yet largely unrecognized and taken for granted national habitus is at the current historical juncture at which globalizing processes dominate the collective imagination. One implication of the deep-rootedness of this psychocultural formation is that it is likely to stay around for some time even among processes of rapid economic and political “denationalization.” Psychosocial change is widely assumed to lag behind social-structural change (Marx, Weber, Durkheim, Elias). The national habitus therefore has to be taken seriously even if, or perhaps especially if, it is increasingly anachronistic and a liability in coping with a variety of contemporary problems of order. This question reemerges for discussion in subsequent chapters of the book. This chapter makes the case for the central place of national habitus in contemporary problems of order. It sketches the outlines of homo nationis in general terms. Like any actual problem of order, any concrete national habitus is historically specific. It would therefore be mistaken to generalize that the national habitus has the function of integrating modern society. It may have that effect, but not necessarily so. Take extreme forms of nationalism that lead to violence and the collapse of state institutions. Or think of a weakly developed national habitus that plays at best a secondary role relative to other habitus forms rooted in religious, class, tribal, or local social systems. In a world system composed of formally sovereign states, what one can say in general terms with some certainty is only that, for better or worse, national culture matters—for political legitimation, economic development, social conflicts. This may not be much, but it does allow us to pose as serious historical and empirical questions how national culture matters, and whether it is more or less functional for a variety of political and economic processes such as democratization, postcommunist transformation, or global economic integration. Stability and change of national cultures and forms of habitus are historical processes that, as the historical record shows, have been unfolding in a rich variety of ways. The nationalization of culture and habitus has helped to establish and maintain arrangements of social order largely compatible with and conducive to progressive development in some states (such as Britain, France, the Scandinavian countries, Costa Rica, or Botswana). In others (such as the United States, Germany, Japan, or South Africa) this process was accompanied by periods of profound political and economic crisis, from which these countries emerged or are emerging only gradually. Then there are the postcommunist countries whose political and economic order simply collapsed.6 Finally, in a large number of states (most of them postcolonial states), the nationalization of culture and habitus has occurred in the context of colonial legacies, domestic

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instability and economic and political dependence on other states. However, regardless of country-specific circumstances, the nationalization process is fundamental in all states. As a central social process, it is involved in and affected by other social processes, including those referred to as globalization.7 But what is nationalization of culture and habitus? What are some of the major ways in which this process is related to the problem of order?

What is Habitus? In current debates, the concept of social habitus (the Latin term for habit) is usually associated with the recent work of French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (1984; 1990). Although widely known, his influence in the mainstream social sciences has remained limited, though social theory and postmodern approaches frequently take up his core concepts such as habitus, field, and cultural capital.8 Habitus to the scientifically minded appears as a somewhat vague and dubious concept.9 It has no place in the dominant frameworks and approaches that speak about preferences, interests, behavior, attitudes, values, cognition, rational action, social structure, and perhaps even emotion and passion, but not about habits. Why introduce a concept of questionable value when there are so many more rigorous, established, and operationalizable concepts that refer to the same things?10 First, the concept of habit does not have to be newly introduced into the discussion; it has been around for a long time. As the quotations that follow illustrate, the concept of habit has an important place in the works of the founding fathers of modern sociology, who themselves continued a tradition going back to the Enlightenment and Greek philosophy. The concept was embraced equally by English utilitarians and German idealists. “Despite the efforts of biologists, physiologists, and psychologists to carry habit off in other directions, it remained a standard term by which social theorists captured ‘those forms of action in the social world that were seen to be less reflective and more self-actuating.’ It was in this sense that Emile Durkheim and Max Weber employed the term (Camic 1986, 1050, emphasis added).” Take the following short examples, extracted from the detailed analysis of Camic (1986). First, Durkheim: [I]t is not enough to direct our attention to the superficial portion of our consciousness; for the sentiments, the ideas which come to the surface are not, by far, those which have the most influence on our conduct. What must be reached are the habits . . . these are the real forces which govern us. (Durkheim 1905–06, 152; quoted in Camic 1986, 1052)

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Contrary to the assumptions underlying homo oeconomicus, Weber considered habit to be of “far-reaching economic significance” in regulating the behavior and interaction of economic units, as well as fundamental attitudes toward work and what is now called “professionalism.” More generally, he saw habit as crucially involved in various processes of group formation, such as “mere custom . . . facilitating intermarriage,” “the formation of feelings of ‘ethnic’ identification,” and “the creation of community” (Weber 1922a, 320 (transl. by Camic); 1922b, 187; quoted in Camic 1986, 1058). “[T]he great bulk of all everyday action [approaches an] almost automatic reaction to habitual stimuli which guide behavior in a course which has been repeatedly followed” (Weber 1922a, 337; quoted in Camic 1986, 1059). In Weber’s view, habit was also at the foundation of modern political and legal orders: “the broad mass of the participants act in a way corresponding to legal norms, not out of obedience regarded as a legal obligation, but [in a great many cases] merely as a result of unreflective habit” (Weber 1922a, 31, 312 (transl. by Camic); 1922b, 16, 182; quoted in Camic 1986, 1058–59). Camic suggests that Weber was interested in “the larger social and cultural conditions under which general societal patterns of habitual action wax and wane.” He argues that “Weber’s writings on traditionalism may be seen as developing (in a way that, to my knowledge, has nowhere been matched), a macrosociological perspective on habit” (Camic 1986, 1062). Not only Durkheim and Weber, but also Marx, Comte, Tönnies, Simmel, and other social theorists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century (Camic 1986, 1050) employed the concept of habit in the broad sense of guiding action, influencing the emergence of norms, and posing powerful inertia to social change.11 The concept became a victim in the struggle of early twentieth-century American sociologists for academic influence and recognition as a discipline in universities. Since more-established disciplines like psychology and physiology had occupied the field with their own conceptions and explanations of habit, it was abandoned by sociologists largely for political reasons. The preeminent American sociologist Talcott Parsons, probably the most influential Weber interpreter and translator in the Anglo-Saxon world, was a key figure in banishing the concept from the modern sociologist’s toolbox. Readers of English translations of Durkheim and Weber in the latter half of the twentieth century were ill-prepared to recognize the concept of habit as of any particular significance for the social sciences, even though it played such an important role in their works (Camic 1986). Second, it is questionable whether established concepts such as norms, behaviour, attitudes, values, and so on can capture certain social phenomena as well as or even better than the concept of habit. Habits are involved in the

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whole spectrum of human action and interaction—from habits of obedience to habits of economic behaviour. They can be cognitive, emotional, or moral. Habitual action, it is important to stress, is not the opposite of reflexive or conscious or rational action. In fact, habitual and nonhabitual processes usually occur in mixed form. In its most general form, habitus therefore encompasses norms, behavior, attitudes, values, and interests in “a durable and generalized disposition that suffuses a person’s action throughout an entire domain of life or, in the extreme instance, throughout all of life” (Camic 1986, 1046). Third, the concept of habitus has played a central role in the work of another mid-twentieth-century sociologist who has become more widely recognized only in the last two decades.12 In his two-volume The Process of Civilization (1939/1978–1982; first published in German in 1936), Norbert Elias undertakes a sweeping and unique historical analysis of the emergence of Western civilization. Two aspects of his work make it particularly exceptional. Elias explores the psychocultural changes in human personality structure over a period of several centuries, conceiving of the civilizing process in terms of specific changes in human behavior. He examines everyday behaviors from eating habits and spitting etiquette to more general dispositions of aggressiveness and changing gender relationships. Fascinating as a historical study of changing habits, Elias does more than document these profound habitus changes. He simultaneously provides a structural analysis of social change in the context of which those fundamental changes in habits occurred. His ambition is to demonstrate key relationships between social structural and psychocultural change. The general process of civilization he traces is the gradual evolution of more differentiated and integrated social structures. Elias is clear, however, that there is no overall historical necessity at work that drives societies towards ever higher levels of differentiation and integration. There are periods and places in which we can observe long-term stagnation or de-differentiation and disintegration. Elias poses two central questions: are there changes in affect and control structures of members of particular societies that over generations run in the same direction; and can these changes in personality structure be related to social structural changes (Elias 1978). In the introduction added to the 1968 edition of Process, Elias delivers a powerful critique of Parsons’s system thinking that foreshadows many later criticisms of structural-functionalism. But Elias sees a number of conceptual fallacies still deeply embedded in post-Parsonian social science, such as the view that social systems move from one state of equilibrium to another, making social change into a disruptive transition from one state of normality to another—a strongly held implicit assumption in much of the literature on

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postcommunist transitions, as chapters 4–5 demonstrate. He holds the “national idea” responsible for diverting attention from what is changing to what is seen as unchangeable, that is, the nation—a fundamental idea that has subtly shaped the world views and modes of thinking of modern intellectuals (Elias 1978, 38; Hofstede 1996), notwithstanding their usually adverse views of nationalism. It accords with this development that many twentieth-century sociologists, when speaking of “society,” no longer have in mind (as did their predecessors) a “bourgeois society” or a “human society” beyond the state, but increasingly the somewhat diluted ideal image of a nation state. . . . A mixture of “is” and “ought,” of factual analyses and normative postulates, relating primarily to a society of a very definite type, a nation-state conceived in broadly egalitarian fashion, thus presents itself as the centerpiece of a theory which claims to be capable of serving as a model for the scientific investigation of societies in all times and places. . . .[As a result] the concept of development itself [has been called into question], the very consideration of problems of long-term social development, of sociogenesis and psychogenesis. In a word, the baby has been thrown out with the bathwater. (Elias 1991, 241–44) Some of these arguments have more recently reappeared in the globalization debate, especially those that have identified as problematic the assumption of the nation-state as the “natural” unit of analysis. How this criticism affects my own argument in this chapter that national habitus should be treated as central is addressed in the next section. Elias’s critique, however, goes further than this particular argument. He regards as especially pernicious the widespread static conception of individual and society in contemporary social science, and the related failure to adequately conceptualize the process character of social life. A major obstacle in this respect, according to him, is the extraordinary conviction carried in European societies since roughly the Renaissance by the self-perception of human beings in terms of their own isolation, the severance of their own “inside” from everything “outside.”. . . This self-perception in terms of one’s own isolation, of the invisible wall dividing one’s own “inner” self from all the people and things “outside,” takes on for a large number of people in the course of the modern age the same immediate force of conviction that the movement of the sun around an earth situated at the center of the cosmos possessed in the Middle Ages. (Elias 1991, 250–51; 260)

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This shifting balance between “I” and “we,” from almost exclusive emphasis on “we” to primary emphasis on “I,” this historical process of individualization represents one of the major psychosocial outcomes of the civilizing process in Western Europe.13 What is National Habitus? It might appear from what Elias says about the naturalization of the “national idea,” that is, the tacit equation of the concepts of society and social system with an idealized conception of nation-state, that speaking of “national habitus” immediately forfeits whatever credibility might have just been established for the concept of habitus. National habitus would be yet another way of naturalizing what probably has no social reality outside the minds of nationalists. In contrast to the widespread, tacit universalization and naturalization of the national, my reconceptualization attempts to historicize and contextualize it. Elias (1991, 209) himself is explicit about his own view. “Looking more closely one finds that the traits of national group identity— what we call the ‘national character’—are a layer of the social habitus built very deeply and firmly into the personality structure of the individual.” “National character” is not exactly a widely used concept in the social sciences. Bourdieu, who reintroduced habitus into the debate in the 1980s (1984; 1990), tellingly does not use the concept in the context of national character. He is interested primarily in the way a class specific habitus functions in processes of social exclusion, distinction, and power.14 So what is there to be said in favor of the concept of national habitus? The long-term historical trend toward increasing social differentiation and integration into ever larger social units culminated in the creation of a global system of nation-states in the twentieth century. As the literatures on economic globalization, international governance, and cultural transnationalization forcefully suggest, it would be naïve to assume that the current age of globalization will leave the existing nation-state order intact. Whatever validity the concept of national habitus may have had, many argue that it is increasingly a personality structure15 of the past that is being replaced by fragmented postnational selves and higher level transnational identities. In this long-term historical perspective, Elias himself predicts the eventual decline of the nation-state order. In the meantime, however, he notes that “[i]t may be that the nation-state-based we-identity of the individual in our day is almost taken for granted. One does not always remember clearly enough that the role of the state as a frame of reference for the we-identity of the great majority of all members of a state, that is, the state’s role as nation state, is of relatively recent date (Elias 1991, 206).

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Only in the course of the two great wars of this century did the populations of the more developed industrial states take on the character of nations in the more modern sense of the word, and their states the character of nation states. Nation states, one might say, are born in wars and for wars. Here we find the explanation why, among the various layers of we-identity, the state level of integration today carries special weight and a special emotional charge. The integration plane of the state, more than any other layer of we-identity, has in the consciousness of most members the function of a survival unit, a protection unit on which depends their physical and social security in the conflicts of human groups and in cases of physical catastrophe. (Elias 1991, 208) The continuing individualization process diagnosed by Elias, and the related fragmentation of identities described by postmodern theorists,16 would suggest that all-encompassing collective identities, especially national identities, are similarly being weakened and undermined. Individuality, it appears, is increasingly becoming a unifying characteristic and source of common identification for many people of different nationalities.17 While at one level this commonality is real,18 it does not follow that it occurs at the expense of or transcends the framework of the national culture. Powerful as the advance of individualization has been in recent times, in relation to the nation-state plane we-identity has actually strengthened. One often finds that people try to overcome the contradiction between their self-perception as a we-less I, as a totally isolated individual, and their emotional involvement in the we-group of the nation by a strategy of encapsulation. Their self-perceptions as an individual and as a representative of a we-group, as a Frenchman, Englishman, West German, American, etc., are assigned to different compartments of their knowledge, and these compartments communicate only very tenuously with each other. (Elias 1991, 209) This radical separation is facilitated by the taken-for-grantedness or “second nature” that national habitus represents for most people most of the time.19 Much the same seems to hold for individuality as a part of habitus. The timeless, placeless self, personally experienced by a growing number of people— the subjective part of individualization processes—is however firmly tied to its national culture as source and reference point. The deeply rooted nature of the distinctive national characteristics and the consciousness of national we-identity closely bound up with them

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can serve as a graphic example of the degree to which the social habitus of the individual provides a soil in which personal, individual differences can flourish. The individuality of the particular Englishman, Dutchman, Swede or German represents, in a sense, the personal elaboration of a common social, and in this case national, habitus. (Elias 1991, 210) The individual-versus-society dualism is therefore misleading even when we speak of the process of individualization itself. Individuality presupposes a particular cultural environment, and the central part of this environment is the historically evolved national culture. Homo nationis as an individual is constituted by his particular nationality—not exclusively, but primarily. If this argument asserting the significance of national habitus in contemporary societies is valid, then national habitus must be assumed to play an oftenunrecognized role in a range of contemporary problems of order. We explore this further in the next section of this chapter. Why and Where Is National Habitus Significant? The concept of national habitus highlights that, in addition to formal institutions and abstractly rational individuals, modern order rests on psychosocial foundations—what phrases such as “consent” or “nation as a daily plebiscite” allude to, with the important proviso that habitus is much less voluntaristic than consent or voting. These foundations may be strong and evolving, or they may be brittle and dissolving. In either case, they exist in every modern state.20 They cannot be reduced to individual choices or systemic structures, though both are involved. The development of national habitus is structurally favored by the global state system.21 It is functionally significant since national habitus plays a fundamental role in many social processes, as the remainder of this chapter illustrates. It is important to keep in mind that national habitus is not a general solution to the modern problem of order; such solutions are normative, like the theory of sovereignty examined in chapter 2. A social process like the development of a national habitus is a cultural fact, produced for the most part not by design but the result of unintended consequences of human action. A strong functionalist interpretation of national habitus as a “precondition” for modern society can therefore be misleading.21 The same holds for a causal interpretation that sees national habitus as a “necessary” outcome of the emergence of the modern state system. I propose to start with the more-modest assumption that national habitus is a form of personality structure that has evolved in the context of a global system composed of states, and that it is

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causally involved in many facets of how this global system works. Each national habitus is a particular, historically specific, concrete social formation that has evolved under structural conditions (i.e., the rise of the nation-state system) that are normatively reflected in the theory of sovereignty. This should give us sufficient room to examine the actual effects of national habitus on political and economic processes without overcommitting ourselves methodologically. I now present some more evidence for the existence and significance of national habitus by drawing on a diverse set of scholarly literatures. National Culture in Business Studies It may come as a surprise that business studies can be found among the academic fields explicitly recognizing the significance of the “national”—rather than merely employing it implicitly as the basic unit of analysis. Equipped with the assumption that economic actors are among the major driving forces of globalization, one might expect the management literature to be busy devising social technologies for the global firm, based on a conception of homo oeconomicus. Unlike their colleagues in mainstream economics, however, management theorists seem much more sympathetic to homo sociologicus. In fact, the literature sampled below suggests that homo nationis is no stranger to their field. Because management is about people, it is part of the culture of the society in which it takes place. Culture is “the collective programming of the mind that distinguishes the members of one group or category of people from another.” The core element in culture are values. Values are ‘broad tendencies to prefer certain states of affairs over others’. They are about what is evil and what is good, dirty and clean, immoral and moral, irrational and rational. Relationships between people in a society are affected by the values that form part of the collective programming of people’s minds in that society. So management is subject to cultural values. Cultural values differ among societies, but within a society they are remarkably stable over time. This is why I claim that management processes, which are embedded in a culture, differ from society to society but within each society show strong continuity. . . . While I argue that management in the 21st century will not be basically different from management in the 20th, I do expect a breakthrough in the development of theories of management, which will become more adapted to national cultural value systems in different parts of the world. (Hofstede 1999, 36, 39)23

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Nationality and national culture have been identified as significant or dominant influences in a variety of problems in business studies such as corporate policies and accounting practices, management styles and entrepreneurial orientations, mergers and acquisitions, employment systems, et cetera. Take the following examples culled from some of the relevant books and journals. In The Myth of the Global Corporation, Doremus et al. (1998, 9) write: “The empirical evidence . . . suggests that distinctive national histories have left legacies that continue to affect the behavior of leading MNCs. The scope of corporate interdependencies across national markets has unquestionably expanded in recent decades. But history and culture continue to shape both the internal structures of MNCs and the core strategies articulated through them.” Chui et al. (2002) report that in addition to economic performance, legal and banking systems, and other conventional variables, national culture has strong effects on a company’s capital structure and financial leverage. A study of local subsidiaries of a multinational corporation demonstrates the influence of nationally specific corporate policies and practices in relation to the environment (Guedes 2000). Salter and Sharp (2001) show that even apparently minor cultural differences in management control and accounting such as those between Canada and the United States can be the source of serious coordination problems. Other studies address the importance of nationality in behavioral attributes of executives (Hitt 1997), entrepreneurial orientation (Kemelgor 2002), and investment conduct (Thomas and Waring 1999). The global scale of many firms’ activities has led to a search for “best practices,” though as Hope and Muhlemann (2001) argue with respect to production and operations management, these practices are often not transferable from one national context to another. National differences, or inadequate national cultural fit (Weber et al. 1996), have also played a significant role in international mergers and acquisitions, from preacquisition management (Angwin 2001) to the integrating mechanisms used to establish headquarter-subsidiary control (Lubatkin et al. 1998). As Calori et al. (1994) conclude, firms are guided by their national administrative heritage when they acquire companies abroad. The design of managerial information systems (Ishman et al. 2001) and the information seeking behavior of banks (Zaheer and Zaheer 1997) have been found to be shaped by national culture. Significant cultural differences in national employment systems and national production regimes are reflected in relative job autonomy (Dobbin/Boychuk 1999) and levels of employee commitment (Hult/Svallfors 2002). In postcommunist Poland, the apparently generic practice of human-relations management in MNC subsidiaries is widely perceived as an Anglo-American idea with no direct Polish

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equivalent (Hetrick 2002). Proactive career behaviors such as career planning, skill development, consultation, and networking differ from one national culture to another (Claes/Ruiz-Quintanilla 1998). Comparative analysis of professions such as solicitors and pharmacists (Lane et al. 2002) demonstrate the determining power of national culture. While international airline pilots—true agents of globalization themselves—share a professional culture, they are nonetheless influenced in their cockpit behavior by their nationality (Merritt 2000). Contrary to the homogenization thesis in the globalization debate, internationally converging incomes are reported to lead to diverging consumer behavior (de Mooij 2000). Finally, in a partial reversal of the causal arrow, Foster (1999) argues that while commodity marketing and mass consumption are nationally specific, they also play a significant role in producing nationally distinct consumption styles that may rival political identities in defining a nation. Much of this literature is methodologically and theoretically problematic. Few authors examine the mechanisms by which the national affects the economic. The main purpose of this brief survey is to show that there is a strong sense of the significance of national culture in these different areas of management studies. Comparative perspectives on both explanatory and practical problems of international business seem to have fostered a strong awareness of the importance of national habitus. To be sure, the concept of national habitus is rarely used in these studies. Authors speak in general and often vague terms about national culture and usually do not attempt to anchor their concepts of nation and national identity in sociological theories. (What they might find if they did is briefly addressed below.) One of the most influential figures in business studies is the Dutch cultural psychologist Geert Hofstede, quoted at length above. He has conceptualized national culture in terms of five dimensions, a concept that facilitates operationalization and measurement through survey methods. The five dimensions refer to basic problems that are resolved differently in different societies: inequality, togetherness, gender roles, dealing with the unknown, and time orientation. The different solutions to these problems represent five dimensions of national cultures (Hofstede 1998). This approach has been widely applied. While I believe that the work of Hofstede and other researchers in management studies lends support to my argument that the national is of fundamental significance in a variety of social processes, I am skeptical about how it is being conceptualized in that literature. I claim for my own conceptualization of homo nationis and national habitus that it is both more systematic and deeper than the implicit and undeveloped conceptions underlying the studies discussed above. Let us continue surveying other academic literatures that take the national seriously, particularly in the context of globalization.

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National Economies and Economic Nations Based on a geographical definition of national economy, national economies do indeed appear to be dissolving insofar as economic activity, especially finance and trade, is rapidly internationalizing. But economic activity, especially production and consumption, still occurs in particular national, social, and political contexts that in turn provide fundamental resources and constraints for such global-level economic activity. Two literatures have made particularly significant contributions to establishing the continuing significance of the national economy. The first is the literature critical of the “new global economy” thesis (see, e.g., Wade 1996; Zysman 1996; Sorge 1999). The second is the “varieties-of-capitalism” literature that calls into question the convergence thesis, according to which globalization is producing one dominant model of market economy (Berger and Dore 1996; Goricheva 1997; Hollingsworth and Boyer 1997; Streeck and Crouch 1997; Streeck 1992). For the purposes of discussion, the following results are particularly important. Extension of economic activity beyond national boundaries does not equal the end of national economy; the latter, qua political, social, and cultural economy, continues to be the basis for the former. Generalizations about the national economy, now as in the past, ignore the great diversity of conditions for particular national economies. Just as individual political nations have developed particular national political cultures (Bendix 1977, 1978), economic nations have their own economic cultures. Let us begin by illustrating the general concept with a concrete empirical example, drawn not from an earlier, now largely discredited, literature on national character (Lamont 1995, 351), but from contemporary political economy. German economic culture is often traditionalist. Savings rates are high, and consumer credit, although increasing, remains low by comparison. Price competition is mitigated by socially established preferences for quality. Markets do not per se confer merit: social status and solidarity interfere, and security is regarded as important. Speculation is not valued. Continuous monitoring of one’s shortterm balance of economic advantage is not a social norm, encouraging long-term orientations and commitments and supporting, among other things, a redistributive tax system. Professional competence is highly regarded for its own sake; German managers tend to be engineers and authority at the workplace is based on superior technical knowledge. Collectivism and discipline have given way as core cultural values to privacy and autonomy from organisational control and market pressure, as shown by strong cultural support for short working hours, low

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participation in paid employment, and a qualification-based organisation of work. (Streeck 1997) The same author (Streeck 1999) has also coined the phrase “competitive solidarity” to underline nationalism’s economic potential in global competitiveness. A critical view of a-cultural, thin conceptions of economic society can also be found in recent studies of national legal cultures (Boyle 2000; Chua 1998), public administrative cultures (Kouzmin 1997; Macdonald and Thomas 1997), and national “repertoires of evaluation” (Lamont and Thevenot 2000). The general social and cultural embeddedness of markets is studied by economic sociologists (Granovetter and Swedberg 1992; Fligstein 2001; White 2001) and economic anthropologists (Macfarlane 1987; Gudeman 1986; Halperin 1994; Hefner 1998). The following points are particularly relevant. National economic cultures exist both as symbolic and as social systems, and as such can be mapped. Economic cultures have limited variation within a society, but strong variations between societies. Part of the distinctiveness of individual national economies arises from the specific patterns of interaction between state and economy that have evolved over time. These—in many respects nationally specific—roles of the state are examined in an extensive literature (Boyer and Drache 1996; Garrett 1998; Helleiner 1994; Iverson et al. 2000; Jessop 1999; Weiss 1998, 2003). This literature shows why and how even under the “rule of the global economy” political economies are still governed by states. While economic globalization is a convenient shorthand for referring to changing global economic conditions, the decline or even end of the nation-state is not the other side of this coin. First, economic globalization has been engineered by certain nationstates and continues to be shaped by them. Second, given the continued significance of national economies, states remain the central actors in all political economies. Another literature with a long tradition (Gerschenkron 1962; Bendix1977) underscores the centrality of nation and culture in state formation, industrialization, postcommunist transformation, and stability and change in modern nation-states (Bönker et al. 2002; Linz and Stepan 1996; Steinmetz 1999). The Nationalism Literature It should come as no surprise that the nationalism literature takes the national seriously. I briefly comment on it here in order to highlight some of the fundamental insights that this literature has recently generated. Although the relationship between state and nation is a mainstay in the nationalism

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literature, it has paid relatively little attention to the relationship between the nation and the economy.24 In part, this is a result of an unfortunate division of labor between students of nationalism, on the one hand, and students of political economy and students of management theory, on the other. One of the major results of current scholarly debates on nationalism is the demolition of the categorical distinction between civic and ethnic nationalism (i.e., good Western or liberal patriotism and bad non-Western or authoritarian nationalism) (Billig 1995; Spencer and Wollman 1998). The upshot of this insight is that nationalism is increasingly conceived of as a generic phenomenon that is in principle compatible with a variety of ideological content— from political liberalism (Miller 1995; Tamir 1993) to fascism, and from neoliberalism to new forms of protectionism (Helleiner and Pickel 2005). Another fundamental insight of the recent nationalism literature is that both as symbolic system (discourse and ideology) and as societal structure (nation-state societies), the nation has become a fundamental pattern that is constantly being reproduced globally in a variety of forms (Calhoun 1997; Gellner 1983; Kyvelidis 2000; Meyer et al. 1997). As Charles Tilly has put it: As in the cases of citizenship and democracy, nationalism exhibits the paradox of a general process characterized by path-dependent particularism. On one side, classic mechanisms of invention, ramification, emulation, and adaptation recur in the generation of nationalist claims. On the other side, each new assertion of nationalism responds to its immediate historical and cultural context, then modifies conditions for the next assertion of nationalism. Like all culturally constrained social processes, nationalism proceeds in cultural ruts that greatly limit the directions it can go, relies on collective learning, but by its very exercise alters relations— including shared understandings—among parties to its claims. (Tilly 1999, 418) A third insight is that the national is not only symbolic and systemic structure, but also political action in the context of concrete historical conditions, in particular the expansion of a global nation-state order (Beissinger 1996; Brubaker 1996; see also Tarrow 1994). These novel insights represent the beginnings of a conscious linking of the nationalism literature to current debates in political science and sociology. In light of the theoretically extremely diverse if not chaotic state of this literature (A.D. Smith 2001; Spillman/Faeges 2005), this development seems quite promising. That such bridging work is necessary is in part also due to the low level of attention the social sciences have afforded the subject of nation and nationalism in their theorizing. However, on this side as well there seems to be a growing

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awareness that the significance of the national has been seriously neglected. Let us briefly survey recent developments in historical and cultural sociology. Comparative Sociology Marx, Durkheim, and Weber did not provide much systematic theorizing on the nation that might have served as a foundation for subsequent studies.25 Marx considered the nation as a transitory historical phenomenon.26 Both Weber and Durkheim27 experienced World War I with its unprecedented nationalist mobilization, which in hindsight marks the acceleration of a global nationalizing process that may have only now run its full course.28 One wave of nation-states, mostly in Europe, emerged in the aftermath of World War I from the ruins of European empires, while the largest wave, producing the greatest number of new states, was not to come until after World War II as result of large-scale decolonization. The dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 may well have ushered in the final wave of new nation-states. Both the postcolonial wave and the post-Soviet wave of nation-building have attracted a great deal of scholarly attention from social and political scientists. The 1950s and 1960s mark a high point in the study of nation formation. Karl Deutsch, Reinhard Bendix, Seymour Martin Lipset, and others produced theoretically diverse studies that had in common a rejection of the universalism of modernization theory. Deutsch (1953) conceived of the national as a collective identity emerging from a common system of social communication. While strongly committed to quantification, he generated insights into processes that would nowadays be examined by discourse analysis. Much like the latter, Deutsch paid little attention to political institutions and processes. Bendix (1964), by contrast, emphasized interstate processes leading to the formation and consolidation of nations, while largely neglecting the generation and role of collective representations and identity in these processes. His identification of the “global logic” of nation-building is a particularly important contribution to the theoretical literature. “[N]ationalism has become a universal condition . . . because the sense of backwardness in one’s own country has led to ever new encounters with the ‘advanced model’ of development of another country” (Bendix, quoted in Spillman/Faeges 2005, 423). Focusing on foundational values, Lipset’s The First New Nation (1963) analyzed nation-building and collective identity formation in the United States, placing this case in comparative historical perspective—a perspective that was at odds with the dominant Parsonian framework of grand, often ahistorical and Western-centric generalizations. The revival of macrosociology in the United States in the 1970s, associated with scholars such as Theda Skocpol (1979) and Charles Tilly (1975),

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focused on bringing the state back in, leaving the nation on the sidelines of analysis. “In this intellectual field, a concern with understanding ‘the nation’ as a collective identity was suspect, associated, rightly or wrongly, with assumptions of value consensus which at best were untenable and at worst were coercive, and probably both. As cultural phenomena, ‘nations’ were peripheral to the main historical forces shaping modernity, since structures of domination such as the state could account for such collective identity formation and change” (Spillman/Faeges 2005, 425).29 A similar neglect of the sociological significance of national culture is also characteristic for the influential German sociologists Niklas Luhmann and Ulrich Beck. The major theme of Luhmann’s (1995) systems theory is the functional differentiation of contemporary society that has no overarching and integrating system as I claim is provided by a national culture connected to a sovereign state. Beck (1992) is preoccupied with individualization processes that run counter to the nationalizing processes which I argue continue to be fundamental even in postmodern societies in the age of globalization. Schwinn (2001; my translation) suggests the following in his analysis of the problem of order with reference to such systems and postmodern approaches: The differentiated institutions have to remain connected with each other so that individuals are able to pass through various institutions in their life times with continuity, in a planned fashion, and with stable expectations. Differentiated institutions do not provide this automatically but depend for this on the political system. Educational degrees, professions, access to the labour market, health and pension systems, are difficult or impossible to convert from one state to another. Which explains why even in the EU there is little international mobility. The capacity to plan one’s life remains tied to a cultural and state framework. Membership in the political system, that is, holding citizenship in a particular state, is the formal precondition for full and equal participation in other societal institutions. Membership (i.e., competence) in the national culture of a state-society30 is the informal precondition. Both citizenship and cultural membership are taken for granted by homo nationis. For nonmembers, such as economic migrants and political refugees, acquiring citizenship and assimilating to a national culture are therefore prerequisites for equal status. The ways in which these might be fulfilled in a particular state-society are not culturally neutral but politically defined in and through a national culture. This takes us to current debates on citizenship and multiculturalism. What do they say about the national?

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Normative Political Theory Most state-societies nowadays are to some degree multinational in composition. The debate in contemporary political theory has been between those who argue that liberalism can adequately accommodate ethnic and cultural minorities and those who argue that liberalism is not and cannot be culturally neutral. Accommodation and integration of cultural minorities under liberalism is therefore not possible on equal terms, thus requiring some sort of alternative, multicultural solution. The central question here is to what extent democratic citizenship can be separated from national culture. What is of interest in this debate for purposes of this chapter is the question whether and how national culture is seen to play a role in these problems of order. The debate has long been shaped by the abstract juxtaposition of “cosmopolitanism” versus “ethnic nationalism.” From the perspective presented here, nationalism (whether strong or weak, more civic or more ethnic31) is a general fact whereas cosmopolitanism is a utopian vision. Since this study is not primarily interested in normative problems of order but rather in the factual significance of the national, the cosmopolitan position is of interest only insofar as it claims that a political order can rest on a culturally neutral foundation. Veit Bader (1997) has attempted to develop a differentiated concept of transnational political culture that can deal with the weaknesses of both radical positions. He points out that mainstream liberal political philosophy has generally neglected cultures, habits, virtues, and practices. “Traditional liberalism (‘liberalism 1’) has underestimated the importance of communities and cultures. But liberal-democratic communitarianism or communitarian liberalism (‘liberalism 2’) has not yet fully addressed the exclusionary effects of communities and cultures.” (Bader 1997, 772) Can the institutions, cultures, habits, and virtues of liberal democracy be treated as separate from the national? Political theorists aware of the problem of universalism versus particularism have proposed “solutions” such as “liberal nationalism” (Tamir 1993; Kymlicka 1995; Miller 1995), “constitutional patriotism” (Habermas 2001, esp. ch. 4), “rooted cosmopolitanism” (Cohen 1995), and “multiculturalism” (Taylor 1992). Bader (1997, 773) cautions that the “specific meanings of these concepts are, however, quite vague, particularly when it comes to [actual] institutional settings and political cultures and virtues.” It seems that theorizing about the empirical significance of national culture has not moved beyond the implicit assumption that either it should be and can be ignored (mainstream liberalism) or that it cannot be dissociated from democratic institutions (communitarian liberalism). The former thus has little to contribute to the present project, whereas the latter recognizes the significance

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of the national for political theory, but leaves us with little more than the conclusion that “abstract or complete ethnic neutrality of the liberal-democratic state is unachievable empirically. As long as ‘ought implies can,’ it cannot be required normatively” (Bader 1997, 789). Conclusion In chapter 2, one of the central arguments was that the theory of sovereignty is above all a normative theory that has been frequently misunderstood as an empirical theory. This was one of the main weaknesses in Popper’s critique, and it is a fallacy that is widespread in the globalization debate. A sharp “positivist” separation between facts and values in social science has been rightly criticized and rejected. One of the unfortunate results of positivism critique, however, has been confusion about the distinction between facts and values. While this raises complex issues, the fundamental distinction for the problem at hand is quite simple. The norm “you shall not kill” is frequently violated. As a statement of fact, that is, “people do not kill,” it is false. But that it is empirically false does not entail that it fails as a norm, or that it should be abandoned as such. Similarly, the norm that states ought to be fully sovereign is frequently (always?) violated. As a statement of fact, that is, “modern states are fully sovereign,” it is false, as the globalization debate has once more underscored. But that it is empirically false does not entail that it fails as a norm, or that it should be abandoned as such. Standard confusions between normative, strategic, and empirical dimensions of social order compose the subject of chapter 4. Another central point in chapter 2 was that normative theories are developed in and for specific historical problem situations and should be assessed as such. The theory of sovereignty was developed in sixteenth-century France and seventeenth-century England, which came to be the two early prototypes of a form of political order that by the end of the millenium, three- to fourhundred years later, has become the only global model, that is, the sovereign nation-state.32 The great majority of the world’s population came to live under this model only in the last one-hundred years. It is particularly important for the discussion in the present chapter that these basic historical facts be firmly kept in mind. For the central argument advanced here was that the global expansion of sovereign nation-states has been accompanied by the emergence of a particular type of modern individual, homo nationis. The general significance of this argument is that this personality type should be seen as an integral component of modern political order. That is, in addition to the constitutional and institutional foundations of the state and its political economy, the nation-state has a psychosocial foundation.

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To be clear, this is an historical-empirical assertion of fact, not a normative argument for or against the desirability of homo nationis—though I have claimed that for explanatory purposes, homo nationis has certain advantages over homo oeconomicus and homo sociologicus. We saw that much of contemporary social science takes as its common point of departure a particular problem formulation referred to as the Hobbesian problem of order: how social order is possible. This formulation does not have much to do with Hobbes’s own concerns, but is an abstract, ahistorical formulation of what is considered to be the basic problem of order. It goes along with a conception of “individual and society” that separates the two types of entities such that isolated, “sovereign” individuals are the point of departure for the analysis of problems of social order. The abstract and ahistorical conceptions of “individual” and “society” underlying many individualistic and holistic approaches in modern social science divert attention from, or simply ignore, the fact that both individuals and societies are elements in the historical development of humankind rather than transhistorical entities, as their use as fundamental analytical categories implies. The concept of homo nationis underscores that modern individuals are historical individuals, that is, they have personality structures that are unlike those of individuals in other historical epochs, and that they should be explicitly conceptualized as such, rather than as transhistorical homo oeconomicus or homo sociologicus. The historical context for homo nationis is the world order of nation-states that has only recently finished incorporating all other social formations, from tribes to the remnants of empires. In order to conceptualize homo nationis, this chapter has suggested the concept of national habitus. It showed that habitus, which is not a mainstream social science concept, played an important role in the work of Weber and Durkheim. Habitus captures better what more narrow standard concepts like values, attitudes, et cetera refer to. The work of Elias was presented as a prime example for the analysis of psychocultural changes in personality structure in the historical context. Elias himself considered national habitus as highly significant in the contemporary period. The question of why a concept like national habitus should be embraced when national cultures are so widely seen to be in decline was raised. The answer suggested was that not only is this view exaggerated, but even declining cultures have to be analyzed as dynamic elements of global change. Similarly, how can a national focus be defended when social scientists are trying to transcend “methodological territorialism” (Scholte 2000). The approach suggested here differs fundamentally from the traditionally widespread and implicit use of nation as a fundamental unit of analysis. First, the “national level” has often been used as a synonym for state or country. Second, it is not recommended as a basic level

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of analysis, but viewed as a basic social reality that has not been sufficiently recognized and properly studied, especially at individual and supranational levels of analysis. Third, as a social reality it has to be in every case historicized and contextualized rather than theorized in general terms. Fourth, national habitus differs from “national character” in the important respect that it is not essentializing and homogenizing. Forms of national habitus are constantly changing, and they are composed of different, sometimes conflicting, elements (such as world views, values, or attitudes). Fifth, social differentiation and individualization as fundamental social processes of modernity and postmodernity are not inconsistent with national habitus. In fact, both processes depend on the moral, cognitive, and political resources that national habitus supplies. This chapter has not fully developed an alternative conceptualization of the national, a task further pursued systematically in chapter 6, which will introduce the concept of nationalizing mechanisms. However, it has attempted to demonstrate the theoretical potential of the national in the explanation of a variety of problems of order. A number of diverse literatures recognizing the significance of the national in their fields of specialization were surveyed in the latter part of the chapter—management studies, national economies and economic nations, the nationalism literature, comparative sociology, and normative political theory. There is little doubt that “the nation” remains of central significance in the global age.


PART II

The Challenge of Postcommunist Transformation


CHAPTER 4


T

he problem of order in its many forms arises with the greatest urgency and immediacy in times of revolutionary change. In relatively stable societies, the problem of order may not be perceived at all, or only in some partial or minor manifestations. This is why postcommunist transformations make such fascinating contemporary case studies. They raise the problem of order in several fundamental ways. Three former communist countries—the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia—dissolved into twenty-two “new” nation-states in the early 1990s. In this process the theory of sovereignty discussed in chapter 1 played an important role, albeit not in any theoretically novel way. As in the postcolonial world in previous decades, the doctrine of sovereignty constituted the central normative principle legitimating the formation and future existence of new nation-states rising from the ruins of multinational federations.1 How well the theory of sovereignty has solved the problem of order in individual cases varies significantly in that region. As the contrast of Czechoslovakia’s successful velvet divorce to Bosnia’s failed Dayton constitution illustrates, the principle of sovereignty as such is clearly not an adequate solution to the problem of order. This is because the problem of political order to which the theory of sovereignty provides the universal normative solution is only one of the several fundamental problems that the revolutionary processes in the postcommunist world have posed. Communist states too were in principle based on popular sovereignty and respected the sovereignty of other states in the world system. The dissolution of federations has complicated postcommunist transformation in some cases, but it has not called into question the validity of the principle of

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sovereignty as such. If anything, it has once again affirmed its status as a global norm. Communist states were thus not distinguished by their basic state form (they too were sovereign nation-states) but by their specific institutional arrangements in political and economic systems housed within that form. Postcommunist transformation has therefore raised the problem of order in the sense of a fundamental reorganization of political and economic systems in sovereign nation-states, whether already existing or newly established. Historically, this situation was unprecedented. There had been no previous radical departures from a centrally planned economy and communist oneparty state that could have served as models for reformers in 1989 and after.2 Yet the problem of order even in this sense of systemic change apparently posed few theoretical problems since the changes under way in Central and Eastern Europe were very quickly defined as transitions from an old, defunct social order (communism) to an existing, successful alternative (Western capitalist democracy). Thus the fundamental questions of particular interest to social science about the sources of stability and change, the properties of and interrelationships among different institutional arrangements, and their suitability to different contexts were considered satisfactorily answered by the apparently uncontroversial choice of a Western-style market economy and liberal democracy. The central question therefore was not what social order to establish, but how to establish liberal democracy and the market economy. This premise was widely accepted (Berend 1999; Szacki 1996). The postcommunist transformation debate, especially in its first few years, represented an often confusing mix of arguments and claims about the “how,” coming from social scientists (mainly economists), policy experts, and technocrats, as well as professional communicators and politicians. This debate was structured by an opposition between two basic approaches to the “how” of transformation—reform radicalism and gradualism. Useful and attractive as this simple distinction surely was for political purposes, it created a great deal of confusion in the social sciences. What relevant knowledge, if any, did social science have to contribute to the practical task of transition thus defined? And were social scientists acting as advisors or reformers justified in deriving political authority from their professional expertise? These are fundamental problems faced by any social scientist interested in producing knowledge not only about how social orders have changed in the past, but also in contributing knowledge relevant for “making change” in the present and future. The problem of changing social orders—in both the active and passive meaning of this phrase—poses a particular set of challenges at the intersection of theory, policy, and ideology. The postcommunist transformation debate presents a welcome opportunity to examine some of these fundamental challenges for social science and

Theory, Strategy, Ideology

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political theory. The opposition between radicals and gradualists in debates about social order, which helps organize the discussion in this chapter, has a much longer history than does the postcommunist transformation debate. In its modern form, it is a product of the Enlightenment faith in reason and the discovery that human societies are evolving historically. Most powerfully symbolized by the French Revolution, the problem of order henceforth became one of rationally exploring the conditions for, and indeed making, social change. Liberals and Marxists tend to be optimistic about the possibility of bringing about fundamental change in social orders, whereas conservatives maintain that conscious human intervention in reordering society is doomed to failure. The first tradition informs political radicals and reformists, the second, defenders of the status quo and reactionaries.3 Since theory, ideology, and policy intersect on the problem of order, it is hardly surprising that discussions, arguments, and positions relating to order combine elements of all three. This is very much in keeping with a long and distinguished tradition in political theory. From Plato to Hayek, political theorists have always confronted problems of order in their specific historical forms by bringing together the tasks of explaining (theory), framing (ideology), and intervening (policy). Not surprisingly, this has also been the case in the transformation debate, in which the two basic positions of radicalism and gradualism are a mixture of theory, ideology, and policy. There is nothing wrong in principle with this kind of synthesis—it is in fact the kind of achievement for which great political theorists are rightly admired. But not all such combinations succeed, and where they do not, they can create or aggravate rather than help resolve fundamental problems of order. One reason why failure can happen so easily is that comprehensive positions on the problem of order actually have to deal with very distinct sets of problems. Arguments, doctrines, and positions that are strong in the context of one set of problems may be weak in the context of another. Explaining, framing, and intervening are fundamentally different activities that respond to fundamentally different types of problems. For this reason, it is crucial to be able to distinguish clearly between them. In the transformation debate this distinction was rarely made. The result was significant ambiguity and confusion about the status of different claims, eventually leading many participants to declare the radical-gradualist dichotomy false, counterproductive, or simply irrelevant. This chapter reexamines what might have gone wrong. The purpose is not to resurrect a debate that has largely run its course, but rather to identify and sharpen the distinctions between fundamental dimensions of the problem of order that apply not only in the postcommunist transformation debate. I propose to distinguish between three basic types of problems.

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First, problems of transformation can be theoretical problems, that is, they may be challenges to our scientific knowledge about social change. These problems are typically dealt with in academic publications and at scholarly meetings. This is the world of the theorist and empirical scientist. Second, problems of transformation can be problems of strategy, that is, questions about policy packages and specific measures for reforming postcommunist economies and societies. This is the world of the policy advisor and the technocrat. Third, problems of transformation can be political problems, that is, problems of mobilizing political actors, building consensus, creating or maintaining order, pursuing interests, and weakening or defeating opponents. This is the world of the politician and the opinion maker. Evidently, these problems of transformation are overlapping, and in some exceptional cases individual reform actors have been at home in two or even all three worlds simultaneously. Leading policy advisors were usually academics—economists for the most part—who straddled both worlds. Former Czech Premier Vaclav Klaus and former Polish Finance Ministers Leszek Balcerowicz and Grzegosz Kolodko have donned all three roles academic: theorist, policy strategist, and politician. The sharp distinction I propose between the three worlds is analytical, but not exclusively so, for the distinction also roughly corresponds to different sets of institutions and discourses. Each of the three types of problem belongs to a distinct level of discourse. Each of these three levels of discourse—theoretical, strategic, and ideological—represents a level of social reality at which different goals are pursued, different rules of the game apply, and different standards ought to be applied to judge the validity, adequacy, or success of competing approaches to the problems of transformation. As figure 4.1 indicates, the simple conception of two basic positions in the transformation debate will be retained (vertical axis), but in order to underscore the crucial distinction between three types of problem and three levels of discourse (horizontal axis), I refer to the two positions by different names at each level: neoclassical versus evolutionary approaches in theory, radical versus gradualist approaches in strategy, and neoliberal versus social-democratic and etatist positions politically. This threefold distinction should help us disentangle the responses of the two positions to what are clearly different problems of postcommunist transformation. The discussion shows that a given position, set of ideas, or doctrine may perform well in dealing with

POSITION A POSITION B

THEORY neoclassical evolutionary

STRATEGY radical gradualist

Figure 4.1: Types of Problems and Levels of Discourse

IDEOLOGY neoliberal social-democratic


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problems at one level while having serious shortcomings at another, and this is a major source of ambiguities and confusions that typically emerge in debates on the problem of order. This analysis begins by explaining the three levels of transformation problems. It presents the typical responses offered by each of the two positions, and then suggests some standards and criteria for evaluating them. In a subsequent step, some examples are given to demonstrate the usefulness of the threefold distinction. The main purpose of this chapter is not to endorse one position over another, nor to make a strong case for particular standards of evaluation. Rather, my views in these respects serve primarily an illustrative purpose. My goal is to propose some conceptual instruments for identifying distinct problems and for developing appropriate standards of evaluation by demonstrating that a clear analytical distinction between separate conceptual and social domains of transformation may provide a useful mode of approaching the problem of order in a variety of contexts.

Three Levels of Discourse and Three Types of Transformation Problems The Theoretical Level The problems of economic transformation at this level are problems of conceptualizing and explaining the changes under way in the formerly (or still) communist countries in the context of a larger body of knowledge concerning processes of fundamental social change. Of particular importance is the problem of fundamental reform, that is, the conditions for the possibility of controlled social change. Perhaps not surprisingly, systematic theoretical reflection and analysis have lagged behind the production of strategies and ideologies of transformation. Nevertheless, any strategy or ideology contains a core of theoretical assumptions, and it is with this in mind that I speak of two basic theoretical positions in the transformation debate.4 The first theoretical position is closely associated with mainstream neoclassical economics. At strategic and political levels, as discussed below, it is identified with shock therapy or reform radicalism and with neoliberalism. Polemically—though not altogether inappropriately—labeled “designer capitalism,” the basic structure of this position is a stylized model of a modern market economy familiar from most introductory economics texts, an assembly of what are considered the “core institutions” of such a market system: private property rights, labor, capital, and financial markets, and the absence of barriers to free trade. According to this position, transformation is a process of transition from one system to another. Any restriction of basic

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market principles will reduce the allocative efficiency of the overall system. The systemic integrity of the market will be compromised if such restrictions become excessive. The implicit assumption concerning the problem of fundamental reform is that system change can be successfully engineered by establishing a core of formal institutions—but that it can be successful only if that core of market institutions is established rapidly and simultaneously. Neoclassical economics is of course not, and does not claim to be, a theory of systems change or a theory of fundamental reform. It is not even, as Douglass North (1990) has argued, a theory of economic change. As a result, many of the implicit theoretical assumptions this position makes about social change are highly questionable in light of existing theoretical knowledge generated by sociologists, political economists, and others—assumptions concerning the functioning of institutions and the dynamics of institutional change, the politics of economic reform, and the importance of specific historical, social, and cultural conditions. It is, in other words, quite difficult to identify this position with any serious theoretical tradition or approach other than perhaps certain optimistic early versions of modernization theory (Rostow 1962). While these are obviously very critical remarks about the academic credentials of the first position, this chapter argues that the strengths and weaknesses of a particular position in the transformation debate should be judged in the context of distinct sets of transformation problems. The serious weaknesses of the first position at the theoretical level therefore do not necessarily imply corresponding weaknesses at strategic and political levels. The second position we can identify at the theoretical level might be called evolutionism and is, at strategic and political levels, closely associated with reform gradualism and social democracy. Most often formulated in conscious contrast to the first position, the evolutionary position rejects the neoclassical stylized market system, stressing the great variety of actually existing market economies and their often-considerable deviations from this ideal. Accordingly, it is sceptical about any allegedly necessary package of “core institutions” and tolerant of dualism, that is, the coexistence of institutions from the old and from the new “system.” Transformation is conceptualized, not as a transition from one determinate system to another, but as an openended process that moves along by trial and error. The explicit assumption concerning the problem of fundamental reform is that since the attempt to impose formal institutional blueprints on society is bound to fail, reforms should be introduced in a piecemeal and gradual fashion and, especially in light of the crucial importance of slowly and unpredictably changing informal institutions, be at all times open to revision. Even the proponents of the evolutionary position would not claim that they possess anything approaching a comprehensive theory of socioeconomic


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change or of fundamental reform (see Poznanski 1995a, ix and Csaba 1995). However, their theoretical assumptions can at least be linked to established traditions, in particular neoinstitutional (Williamson 1985) and neo-Marxist political economy (Przeworksi 1991), Parsonian sociology, and with respect to the problem of fundamental reform, the anticonstructivist arguments of Popper (1976) and Hayek (1989). In short, concerning the theoretical problems of economic transformation, the evolutionary position is considerably richer and more sophisticated than the neoclassical position. At the same time, and quite possibly for this reason, it has so far not matched its neoclassical competitor’s clear, simple, and rigorous conceptualization of postcommunist economic transformation. This brings us to the question of how to assess competing positions at the theoretical level. It is important to underscore again at this point that the specific standards and criteria I suggest in this and the two subsequent sections are primarily intended as illustrations for my argument that a given position or approach should be judged with reference to the specific type of problems it is supposed to solve. The two competing positions are introduced in a brief fashion without much further discussion. The reader is invited to substitute his or her own standards and criteria should the ones suggested appear problematic— that is, as long as these standards judge a position’s adequacy in its appropriate problem context, which is the basic point at issue here. Clarity, simplicity, and rigor, while important scientific and intellectual standards, may need to be supplemented by other standards if we want to be able to distinguish clear and simple from simplistic conceptualizations, and rigorous from reductionist theorizing. Painfully aware of the essentially contested character of any such standards, let me propose three additional ones that may help us in determining the value of competing theoretical conceptions of postcommunist transformation. The first for any empirically oriented social scientist is surely the standard of empirical validity, one that is at the same time generally the most elusive. Thus, the empirical record of transformation can easily be made consistent with both of the basic positions outlined above. A second standard is the consistency of a position’s claims or implicit assumptions with the state of debate in related fields of knowledge. Thus, without having to venture too far afield, neoinstitutional economists have moved far beyond the traditional neoclassical conception of the market, not to mention the large body of relevant work available on various aspects of modernization and development in the third world. Third, and related to this, is the adequacy of a theory’s underlying definition of the problem.5 Thus, in light of our accumulated knowledge on deep or revolutionary social change, and particularly with a view to the postcolonial experiences of modernization, it can only appear as dangerously reductionist and simplistic to

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formulate the problem of postcommunist transformation primarily as that of installing a set of formal Western institutions. While the reader need not agree with these particular standards for evaluating the theoretical merits of various positions or the judgments made in their light, the crucial point here is that there are distinct problems of transformation theory to which we should apply a set of corresponding (“meta-theoretical”) standards. In short, what matters about a theoretical claim is, above all, its validity, that is, “is it true?” The Level of Strategy and Policy It is at this level that in the postcommunist transformation debate to date most of the intellectual activity has been focused. There is a variety of reasons for this. Evidently, with the collapse of communist regimes, there arose an immediate and urgent need for reform strategies. Moreover, with the quickly emerging consensus in many countries on establishing a capitalist market economy as the general reform goal, the debate could immediately turn to questions of strategy and policy—that is, to practical questions of what to do, when, and how. Once again, I distinguish two basic positions. The first and most influential position is the radical strategy of economic reform, or shock therapy. It is useful to separate the strategy’s substantive from its procedural aspects. Substantively, the strategy is composed of macroeconomic stabilization, price liberalization, incomes policy (wage control), privatization, and institutional reform aimed at establishing the legal framework for a market economy. Procedurally, this strategy calls for rapid, comprehensive and, as far as possible, simultaneous reform action. The logic of the radical position is that unless a “solid core” or “critical mass” of market institutions can be put in place, there is a danger that the reform process will be subverted by the remnants of the old system. This would cause serious efficiency losses and could bring about the reversal of basic reforms. The key reform actors are a small group of committed technocrats and politicians who have the capacity to implement the reform program. While in principle proponents of the radical strategy see the market system and liberal democracy as part of the same package, there are fears that the democratic process may slow down, if not undermine, the successful completion of market reforms. The second position is the gradualist strategy of economic reform. Substantively, there is no catalog or blueprint of policy measures comparable to that offered by the radical strategy. This is so for theoretical reasons (transformation as a necessarily open-ended process), but often also for more explicitly normative reasons (rejection of a laissez-faire model of capitalism as a desirable goal).6 In general, the radicals’ policies are treated with scepticism,


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though they are rarely rejected completely. For instance, macroeconomic stabilization yes, but not at the cost of causing a deep economic depression. Price liberalization yes, but much more selective, especially in foreign trade. Privatization yes, but not at the cost of deindustrialization. Procedurally, as its name suggests, the gradualist strategy advocates a slower, more selective, and sequenced reform approach. The logic of this strategy is that rushing the process of formal institutional change along, as recommended by the radicals, will not only fail to accelerate the crucial process of informal institutional adaptation, but will cause grave economic dysfunctions and foster dangerous political conflict. As a result, reformers will be forced to reverse excessively ambitious reforms and lose credibility. Placing a high premium on the role of social knowledge and a slower pace of change, the gradualist position tends to welcome the role played by democratic processes in economic transformation (Pickel 1993). What may be a considerable asset for a theoretical position may be a serious liability for a reform strategy. For while deep understanding of a situation may require a historically and empirically rich and conceptually nuanced view, political action requires a much greater simplification of reality and the conceptual reduction of the situation to a few crucial variables. There can be little doubt which of the two positions better fulfils the needs of “revolutionary” political action. Where the radical strategy sees only one unequivocal goal, the gradualist strategy sees an open-ended process. Where the radical strategy can offer a clear and concrete plan of action that can be rapidly implemented, the gradualist strategy remains vague and anticipates a lengthy process of change. Where the radical strategy clearly identifies friends and foes, the gradualist strategy fails to make a clear commitment. Yet while in all these respects the radical strategy appears much more attractive than its alternative, this may not be a sufficient criterion for the evaluation of competing strategies. One should be careful not to judge the merits of a strategy or set of policies primarily in terms of how well it fulfills the actors’ needs for cognitive simplicity. For after all a strategy is designed to help bring about a desired change in a given state of affairs. This suggests that we make a fundamental distinction between a strategy’s requisite cognitive simplicity, and its workability in general and applicability in particular. Let me propose three additional standards for evaluating competing strategic positions of postcommunist economic transformation. The first refers back to the theoretical level already addressed. While recognizing the crucial importance of simplicity, the feasibility of a strategy may be seriously in question in light of our available theoretical knowledge. Thus, for example, we have strong evidence from other attempts at wholesale social change that unintended

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consequences force such reform projects off their ideal paths long before their successful completion (e.g., the communist experience). Conversely, there is equally strong evidence that unless a decisive and irreversible break with the past occurs at the outset of the reform program, it will never get off the ground (e.g., the reform experience in many established democratic countries). A second standard is the historical record of attempts at implementing transformation strategies. Here we find ourselves in the midst of a heated controversy over the correct interpretation of the available empirical evidence. There are disputes about whether or to what extent individual countries have actually embraced shock therapy or gradualism (Brada 1995), and if so what accounts for success and failure. Thus, proponents of shock therapy argue that where the strategy has been implemented more or less faithfully, the results have been positive, while failures are due to deviations from that strategy. Gradualists, by contrast, argue that, as predicted, the radical strategy could nowhere be fully implemented, and where there have been transformation successes, they have not been primarily due to following that strategy (Murrell 1993, 1995b). A third standard for evaluation is the adequacy or fit of a particular strategy to a given problem situation. The radical strategy, for example, is basically an extension of structural adjustment programs developed for third-world countries and may therefore not be applicable to the specific conditions of postcommunist countries (Nove 1995). Conversely, as Sachs and Woo (1994) have argued, gradualism as practiced in China may not be applicable to Eastern Europe. Problem situations of course differ not only between Asia and Eastern Europe, but also between European countries of the former Soviet Bloc. Thus while the radical strategy may work in countries like the Czech Republic and Poland that have a political culture conducive to institutional reforms aimed at creating a market economy’s legal framework, the same may not be true for Russia or Romania. Conversely, it may be precisely favorable initial conditions such as in Czechoslovakia that do not require the application of shock therapy that would have been needed for Russia (Poznanski 1995a, xxii).7 While once again the reader need not agree with these particular standards for evaluating the strategic merits of various positions or the judgments made in their light, the crucial point is that there are distinct problems of transformation strategy to which we should apply a set of corresponding (“metastrategic”) standards. In short, what matters about a strategic or policy program is, above all, its feasibility, that is, “can it work?” The Level of Ideology and Politics From the definition of the political agenda to the legitimation of the political order, there is a range of problems that any society has to cope with in order to


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create a minimum of stability, internal peace, and external security, and thus the preconditions for the possibility of achieving more ambitious societal goals (stable democracy, prosperity, regional integration, etc.). Societies undergoing rapid and profound changes experience these problems much more acutely than do stable societies, in which established institutional mechanisms and routines may be so successful that these fundamental problems seem nonexistent. Ideologies provide responses to these fundamental problems and are crucial in developing and maintaining these more-permanent institutional mechanisms and routines. In this sense, the economic transformation of a society is perhaps above all a political challenge. The challenge of economic reform poses a variety of specific ideological and political problems: forging a vision for the new order, mobilizing voters for the reform program, reaching elite consensus on policies, providing legitimation of policy outcomes and the emerging new order, maintaining the credibility of and commitment to the reform project, and holding political opponents in check. We again distinguish two basic positions. The first is the neoliberal position. It has offered the vision of a clean and uncompromising break with the past, an initially painful but before long richly rewarding reform process. In this vision, superior Western institutions quickly replace the defunct one-party central planning system. This would create the conditions for both the political freedom and the economic prosperity enjoyed by most citizens of Western countries and integrate the East economically, politically, and culturally into the world market and into various global and regional organizations. The Czech Conservative Party ODS, the Polish Freedom Union, and the Hungarian Free Democrats typically represented this position. The second position is more difficult to label unambiguously, but socialdemocratic, statist, reform communist, and perhaps even “Third Way” are qualifiers that may convey its flavor to some extent. As was the case with its theoretical and strategic counterparts, that is, evolutionism and gradualism, this position is less coherent and clear than that of its neoliberal competitor. Once again, it has been developed in conscious opposition to the first view. While definitely in support of a break with the past, it provides for the possibility of compromise at both institutional and individual levels. A more-gradual and less-painful reform process is seen to be ultimately more productive, with the introduction of superior Western institutions whenever and wherever possible and advantageous, though certainly not in a dogmatic fashion. In clear contrast to the neoliberal position, the state is to play an active role, for instance by using industrial policy for economic restructuring and tariff protection for gradual world-market integration. Typical representatives include Poland’s Democratic Left Alliance, the Czech Social Democrats, and the Hungarian Socialists (further examples in Janos 1995).

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Seen from this vantage point, both positions provide a range of responses to these fundamental political problems of economic transformation. Embedded in an uncompromisingly anticommunist and pro-Western normative framework, neoliberal ideology, in particular the blueprints for the quick transition to the market, supplied a clear definition of the agenda, a fairly uncontroversial set of goals, and expertise concerning means and modes of implementation. Like any ideology, it explicitly excluded or implicitly marginalized a variety of concerns, problems, and interests—but to most people at the time did so convincingly, at least more so than any ideological competitor could. Whatever other reservations one may have about the neoliberal ideology and its contents, it has succeeded in bringing cognitive order to the postcommunist disorder: it has given grounds for hope that there is light at the end of the tunnel; it has defined a societal project that in many countries has commanded widespread social consensus; and it has in this way contributed to the legitimacy of the new political and economic order (Berend 1995). In all these respects, the neoliberal position has outperformed its major competitor. There can be little doubt that political success is one of the central standards for evaluating ideologies of transformation. An ideology may be theoretically powerful or strategically convincing, but if it cannot command the assent of the relevant segments of the political community, it must be judged a de facto failure—false consciousness or not. Political success, however, should not be the sole standard for judging transformation ideologies. For it is not only the initial building of consensus and legitimacy in support of a reform project but also their maintenance during the project’s implementation and consolidation that a successful transformation ideology should be able to deliver. Continuing success, in turn, depends on both the objective results generated by the reform process and the ideology’s political “corroboration” in light of these emerging facts. This suggests a number of additional standards for evaluation. Judging from election results and opinion surveys, there are few countries in Eastern Europe in which a majority of the population views the capitalist democratic revolution as an unmitigated disaster.8 This is no extravagant claim for success, but is probably indicative of a sufficiently ambivalent set of objective results that taken together do not seriously call the continuation of the general reform project into question.9 The first of our additional standards, then, concerns simply the results of the reform process that a transformation ideology supports, with the important proviso that we are speaking about results as perceived by the population. This is not to say that one’s independent judgment of these results in light of a reform position’s theoretical and strategic merits are ruled out or irrelevant. For instance, if we have good


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reason to assume that a particular country or group of countries is set on a course of economic collapse, social anomie, and political anarchy, current popular perceptions, although perhaps still quite optimistic, may be diagnosed as seriously distorted and about to change drastically. Nevertheless, according to this standard, the bottom line is public opinion. In the struggle to maintain political dominance and ideological hegemony, a given position will undergo constant revision in response to actual reform outcomes and public reactions. In some instances, this may amount to genuine revision as a result of learning. Thus, the original neoliberal idea that the state would have no role to play in economic restructuring other than creating a favorable macroeconomic and legal framework has had to be “reframed” in light of the large number of tasks from protracted privatization to enterprise subsidization that postcommunist states have found impossible to avoid. In other instances, contradictions between ideology and reality can be absorbed sufficiently through equivocation, concept stretching, and opportunistic reinterpretation. Thus increasing rates of economic growth after the post-1989 depressions are celebrated as reliable indicators of transformation success, while the fact of simultaneous growth in rates of absolute impoverishment is explained away as temporary and at any rate based on misleading statistics. The bottom line for this second standard is how well an ideological position can deal with the tension between adapting to a changing reality and maintaining its identity and credibility. A third standard for evaluation is the adequacy or fit of a particular strategy to a given problem situation. Neoliberal ideology emerged in the West in opposition to the postwar consensus on capitalism and the welfare state. Its often problematic correspondence to the realities of highly developed market economies has been further stretched by its export to countries of the third world and finally to the collapsing communist states of Eastern Europe. Nevertheless, it may be precisely this long stretch that accounts for the amazing success of neoliberal ideology in postcommunist countries. For no other ideological position has so powerfully symbolized the desired radical break with the past and provided the new—Western—image of the future. In other words, failure to correspond to the problem situation in a historical and empirical sense seems to have helped give neoliberalism its particular East European “fit.” Moreover, this was and is the ideological position championed by the international organizations and national governments that now really matter to the new democracies. For the new Eastern European elites, neoliberalism has represented the ethos of anticommunism and serious reform commitment. It has been an ideology of modernization par excellence (Gerschenkron 1962). However, it has become evident that not all actors in the postcommunist problem situation are served equally well by neoliberal ideology. In fact, with

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its ideal of an independent middle class, neoliberalism can be described as a revolutionary ideology without a revolutionary subject (Mokrzycki 1993, 1994). With its call for dismantling the distributive state, it leaves practically no social group unaffected. While even entrepreneurs are at best lukewarm supporters of neoliberal ideology, its strongest support base is among intellectuals and the intelligentsia. The mass of the population, though in principle still widely in support of the general reform project and its abstract ideological principles (Kolarska-Bobinska 1994), in everyday life employs sociocultural frameworks that could hardly be more incompatible with the rational, individualistic, and competitive tenets of neoliberalism (Aleksandrowicz 1994; Mares et al. 1994).10 Thus while many political parties, including reformed communist parties, in the region continue to profess support for the general reform project, neoliberalism is hardly an ideological program that appeals to wide sectors of the population. This is all the more true in the difficult “second stage” of transformation, in which the victory of capitalism in principle is no longer an issue but rather the emergence of a variety of persistent practical problems—privatization, social security reform—to which neoliberalism no longer provides a convincing guide. Evidently, there are significant differences among former communist countries also in this respect. The further East one goes in the region, the less attractive become even the abstract neoliberal values of anticommunism and Westernization. While Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia, as well as perhaps Slovenia, had a strong incentive to profess at least symbolic neoliberalism in order not to jeopardize their accession to the EU and NATO, political elites in other postcommunist countries face populations the anticommunist and pro-Western inclinations of which are considerably weaker. Here, the political value of neoliberal ideology is even further reduced. While once again the reader need not agree with these particular standards for evaluating the ideological merits of various positions or the judgments made in their light, the crucial point is that there are distinct problems of transformation ideology to which we should apply a set of corresponding (“meta-ideological”) standards. In short, what matters about an ideology is, above all, its attractiveness, that is, “does it sell and do its clients remain faithful?” Applying the Threefold Distinction The final section now applies this threefold analytical scheme to some standard confusions and questionable claims in the debate. In the political battle over reform ideas, the gradualist strategy is often associated by its opponents with antimarket forces and conservative or restorationist tendencies, and thus


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disqualified as a serious reform strategy. However, this claim represents a simple case of “domain confusion.” The fact that certain political groups find it useful to employ the concept of gradualism in their ideological discourse says very little if anything about the merits of gradualism as a reform strategy. Reform opponents, whether industrial interests in the Ukraine or former members of the Ceaucescu regime in Romania, are not proponents of any particular reform strategy but simply opponents of any market reforms they consider unacceptable. Using the rhetoric of gradualism therefore serves as a political weapon; it is not an indication of the existence of a coherent policy program. Linking gradualism to market-critical forces, even if empirically true, is itself a political argument that does not use standards appropriate for assessing gradualism as a strategy. It infers erroneously that the practice of a particular kind of political rhetoric is an accurate statement of policy strategy. As argued above, the two represent distinct sets of problems. In a similar case of “domain confusion,” radical reform rhetoric used for political reasons should not be automatically rejected as strategically misdirected or even as theoretically untenable. Once again, the fact that certain political groups or individuals find it useful to employ radicalism in their ideological discourse says very little about what reform strategy they are actually following. Our case in point is former Czech reform politician Vaclav Klaus, who certainly in his own words and deeds has kept the distinction between ideology and strategy very clear.11 Evolutionism as a theory of transformation is frequently taken to imply a “go-slow” approach strategically that in contrast to the radical approach is “reactive” rather than “project-driven” (Poznanski 1995b, 206) and abstains from the use of radical rhetoric (Murrell 1995a, 79). Although evolutionism certainly provides little ground for devising a strategy of rapid and holistic reform, it does not imply that there may never be any need to employ a rapid reform approach that is informed by a larger project.12 Evolutionism does caution us against assuming that rapid changes in formal institutions are basically all it takes to reach the reform goal. But evolutionism does not rule out the possibility that radical changes in formal institutions may facilitate, or perhaps under certain conditions even be an indispensable prerequisite for, positive adaptation processes in informal institutions (Grosfeld 1995; Eckstein 1992, 280–81). Similarly, neither evolutionist theory nor gradualist strategy carries with it any necessary implications for how to ideologically package and politically sell such a strategy. (On the question of abstaining from radical rhetoric, the previous paragraph has noted that ideological discourse may say very little about what actual reform strategy is being followed.) The adequacy or fit of an ideological position, as has been suggested in the discussion of evaluation standards above, depends primarily on a country’s

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political problem situation. The appeal radical reform ideology has had for elites and populations in the western parts of the former bloc with a strong desire and good prospects of “joining the West” is not paralleled in countries like Russia or Mongolia in which neoliberal rhetoric was tried but could not be sustained. Clearly, in addition to the relative political strength and representativeness of Western-oriented elites, a major part of the political problem situation is a strong cultural element through which any ideology will be interpreted and translated into action.13 It appears therefore too sweeping a claim that radical reform ideology and rhetoric will necessarily have negative implications for the transformation process.14 First, there are distinct politicalideological problems of economic transformation as discussed above to the solution of which neoliberal reform doctrines may make some constructive contributions. Second, such a claim assumes a direct link between ideology and strategy, a link that is in fact much more tenuous.15 Regardless of what particular ideological position is adopted, the essential question (from a “meta-ideological” viewpoint) is whether and to what extent its credibility can be maintained in light of actual reform results and popular perceptions.16 As argued above, evolutionism does not imply a particular strategy or ideology of transformation, and the same applies to the neoclassical position. In a similar vein, it is often assumed that success or failure of a particular strategy confirms or refutes the claims made by its corresponding theoretical position. A standard argument in this respect is that while neoclassical doctrines are valid, they are frequently not properly put into practice, so that a case of presumed shock therapy with bad consequences should not be interpreted as a refutation of the neoclassical approach and a vindication of evolutionism.17 This argument contains two assumptions. The first is that certain theoretical doctrines (whether valid or not) can be “put into practice” or “applied” in any direct and logically compelling fashion. This assumption is highly problematic. The difference between a theory and a strategy, as discussed above, lies in the set of fundamental problems to which they are addressed. Of course, strategies contain a variety of theoretical elements, but they also contain explicitly political considerations, normative choices, necessary cognitive simplifications, and risk assessments. Thus while the second assumption in the argument under discussion is correct—a case of shock therapy with bad consequences does not support or refute any theoretical position—it is correct for a different reason. The theory was not misapplied, but it has in principle no direct or unequivocal strategic application. This chapter has argued for a sharp separation between theory, policy, and ideology in the study of transformation and problems of order more generally. Although this reconceptualization of the problem context offers a means of dealing with a variety of perplexing phenomena and can help to clear up some


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typical confusion in reform debates, it does raise a host of new problems in need of further examination (van Dijk 1998). In particular, what are the links between the three domains or discourse levels? What generalizations can be made about these links, to what extent do such relationships differ from country to country or context to context? Do doctrines or ideas such as the two positions in the transformation debate retain some sort of identity or integrity when passing from one level of discourse to another? Or are neoclassical theory, radical strategy, and neoliberal ideology best treated as quite separate sets of ideas, to be studied only in their appropriate problem contexts? Theoretical discourse, to take just one of these domain linkages, is certainly not completely detached from or irrelevant to problems of strategy. In fact, the opposite is true. Theorizing often takes its cues from strategic and policy problems, and its insights are potentially of enormous relevance to strategic thinking. Since any strategy is supported by theoretical assumptions, theory can play a critical role in the policy debate—by identifying and removing intellectual blinders, explaining historically and culturally rooted obstacles, and on rare occasions providing powerful reconceptualizations of reality. Conversely, scientific knowledge can be used ideologically to impart sanction to strategic choices to which it is at best distantly related. The next chapter further explores the linkages between social science and social technology.


CHAPTER 5

Explaining and Designing Order: Social Science and Social Technology

Today it has become fashionable in the sciences to appeal to the specialized knowledge and authority of experts, and fashionable in philosophy to denigrate science and rationality. Oftentimes, this denigration of science and rationality is due to a mistaken theory of science and rationality—a theory which speaks of science and rationality in terms of specializations, experts, and authority. But science and rationality have really very little to do with specialization and the appeal to expert authority. On the contrary, these intellectual fashions are actually an obstacle to both. For just as the fashionable thinker is a prisoner of his fashion, the expert is a prisoner of his specialization. And it is the freedom from intellectual fashions and specializations that makes science and rationality possible. (Popper 1994, ix)

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his chapter examines fundamental questions at the intersection of social science and social technology, as well as problems of disciplinary divisions and the challenge of cross-disciplinary cooperation. The following analysis, like the previous chapter, has as its substantive theoretical and empirical focus the general field of postcommunist transformation studies. This field had its origin in, but has since moved considerably beyond, the radicalism-gradualism debate discussed in chapter 4. This is a relatively young field that has attracted scholars from a wide range of disciplines—economics, political science, sociology, geography, demography, psychology, as well as history, cultural studies, and philosophy. The field was

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quickly acknowledged as a unique “social science laboratory” (Offe 1991) for disciplines that rarely have the opportunity to undertake their empirical studies under “laboratory” conditions. However, it is not just the great speed, the profound and comprehensive character, and the contemporaneity of social changes in the postcommunist regions that qualify them as quasilaboratories. In the age of globalization few places are spared the powerful effects of accelerated social change. Yet nowhere have we witnessed such conscious and concerted attempts to steer and control these macro processes of social change toward a well-defined set of systemic goals—attempts usually referred to as “making the transition to the market and democracy.”1 The transition doctrines, plans, and policies that have been produced, have reached dominance, and have been implemented to varying degrees constitute what at any rate could be considered the most advanced forms of largescale social technology at the end of the twentieth century, as explained below. As such, it is the design element of these change processes that makes them particularly relevant for social studies in general. In other words, what enhances the quasi-laboratory conditions of the postcommunist regions is the fact that experiments in social engineering (to use Popper’s phrase)2 are in fact being carried out, if not under the direct guidance of scientists themselves, then by politicians, with the help of experts who presumably draw on scientific knowledge. Postcommunist studies is thus an excellent field for studying the relationship between social science and social technology and the challenge of cross-disciplinary cooperation. As the quotation at the beginning of this chapter shows, Karl Popper was a strong advocate for crossing disciplinary boundaries. He also formulated a number of important ideas and arguments relating to social technologies, such as the reform strategies and policies of the postcommunist transformation debate. Popper’s major historical reference context was that earlier set of revolutionary social changes that were brought about by communist regimes in the twentieth century. However, contributors to the transformation debate have drawn on Popper’s arguments. At any rate, his ideas are of a general, philosophical nature and therefore worth revisiting in the context of the postcommunist transformation process. Popper and Transformation Studies [M]y social theory (which favours gradual and piecemeal reform, reform controlled by a critical comparison between expected and achieved results) contrasts with my theory of method, which happens to be a theory of scientific and intellectual revolution. (Popper 1994, 68)

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The most relevant contributions of Popper’s philosophy to the field of transformation studies I take to be twofold: his problem-oriented approach, presented in chapter 2 and put to work in chapter 4; and his critique of utopian social engineering, which will be discussed momentarily. Popper’s insistence on the primacy of problems, both theoretical and practical, in advancing scientific knowledge relegates disciplinary boundaries and frameworks to the status of administrative divisions—the intrinsic theoretical merit of which, if any, is more than offset by their tendency to stifle scientific inquiry (see, e.g., Popper 1994, 1970). Popper’s critique of “utopian social engineering” (Popper 1966, 1972), developed in the context of the communist experiment of revolutionary social change by design, as well as his endorsement of “piecemeal social engineering” have remained highly relevant for the postcommunist experiments (Dahrendorf 1990, Isaac 1996, Kabele and Radzai 1993, Murrell 1995a, Murrell 1992, Pickel 1992a, 1993, Soros 1998, Sullivan 1994). In his Reflections on the Revolution in Europe (first published in 1990), Ralf Dahrendorf explicitly refers to Popper’s conception of utopian versus piecemeal social engineering as he reflects on the tasks facing reformers in Eastern Europe immediately after the collapse of communism. Dahrendorf himself does not believe that Popper’s conception is helpful for the problem at hand. “Even apart from the unfortunate connotations of social engineering, ‘piecemeal’ is not quite enough when one is faced with a constitutional challenge” (Dahrendorf 1990, 161). In a decade of work in the field of postcommunist studies, I have gradually arrived at the conclusion that Dahrendorf is right: Popper’s conception is ultimately inadequate and even misleading, as I try to show below. However, this is not to say that it does not contain valuable and highly relevant insights for some fundamental problems of social science and social technology. My own sense in 1989/90, while just completing a dissertation that used some of Popper’s arguments and insights to help account for the peculiar and unintended consequences of East German private-sector social engineering under communist rule (Pickel 1992b), was that the radical blueprints for the rapid transition to capitalism known as economic shock therapy could fruitfully be approached as contemporary instances of utopian social engineering. The proponents of radical, comprehensive reform doctrines as well as many other participants and observers of the events, by contrast, assumed that whereas the goal of socialism had been utopian, establishing a liberal market order was not. As a result, unlike his conception of the open society, Popper’s critique of utopian social engineering was not really considered applicable to postcommunist Eastern Europe. Proponents of radical reforms feared primarily the political and bureaucratic opposition of antireformist interests rather than other, deeper obstacles in the way of reaching the nonutopian goal of the market. But it was precisely some of

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those deeper obstacles that Popper had in mind when he rejected “wholesale social engineering” as utopian. True, the context for his original critique was the Marxist-Leninist project of social transformation. But the force of his argument was directed against a specific, holistic approach to social reform, not simply against this or that set of utopian goals. Thus his critique applies equally to the neoliberal project of radical marketization. In Popper’s words: “Holistic or Utopian social engineering, as opposed to piecemeal social engineering . . . aims at remodeling the ‘whole of society’ in accordance with a definite plan or blueprint.” The piecemeal engineer knows, like Socrates, how little he knows. He knows that we can learn only from our mistakes. Accordingly, he will make his way, step by step, carefully comparing the results expected with the results achieved, and always on the look-out for the unavoidable unwanted consequences of any reform; and he will avoid undertaking reforms of a complexity and scope which make it impossible for him to disentangle causes and effects, and to know what he is really doing. (Popper 1976, 67) Popper’s epistemological argument seems to condemn any comprehensive and fundamental social reform project, including postcommunist marketization and democratization, as utopian, for the systemic changes are necessarily of a complexity and scope that transcend the careful, step-by-step method he favors. However, the crux of his argument against the holistic approach is the claim that such wholesale changes turn out to be impossible to accomplish in practice. “The greater the holistic changes attempted, the greater are their unintended and largely unexpected repercussions, forcing upon the holistic engineer the expedient of piecemeal improvization” (italics in original). [I]t continually leads the Utopian engineer to do things which he did not intend to do; that is to say, it leads to the notorious phenomenon of unplanned planning. Thus the difference between Utopian and piecemeal social engineering turns out, in practice, to be a difference not so much in scale and scope as in caution and preparedness for unavoidable surprises. One could also say that, in practice, the two methods differ in other ways than in scale and scope—in opposition to what we are led to expect if we compare the two doctrines concerning the proper methods of rational social reform. (Popper 1976, 68–69, italics in original) This fundamental insight, derived from Popper’s fallibilist epistemology, contributes significantly to our understanding of why radical liberalization


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programs in so many former communist countries were never fully implemented (Pickel and Wiesenthal 1997). They were conceived as a revolutionary process of “planned unplanning” and have ended up, precisely as Popper predicts, as processes of “unplanned planning.” Yet this central insight alone does not help us explain the very significant differences in levels of success and failure attained by different reform countries in their clearly “holistic”—that is, comprehensive and large-scale, systemic—reform projects. The reason for this is that Popper’s epistemological insight is only one, albeit important, part of the story. It concerns directly only the limitations of our social scientific knowledge. That epistemological fallibilism has implications for social technology should be evident. However, what these implications are, and more specifically, what the relationship between social science and social technology is, could be, and should be, is barely examined in Popper’s work (see, however, Agassi 1985, Albert 1976, Bunge 1998, Dryzek 1990, Fischer 1993). Radical reformist doctrines of comprehensive liberalization (“planned unplanning”) were not primarily scientific claims (though all too often they were claimed to have scientific credentials). Rather, they were above all action plans for key reform policies and political platforms in the struggle for political power and ideological hegemony. As such, as argued in the previous chapter, they should not be subject to the same standards and criticisms as scientific theories. The Fundamental Problems of Postcommunist Transformation The work of the scientist does not start with the collection of data, but with the sensitive selection of a promising problem—a problem that is significant within the current problem situation, which in its turn is entirely dominated by our theories. . . . Scientific problems are preceded, of course, by pre-scientific problems, and especially by practical problems. (Popper 1994, 155–56) In my attempt to come to grips with the status and function of reformist doctrines in the postcommunist context, it became increasingly clear to me that their significance and power in the debate had little to do with their scientific credentials. Indeed, radical reform advocates have typically combined mainstream neoclassical economics, historicism, and market essentialism into an impressive-looking “scientific” foundation for systemic transformation that serious social scientists could not possibly accept as such (ch. 4; Pickel 1997). Yet, radical market reformism has remained politically dominant, and it has arguably produced both transformation successes and failures. How could a scientifically weak doctrine remain so strong politically and even be

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implicated in some policy successes? In order to answer this somewhat puzzling question, I draw on the broadened problem-oriented approach developed in chapters 2 and 4. Postcommunist transformation processes relate to a host of fundamental theoretical problems in the social sciences—probably the main reason why they have become such an attractive field of study for scholars in these disciplines. Reform doctrines can be examined in terms of their theoretical content: any contemporary social reform doctrine that is internally inconsistent, empirically untenable, or seriously at odds with current social science knowledge is unlikely to be translated into rational, science-based reform policy (i.e., social technology). Neoliberalism is an instance of such a pseudoscientific reform doctrine. Problems of postcommunist transformation at the theoretical level are problems of conceptualizing and explaining the changes under way in formerly or still-communist countries in the context of a larger body of knowledge concerning processes of fundamental social change. Of particular importance at this level is the problem of fundamental reform, that is, the conditions for the possibility of controlled social change. The scientific evidence concerning the possibility of controlled holistic reform programs has in fact led most theorists, quite in line with Popper, to conclude that in modern complex societies such projects of planned systemic change are practically impossible (Wiesenthal 1997). However, although reform doctrines can and should be assessed by such scientific standards, this alone would give us only a very partial view of their overall strength. The reason is that reform doctrines are designed as well, or perhaps above all, to solve different types of problems. With the sudden and unexpected collapse of Communist regimes in 1989, there was an immediate practical, that is, strategic and policy need for suitable reform doctrines. At the time, a political consensus quickly emerged that a controlled systemic transition from a centrally planned economy to a capitalist market economy was possible; so the debate shifted largely to questions of strategy and policy as reflected in the radicalism-gradualism debate encountered in chapter 4. The problem context from this strategic, policy point of view differs in fundamental respects from the social scientific problem context. The strategic debate largely ignored the social sciences’ “impossibility theorem” and, for its practical purposes, adopted the opposite working assumption: the systemic transition from communism to capitalism can be achieved through a radical institutional break with the past and the rapid introduction of a “market infrastructure.” Like any social technology designed to effect change, postcommunist reform doctrines identify a given state of affairs as unsatisfactory, spell out the alternative state of affairs or goal to be reached, and assign the appropriate means or policies. Unlike social


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science, social technology is based on political norms and moral standards that determine what constitutes an unsatisfactory state of affairs, a desirable goal, and acceptable means. The particular problem situation after the collapse of communism favored rather stark and simplistic answers to these basic questions: the communist system was bankrupt, capitalism and liberal democracy were desirable and indeed “natural” or at least “historically inevitable,” and systemic change required little more than the elimination of the old system plus a set of liberalization measures. This radical simplification of reality and drastic conceptual reduction of the problem to a few key variables responded powerfully to the fundamental problem of strategy and policy in 1989. Richer, more nuanced conceptions (Murrell 1992, Poznanski 1995a, b) proved to be too complex and normatively too ambiguous to provide competitive answers to the question of what is to be done. Of course, a social technology should not be judged solely in terms of its prospects for being adopted. The most basic standard to apply to any social technology is, does it work? Yet a social technology that is never adopted by definition cannot pass the test. A social technology that works barely, or generates mixed success, on the other hand, can be defended by its proponents in a variety of ways (Aslund 1995, 2002). This takes us from the level of strategy and policy to the level of ideology and politics. From the definition of the political agenda to the legitimation of the political order, there is a range of problems that any society has to cope with in order to create a minimum of social stability, internal peace, and external security, and thus the preconditions for the possibility of achieving more ambitious societal goals, such as stable democracy, prosperity, and regional integration. Societies undergoing rapid and profound changes experience these problems much more acutely than stable societies, in which established institutional mechanisms and routines may be so successful that these fundamental problems seem nonexistent. Ideologies provide responses to these fundamental problems and are crucial in developing and maintaining these more-permanent institutional mechanisms and routines. In this sense, the economic transformation of a society is perhaps above all a political challenge. The challenge of economic reform poses a variety of specific ideological and political problems: forging a vision for the new order, mobilizing voters for the reform program, reaching elite consensus on policies, defining and securing the country’s place in the larger world, providing legitimation of policy outcomes and the emerging new order, maintaining the credibility of and commitment to the reform project, and holding political opponents in check. Any social technology for fundamental change has to prove itself in such an ideological and political problem context. Its relative success in those respects will determine not only whether a reform doctrine will be adopted,

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but also whether it will have a social and political environment within which, once adopted, it can work. In sum, social technologies as articulated in postcommunist reform doctrines should be evaluated using a problem-oriented approach. However, it is crucial to take into account the diverse problems and problem contexts in which social technologies have to prove themselves. We have discussed three general sets of problems and contexts: scientific knowledge (“Is the doctrine true?”), strategy and policy (“Does it work?”), and ideology and politics (“Does it sell and do its clients remain faithful?”). Let us now illustrate the problem-oriented method by looking more closely at the most successful postcommunist reform doctrine—neoliberalism. Neoliberalism as Social Technology Neoliberalism is probably the most influential doctrine of social change in the late twentieth century.3 In the light of our distinction between three fundamental types of transformation problems—theoretical, strategic, and political—let us now look more closely at neoliberalism. As with any theory, doctrine, or ideology, attempts to capture its “essence” can always be criticized as inaccurate, misleading, or simply a convenient target constructed by the critic for subsequent demolition. Our purpose here is not simply to expose neoliberalism as ideology. To acknowledge the fact that it provides answers to fundamental political and ideological questions is therefore not a criticism as such. There are no nonideological answers to these questions.4 From a scientific point of view, we would ask the theoretical and empirical question whether and to what extent the ideology is politically successful in a given problem context. From a normative point of view, we would ask moral and political questions about the ideology’s defensibility (even if successful, it may be reprehensible; cf. Standing 1998). The political success of neoliberalism as an ideology of postcommunist change in Eastern Europe owes largely to its contextual fit, that is, to the way in which it was able to address the fundamental problems of order and legitimacy after the collapse of communism and the specific ideological and political problems of systemic reform sketched out above. At the same time, it is important to note the limits of neoliberalism’s success as an ideology in Eastern Europe, especially for purposes of domestic agenda setting, mobilization, and legitimization. Antiliberal, ethnic nationalism has been and continues to be a force in the whole region. The further east and south we move, the less successful has been the ideological strength of neoliberalism in terms of its domestic political purchase. As the ideology and discourse of globalization and regional integration, its popularity and situational fit seem to reflect


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closely a particular country’s prospects and its population’s self-perceptions along these lines.5 But neoliberal reform doctrines have also been extremely influential as social technologies for economic reform. In fact, most proponents of neoliberalism would flatly deny my characterization of their reform doctrines as ideological, a charge they usually reserve for their opponents. Neoliberals routinely invoke neoclassical economics as the scientific basis of their social technologies of market transition. The quality and strength of this foundation is examined below. Let us first note, however, that social technologies cannot be directly derived from scientific knowledge because they are neither politically nor morally neutral. (Conversely, reform doctrines that derive mainly from ideological precepts with little or no basis in current scientific knowledge should not be considered social technologies but merely techniques; Bunge 2001). Neoliberals tend to downplay or ignore the unavoidable normative dimensions of reform technology. In fact, by playing on the scientific credentials of economics as a discipline, neoliberals have been successful in selling their doctrines as expert social technology and progressive ideology to the powerful, and even the less powerful.6 The considerable sophistication with which neoliberal transition policies have been sold to reformers and many of the to-be-reformed suggests that this dimension of promoting their doctrines might itself be considered a social technology—more specifically as the cultural and political technology of spreading economic ideas (on Keynesianism, see Hall 1989; on neoliberalism, see George 1999). There continues to be a heated debate on the relative success of neoliberal reforms in postcommunist Eastern Europe. Admittedly, the apparent simplicity of the question whether neoliberal social technology works, can work, or has worked is deceiving. Even if we accept the simplifying assumption that neoliberal reform doctrines were more or less followed for at least some time in the entire region (Zecchini 1997), the picture remains sufficiently ambivalent to support various, mutually inconsistent interpretations. They range from the dogmatic technocratic view that reform failures simply mirror inadequate adoption and implementation of radical reforms, to more nuanced views that take into account different initial conditions (Balcerowicz 1995), historical legacies (Jowitt 1992), social networks (Grabher and Stark 1997) or international dynamics (Bönker 1994, Chilton 1995) in the reform process. To complicate matters further, neoliberal reforms qua social technology can only be adequately judged if both empirical-theoretical and normative-political standards are applied. As chapter 4 has shown, the debate tends to be hopelessly confused on this distinction, presenting normative (often patently partisan) judgments as scientific assessments, or conversely rejecting empirical evidence or theoretical arguments as ideological. Taking reform doctrines

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such as neoliberalism seriously as social technology, as is proposed here, injects some analytical clarity into this debate. Such doctrines are not—and should therefore not be presented as—just science, as many proponents of reform plans tend to do. At the same time, they are not—or at least may not be—just ideology, as their critics tend to charge (Gowan 1995). A social technology needs both a sound scientific basis and a sound moral-political basis. The remainder of the chapter focuses on the scientific basis of neoliberal social technology. This gives us an opportunity to attend more closely to questions of interdisciplinarity, the chapter’s second major theme. Transformation Studies, Experts, and the Disciplinary Division of Labor A necessary condition for unified policy-making is a unified social science. (Bunge 1998, 452) Since the beginning of the transformations in 1989, experts have played crucial roles in the fundamental restructuring of formerly Communist economies and states. From the first wave of economic experts counseling shock therapy to the subsequent wave of specialists in European Union rules and regulations (Jacoby 2002), a host of social technologies, mostly of Western origin,7 has been adopted and adapted in the reform process. They include macroeconomic policies such as stabilization and liberalization, institutional reforms such as privatization and social-sector restructuring, constitutional reforms of the state such as democratization and regionalization, as well as the introduction of innumerable new rules and regulations designed to create the framework of a liberal market economy and polyarchy on the remains of the Communist system. There can be no doubt that the systemic switch from an old and exhausted model of industrialism and centralism to a new and dynamic informational economy and pluralistic polity depends for its success to a large extent on the expert knowledge of many different specialists. Whether it is banking reform, pension reform, electoral law, corporate law, or environmental regulation, only specialists are in a position to design the requisite social technologies to bring into being such political and economic institutions. Many of the experts, and even more of the expert knowledge, have been imported from the West. This should be no surprise, since the economic and political systems to be created are those of Western capitalism and liberal democracy. What was missing, and what the West could not supply, was expertise in guiding such large-scale, complex, and interrelated transformation processes. The available specialized knowledge was helpful to the extent


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that limited sociotechnical systems were to be implanted. It was unhelpful and often dangerous to the extent that such limited sociotechnical systems depended for their anticipated functioning on a variety of formal-legal, informal-cultural, and other preconditions that were not in place and could not easily be transplanted from their original context. Many social technologies for reform were more or less arbitrary abstractions from specialized knowledge that was insufficiently aware of its own embeddedness in a particular economic, political, and cultural system. Thus the utopian character of such reform policies was not due to excessive scope but rather to an excessively limited, sectoral conception of reality and a corresponding piecemeal approach to changing it that is insufficiently holistic in perspective. Traditional disciplinary divisions in the social sciences have played a major role in this. Mainstream neoclassical economics, the scientific basis for neoliberal social technology, is a case in point. Economists and economic experts as a group probably enjoy the greatest influence and respect among social scientists in the West. Their authority is based in part on a carefully maintained image of neoclassical economics as a genuine science (as opposed to such allegedly prescientific disciplines as sociology and political science). Politicians and the public at large, however, are rarely interested in the scientific discoveries of mainstream economists. They are interested in advice and forecasts that address practical problems. However, as demonstrated above, such policy advice is at best part-science, and always part-ideology. The public authority of mainstream economists is closely related to their collective ability to have consumers of their expertise associate their policy advice with science, objectivity, and rationality, whereas the policy advice of dissenters is portrayed as unscientific, partisan, and ideological. The same mechanism, enhanced by the initial attractiveness of all things Western and the helping hand of Western financial institutions and political elites, has been transplanted to Eastern Europe and placed economic experts in the role of “wholesale social engineers.” As a scientific basis for social technologies of postcommunist transformation, however, neoclassical economics has surprisingly little to contribute. First, while the transition from a command economy to a liberal market economy obviously poses a range of economic problems, it also, and simultaneously, poses a range of institutional, political, and cultural problems. Mainstream economists usually do not claim specialized knowledge in the latter types of problems. In fact, their own claim to scientific status depends on a high degree of theoretical formalization that rests on a narrow and sectoral conception of the economy. (In addition, it is also based on highly problematic assumptions about human behavior and society; Bunge 1998, ch. 3). While the relevance of this knowledge for explaining economic phenomena

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even in established market systems is disputed, it is ruefully inadequate as a basis for systemic change by design. Neoclassical economics has no theory of society, but only an idealized and empirically and theoretically precarious model of a market economy. It therefore has no theory of social change, but only a set of implicit normative implications according to which ceteris paribus the closer the economic system is to the stylized market economy, the more efficient the outcomes. It has a highly problematic basis for drawing explicit normative or policy conclusions in welfare economics, but this has been long since exposed as a pseudo-scientific attempt to avoid addressing normative and political questions explicitly and directly (Albert 1978, ch. 5; Bunge 1998, ch. 10; Myrdal 1954). As a result, policy advice presumably based on, or even “derived from,” neoclassical economics is in large measure ideological, while at the same time denying, or failing to make explicit, its normative assumptions. The central values embedded in neoliberal ideology, the most common ideology to accompany neoclassical theory, places the individual above society, endorses a vision of the individual as a homo oeconomicus, accepts and defends high degrees of social inequality, and, partly because it has so little sense and understanding of the social, opposes any form of collective political action, except when in defense of the market order. To be sure, the academic discipline of mainstream economics cannot be held primarily responsible for the consequences of any social technologies designed in its name, though barely on its basis. Mainstream economics as a science has, especially in its more recent move toward ever greater formalization and mathematization, not even shown particularly strong interest in socalled real-world problems (Csaba 2001). It is thus a great irony that postcommunist economic transformations were so powerfully influenced by the advice of economic experts whose scientific knowledge had so little relevance for the sociotechnological problems of systemic change. Another branch of social science that sometimes claims to look at the big picture and has had some, albeit much less, influence on postcommunist transformations, is political science. The intrusion of so-called transitologists, that is, specialists on democratization, into the field of postcommunist transformation studies sparked a lively debate on the role of generalizing versus contextually limited approaches to studying democratization (Bunce 1995, Karl and Schmitter 1995). Unlike their colleagues in the marketization branch of transformation studies, transitologists have played at best a modest role in advising reform governments on political reform. The equivalent of the economic shock therapists in the early stages of transformation were human-rights lawyers, who in Popperian spirit advocated “negative constitutionalism—the notion that constitutions have a primarily negative purpose of preventing tyranny” (Holmes 1995; cf. also chapter 2). The narrowness of


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both politico-technological and economico-technological approaches, however, cannot be blamed entirely on the social engineers, who might have inadvertently or wilfully ignored a vast body of social science knowledge, only waiting to be translated into postcommunist reform plans. The problem was and is also one of divided, compartmentalized, and often-irrelevant social science knowledge. Most important, none of the social sciences was able to provide the kind of integrated, indeed holistic, approach and overarching perspective that the practical problems of transformation required (Müller 1995; the only partial exception, neo-Marxist approaches, was politically discredited). In the breach jumped self-appointed experts and ideologues whose reform prescriptions were based on political attractiveness, common sense, intuition, and abstractions of Western models. The result was piecemeal social engineering, albeit in a negative sense: large-scale reform policies were launched in some sectors of society, resulting in major unintended consequences in others, leading to “unplanned planning” and generating enormous social and economic costs. A Social Philosophy for a Unified Social Science A well-rounded social philosophy must include a positive theory of society along with a positive moral philosophy—that is, one positing social goods, however debatable and changeable. Without such a global and positive social philosophy, no clear vision of an open society can emerge. And without such vision, people won’t be mobilized to build the new society. (Bunge 1996b, 552) Popper’s social philosophy contains many useful suggestions for the theory and practice of transformation.8 In particular, his strong critique of utopian blueprints for reform has remained of some relevance here, as I have tried to show above. An even more important, methodological tool, in my view, is Popper’s problem-oriented approach (see ch. 2), even if he did not sufficiently elaborate it for problems of social science theorizing, planning, and implementing social changes. In fact, Mario Bunge reminds us: Although he favored planned social reform, Popper never put forth any constructive proposals for it. Moreover, he did not examine in detail any of the social technologies, such as normative macroeconomics, city planning, social medicine, the law, or management science, all of which raise interesting ontological and epistemological problems—such as, for instance, the question of the very nature of plans as different from theories. (Moreover, he was not entirely clear about the distinction between

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social science and social technology.). . . By writing off all ideologies— and moreover without analyzing in any detail the very concept of an ideology—Popper locked himself out of political science and political philosophy. (Bunge 1996b, 542–43) The problem of controlling political rulers, perhaps the centerpiece of Popper’s social philosophy, identifies one, albeit not the only or even the central, problem of politics. Two at least equally fundamental problems are the problem of political order and the problem of political legitimacy, as argued in chapter 2 (see also Eidlin 1997). Moreover, postcommunist transformation is not confined to changes in the political system. It includes simultaneous and interrelated changes in economic and cultural systems, embedded in regional and global dynamics, that raise fundamental problems of their own. It is here that the limits of Popper’s social philosophy become particularly evident. Popper has had nothing original, let alone constructive, to say about any social order, actual or desirable, beyond that it should be nontyrannical and should involve the protection of the destitute. . . . Popper’s social philosophy lacks a theory about social order because he has neither a theory of society nor a positive moral philosophy. All Popper’s social philosophy does is admonish us to replace the substantive traditional question “Who shall be the rulers?” with the procedural question “How can we tame them?”. . . In other words, Popper’s conception and defense of liberty and democracy is limited to law and politics, and even then only to their mechanics. It warns us against despotism but does not help us redesign society to remove the sources of tyranny. Hence Popper’s praise of social engineering, though sincere, rings hollow: it enjoins us to plan without specifying any goals other than freedom. The result is a negative, spotty, superficial, formalist, and at places inconsistent social philosophy. It bears no comparison with the social philosophies of Khaldun, Machiavelli, Spinoza, Hobbes, Locke, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Mill, Marx, or even Paine, Kropotkin, or Laski. In my opinion it is also inferior to Popper’s own contribution to the theory of knowledge, in particular his successful demolition of inductive logic and defense of epistemological realism. (Bunge 1996b, 550–51) Even if Popper’s social philosophy is admittedly “thin,” in the sense that it has a narrow view of politics, little to say about economics and culture, and is unhelpful for the crucial distinction between problems of social science, social technology, and ideology, does it not provide at least an innovative methodological approach to social theorizing in the form of the “logic of the


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situation”? As a matter of historical record, the “logic of the situation” has not had any significant influence in the social sciences. Popper’s version of methodological individualism is at odds with the very popular and influential rational choice model (Agassi 1987). And it is obviously opposed to all approaches in the social sciences that espouse one or the other version of methodological holism. A recent symposium reexamining Popper’s model of situational analysis has yielded a mixed verdict on its usefulness and relevance (Jarvie and Matzner 1998). Popper’s methodological individualism recapitulates an ontological individualism in the tradition of Mill, Weber, and neoclassical economics. This individualism—both ontological and methodological—has significant merits as a critical response to holism or collectivism, but it reaffirms a questionable alternative (see ch. 1). As Bunge points out, individualism commits us to the view that there are no social entities with supraindividual features. This is highly problematic for two reasons: One is that every human being is part of several social systems—such as families, business firms, schools, clubs, and informal social networks—so that his behavior is unintelligible without reference to them. Another reason is that every social system is characterized by emergent or systemic properties, such as social structure, viability, cohesion, history, progress, decline, and wealth distribution. . . . Whoever denies the existence of social systems is bound to either smuggle them in or invent surrogates for them. Popper was no exception. Indeed, to explain individual actions, Popper invokes institutions and “situations” (or “states of affair”) as other individualists invoke “contexts” and “circumstances.” . . . The entire “logic of the situation” resorts then to supraindividual items . . . .Popper’s social ontology may therefore be characterized as individholistic rather than as consistently individualistic. (More on this hybrid in Bunge 1996a) Chapter 1 of this book has outlined major elements of an alternative, substantive social philosophy consistent with a problem-oriented approach that empower us to transgress disciplinary borders and give us tools to deal with the relationship between social science and social technology. Toward a Cross-Disciplinary Approach to Postcommunist Transformation Constructive action, whether individual or social, calls for positive views and plans in addition to rational discussions of goals and means. In particular, the design, planning, and construction of a better social order requires more than a handful of danger signals to

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help avoid or fight tyranny: it also calls for a positive social philosophy including a clear vision of the open society—one capable of motivating and mobilizing people. (The warning “Here be dragons” may be helpful, but it does not point to the right way.) And such a philosophy had better form a system rather than an aggregate of disjoint views, for social issues—like any correct ideas about them—happen to come in bundles, not one at a time. One step at a time, yes; one thing at a time, no. (Bunge 1996b, 553–54) Much of the transition literature follows conventional disciplinary lines of inquiry. This is as true for the economics literature as for the political science literature on postcommunist transformation, the two fields that account for the bulk of scholarly production in the first decade of postcommunist “transitology.” Much of this literature, even when it has not explicitly taken the form of policy advice, appears to be normatively and ideologically driven. Specifically, economists are working on the premise that the telos of transformation is the establishment of a Western-style market economy, while political scientists are studying the conditions for and obstacles to democratization and democratic consolidation along Western lines. The problem is not the presence of normative and ideological assumptions as such, but rather the often-implicit adoption of the view that the radical change processes occurring in postcommunist and other reforming countries are best conceptualized as “catching-up modernization” (Habermas 1990) and Westernization. From this perspective, it appears reasonable to approach the study of transformation as a country’s successful or unsuccessful approximation of an—often idealized—Western economic, political, and cultural model, each dimension of which is best studied on its own by the competent social science discipline. Along with other critical voices in the debate (see, among others, Grabher and Stark 1997, Greskovits 1998, Rona-Tas 1997; Poznanski 2001; Bönker/Müller/Pickel 2002), I contend that the Westernization or convergence thesis is not the most appropriate, and potentially a quite misleading, point of departure for the formulation of the fundamental problems of transformation. It uncritically accepts the premises and goals of a political project as basic assumptions for social science theorizing. I propose, by contrast, to conceptualize systemic changes “on their own terms” and in a more-open and broader fashion. More concretely, we should remain sensitive to the different degrees to which the political project of Westernization is pursued by various actors and as such constitutes important causal factors that need to be closely examined. However, we need to be equally interested in investigating the actual dynamics of change in the transforming societies that cannot be


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captured by viewing phenomena of social change discretely as more or less successful instances of economic, or political, or cultural Westernization. The social mechanisms at the centre of postcommunist transformation are the major change mechanisms in the transformation of individual countries. However, we also need to pay special attention to transnational (regional, global) and subnational systems. Thus, for example, the European Union as a transnational system in its interaction with transforming countries (Bruszt and Stark 2003), or the Russian regions as subnational systems interacting with the center (Rutland 2002), are likely to be important elements of major change mechanisms. One potential source of confusion is the fact that we are dealing with systemic change, so that the major social mechanisms in the transformation occur in systems that are themselves changing rapidly— evolving, adapting, or collapsing. Describing fundamental systemic changes in terms of the rate of privatization or liberalization, for instance, is not the same as explanation in terms of major change mechanisms (see ch. 1). As the discussion of Verdery on postcommunist transformation in chapter 1 has shown, the rate or degree of privatization is an—often overrated and misinterpreted—indicator of systemic change. By contrast, a major change mechanism involves the concrete system within which this process is taking place (i.e., its particular composition, structure, and environment), and the actual outcome (new, hybrid, or collapsed system). The conception of social mechanisms introduced at length in chapter 1 also has significant implications for the fundamental problem of the role of social technology in systemic change. Between Social Science and Social Technology: Catalytic Designs In much of the neoliberal market transition literature, a central assumption is that “the new system” can in fact be designed, since the major mechanisms that maintain a market economy are presumably known, and so are the mechanisms (i.e., reforms policies) to put them in place. The two— maintenance and creation of a market economy—are of course not the same. There may be somewhat more knowledge about maintaining established and relatively successful market economies in the West than about creating them under a variety of conditions in the rest of the world. Yet skepticism is called for with respect to the claim that both types of major mechanisms are fully or even sufficiently known. There is the ideological claim that a market system spontaneously creates socially desirable outcomes. In other words, the social mechanisms that make this particular type of economic system successful are said to be spontaneous as opposed to controlled, economic rather than political, decentralized rather than centralized, as well as intrinsically just

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(Hayek 1989). This ideological claim, based on empirically untested or untenable assumptions, entails the demand to design and establish an economic system in a controlled, political, and centralized fashion that will henceforth maintain itself spontaneously, without the need for political intervention, and in a decentralized way. Describing these ideas in terms of social mechanisms brings out the paradoxical role that design plays in the neoliberal transition literature. Faith in the possibility of rationally designing and establishing a specific type of economic system, on the one hand, goes hand in hand with the deep conviction that once established, rational design should not be employed to alter the way the system works, on the other.9 I take my position between the two poles of the neoliberal paradox. I am at the same time more and less sanguine about the role of design in economic and social life. There is both spontaneity and design in most processes of social change and continuity. “Whereas some social systems and their corresponding mechanisms emerge more or less spontaneously, others are designed” (Bunge 1997, 452). Where designs do play an important role, the particular way in which they contribute to social change may contain different mixes of intended, unintended, and perverse effects (Hirschman 1992, Merton 1968). In order to advance our understanding of the actual role of design in postcommunist transformation, I conceptualize designs as elements in larger change mechanisms. In order to underscore this broader conception of design, I speak of catalytic design (using the term “catalytic” in its broad sense of an agent that stimulates or precipitates a reaction, development, or change). Catalytic design is not simply a policy blueprint or institutional template. It may contain that, but it is more (and that “more” is what determines how policy blueprints or institutional transfers work): it is the vision or ideological model; the shifts in political alliances—domestic and international—it builds on or opens up; the potential for redefining state-society relations; the major ways in which society is and is not restructured in the process. It is also less, for even the attempt to faithfully implement a blueprint of a new order can never succeed fully (rational policy fallacy). The catalytic design is a partially anticipated emergent property.10 As far as catalytic designs for systemic change are concerned, the state (more precisely, various state actors and institutions) is its major—though clearly not exclusive nor necessarily decisive— agent. This is why we need to pay particular attention to the type and role of the state in its global context. For example, for the Central Eastern European states, EU integration is the centrepiece of their respective catalytic designs for postcommunist political-economic transformation. If we look for a “rational design” at the core of systemic change, it encompasses the broader historical and systemic context plus reform policies and politics (really: the “rational design” is our model of what is going on, i.e., our rational


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reconstruction). In this sense we describe and explain the “catalytic design” (i.e., model of change) as an emergent property, though clearly not as much of a historical accident as the original emergence of market society, and with a greatly more prominent role for human designers and designs. Finally, I propose to look at the systemic context (domestic and international structures) plus the design (models, templates, and policies) very much as catalysts rather than as a full-fledged plan for systemic change. Catalysts in the sense that they provide only a set of conditions and forces within which processes of social and economic change occur “spontaneously” (in the sense of unplanned, and to some extent unintended)—thus: catalytic design. The same reform measure, change policy, institutional model, or social technology may therefore have different effects in different contexts (e.g., stabilization, privatization). Viewed in conventional terms of design, the policy is assumed to work unless there is something “wrong” in the political, economic, or cultural context in which it is “implemented.” From our alternative viewpoint, a rational design or set of reform policies should not be understood as a simple means to an end that works or does not work. Rather, reform policies, like the general ideologies with which they are associated (e.g., neoliberalism, nationalism, anticommunism, return-to-Europe-ism), should instead be seen as potential catalysts for change. Whether or not they are, and of what kind, will depend on the nature of the “reactants” (i.e., the systemic problem context). This is a major point overlooked by conventional “voluntaristic” and “rationalistic” designs. This does not commit us to the radical structuralist position, according to which individual decisions, events, policies, or plans do not have a decisive impact on the course of change. But just as reduction to structure is unsatisfactory, so is overemphasis of agency and contingency. The systemic and mechanismic approach, as chapter 1 has argued, offers a response to this problem. In contrast to a policy package such as the neoliberal reform strategy, the concept of catalytic design prominently includes what are usually implicit assumptions about local context, global environment, actors, and problem situation. In one sense, the claim is simple: by using a systemic view of reality, we create the preconditions for identifying most of the relevant change mechanisms. However, this should not be taken as an indication of a hyperrationalistic design. At least as important as identifying the possibilities and conditions for rationally designed change is the systematic exploration of its limits and the search for catalytic principles (normative)11, catalytic mechanisms (empirical)12, and catalytic practices (applied)13 of change at different levels and in a variety of domains. Thus when we speak of catalytic designs with respect to a specific case, we attempt to identify (model) the central change mechanisms that catalyze (trigger, bring about, and guide) systemic transformation.

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Methodologically, we work with the tentative assumption that such models will have relevance for other similar situations, past, present, and future, though to what extent this will be the case is likely to vary from fairly direct applicability to general insight or heuristic. Concluding Comment The above sketch of a social theoretical foundation for transformation studies has responded primarily to a set of philosophical problems—the relationship between social science and social technology, and the challenge of crossdisciplinary work. It has taken as its point of departure some fundamental ideas of Popper’s social philosophy, examined its strengths and weaknesses in the context of the problems at hand, and offered an alternative approach based on the systemic and mechanismic approach presented in chapter 1. Whether and to what extent this alternative is useful for postcommunist transformation studies and related problems in the globalization debate is further examined in the next two chapters.

PART III

The Challenge of Globalization


CHAPTER 6


T

he premise of this analysis is that mechanisms are real processes in concrete, historical systems, rather than merely analytical concepts in theories or variables in generalizations.1 Of course without concepts, theories, and generalizations we cannot discuss, let alone explain, real social processes. The nationalizing mechanisms discussed in this chapter are real and occur in a large, but limited, number of actual social systems. Every reader is intimately familiar with one or two, possibly more, sets of nationalizing mechanisms, that is, with the “national culture(s)”2 of his/her state of origin and/or state of residence. There are roughly 200 territorial states in the world today. Each state-society has a particular mixture of nationalizing mechanisms. Almost all of these state-societies are increasingly multinational today, that is, different sets of nationalizing mechanisms are simultaneously at work. Contrary to the one-to-one correspondence suggested by the phrase “nation-state,” therefore, each state-society is home to different national cultures. Most states do have dominant national cultures, but no national culture is completely contained in its own state; there are multiple ways of “spillover.”3 Territorial state-societies, moreover, are not the only social systems in which nationalizing mechanisms are at work. In fact, as I argue, nationalizing mechanisms operate in large regional and global social systems such as multinational corporations as well as in small social systems such as families. This chapter provides a general model of nationalizing mechanisms and a typology of social systems in which these mechanisms can be found. The justification for this theoretical and conceptual exercise is that realism should

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not be confused with an exclusive focus on the empirical and observable. Rather, the challenge is to have appropriate conceptual tools with which to discuss and examine real social systems and mechanisms, most of which are of course not directly observable and therefore need to be conjectured theoretically. The chapter proceeds to develop a conception of nationalizing mechanisms with reference to the major components of “national cultures”: common cultural knowledge, national discourse, collective identity, and national habitus. Next, it presents a typology of social systems in which nationalizing mechanisms play an important role—from global systems to individuals. The final step is to sketch a general model of how nationalizing mechanisms work in different types of social systems. Reconceptualizing Nations: Nationalizing Mechanisms A social mechanism is a process in a social system. The difference between a process and a mechanism is that the mechanism explains how a particular process works (see ch. 1). In other words, a mechanism is a process that is well understood. The macro processes examined in the study of world politics are usually highly complex and result from a combination of mechanisms. Thus postcommunist transformation, globalization, marketization, democratization, et cetera are large-scale processes that contain a number of general, and many more specific, mechanisms. Admittedly, it may be difficult enough to provide merely clear descriptive accounts of such processes. Yet without an adequate description of the process, it is impossible to uncover the underlying mechanisms. The systemic framework is an important tool in producing systematic descriptions of social processes. Each concrete case of social change is likely to have its own particular combination of change mechanisms.4 Social technologies such as economic policies are normative mechanisms that may or may not work the way they were intended to. This will depend on how they perform as empirical mechanisms in combination with other mechanisms in a specific context. The challenge for those using a mechanismic approach to explanation (and a fortiori for those developing and implementing social technologies) is to identify and explain significant mechanisms and combinations of mechanisms at work in the relevant systems under study. I propose that there is a central type of mechanism that can help us make sense of a great variety of phenomena and processes discussed in the globalization debate. This is the nationalizing mechanism (NM). As explained earlier, a mechanism is a process in a concrete system. “NM” is the generic name for the actually existing, different NMs in the international society of

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states. Individual states and societies have their own specific NMs. NMs occur at global, regional, state-society, and local levels, and are therefore a linkage between social systems at various levels. In addition to linking systems operating at global and state-society levels, NMs occur in political, cultural, economic, and biosocial systems and organizations of all sorts. NMs work in systems and processes as diverse as the state and political system, economic growth, industrial organizations, identity construction, and the life course—subjects traditionally under the jurisdiction of different disciplines and subfields. The fact that a particular type of mechanism occurs in so many different systems does not necessarily mean that identifying it constitutes a major contribution to the explanation of particular processes. Think, for example, of cooperation and competition, basic mechanisms that work in almost all social systems, but which on their own can rarely provide deep explanations of basic processes in concrete systems. Much the same is true for the NM. Few scholars would call into question either that national culture has some significance in world affairs or that it plays some role in various spheres of social life. Clearly, in order to make a strong explanatory claim for the NM, a more specific argument has to be advanced. The nationalism literature is of great value for the study of NMs, but it also has some distinct limitations. The most important of these is that this literature treats nationalism above all as the explanatory problem (explanandum). Why is there nationalism, what kind of nationalism is it, how does it manifest itself, what are its prospects? These are the primary questions addressed in this literature. The potential contribution of the NM lies in its largely unrecognized explanatory function (explanans). True, nationalism is invoked to account for a variety of phenomena from anti-neoliberalism to parochialism (Ignatieff 1993; Barber 1995; Friedman 2000; Vargas Llosa 2002), but such accounts usually rest on questionable, highly normative conceptions of nationalism and are not very deep. If a noun were to be associated with the NM, nation, nationality, national identity, or nationness would be less misleading than nationalism. While general public discourse often conflates the meaning of nation, state, society, and country, social scientists who address the problem are usually clear on the distinction between nation and state. Unfortunately, the same is not true for the distinction between nation and society. The two are often used interchangeably, and even if they are kept separate, there is no agreed-upon set of definitions for them. The globalization debate has further confused things as nations, societies, and states are described as being in various states of decomposition, transnationalization, et cetera. This forces us to remain a little longer on the conceptual and definitional terrain.

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A Thin Realist and Materialist Conception of State and Society Mechanisms are processes in systems. Nationalizing mechanisms are processes in social systems. In my conception, state and society are not simply analytical categories like the levels discussed above but are real social systems. The globalization debate has contributed further to the ambiguity of major social science concepts such as state and society. Weakened by the postmodern assault on their material reality, their very existence has been further called into question by allegedly new, global realities. Contrary to these fashionable trends, I propose a simple realist and materialist conception of state and society for incorporation into our systemic framework.5 The focus of this chapter is on NMs, but since mechanisms do not occur outside of systems, it is important to have a general descriptive model (not theory) of the systems in question. While I argue that NMs occur in a variety of systems, the type of system at the centre of this analysis is what is inconsistently and ambiguously referred to as “nation-state,” “state,” “society,” “nation,” “country,” et cetera. The following brief discussion is intended to bring at least a minimum of analytical clarity to the use of these concepts. In the systemic ontology employed in this study, a social system is composed of people and their artefacts. A society is a social system physically bounded by a territorial state. All residents of the territorial state are members of society. This does not prejudge the nature or extent of the ties that various components, both systems and individuals within that society, have with each other and with “external” systems or individuals. Nor does it prejudge whether a society is globalizing, transnationalizing, fragmenting, renationalizing, or whatever. In fact, this structurally thin conception of society as a social system is designed to assist us in explaining those very processes. A society is composed of political, economic, cultural, biological, and hybrid (e.g., politicaleconomic) subsystems, to which the same caveats apply. A major element of any social system is the symbolic system(s) used by its members (see ch. 1). How does the state fit into this conceptualization? Social scientists have debated the state-society problematic long and hard. Waves of “bringing the state back in” to the analysis have alternated with waves of “bringing society back in.” “Bringing the nation back in,” and bringing it in as a process, gives us a different way of dealing with the state-society problematic. As with respect to society, I propose a thin conception of state, avoiding questions about its autonomy, coherence, et cetera. Michael Mann’s (1993, 55) definition is useful here: 1. The state is a differentiated set of institutions and personnel embodying centrality, in the sense that political relations radiate to and from the center, to cover a


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2. territorially demarcated area over which it exercises 3. some degree of authoritative, binding rule making, backed up by some organized physical force. State institutions and personnel represent a society externally vis-à-vis other states and govern a society internally. The theory of sovereignty discussed in chapter 2 is the modern state’s normative foundation. In this sense, all modern states are variations on the Western model. They share basic formal institutions that, normatively, have common functions in the exercise of external and internal sovereignty. States “cage” their societies to varying degrees, and are “polymorphous” rather than unitary and coherent. Thus whether, how, and to what effect particular state institutions discharge those functions, and which other functions besides, depend upon the society in which these state institutions operate, the historical evolution of state institutions, as well as the state’s regional and global environment. Nationalizing processes—cultural processes and symbolic systems—are at the center of these interactions. Nation as Entity or System Like societies and states, nations too appear to be real entities (see fig 6.1). That is, while qua symbolic systems (social representations) nations are real, they do not have any social existence. If nations were social systems, they would be social systems of a peculiar kind since they act only through other social systems—formal institutions of state and economy, informal institutions such as social movements or social networks. This is decidedly not the case with respect to other social systems in society that are capable of collective action on their own.6 For their social existence nations are in this sense “forced into symbiosis” with (real) social systems. In a more realist and materialist turn of phrase, a variety of social systems “act through the nation” by constructing and reproducing the nation through discourse and practice, and not the other way round. This is what I refer to as the nationalizing process. The nation as an imagined entity is an emergent property of this process in each of those social systems. Nation as a Property of Social Systems A nation can be defined as a collective composed of individuals and groups that see and experience themselves as members of a nation and who are so recognized by others.7 In this sense, a nation is “only” an imagined community, as such a social fact, but not a real (material, concrete) social system. To illustrate, the gradual, halting, and incomplete inclusion of African Americans

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Figure 6.1: Major Social Systems in the Nationalizing Mechanism: State, Society, Nation Note: this is a highly simplified model of state, society, and nation. Unlike the real systems which it depicts, the model is static. Nations therefore appear as entities rather than the nationalizing process conceptualized in this chapter. Moreover, the model does not depict any of the innumerable ties these social systems and subsystems have with others situated in other states and societies. Some of these ties may be so strong that it makes sense to speak of supranational systems (e.g., MNCs, INGOs, transnational migrant communities). However, whatever the strength of these ties, all the parts of such supranational systems are always situated in particular states and societies and composed of nationals from specific societies. The background depicts the nation, defined as society minus subordinate nations (the latter are represented by the white triangles). Thus members of subordinate nations, in the case of migrant communities, residing in this state and society may have very strong ties (as individuals, groups, and subordinate nations) with their “home countries” (i.e., their nations), and may therefore be considered transnational communities. To a large extent, however, their living conditions and life chances are determined by their host state and society. This is most obvious in the case of migrant workers employed at the lowest level of economic activity, who are integrated neither politically nor culturally. The different positions of the triangles depicting subordinate nations refer to the fact that at least some members of subordinate nations may hold high positions in one or two subsystems of society, but not in another. Take, for example, highly paid professionals in the cultural system such as musicians or scientists or in the economic systems such as managers in MNCs without citizenship rights and possibly also lacking language and societal competence and recognition. Members of subordinate nations with few or no ties outside the state and society in which they live are likely to be excluded in some fashion from society’s economic, political, and/or cultural systems, such as when race or ethnicity overlaps with class distinctions, or when aboriginal populations are in effect economically, politically, and culturally disenfranchised. Note also that members of the dominant nation may belong to socially otherwise-marginalized groups. Right-wing extremism is closely related to this particular combination of de facto social exclusion and nominal membership in the dominant nation.


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and Latinos into the American nation represents an ongoing change in the boundaries of the imagined community (i.e., in terms of individual experience and recognition), but not in the boundaries of U.S. society as a social system. A “state-society” (i.e., the social system composed of the permanent residents of a territorial state) is usually dominated by one “nation,”8 which, its proponents claim, represents society as a whole, and which has “cultural hegemony” in the definition and reproduction of societal identity.9 Every state also contains subordinate nations, defined ethnically (most common), racially (e.g., the United States; South Africa), or culturally (e.g., Auslandsdeutsche10). Subordinate nations are politically, economically, and culturally integrated into society in different forms and to varying degrees, as mediated by the society’s concrete nationalizing processes. Other examples of subordinate nations are aboriginal populations and migrant workers. Regardless of nationality, however, all members of a society partake of its nationness— whether as insiders or outsiders, dominant or dominated groups. Thus politically, economically, and culturally, a particular society’s nationness may be inclusive or exclusive, egalitarian or inegalitarian with respect to resident members of other nations. To view nation as a property of specific social systems is a step away from conceptions of nations as real or imagined social entities, but we need to take a further step. Nation as Process: the Basic Elements of Nationalizing Mechanisms The previous section portrayed the nation as a property of social systems. This is what makes it possible to imagine social systems as nations, or parts thereof. The decisive step in the conceptualization proposed here is to view the nation as process. The “nation as process” is in fact a complex set of cultural processes that occur in and among societies and states, as well as other social systems. Since nationalizing processes often have considerable constancy over time, and since the discourse of nation reinforces the appearance of constancy, it certainly makes sense to speak of the nationness (a property) of a society (e.g., typical practices seen as part of its national culture) as a social fact. Describing nationness, especially as contained in the selfdescriptions of a national discourse, is an important contribution to mapping nationalizing processes. But conceptualizing nation as process opens up the whole range of social processes in which the national is in one way or another involved—from political legitimation to economic activity. The conception of nation as process turns the national into a powerful explanatory tool. Many scholars outside the field of nationalism studies consider the social things to which terms and phrases such as nation, national culture, and

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national identity refer as sufficiently significant for the particular aspects of social life they study, to incorporate them in their explanations. In contrast to the mechanismic conception adopted here, the national in those studies is usually presented as an independent variable, frequently operationalized in terms of specific values such as individualism, collectivism, et cetera. Such conceptions can be illuminating but are ultimately unsatisfactory since they cannot explain how values produce the effects for which they are held responsible. Thus empirical studies can show that certain values are prominently held in some cultures but not others, and theoretical models can produce correlations between such values and different social outcomes. But values are abstracted from their larger symbolic and social contexts; and values in any case do not act. As a result, the relationships between the national and other social phenomena remain obscure. In the remainder of the chapter, I offer first an alternative conception of nation as cultural process and then present in greater detail a model of how nationalizing mechanisms operate. Summing up the results to this point, based on the systemic framework and mechanismic approach to explanation (ch. 1), chapter 6 has put forth a particular type of mechanism, the nationalizing mechanism, as a central mechanism in contemporary large-scale social processes such as postcommunist transformation and globalization. It has further attempted to clarify the nature of some of the most important systems in which NMs work, that is, state-societies and their component social systems. With working definitions in place, it is now possible to flesh out this particular change mechanism in somewhat more-concrete terms. My conception of the national allows us to link symbolic systems, social systems, and social actions that together “make” a national process.11 The major constituents of “nation as process,” or to use a less-awkward though somewhat inaccurate phrase, of “national culture,” are listed below: ● ● ● ●

common cultural knowledge national discourse collective identity national habitus

Let us look at these four components in more detail.12 ● National culture as repertory of common knowledge. The nation as process produces and reproduces general, cultural knowledge that is the basis of all group-specific beliefs, including ideologies. “Such cultural knowledge, or cultural common-ground, may be defined as the (fuzzy) set of those beliefs that are shared by (virtually) all competent members of a national culture, and that are held to be true by those members by similarly shared criteria of


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truth. . . . [W]e may simply call this the repertory of ‘common knowledge’ of a [national culture]. It is this knowledge that all new members of a culture have to learn (e.g., during socialization, formal education, through the media, etc.) in order to become competent members” (van Dijk 1998, 37). The repertory of common knowledge also provides a shared epistemic and moral order. All specific group beliefs as well as the very interaction, communication, and mutual understanding of members of different groups in society presuppose such cultural knowledge. Cultural knowledge also is therefore the basis for all evaluative beliefs. ● National discourse as meta-discourse. The nationalizing process occurs in large part as and through discourse. National discourse refers to all the text and talk, or the discourses of a whole national culture, in a particular historical period. We may also use the very abstract and generic notion of the “discourse” of that period, community, or culture—including all possible discourse genres and all domains of communication. In this sense, the national discourse is a meta-discourse. ● National identity as social representations and process. In the same way that national groups may be said to share knowledge and attitudes, we may assume that they share a social representation that defines their identity or “social self ” as a national group. “National identity as process” refers to the reproduction and change in cognitions and social representations of the nation. Identity thus becomes a process in which a national collectivity is engaged, rather than a property of individuals and collectives. ● National habitus as characteristic social practices. While national identity refers primarily to the cognitive realm, national habitus may be defined in terms of the characteristic social practices of group members, including typical forms of collective action. National habitus thus refers to concomitant practices from speech to nonverbalized social behavior. Clearly these four components of national culture are not mutually exclusive and therefore overlap. Having established what NMs are “made of,” let us now turn to the question of where and how NMs work. This is where systemism comes in. The NM as a Historical Mechanism NMs, like all social mechanisms, have evolved historically. They have originated with the emergence of a global system based on nation-states (Mann 1993; Tilly 1990). There is an ongoing debate in the nationalism literature whether nations are a result of the formation of modern states (modernists) or significantly predate them (primordialists, ethno-symbolists) (A.D. Smith 2001; Özkirimli 2000). Since both sides of the dispute agree that nations and

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The Problem of Order Types of Systems (examples of actual systems in parenthesis)

Levels of analysis

ECONOMIC

POLITICAL

CULTURAL

BIOSOCIAL humankind (all groups of human beings)

GLOBAL

world economy (MNC)

international society of states (IO, INGO, movements)

[global culture?] (cultural org. movements)

REGIONAL

regional economies (EEC; NAFTA)

regional pol. org. (NATO)

civilizations (Islam)

STATE-SOCIETY national economies (various capitalisms)

states,regimes (various polyarchies)

societies (national cultures)

LOCAL

various econ. inst. (firms,households)

various pol. inst. (provinces, munic., movements, assoc.)

various cult. systems networks (families, (schools, theatres, kinship groups) ethnic minorities)

homo oeconomicus (consumers,workers, entrepreneurs)

zoon politikon (citizens, voters)

homo faber (scientists,artists)

INDIVIDUAL

–

imagined communities (nations, ethnies)

homo sapiens (individuals-in-society)

Figure 6.2: The Systemic Framework In order to study the connections between real or concrete social systems seriously, the distinction between systemic levels can be crucial. However, levels—global, regional state-society, local—are levels of analysis rather than levels of social reality. Real social systems from multinational corporations to families may be found operating on more than one level. Most multinational corporations work at global, state-society, and local levels, while the activities of other firms may be confined to regional, state-society, or local levels. Most families function at local or state-society levels, though increasingly they extend regionally or globally. While levels of analysis are hierarchically arranged, concrete social systems are usually interrelated in more complex and diffuse ways. Thus multinational corporations coordinate economic activities between subsidiaries and suppliers at all levels, interact politically with international organizations, states, local authorities, and interest associations, and give rise to organizational cultures framed by different national cultures. Families for the most part are less-complex social systems than MNCs, even if they operate at all levels of analysis. The systemic framework depicted in figure 6.1 should therefore be understood as a multilevel and multidimensional analytical framework for the study of real social systems. Only the terms appearing in parentheses are examples of real social systems, many of which could well be classified differently since they are hybrid, making the divisions between economic, political, and cultural systems empirically more problematic.

states have been central social systems in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, we can leave this theoretical and historical problem safely aside. Whether, to what extent, and how fast their centrality is on the decline in the twenty-first century is a major question in the globalization debate. The significance of NMs, however, is not affected by the outcome of this debate. Even if the proponents of the most radical views of globalization turned out to be right, the processes of dissolution, decline, and fragmentation of the


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nation-state system, as well as the formation of a successor system, would be strongly influenced by NMs. Think of the continuing significance of premodern social systems and mechanisms in the modern world. NMs have achieved their contemporary significance by penetrating social systems from the world system all the way to the individual. Let us look at how the NM works at various levels of social systems. For the structure of this presentation, the reader is referred to figure 6.2. The NM at the World-System and Regional-System Level The world system as a biosocial system consists of humankind, as well as all of other species of social animals. The relationship of human systems with other species and the natural environment in general is now widely recognized as politically, economically, culturally, and morally important, if only because the survival of the human species depends on the sustainability of this relationship.13 In this sense, there is an emerging global awareness of the precarious existence of the human species. Of course local awareness of humankind’s dependence on other animals and the natural environment long predates the emergence of the modern world system; in fact various traditional forms serve as models or sources of inspiration for current attempts to redress an imbalance that is very much a product of modernity.14 The NM is both centrally implicated in the historical evolution of global ecological problems and is certain to be an important mechanism in attempts at coping with them. This is because, while many economic processes that cause serious ecological damage are of global scope, cultural and political systems are currently not up to the task of dealing with them globally. In sum, humanity is a world biosocial system that with other social animals shares one natural environment. The great world religions are universalist at least in their fundamental principles and often in their missionary aspirations. Even though they share a set of core values, as social systems they are, often sharply, divided. More important, they are closely linked up with political processes in states and societies, and as such are affected by and involved in the NM. While the search is on for new forms of non-Eurocentric universal value systems and “epistemologies” that might provide a doctrinal basis for one global culture (Lewis and Aikenhead 2001; Miyoshi 2001; Singer 2004), there is in this sense no world culture but rather several world cultures (see also below).15 However, if we include modern science and technology into our conception of culture, then it is quite possible to speak of one specific world cultural system composed of the globally interconnected scientific and educational systems that produce and reproduce this system (Drori et al. 2003).

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Is there a world political system? The answer must be affirmative if we refer to the “international society” of states as represented in the UN and its many organizations as a system. This world political system is composed of nominally sovereign nation-states that collectively claim control over the entire territory of the planet. The nation-state as a social system has become the global rule to which there are no exceptions (Meyer et al. 1997). The world political system is also composed of international, global-level political organizations and movements that however have only limited political authority even in their narrow fields of activity. The nature of the world political system is further complicated by the fact that nominal political sovereignty translates into anything approaching “real sovereignty” only for a small number of states (see also chapter 2). The whole idea of political sovereignty in the international system is further compromised by the interrelationships between these political systems and various cultural and economic systems at national and supranational levels that are at the same time political actors (e.g., large corporations). The NM (in conjunction with other mechanisms) promises to be useful in capturing crucial dimensions of how the world political system works since it operates in all the social systems of which it is composed. Unlike the normative principle of sovereignty, the theoretical concept of nationalizing mechanism does not prejudge how this process operates in concrete cases but allows us to formulate relevant questions to examine precisely that. That we live in a “global economy” has become conventional wisdom. Discursively in any case, it certainly does exist. However, if we apply the stricter standards of the systemic framework, a different kind of world economic system emerges. It is far from the imagined “new economy” in which national economic systems have all but vanished. Since economic systems are embedded in political and cultural systems, it is not enough to point to trends in global flows or to economic actors operating globally. The academic literature on globalization has produced numerous and detailed accounts of the continuing fundamental significance of national political-cultural economies,16 as well as of the asymmetrical relations between groups of economic actors both between and within national economies. In addition to transnationally operating economic organizations, the world economic system is composed of national political-cultural economies. Hence the significance of the NM for the global economy. It is also composed of regional systems, to which we turn next. The world biosocial system of humanity has its counterpart in the “imagined community” of national biosocial systems (on which more below). There does not seem to exist an imagined regional counterpart of biosocial system, unless we interpret “civilizations” and world religions to this effect. I propose to use the term civilization instead to refer to regional cultural


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systems. Although a recent political treatise (Huntington 1994) has widely and negatively affected the connotations of this term, I believe this is not a sufficient reason to abandon it. The term civilization has a long and distinguished intellectual history and arguably is a fundamental reality, underlying the very raison d’etre of area studies in the social sciences and humanities. Civilizations have a long historical genealogy predating the history of the nation-state by centuries or even millenia. Their significance is relativized by the fact that world civilizations have dissolved into, or perhaps more accurately, have given rise to different national cultures. Thus while the importance of civilizations as regional cultural systems is not called into question, the relatively greater importance of national cultures puts them into context. Hence the significance of the NM. Probably the major reason why regional cultures are relatively less important is that, in contrast to national cultures, they do not have strong political counterparts. Regional political systems have hegemons, that is, national political systems exerting some control over other national systems. The major exception here of course is Western and Central Europe, which has the by far most institutionalized and law-based regional political system in the world. However, as students of European integration have shown, this regional system is composed of states that, monetary union notwithstanding, continue to be the most important systems in many other respects (Offe 2003). Thus taking our cue from the EU, the prospects of the NM remaining central at the regional level are good. Regional economic systems have been studied increasingly over the past few years in attempts to investigate the realities underlying globalization discourse (e.g., Breslin and Higgott 2000). Much the same that applies to the regional political systems just discussed is true here. Most regional economic systems have national hegemons, with the partial exception again of the EU, in which raw national economic power is tempered by supranational political institutions. What is perhaps most important to note about regional economies as components of the world system is that relations among them are highly asymmetrical, with three or four dominant regions accounting for the bulk of activity, on the one hand, and vast (in terms of territory and population) regions of the globe remaining precariously integrated into the global economy, on the other.17 In sum, the national level remains of overriding significance in regional economies as political-cultural economic systems. Before taking the analysis to the state-society level, it may be useful to point out that the above emphasis on the central importance of NMs at regional and world levels does not prejudge overall trends or eventual outcomes of current transformation processes. It does mean, however, that globalizing and regionalizing processes must be placed in the context of NMs, certainly

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in order to be able to gauge their relative importance, but also for constructing powerful explanations of the change processes themselves occurring at regional and global levels. The NM at the Level of State-Society The “national” level of state, society, and economy is considered by many contributors to the globalization debate still the most important level of analysis (Kitschelt et al.1999; Krasner 1999; Streeck and Crouch 1997; Weiss 2003, 1998). While the centrality of NMs for the argument of this chapter might suggest that it sides with such authors, this is not necessarily or a priori the case. NMs are processes working at “supranational” and local levels as well as at state-society level. More precisely, they work in virtually all biosocial, cultural, political, and economic systems at global, regional, state-society, and local levels. But an NM is only one crucial change mechanism among others. Moreover, the way it combines with other basic change mechanisms may differ from case to case. Thus the claim of this chapter is at the same time modest and ambitious. It is modest in claiming significance for the NM always in the context of specific systems and only in conjunction with other social mechanisms. But the NM is not presented here as a variable that has greater significance than other variables. Mechanismic explanation is the explanation of processes in concrete social systems (see ch. 1). This approach is ambitious in its claim to provide deeper explanations of how change processes actually work, thus going beyond approaches that seek to establish the relative causal importance of certain variables.18 Let us look at the major social systems at state-society level in which NMs occur. In nationalist rhetoric and to some extent in common-sense understandings, a nation appears as a biosocial unit, which in reality it is of course not. In this view the nation is like one large family or community that is related by blood, kinship, culture, and a common history. We know from the nationalism literature that such ethnic-cultural conceptions of a biosocial community are an act of collective imagination that historically has depended on technological (printing press, mass education), cultural (“high culture”), and political (modern state) preconditions. It is Plato’s “noble myth” in its modern guise, the most basic legitimation of modern political orders. The sociological and psychological literature on nationalism has examined the mechanisms that make such collective imaginings of a quasi-biosocial community possible (on which more below)—mechanisms that are at work in all modern societies, regardless of whether their nationalism is more ethnic or more civic. The collective representations of a nation as a biosocial system tend to support and reinforce ideas of the nation as a cultural system. As explained


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earlier, nation and society tend to be used interchangeably. In most modern states, the term nation has positive connotations so that state representatives will call on the nation when addressing society as a whole. In some modern states, the term nation has problematic or negative connotations so that in political discourse society and country may take its place. Regardless of linguistic conventions in specific cases, I have argued above that a state is usually dominated by one nation, which claims to represent society as a whole and which has “cultural hegemony” in the production and reproduction of cognitive systems and a national discourse. It is in this sense that the nation is (claimed to be) the people as a whole. The boundaries of a nation are more difficult to determine than those of a society with physical boundaries (territorial state) and permanent residents, since the existence of a nation depends fundamentally on individual experience and social recognition, both of which are diverse and much more “fluid.” Both nation and society correspond to the entire social system at the state-society level—though both are at the same time less—the nation since it does not include members of subordinate nations residing in the state; and the society since it is usually defined in contradistinction to the state. For the purposes of this study, I proposed earlier in this chapter that “state-society” provides a relatively simple and clear conception of the single most important type of social system in the world today. The political system at state-society level includes the state apparatus and civil society.19 The distinction between state and nonstate actors is at times problematic (e.g., with respect to political parties or neocorporatist institutions), but sufficiently sharp for our purposes. NMs are crucial in structuring and mediating relationships between these two sets of actors. It is through NMs that the state seeks to justify and implement its authoritative decisions by appealing to the nation for its support (legitimation function20). Nonstate actors, whether cultural, political, economic, or hybrid, in turn work with or through NMs in order to pursue their respective goals. It is particularly important at this point to emphasize the nonintentional dimension of NMs. Thus the explicit functions and effects of NMs stem from social actors consciously using these mechanisms in pursuit of their interests. By contrast, the implicit functions and unintended effects of the NM stem from its close linkage with society’s dominant cognitive system and discourse. These are in part constitutive of perception, identity, and rational action. In both senses, the NM has a crucial coordinating function for social action. It is the pervasiveness of this coordinating function of the NM that makes it so important for political systems at the state-society level. Successful coordination of political action is a precondition for meaningful cooperation and nondestructive conflict.21 This holds for political action of state and nonstate actors at both local and “supranational” levels. Thus the NM has an integration function for systems at

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various levels. “Intranational” systems seek and are expected to integrate themselves into the larger “national” system (i.e., the state-society). “National” systems seek or are forced to integrate themselves into the larger regional and global systems. The establishment and integration of “national” economies has been a major part of modern state and nation building. With the accelerating internationalization and globalization of economic activity in the past three decades, the nature of economic systems at state-society level has become the subject of intense controversy. Both in terms of its composition (e.g., MNCs, migrant workers) and in terms of its relationship with the environment (global flows of trade, capital, technology, information, and labor), the “identity” of “national” economies has become more uncertain.22 It is the dynamics of economic change, driven in part by key technological innovations, that are said to pose the major threat to the integrity of all “national-level” systems. As pointed out earlier in the chapter, the NM does not prejudge the outcome of these change processes. However, it does allow us to see more clearly the connection between economic activity as represented in the models of mainstream economics, on the one hand, and its actual embeddedness in cultural and political systems, on the other. The economic system of a state-society as subject and object of political action is part of the NM and its legitimation, coordination, and integration functions, both externally (regionally, globally) and internally (economically, politically, and culturally). As theorists of nationalism (see esp. Gellner 1983) have recognized, the coherence of a “national economy” is also, and perhaps above all, a cultural achievement. In the absence of a society’s shared cognitive system and a common national discourse and practices, there would be no “national” economies. (Challenge: find a contemporary society low in nationness that is economically successful.) The NM at Local Levels The creation of a relatively unified societal space integrating a national state, economy, and culture is one of the major achievements of Western modernity. It is at the same time implicated in a whole range of social problems that are extensively described in postmodern and anticolonial literatures. Eurocentrism, ethnocentrism, social homogenization, and the repression of minorities are some of the undisputed effects of NMs at global and subnational levels. Perhaps nowhere else does the Janus-faced character of the nationalizing process reveal itself as clearly as in the enormous diversity of effects with which it can be associated in cultural, political, and economic terms. The same general mechanisms are co-responsible for some of humanity’s greatest social achievements and some of its darkest moments. This once


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again underlines a methodological point raised earlier (see also ch. 1), that is, that NMs usually come in a bundle along with other social mechanisms that jointly produce a particular outcome in a specific context. The working of the NM at local levels is relatively well mapped, though rarely in explicitly mechanismic terms. The most obvious effect of NMs at these levels is that they integrate cultural, political, and economic systems existing at lower levels into the “national systems” (i.e., state-societies). The globalization debate has raised a spectre for the most developed countries that in much of the rest of the world has been widespread reality for a while: national disintegration. The dissolution of the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia are occasionally presented as recent instances of national disintegration. However, those who argue that these cases are better understood as cases of national separation and reintegration tend to have a better grasp of the NM.23 Individual state-societies differ enormously in the degree to which they are nationally integrated. From a Western perspective, a high degree of integration tends to be taken for granted so that the NM is barely if at all visible in social systems contained in and bounded by a particular state-society.24 For explaining the working of some local systems, NMs may be of minor significance or so patently obvious (i.e., well understood) that it hardly needs to be spelled out. The nationalizing process tends to be, to quote Michael Billig’s (1995) memorable term in this context, banal in so many ways that it works very often not through the intentions and conscious calculations of individual and collective actors but rather through their “unconscious minds” (i.e., through social representations). From the national family—felt by and reinforced for billions of people during the Olympic Games (Bernstein 2000)— to the nuclear family in which new members of society are socialized, NMs work in a great number of different ways. The integration of “subnational” biosocial systems, such as kinship and ethnic groups, social networks, and families, is a task that many contemporary state-societies have not accomplished, and perhaps never will. How much integration is possible, desirable, and necessary poses a set of complex questions to which there are probably no generally applicable and certainly no normatively neutral answers. Historical evidence suggests that the integration of such local biosocial systems into a “national system” requires a functioning state and a minimally unified and coherent society (see discussions of nation and society above). Since most biosocial systems (both imagined and real) today are organized in so-called nation-states, the NM is (almost by definition) at work globally, though given the varying degrees of nationness in the world’s state-societies alone, its effects are widely divergent. The integration of cultural systems at local levels follows a number of basic patterns. The liberal model integrates primarily through pluralism,

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individual rights, and implicit hierarchies, a strategy that has more recently been criticized as fundamentally inadequate for the integration of certain ethnically based and other cultural groups (Taylor 1992; Kymlicka 1995). Nonliberal models of integration create explicit religious, racial, and/or ethnoculturally based hierarchies, sanctioned by the state and usually also reflected in the structure of their economic systems. “Subnational” political systems are integrated at state-society level through a number of basic regime types, such as polyarchy, federalism, and authoritarianism. For the most part, “subnational” cultural and political systems are integrated primarily into their “national” systems. However, as a large and growing literature shows, numerous such “subnational” systems from social movements and ethnic groups to professional associations and international political organizations also and at the same time integrate regionally and globally.25 In any event, the NM is sure to be important since these “subnational” cultural and political organizations remain firmly anchored in their state-societies. The same does not seem to hold true for certain economic subsystems. Some descriptions go so far as to portray multinational corporations (MNCs) as free-floating in a transnational space. What is perhaps more plausible is to confine oneself to the observation that the economic size and scope of operation of many MNCs group them into economic subsystems of a special kind. Their subsidiaries individually are economic subsystems of particular state-societies, while the MNC as a whole is an economic subsystem of regional economic systems or the global economy. The academic literature has produced strong evidence in favor of the assumption that, whatever the degree of footlooseness, state-society-based economies and national cultures continue to be crucial resources for the operations of MNCs. Hence the relevance of the NM in this context. The NM at the Individual Level There are at least two reasons that make it imperative to discuss the NM at the level of the individual. The first is that the systemic framework proposed in this study claims to build a bridge between individualism and holism. We therefore need to get some idea of how NMs work at the level of the individual. The second reason is that globalization and postmodern discourses suggest that the national is becoming increasingly irrelevant for individual identities. In addition to the discussion of national habitus in chapter 3, it may be useful to refer to some further insights gleaned from literature in anthropology and social psychology, especially in terms of specific mechanisms. This literature identifies as some of the main processes connecting national culture and the individual the production of collective memory, the


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state’s application of specific political technologies, and the individual’s self-constitution as a subject through specific practices. The NM in each case combines with other social and psychological mechanisms in the production and reproduction of a national culture. Collective memory is created through such mechanisms as historiography (writing the nation) and rituals (living the nation). One of the major effects of a collective memory is that it provides substance to the “imagined community”: it demarcates the nation in time and space.26 The state’s political technologies rely on such mechanisms as classification, knowledge, and regulation. For example, the classification of residents into nationals and foreigners, citizens and noncitizens; the dissemination of knowledge through national curricula; and the regulation of morality and gender (Foucault 1995; Nagel 1998; Scott 1998; True 2003). The legitimation of the nation-state proceeds not only in the public enactment of its self-defined traditions, but by constant reiteration of its power through what have become accepted as natural (rational and normal) state functions, of certifying, counting, reporting, registering, classifying, and identifying (Cohn and Dirks 1988, 205; quoted in Foster 1991, 244). The individual’s self-constitution as a national subject also occurs through mechanisms of commodification, diffusion, and consumption. Practices such as taking part in the consumption of heritage (e.g., by visiting museums) and national sports to reading the same ads and watching the same movies are instances of those mechanisms that, in combination with the NM, contribute to the production of a national culture (Billig 1995; Löfgren 1999). These same mechanisms of commodification, diffusion, and consumption can also combine with regionalizing and globalizing mechanisms, and as such provide alternatives or supplements to individual national identities. Once again, the outcome should not be prejudged. But, as at global, regional, state-society, and local levels, the NM should be carefully accounted for also at the individual level. Finally, the literature in social psychology, personality psychology, and sociolinguistics has produced insights into some additional relevant mechanisms linking social systems and subsystems of individual personalities (Cooper and Denner 1998; Howard 2000; Marshall 2002; Moessinger 1999, ch. 3; Triandis and Suh 2002). A major question here is how individuals develop feelings about and attachments and loyalty to large groups such as the nation (Stern 1995). One general psychological mechanism at play is that individuals see groups as providing them with security and status in return for their loyalty and commitment. “Nations, in particular, achieve personal relevance for individuals when they become sentimentally attached to the homeland (affectively involved), motivated to help their country (goaloriented), and gain a sense of identity and self-esteem through their national

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identification (ego involved). [. . .] The feelings transfer across from smaller to ever larger groups as people perceive themselves to represent and be accountable to these larger entities (Druckman 1994, 63).” Many other relevant social mechanisms linking emotions, identities, and cultures have been identified by sociologists and sociolinguists (Lawler and Thye 1999; Vogler 2000; Wierzbicki 1999). A Model of Nationalizing Mechanisms The following model attempts to recapitulate in schematic form the main points of the above analysis of where and how NMs work. Contrary to methodological holism and individualism, social systems are reproduced and changed in both top–down and bottom–up directions. Thus social mechanisms, such as NMs, have to be modeled accordingly. Instead of accepting the false choice between structuralist and individualist approaches (Elias 1991), I have proposed a process-oriented systemic framework (ch. 1). This is reflected in the following rough sketch of a general model of how NMs work at different levels and in various social systems, that is, both top–down (holistically) and bottom–up (individually).27 Starting with the top level of global structures, we work our way down to the level of the individual. For each level, I first indicate what the central (types of) social systems are in which NMs occur and who the major (types of) actors are, and then identify the general mechanisms at work. Even though I attempt to illustrate each type of mechanism with brief examples, this presentation remains highly schematic. The point of this schema is to offer an encompassing perspective on the basic flow of general nationalizing mechanisms in social systems at different levels of analysis. NMs working at global level system: international political system28 major actors: states and their representatives, transnational organizations and movements basic flow of nationalizing mechanisms at the global level: ● System→Action: top-down; application, use, and implementation of general, abstract doctrine of sovereignty and national self-determination in concrete political practices.29 ● Action→System: bottom–up; sustaining, continuing, and changing the international system by its daily uses in political practices. Along this dimension, political ideologies—both those of defenders and challengers of the status quo—are effectively being constructed, constituted, and changed by political practices, including discourse.


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general types of nationalizing mechanisms at the global level: ● “International society” of states→individual states: ideological communication and political action by dominant states and other transnational actors. Examples of mechanisms: framing state interests; demanding territorial autonomy or independence; building state-bureaucracies according to the global template. ● Individual states→“International society” of states: acceptance and compliance or nonacceptance, resistance, or dissidence of one or some states, transnational organizations and movements against the ideology or actions of international society or its elites. Examples: post–cold war United States establishing global hegemony in defense of “freedom and democracy”; governments and organizations working in/through the United Nations; social movements mobilizing against the WTO; failure to sign/comply with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty; the European Union’s constitutional crisis in 2005; Cuba and Venezuela’s outspoken opposition to neoliberalism. NMs working at state-society and local levels systems: territorial state-society with all its component systems major actors: all collective and individual actors (state and nonstate; political, economic, cultural, biosocial, hybrid) basic flow of nationalizing mechanisms at the state-society level: ● System→Action: top–down; application, use, and implementation of national culture (common epistemic and moral order, national discourse, identity, and habitus) in concrete social practices. ● Action→System: bottom–up; sustaining, continuing, and changing the national culture by its daily uses in social practices. Along this dimension, national cultures are effectively constructed, constituted, challenged, and changed by social practices, including discourse. general types of mechanisms at the state-society level: ● State-society→Members: ideological communication, inculcation, teaching, socialization, and initiation of new members into the national culture by knowledgeable group members/institutions. Examples: universal schooling, life-course models. ● Members→ State-society: acceptance and compliance or nonacceptance, resistance, or dissidence30 of some group members against the dominant ideology of the nation or its elites. Examples: modes of integration of minorities; civil-society movements in Eastern Europe. ● National→Global: generalization, extension, decontextualization of nationally specific experiences and policies of “leading nations” to other

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“national” contexts, experiences, cases, or circumstances; social learning, “best practices,” overgeneralization, stereotyping, prejudice formation, and ideology construction.31 Examples: U.S. global antiterror campaign; social movement mobilization. NMs working at individual level “systems”: individual members of state-society32 major “actors”: subselves (subsystems of personality) basic flow of nationalizing mechanisms at the individual level: ● System→Action: top–down; individual’s application, use, and implementation of models of self ● Action→System: bottom–up; sustaining, continuing, and changing of an individual’s self through the subsystems of personality general types of mechanisms at the individual level: ● Individual member→Subselves: top–down; emotional and metaphorical appeals tying national symbols to the strong forces of primary group identification; personalizing nations; mobilizing altruism and strong emotional bonds (Stern 1995); commemorative practices (Olick and Robbins 1998). Examples: raising of national flag, playing of national anthem; rhetorical appeals for national unity and the need for personal sacrifice in times of crisis; war memorial days. ● Subselves→ Individual member: bottom–up; search for social status and prestige in return for individual loyalty and commitment; sentimental attachment to homeland (affectively involved), motivated to help one’s country (goal-oriented), sense of identity and self-esteem through national identification (ego involved). Examples: honors for military service; satisfaction derived from displaying a national flag in one’s home; volunteering; becoming conscious of one’s nationality when traveling to another country. Concluding Comment This chapter has introduced a general social mechanism, the nationalizing mechanism. Nationalizing mechanisms, the basic premise of this study, are of central importance in many social processes in the early twenty-first century. Thus the hope is to identify sets of nationalizing mechanisms that can serve explanatory purposes in a variety of different contexts—from economic development to political change and cultural transformations—that are at the center of the globalization debate. The chapter has developed a detailed conception of nationalizing mechanisms with reference to the major


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components of “national cultures”: common cultural knowledge, national discourse, collective identity, and national habitus. On this basis, a typology of social systems was presented in which nationalizing mechanisms play an important role—from global systems to individuals. The final section sketched a general model of how nationalizing mechanisms work in different types of social systems.


CHAPTER 7


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his chapter attempts to recast the problem of order in the age of globalization1 and to summarize the study’s major results. The complexity of the problems of order raised in the globalization debate requires a sufficiently complex analytical framework and a mode of explanation that can deal simultaneously with stability and change in social systems; chapter 1 proposes systemism and mechanismic explanation. The complexity of problems of order requires a problem-oriented approach that can distinguish between different types of problems; an approach introduced in chapter 2 and explored in subsequent chapters. It also requires a conception of contemporary individuals that takes into account their historical constitution as national subjects as sketched in chapter 3 (homo nationis). The recasting of the problem of order under globalization attempted in the present chapter reaffirms the centrality, scope, and depth of nationalizing mechanisms under globalization. Insisting on the significance of the “national order of things” (Malkki 1995) is by no means a defense of nations or the national, whether as normative-political category or disciplinary approach.2 My basic claim is that as a matter of fact the national remains of central significance in the contemporary period of rapid global change.3 This does not entail neglecting new globalizing or regionalizing forces, the relative significance and functioning of which can only be explained in the context of nationalizing forces. To put it in the terminology developed in earlier chapters, globalization mechanisms (Dale 1999), like nationalizing mechanisms, usually work in combination with other mechanisms, and often in combination with other globalization mechanisms. This chapter explores some of the implications of

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this general claim by reexamining different dimensions of the problem of order under globalization, discussed in preceding chapters: ● ● ● ● ●

the theory of sovereignty national habitus types of the problem of order the relationship between social science and social technology the diversity of systems and combinations of mechanisms. Nation, Sovereignty, and Global Order

The emergence of nations and sovereign states is historically closely intertwined. Beginning with religious and civil wars in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe, nation- and state-building processes have continued into the late twentieth century, penetrating every single part of the globe. Although not marking the end of history, the postcommunist revolutions precipitated what may well be the last major wave of new nation-states. The era of globalization is occurring in a world political system in which the sovereign nation-state has become a universal form of order. Recent claims about the imminent end of this order therefore sound particularly alarming—one reason why such claims have received so much attention. Since the owl of Minerva flies at dusk, an appreciation of the deep significance of national orders may well become possible only after they have entered their period of decline (Hobsbawm 1990). Whether they already have remains of course an open question.4 What is beyond doubt is that the theory of sovereignty remains central. As chapter 1 argues, the theory of sovereignty is a normative theory, not an empirical one. The view that nation-states are losing sovereignty under globalization thus rests on a serious misunderstanding. States may be losing the ability to exert their authority in certain spheres, both domestically and internationally, but they retain this authority in principle.5 In any event, states in fact continue to enjoy enormous power to apply their authority in many other spheres. There is no alternative normative theory of political order that is likely to supersede the doctrine of sovereignty in the foreseeable future. Alternative normative theories that are being discussed seek at most to complement or tame the principle of sovereignty.6 This is not due to a lack of imagination, but to a more or less explicit recognition of the foundational nature of sovereignty in modern political orders (Spruyt 2002). Sovereignty is not a matter of degree, but a matter of principle. Foundational of course does not equal acceptable or desirable. Clearly there are strong arguments in support of the view that the international

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system composed of sovereign states itself embodies one of the major obstacles to successfully coping with the most pressing global problems and crises, from poverty and epidemics to environmental degradation and wars. But foundational also means central, significant, and unavoidable. Sovereignty as a normative theory is profoundly institutionalized, and not just in the obvious form of the nation-state system, but also in the less-obvious form of homo nationis (ch. 3). Nationalizing mechanisms (NMs) play a central role in most types of social systems, from the level of international organizations to that of families, as well as symbolic and cognitive systems, from discursive formations to moral and epistemic orders (see ch. 6). NMs are not confined to political systems but operate in economic, cultural, and biosocial systems. NMs are key mechanisms contributing to the stability or change of social systems. Modern social science, perhaps among the most globalized types of social system next to the Catholic Church and multinational corporations, reflects the significance of the national in many ways. Most of its disciplinary structures and approaches presuppose that national systems—states, societies, economies, and cultures—are the central units of analysis without however problematizing the significance of the national. For all their globalization, universities and scientific organizations themselves remain closely tied to “their” national states and cultures (Stichweh 1996). NMs play an even more significant role in the activities of firms, political organizations, cultural associations, and the bulk of informal networks in which most people live their lives. The order of many social systems depends in part on how NMs work in their specific cases. This is a crucial point to emphasize. My argument is not that nations are everywhere realities that are very significant relative to other variables or levels of analysis. My conceptualization does not turn the national into a variable or a level of analysis the degree of causal significance of which could somehow be established in general terms. Instead, I propose that the theory of sovereignty legitimates a global political order composed of nation-states, which have in one way or another penetrated almost all social systems in the world—territorially, politically, culturally, economically, ecologically. Penetration is a process, and NMs are historically specific processes affecting the order of social systems along with other social mechanisms that together account for stability and change in those orders. As such, although NMs are involved generally, they do not have a given general effect on a particular type of social system. Thus NMs by themselves neither stabilize nor destabilize a state, though they can facilitate either stability or instability and collapse. NMs are centrally involved in processes of social integration, but how (i.e., with what effect) they are so involved in particular empirical cases depends on the conjunction of a variety of situational factors. To illustrate, NMs were centrally involved

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both in the breakup of Yugoslavia and reunification of Germany; and they are centrally involved in processes of social integration in the framework of the newly formed states. But as all real social mechanisms, concrete NMs are historically and empirically distinct. In conclusion, the theory of sovereignty, which is a normative theory, no longer has the force as a solution to the problem of political order today that it had in the historical problem situations for which it was originally conceived four centuries ago. A world system composed of sovereign nationstates is itself the source of many problems of order. The legitimacy of a global order resting on the doctrine of sovereignty does not derive primarily from the doctrine’s external or international implications—what international relations scholars refer to as the post-Westphalian nation-state order.7 Its primary source of legitimacy lies in the doctrine’s internal dimension, for which it was originally conceived (see chapter 2). The modern state’s authority is based on the notion of the ultimate sovereignty of “the people.” “The people” in the modern age is most powerfully imagined as “a nation.”8 And it is these imagined communities, produced and reproduced through national discourses and practices, anchored in shared epistemic and moral orders, that far from declining seem to have evolved into social realities as profound as they are banal, rooted in the personality structure of homo nationis (ch. 3). Types of the Problem of Order There is no doubt that some of the most important questions about problems of order in the twenty-first century will be about “the global order.” But what is this global order? Our systemic framework can assist us in approaching this question systematically. When speaking of global order, we should distinguish between levels of analysis and actual social systems (see chapter 4). The global, like the regional, state-society, or local, is a level of analysis. Actual social systems routinely operating at the global level are states, multinational corporations, and international state and nonstate organizations and movements (from the IMF to Greenpeace). In so far as we can speak of a global political system, it is composed of sovereign states, the international organizations (e.g., UN, NATO, WTO) and “regimes” formed by sovereign states, and nonstate organizations and movements of various kinds (religious, military, professional, civic, and economic). The global political order is highly complex since it is structured as a loose framework of codified rules, unwritten norms, and de facto “regimes.”9 In this sense, it resembles the fragmented medieval political order more than the highly structured internal order of sovereign states10 or the international anarchy postulated by some international relations theories.11


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The global political order is the emergent property of the actions of multiple power centres. It has not evolved into a formal or orderly political system with independent power or authority over its members on the model of the nation-state, and there are currently no indications that it will any time soon. In this fragmented global order, political and military power is dispersed, though one hegemonic nation-state currently wields a disproportionate amount of this power. Authority, in the sense of a generally recognized set of normative principles or doctrines beyond the principle of sovereignty on which such power could be legitimately exercised, exists only in small measure (UN conventions, declarations, and resolutions). The problem of global political order, that is, its low degree of institutionalization, as such does not pose a major theoretical problem. Many of the key mechanisms working in and among the world’s major political actors and systems are fairly well understood, notwithstanding the competing approaches vying for supremacy in the field of international relations.12 Nationalizing mechanisms are among these key mechanisms, which, while widely taken for granted, are less well understood. A major obstacle to a better understanding lies in the “methodological territorialism” institutionalized in all social science disciplines, which leads us to think about local, state-society, regional, and international levels as separate spheres of social reality. As argued above and in chapter 4, these are levels of analysis rather than levels of social reality. Globalization processes such as homogenization of cultures, harmonization of policies, dissemination of scientific knowledge and management practices, or standardization of industrial norms occur at all of these levels of analysis. Clearly, some of these processes are new, and many have accelerated and spread more widely in recent decades. But the point I wish to stress is that these globalization processes for the most part occur in combination with nationalizing mechanisms. A striking example of such a combination is the global spread of neoliberal policies in many states through nationalizing mechanisms such as the mobilization of popular support through a national discourse in which economic liberalization is successfully portrayed as in the nation’s interest. Even in the case of the external imposition of neoliberal policies (e.g., “structural adjustment”), nationalizing mechanisms such as state repression of internal opposition play a central role in the globalization process.13 Few globalization processes can bypass nationalizing processes and affect state-society-level systems in an unmediated fashion. Even in such globalizing processes as the cultural homogenization of consumer products and behavior, nationalizing mechanisms such as the national cognitive frames of local consumers play a significant role. Much the same is true for the globalization of management practices.14 The general point then is that a proper understanding of

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globalization processes will usually require taking into account how these combine with nationalizing mechanisms. It underscores the explanatory significance of the systemic and mechanismic approach to theoretical problems of global order in general and of nationalizing mechanisms in particular. The problem of global order does not only pose more or less serious theoretical problems. In light of the distinction between problems of theory, policy, and ideology developed in chapter 4, we can identify two other major dimensions of the problem of order. Let us begin with the global order as an ideological problem. Ideological problems require ideological solutions, just as problems of policy require sociotechnological solutions and problems of theory require explanatory solutions. There are several global-level ideologies, in the sense of ideologies that take a global perspective—universalistic religions, scientism, neoliberalism, cosmopolitanism, environmentalism, feminism, antiglobalization doctrines—but they tend to be either sectoral, culture-bound, or both.15 There are few truly global ideologies, that is, ideologies that not only possess a global perspective but also have an encompassing (“holistic”) and scientifically tenable philosophy of the global. Many of the above-mentioned ideologies do have global appeal in so far as they have spawned social movements around the world. But there is none that can claim to have systematic answers to the fundamental problems of global order. Part of what any ideology delivers is a definition of fundamental problems, their causes and consequences, and the role different groups play in their creation and potential solution. None of the extant global ideologies contains an overarching framework that is capable of subsuming most of today’s fundamental problems of global order—their proponents’ occasional claims to that effect notwithstanding. Perhaps such an encompassing ideology is not needed. Perhaps a plurality of ideologies is appropriate for a plurality of fundamental problems and a plurality of political struggles and interests. Perhaps the very search for and expectation of such global ideologies is itself misdirected. The kind of encompassing order that national states, societies, economies, and cultures are proclaimed to be is itself populated by partial, sectoral, and competing ideologies. However, it is the relative coherence and overarching nature of the national—in the form of a national discourse, culture, and practices—that bring this diversity together, not necessarily or always by unifying or homogenizing differences, but by constituting a shared institutional, cognitive, and moral framework within which peaceful cooperation and conflict as well as violent struggles are carried out. A corresponding global framework of this kind simply does not exist, nor is there convincing evidence that it is in the making. Ideologies with a global perspective such as neoliberalism, Islam, and others mentioned earlier therefore remain strongly tied to national contexts and systems, both in their


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cultural specificity and in their political significance. This has some clear implications for questions of changing orders, to which we turn now. Between Social Science and Social Technology It is generally recognized and widely understood that many of humanity’s most challenging problems are global in scope. Conceptual frameworks, whether in science or politics, have to match the global scope of these problems. As observed, such frameworks are few and far between. In social science, disciplinary sectoralization of reality and reified distinctions between national and international levels of analysis predominate. In ideology, incipient conceptions matching the global scope of problems are emerging, though they tend to be culture-bound.16 The global political order, as argued above, is highly fragmented. These are not favorable conditions for the design and implementation of global policies. The greater effectiveness and legitimacy of social technologies at the level of states are a result of these conditions. First, essentialized “national” levels of analysis are not as problematic in their statesociety context as they are in the global context. Many problems are, or are perceived and can be treated as, “domestic” problems. For states, social science results based on “methodological territorialism” are useful since for the most part states are interested in and confined to policy making at the national level.17 Second, while a number of ideologies match the global scope of problems, they are not easily legitimated at a global level. Legitimation mechanisms for the most part work with or through NMs at the state-society level. This makes them national culture bound rather than global culture bound. Thus social movements with global agendas are very much nationally specific in both their organizational structure and their culture. The international organizations with which they interact are themselves as yet little more than an aggregate of their nation-state components.18 Third, even if global social movements and international organizations were to become less nationbound, they would still be operating in a highly fragmented global political order that is not conducive to coordinated policy-making to nearly the degree as in the state-society context.19 Thus knowledge, legitimacy, and political structure work against the design and implementation of global policy. None of this is to say that there are not very significant global policy initiatives. Notwithstanding temporary setbacks such as those occasioned by the hegemonic nation-state at the current juncture, global policy-making capacity is likely to increase. Paradoxically, the impetus for this increase is coming from the same sources that have just been identified as the major obstacles to global policy making. A strengthening global consciousness, not against but alongside the national, is affecting the way knowledge production,

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legitimacy, and political structure work in response to global problems. The important point here is that nationalizing mechanisms are not being replaced by globalizing mechanisms. In fact, the former remain largely in place, are reoriented and adapted as they combine with globalizing mechanisms. Metaphors of shifting, declining, undermining, and disappearing employed in describing changes of the national under globalization therefore tend to be misleading. They reinforce the essentialized levels of analysis discussed above, suggesting some sort of zero-sum game between two distinct players. The design and implementation of effective social policies for the global level requires a sophisticated analytical framework—both for the generation and application of relevant scientific knowledge and for the refinement and propagation of progressive ideologies. Adopting and further developing such a cross-disciplinary analytical framework is a major preliminary step for social science to take. The Fundamental Dimensions of the Problem of Order The problem of order refers to a complex set of problems many of which have been a traditional subject of scholarly inquiry since ancient times. In the modern era, the problem of order became gradually separated from the religious framework within which it was firmly lodged in medieval times (Krings 1982; see also ch. 2). With the rise of modern science, a new metaphysical reference context emerged that has overshadowed and informed debates on social order.20 There is however to this day no philosophical consensus on the nature of the problem or how to study it. Individual disciplines in the social sciences, and competing approaches within them, hold often widely diverging views, ranging from that of those who reject the relevance of modern science altogether to those who copy its methods uncritically. The phrase “problem of order” refers to a multiplicity of problems related to stability and change in and of social systems. There are thus as many problems of order as there are social systems. We could also say, that problems of social order are always historically specific. This is why very general theories of social order (e.g., Parsonian, Marxist) have not been particularly successful (cf. also Mann 1993, ch. 1). At the same time, problems of order are similar or even identical if we look at some of their fundamental analytical dimensions. One purpose of this study is to explore these basic dimensions in a systematic fashion and to offer some analytical tools that may be useful in the many different contexts in which problems of systemic stability and change (dimension 1; see figure 7.1) arise. The different types of the problem of order (dimension 2)—theory, policy, ideology—as well as the relationships between explaining and designing order (i.e., between social science and


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types of social systems stability and change

key mechanisms

system-specific habitus

PROBLEMS OF ORDER

types of problems

social science & social technology

disciplines levels of analysis

Diagram 7.1 is a graphic representation of the problem’s seven major dimensions that we have encountered throughout the book. This chapter recapitulates the major results of the analysis. It starts, with a discussion of the significance of the theory of sovereignty (ch. I) for the global order. The problem of order gives rise to different types of problems. Chapter 4, distinguished between problems of theory, policy and ideology. The distinction is important among other reasons because each type of problem is subject to different standards of success defined at different levels of discourse by different actors. What is a good solution for one type of problem is not a good, or any, solution for others. This is also true for the closely related but distinct fields of social science and social technology (chapter 5). To explain a problem adequately is not to provide instruments or social technologies to deal with it as a social problem. Academic disciplines have divided up the study of social reality in ways that are often not conducive to explaining problems of order or to contribute to dealing with them. Specialized (sub-)fields concentrate on their own, separate levels of analysis that tend to be reified into separate levels of reality (chapter 6). But real social systems of all types operate at more than one level of analysis or have crucial ties with social systems at other levels. This includes the often neglected level of dominant personality structures and forms of habitus. To understand stability and change in social orders, levels of analysis have to be combined so that key mechanisms linking social systems can be identified and explained.

Figure 7.1: Fundamental Dimensions of the Problem of Order

social technology; dimension 3) have already been reviewed in the two previous sections of this chapter. There are fundamentally different types of social system (dimension 4) in which the problem of order is posed. I briefly illustrate problems of order in the four basic types of social system—political, economic, cultural, biosocial— contained in the analytical framework proposed here.21 Problems of order in political systems include the problem of constitutional order, the problem of institutional reform, and the problem of legitimacy. Our discussion of the theory of sovereignty (see esp. ch. 2) illustrated all three fundamental problems of political order. Problems of order in economic systems include the problems of ownership and control, problems of economic policy, and problems of mobilizing “cultural resources.” These have been three prominent problems of order in the postcommunist transformation debate

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(see esp. ch. 4–5). Basic problems of ownership and control in the transformation debate were summarized in the opposition between market and plan; problems of economic policy prominently included those of privatization and liberalization; and problems of mobilizing cultural resources refer to collective values and practices that could facilitate or hinder economic transformation processes. Problems of order in cultural systems include the problems of the role of state and nonstate organizations in governing and funding religious, artistic, and educational institutions; and their relationship with or integration into cultural (esp. national) systems of discourse and practice. Problems of order in biosocial systems include family structures and hierarchies, the duties and obligations of their members, and the forms of their public regulation. Individuals are integrated into the social systems to which they belong in part through practicing a system-specific habitus (dimension 5), in particular the national habitus of their state-society. Social systems are situated and operate at various levels of order (dimension 6). Global, regional, state-society, and local levels are distinguished in this study. More could easily be added since these are primarily levels of analysis rather than levels of social reality. The level corresponding most directly to a powerful social reality is that of state-society. State, economic, and cultural systems are organized as “national” entities. This also partly explains the significance of nationalizing mechanisms (ch. 6). The local level is a catch-all category defined with reference to the state-society level; it may include anything from subcultures to cities. The regional level derives its significance from being associated with civilizations and cultures predating the nation-state era (Confucianism, Judaism, Eastern and Western Christianity, Islam) and/or from referring to contemporary transnational concentrations of economic activity. The European Union is a unique case of an evolving political order institutionalized at the regional level. The global level in one sense corresponds most unproblematically to a social reality, namely to all social systems on the planet. Its all-encompassing nature, on the other hand, is also what makes this level of analysis particularly challenging. It is relatively easy to handle as a residual category defined as everything that transcends the statesociety level, but at the same time invites somewhat loose conceptualizations of the global in terms of the scope or effect of social activities, flows of communication, or even the new “space of flows” (Castells 1996, ch. 6). From the systemic perspective proposed here, we insist on a clear separation between real social systems, on the one hand, and social processes, on the other. Problems of order arise only with respect to concrete social systems (though social processes in those systems affect their stability or change). It is for this reason, as argued earlier in this chapter, that problems of global order are not exceptionally challenging theoretically.


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Social systems are historical entities and as such constantly evolving (Sztompka 1991). Some social systems disappear, new ones emerge, and existing ones are more or less stable or changing. The method of identifying and explaining the central processes in and among evolving social systems is what this study refers to as mechanism-based explanation. Discovering and modeling key mechanisms (dimension 7) in social systems accounting for their stability and change is one of the central tasks of social science. It will be remembered that this method does not search for the key mechanism or try to establish the relative significance of one mechanism vis-à-vis others. Instead, the assumption is that a particular combination of key mechanisms is what brings about stability and change in specific social systems in a particular historical period. The distinction is important because the same key mechanism may have very different outcomes, depending on other major mechanisms operating simultaneously in a given situation. The example illustrating all of these characteristics of key mechanisms provided in this study is of nationalizing mechanisms (ch. 6). I propose that nationalizing mechanisms play a significant role in many problems of order today, including in the field of globalization, yet they are often studied separately. Mechanisms, like social systems, do not respect disciplinary boundaries. Academic disciplines in the social sciences (dimension 8) have developed their own distinct traditions and debates dealing with the problem of order. I am hardly the first to suspect that this has slowed down advances in knowledge by treating interdependent spheres of social life as separate social realities (Wallerstein 1999).22 There are significant differences among disciplines; I briefly comment on two, political science and economics, that have played a prominent role in this study. Political science has approached political order primarily in the context of national and international political organizations, above all the state. A distinctly separate subdiscipline of political science, international relations, treats the problem of order in various supranational contexts. Its primary focus, however, has traditionally been on interstate relations, though increasingly international organizations, international political economy, and international discourses are examined. This has reduced the subfield’s isolation from the rest of the discipline and brought in perspectives from other disciplines and fields as well. The problem of global political order has recently been reconceptualized at the intersection of political theory, comparative politics, and international relations (see, e.g., Held 1995), an unusual and promising violation of subfield boundaries. Modern economics in its dominant neoclassical form approaches problems of order following the classical Hobbesian formulation,23 as economic interaction between rational individuals, with the important difference that the market replaces Hobbes’s Leviathan as the crucial coordinating agency.

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The market (unlike, say, firms24) is of course not a real social system but a conceptual system the properties of which are formally modeled on the basis of a mathematically sophisticated but scientifically outmoded methodology.25 As a result, the discipline makes only marginal scholarly contributions to such debates as postcommunist transformation and globalization, though on account of the market model’s current ideological appeal economists enjoy a great deal of social authority, and therefore policy influence (see ch. 4–5). Ironically, this outmoded methodology has in recent years managed to proliferate outside the discipline of economics under the name of rational choice theory in a number of social science fields, especially in U.S. academe.26 This is a warning that not every transdisciplinary project should be considered theoretically progressive (Bunge 2003). The problems of economic order have been more fruitfully examined in such fields as institutional economics, political economy, economic sociology, and world systems theory, all of which are crossdisciplinary ventures.27 The debates on postcommunist transformation and globalization have given further impetus to the kind of crossdisciplinary agenda pursued in this study of the problem of order. Systemism, mechanismic explanation, and problem orientation have been offered as basic elements for the further pursuit of this agenda. The fundamental dimensions of the problem of order discussed here as such do not constitute a direct contribution to theory, ideology, or social technology. Explaining, framing, and designing social change remain the tasks of theorists, ideologues, and technologists, whose work this study seeks to support.

Notes

Introduction 1. Some have drawn the conclusion that the idea of value-neutral social science is at best self-delusion, and that what matters is to choose the right normative and ideological positions for social theorizing. The position I present in chapter 4 is that much of what goes by the name of social science is in fact applied science and social technology, such as the whole field of policy-related work. Here normative and ideological positions indeed do and must play a central role. 2. So-called political theorists who reside in departments of philosophy or political science for the most part specialize in the history of political philosophy, usually unconnected with the debates and concerns of the social sciences. See the journal Political Theory, but also the contributions to the American Political Science Review that are reserved for political theorists. 3. Which is not to say that such boundaries cannot or should not be drawn. For a philosophy-based systematic conception, see Bunge 1998. 4. A useful survey of the historical emergence of the global order of nation-states is provided by Opello and Rosow 1999. 5. From 51 states in 1945 when the UN was founded to more than 190 states by the end of the century. 6. Timor-Leste (East Timor) became a sovereign state in 2002. 7. Rather than speaking abstractly of society and state, I use the phrase “statesocieties” in this study in order to refer to the roughly 200 concrete social-political systems that are situated in a specific, territorially defined, and internationally recognized nation-state—without a priori privileging state-societies over other social systems. 8. On sociology’s lack of interest in nations and nationalism, see Spillman 2004; Szacki 2004. 9. The widely used phrase “the Washington consensus” has come to epitomize the neoliberal position in political and ideological discourse (Williamson 2003). 10. The oft-cited author of the so-called “end of history” thesis is Fukuyama 1992.

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11. This study is greatly indebted to the philosophy of Mario Bunge. However, it is acknowledged that so-called critical realism (e.g., Bhaskar 1975) shares some of the central assumptions and concerns of Bunge’s “scientific realism.”

Chapter 1


1. On systems theories in general and specific versions, see Müller 1996. For examples of critiques of Parsons’s systems theory: Elias 1994, intro; Habermas 1988; Luhmann’s systems theory: Bluhdorn 2000, Osterberg 2000; Wallerstein’s world systems theory: Aronowitz 1981, Kaplan 1980. 2. In fact, Bunge’s ontology is not confined to social systems. See especially his Treatise on Basic Philosophy, Vol. 4: A World of Systems (1979). 3. A number of recent works in different social science disciplines have attempted to bridge the methodological individualism-holism divide. The literatures going by the common name of “new institutionalism” represent recent attempts of this sort in political science (e.g., Ostrom 1991), comparative politics (e.g., Lichbach and Zuckerman 1997), sociology (e.g., Brinton and Nee 1998), economics (e.g., Rutherford 1996), management theory (e.g., Ingram and Silverman 2002), organizational theory (e.g., Powell and DiMaggio 1991) and policy studies (e.g., Scharpf 1997). The difficulty and ultimate failure to date of integrating rational choice and culturalist theories is discussed by Johnson 2002. 4. That our subjective experience of living in/being a member of social systems is “direct” does not imply that our experiences, even such basic and immediate experiences as emotions, are not semiotically encoded. See for example Wierzbicka’s (1999) Emotions across Languages and Cultures. Diversity and Universals. 5. On the question of whether they are central parts in other animal social systems, see Wierzbicka 2004. Models are of course also central in social systems of modern science. Indeed, a fundamental problem in the social sciences is how to model the actors’ models that are part of the social phenomena to be explained. 6. Of course there are also local, regional, and global land systems. 7. An excellent ethnographic and sociological study of major mechanisms of transformation in land systems in postcommunist Romania is Verdery 2003, which will be discussed at greater length later in this chapter. 8. On the role of laws in mechanismic explanation, see Bunge 2004. 9. According to Hedström and Swedberg (1998, 6), Arthur Stinchcombe (1991) reopened the debate in the journal Philosophy of the Social Sciences. Ten authors are assembled in Social Mechanisms. An Analytical Approach to Social Theory (1998), including Raymond Boudon, Jon Elster, and Arthur Stinchcombe, as well as the volume editors Peter Hedström and Richard Swedberg. Bunge’s article “Social Mechanisms” was published in 1997, also in Philosophy of the Social Sciences. In the same journal, two special issues (June and September 2004) were devoted to discussing Bunge’s approach to systems and mechanisms. 10. In his Theory and Social Structure (1948/1968), republished as ch. III of On Theoretical Sociology (1967).

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11. “Functionalism,” like Bunge’s systemic approach, may have negative connotations for some readers. For clarification, see Mahner and Bunge (2001). 12. Merton (ibid.) continues: “Basic query: What is the presently available inventory of social mechanisms corresponding, say, to the large inventory of psychological mechanisms? What methodological problems are entailed in discerning the operation of social mechanisms?” As Renate Mayntz (2004, 256) diagnosed in a recent symposium on systems and mechanisms, “[w]ith the exception of game theory, the literature is still devoid of attempts to treat diverse kinds of actor constellations in different fields of macro-social research as systematically as has been done for the emergent effects of collective behavior. . . . The problem is that in most empirical studies in which structural configurations and actor constellations play a crucial role, very little effort is devoted to distil mechanism models from the analysis.” 13. A general search (August 23, 2005) of the Social Sciences Citation Index for the period 1995–2005 shows that “mechanistic” occurs in the title or abstract of about 500 articles, while “relational” occurs in about 2,500 articles. Bunge’s own “mechanismic” appears twice. A “relational” perspective has a long tradition as part of Marxian dialectics (cf. Heilbroner 1980, ch. 2). 14. This leads some theorists to argue that conceptual systems themselves can be social mechanisms (e.g., Wight 2004). 15. Much literature in comparative politics is actually focused on one country only. Here the comparative, generalizing element may be implicit, or the type of explanation offered is actually of type 1 as just discussed.

Chapter 2 The Problem-Oriented Approach to Order: The Case of the Theory of Sovereignty 1. Contemporary debates involving sovereignty, whether relating to international relations theory, globalization, human rights, international law, citizenship or migration, or development are not engaged directly in this chapter. For useful introductions to the debate, see for example Spruyt 2002; Wouter and De Wilde 2001; Krasner 2000. Kurtulus (2004) surveys how different fields and disciplines approach sovereignty. 2. There is a third objection. Sovereignty, one might contend, means absolute sovereignty, or else it does not make any sense. Of course the same would then have to be said about freedom, tolerance, and democracy. For just as it is quite meaningful to speak of limited freedom, limited tolerance, and limited majority rule, it is quite useful to speak of limited sovereignty. However, as the examples from the history of political theory referred to below show, even the principle of unlimited sovereignty is not necessarily inconsistent with a theory (and practice) of institutional control, whereas theories of limited or mixed sovereignty were in fact seriously defective. See also note 9 below. 3. The first statement of Popper’s solution to the problem of knowledge was published in German as Die beiden Grundprobleme der Erkenntnistheorie (1979), on the

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basis of manuscripts from the years 1930 to 1933. An English translation is in preparation. The Logic of Scientific Discovery was a strongly abridged version of this work from which large parts containing many of the ideas that Popper developed only much later were cut. For the reader unfamiliar with Popper’s solution to the so-called problem of induction, the relevant sections in Miller’s Popper Selections (1985) can serve as a useful introduction. From the justificationist metacontext, relativists infer that since there cannot be any certain knowledge, there cannot be any absolutely true knowledge; hence, knowledge (or the truth) becomes a matter of social convention. See in this context especially Popper’s critique of the sociology of knowledge (1966/2, 212–23). In his early writings, Popper “implicitly tends to identify the demarcation between science and nonscience with the demarcation between good and bad . . . [theories].” Thus, as Bartley (1984, 205) further explains, Popper, in his most extreme statement “denies that untestable or unfalsifiable theories even speak about reality.” Popper himself, in Objective Knowledge (1972, 40n) writes with respect to his early work: “In those days I identified wrongly the limits of science with those of arguability. I later changed my mind and argued that non-testable (i.e., irrefutable) metaphysical theories may be rationally arguable.” For further on this, see especially chapters 8 and 10 in his Conjectures and Refutations (1968) as well as Sect. 15 of his Realism and the Aim of Science (1983). This formulation has the advantage of not disputing the general or transhistorical character of political theories or any of their elements in principle. By emphasizing the importance of a given problem situation, it is possible to avoid both radical relativist and absolutist positions while benefiting from the theoretical insights considered fundamental by each. The fact that many political theorists have made universal claims for their doctrines need not disturb us. There is no reason why we could not read them as making more or less general and contextbound, though not universal, claims. At least in this respect we will not lose anything of significance by refusing to understand their theories as their authors understood them. For a recent account of Bodin’s theory of sovereignty with special emphasis on its historical context, see Engster 1996. The notion of sovereignty was first formulated under the Roman Empire from the first century A.D., in much the same way and by much the same process. Cf. Hinsley 1966, 42–44. With a reversal of roles, the same of course applies to the popular rights doctrines with the paradoxical result that the people are claimed to have supremacy over the people. (On this paradox and its resolution through a theory of popular sovereignty, see comments on Locke, below). Bodin did address the question of tyranny explicitly, and came to the conclusion that although some minor forms of resistance to the sovereign were admissible, removal or tyrannicide were not. On this as well as the specific historical circumstances that provide the context for Bodin’s answer, see Quaritsch 1970, 319–33.

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11. As such, it does not make the claim that political power is in fact sovereign in the empirical sense that Popper has criticized (see above). It only means that there can be no rightful or legitimate claims for political power that do not originate in and are not sanctioned by the sovereign. 12. Bodin’s reformulation of the problem of order, however, that is, his conception of absolute sovereignty, did not become prevalent until the end of the seventeenth century until which time conceptions of limited or double sovereignty were still widely advocated. As Hinsley has pointed out: “It was clear at the time, on the other hand, that this mixed government and similar compromise theories failed to check dissension, as they failed to avert the Civil War. And it is now clear that this was because they merely extended the dualism which it was the aim of the concept of sovereignty to overcome (merely shifted the conflict between dualism and the idea of sovereignty) by seeking to split or subdivide the rulership itself when it was in practice impossible to limit or subdivide the government power that was coming to be seen as sovereign power” (Hinsley 1966, 138). 13. Writers like Anthony Ascham, John Rockett, and Henry Parker. Cf. Hinsley 1966, 141. 14. Locke’s conception of sovereignty, as J.H. Franklin has shown, was already worked out by George Lawson, a political moderate writing in the later Interregnum. Cf. Franklin 1978. 15. Of course Locke’s comprehensive theory of sovereignty has not always been fully understood, nor has it gone unchallenged. “[T]he abstract concept of the state as a moral person, and even the doctrine of sovereignty itself, were blunted and obscured when Montesquieu, like the Founding Fathers of the American Constitution after him, mistook the English principle of mixed government, based on the separation of different government powers, to be a doctrine resulting from and justifying the deliberate division of sovereignty itself among several independent owners” (Hinsley 1966, 152). Rousseau, on the other hand, not only rejected any division of sovereign power but also any constitutionalist elements such as the division of powers or representation. “Reversing Hobbes’s thesis, in which the state dominated the community which created it while remaining separate from it, he allowed the community to swallow up the state— and left the community with no organ capable of exercising power” (ibid., 155). 16. See the useful discussion in Kurtulus (2004) of the distinction and some of the relationships between normative and empirical approaches to the question of sovereignty. 17. I elaborate this point further in chapter 4. 18. The former German Democratic Republic, or East Germany, is a rare case in point for giving up state sovereignty in favor of unification with the Federal Republic, that is, in favor of “national reunification.” 19. Astute observers of U.S. foreign policy in the early twenty-first century, however, see the United States ill served by this approach (see, e.g., Johnson 2004; Mann 2003).

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Chapter 3 Homo Nationis: The Psychosocial Infrastructure of the Nation-State Order 1. Though one of his mistakes, that is, treating the normative theory of sovereignty as an empirical theory of political power—the “descriptive fallacy”(see final section of ch. 2)—is still frequently committed in the contemporary debate. 2. See Macpherson 1964; van Krieken 1997. 3. Society is used in the generic sense of social group. 4. This is the title of one of his major works (Elias 1991). 5. I am purposely speaking of nation-state societies as composed of “individualizing members” rather than individuals. This is to emphasize that individualism is not somehow opposed to society but rather has emerged in particular types of societies. More on the “historical individual” below. 6. Whereas the economic and political regimes of communism, and in three cases the federal state itself, collapsed, national identity and culture survived and thrived. In spite of certain ideological declarations to the contrary, communist states did not denationalize their populations, and for the most part reinforced their national specificity. 7. Being products of an ongoing social process, national culture and national habitus should not be treated as—independent or dependent—variables. See ch. 1 for the distinction between variable-oriented and mechanismic explanation. 8. The more general concept of social capital has been widely employed since the last decade of the twentieth century, though Bourdieu is not the only or even major source of inspiration. For a wide-ranging survey of the origins and diverse usages of the concept of social capital in sociology, see Portes 1998; in political science, Jackman and Miller 1998. 9. Ironically, habit and habitus are well-established concepts in the natural sciences. 10. I provide a broad discussion of the concept of habitus in Pickel 2005a. 11. The same habits that for a long time support or are at least compatible with the existence of a particular social order, however, may under certain conditions also have the opposite effects of facilitating revolutionary action and regime collapse, as was the case in many of the communist regimes in 1989. For an interesting illustration of this point in the context of East Germany in 1989, see McFalls 2003. 12. Camic, writing in the mid-1980s, does not mention Elias once. 13. The significance of habit in determining individual behavior is also highlighted in recent psychological literature (Ajzen 2001). 14. See however the work of Michele Lamont (1992; 2002), who also provides a critique of Bourdieu’s conception of habitus. 15. If indeed it is recognized as such. 16. For a critical assessment of these positions from a viewpoint similar to the one presented here, see Billig (1995), esp. ch. 6–7. 17. The EU as the leading case of transnational integration provides an ideal testing ground for whether and how strong postnational identities can emerge. See for example Cederman 2001; Soysal 2002.

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18. That is, in terms of similar values as measured, for instance, in the cross-national surveys of Inglehart (e.g., 1997). 19. The best recent treatment of this “banal” nature of nationalism is probably Billig 1995. 20. Note that the claim here is not that national habitus works everywhere as the only, or necessarily major, psychosocial foundation of modern order. Such generalizations would be untenable given the diversity of nation-states. 21. There are other structural features of a state-society, such as internal linguistic or religious divisions, that do not favor the development of a national habitus. 22. For a critique of Gellner’s functionalist leanings, see O’Leary 1997. 23. Contrast this rich conception of economic culture with economist L. Thurow’s (2000) thin conception: “Traditionally, culture is older people telling younger people what they should believe and how they should act. What is frightening about the new electronic culture is that it is a ‘for-sale’ culture that jumps right across the generations directly to the young. In contrast to older forms of culture, this culture does not have any specific values that it wants to inculcate. Those who produce this culture provide whatever sells—whatever the young will buy. It is a culture of economics (profits) rather than a culture of values (morals).” 24. See, however, Crane 1998; Abdelal 2001; Tsygankov 2002. 25. I rely in this section heavily on the analysis by Spillman/Faeges 2005. See also Szacki 2004. 26. Writing in the early 1970s, leading nationalism scholar Anthony Smith concluded that the debates of Marxist thinkers Kautsky, Luxemburg, Bauer, and Lenin were the “most consistently sociological of the attempts to explain nationalism until the present decade” (quoted in Spillman and Faeges 2005, 412). 27. Durkheim, like Marx, was convinced of the transitory character of the nation, remarking presciently that “there is tending to form . . . a European society that has even now some feeling of its own identity and the beginnings of an organization” (quoted in Spillman/Faeges 2005, 413). 28. With the addition of Timor-Leste (East Timor) in May of 2002, there are now 193 de iure sovereign states in the world. In addition, there is a small number of de facto independent states, inhabited dependent territories, as well as areas of special sovereignty. 29. A correspondingly one-sided overemphasis of the cultural can be found in the idealist conceptualizations of nation in some of the works published in the 1990s. Greenfeld 1992, 2001; critically: Rutland 2003; Meyer et al. 1997. 30. I define “state-society” as the social system composed of the permanent residents of a territorial state. The significance of this concept will become clearer in ch. 6, in which the nation-state-society problematic is systematically explored. 31. While the civic versus ethnic dualism in the categorization of nationalisms is now widely recognized as problematic, Zubrzycki (2001) shows how they may serve as ideal types if approached and employed with sufficient care. 32. There are of course important variants on the basic type, the most important being the federal model pioneered by the United States.

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Chapter 4


1. This formulation is more dramatic than informative. All of these twenty-two new nation-states had been in existence and fully institutionalized as federal or sub-states for many decades, a crucial precondition for successful secession (Roeder 2001). 2. On economic reforms under communism, see Berend 1999; Hewett 1988. 3. For an excellent historical review of this debate, especially the conservative and reactionary positions, see Hirschman 1991. For an application of Hirschman to the postcommunist debate, see Greskovits 2002. 4. The thumbnail sketches of the basic positions I provide under the headings of theory, strategy, and ideology are designed for illustrative purposes. While I have tried to capture the “essence” of these two positions in the debate as I see them, they are obviously highly simplified. For this reason, I do not cite individual authors unless I am dealing with specific arguments. 5. My three standards for evaluation are informed by the critical rationalist’s nonjustificationist and nonfoundationalist tools “for eliminating error by criticizing our conjectures or speculations.” See, for example, Bartley 1984, 127. See also ch. 2. 6. The failure to be clear on the distinction between means and ends, as Ben Slay (1993) points out, was a source of confusion in the transformation debate. 7. For my own view on this debate, see the editors’ introduction in Bönker/Müller/ Pickel 2002. 8. Possible exceptions include Russia and Ukraine. As John Dryzek and Leslie Holmes (2002) find in their comparative analysis of political discourses in thirteen postcommunist states, all have cultural resources for the strengthening of substantive democratic institutions and practices. 9. Again, this can be said with more conviction about some countries than others. 10. I have elsewhere (Pickel 1997) concluded that for this and other reasons neoliberalism has become what in the context of Marxist-Leninist states was called an “official ideology,” that is, a set of doctrines that has lost much of its practical policy significance but that continues to rein as symbolic discourse at the political level. 11. Thus in a piece published in 1994, he offers the following “gradualist’s” reflection on policy strategy that contrasts sharply with his full-mouthed neoliberal rhetoric: “The reforming politician must take into account the fact that radical transformation of any society is a complex and dynamic process, not merely an exercise in applied economics or political science. [It] takes years to complete; it cannot be accomplished merely with some sort of overnight shock-therapy” (V. Klaus, The Economist, September 10, 1994, 57). 12. This is precisely the point that Karl Popper, who is frequently invoked by gradualists, makes when he writes that the “difference between Utopian and piecemeal social engineering turns out, in practice, to be a difference not so much in scale and scope as in caution and preparedness for unavoidable surprises” (Popper 1976, 69). On Popper and transformation theory, see also ch. 5. 13. A particularly striking example is provided by Murrell (1995a, 88–89), which recounts the peculiar “indigenization” of radical reform ideology and practice in Mongolia.

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14. A claim advanced by Murrell (1995a). 15. It is beyond the scope of this analysis to explore the ways in which ideology and strategy are and are not linked. This distinction underlies a number of studies that have explored such links in a variety of contexts. A classic treatment of the relationship between Marxist-Leninist ideology and policy practice is Moore (1965). For the Western context, see, for example, Hall (1989). 16. Thus, a mid-1990s twelve-country survey of people’s attitude toward the pace of economic reform in their country would suggest that neoliberal ideology with its emphasis on reform speed still enjoyed significant popularity. See The Economist, July 22, 1995: 52. 17. Grimm (1993) and Brada (1995) present arguments to this effect.

Chapter 5 Explaining and Designing Order: Social Science and Social Technology 1. Arguably, the entire “third-world development” experience could be considered as earlier instances of attempts at controlled, systemic change—though perhaps with the important caveat that “modernization” did not necessarily entail wholesale adoption of Western political and economic institutions. The same could be said about Japan in the nineteenth century and Turkey in the early twentieth century, as well as the experience of all late developers. As Gerschenkron (1962) has shown with respect to nineteenth-century European economic history, latecomers developed their own set of institutions specific to their local conditions rather than simply copying those of the advanced countries. 2. As borrowed from Roscoe Pound (1922, 99), as Popper (1966/61, 210) himself acknowledges. 3. Nationalism, religious fundamentalism, environmentalism, and feminism are alternative, to some extent competing, doctrines of social change, though none of these enjoys nearly the same powerful institutional and political support as neoliberalism. 4. As Mario Bunge (1998, 440) has pointed out, “there is a wedge between social science and social technology, namely ideology. This is unavoidable and not deplorable in itself, because technology is neither value-free nor morally neutral. There would be no problem with a proscience and morally right ideology. The trouble is that most ideologies do not meet these conditions.” 5. Thus there is general decline in the political and symbolic attractiveness of neoliberalism as we move from west to east. It is highest in Central Eastern Europe and the Baltic states, more controversial in Southeastern Europe, highly controversial if not simply passé in Russia and the CIS, and anathema in China as well as in the geographic outlier, Cuba. 6. As Janine Wedel (1998) documents, Harvard economist Jeffrey Sachs, for example, advised not only the Polish reform government in 1990, but also appeared in the Polish media to promote the political project of radical transformation. 7. Initially Anglo-Saxon (the United States), subsequently Western European with the growing importance of EU membership; but very little from East Asia,

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10. 11. 12. 13.

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arguably the region with the most relevant cases for late integration into the capitalist world market. Many of these ideas have been further developed by the leading German critical rationalist, Hans Albert (e.g., 1999a, 1978, 1976). With the exception of a recent English-language collection (Albert 1999b), most of his work is unfortunately not available in English. The same inconsistency has been noted by Moessinger (1999, 119) in Hayek’s call for the state to maintain the conditions for “spontaneous order:” “Obviously, it is legitimate to ask whether, in the very attempt to preserve ‘spontaneous’ order, the spontaneity itself is not destroyed.” On this distinction, see Moessinger 1999, 109–110. Example of normative catalytic principles: Western models are best and should be copied; or, indigenous models are best. Catalytic mechanisms: the central change mechanisms in a specific case. Catalytic practices: rely on Western experts wherever possible; do without Western experts wherever possible; rhetorically and symbolically talk neoliberal, even if your goals are fundamentally different.

Chapter 6


1. See ch. 1. For a brief overview of mechanism-based explanation and different views on the methodological presuppositions of the approach, see my introduction to the two special issues of Philosophy of the Social Sciences on systems and mechanisms (Pickel 2004). 2. The phrase “national culture,” subsequently used without quotation marks, is defined and developed below in my conception of “nation as process.” It should therefore not be mistaken as an essentialist concept. 3. This “spillover” of national cultures across the borders of states (often misleadingly referred to as “transnationalization”) is easily accounted for in the conception presented here. National cultures, as further explained below, are not conceived as social entities or properties but rather as social processes (i.e., nationalizing mechanisms) in concrete social systems such as government agencies, firms, associations, or families. Such social systems are active and embedded in supranational contexts in many different ways. 4. “[A mechanismic approach] shifts the search away from general models like rational choice that purport to summarize whole categories of contention and movement toward the analysis of smaller-scale causal mechanisms that recur in different combinations with different aggregate consequences in various historical settings” (McAdam, Tarrow, Tilly 2001, 24). “Every major social change is likely to be biological, psychological, demographic, economic, political, and cultural—either simultaneously or in succession. Hence, the mechanism of every major social change is likely to be a combination of mechanisms of various kinds coupled together” (Bunge 1997, 417).

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5. I am aware of the problematic semantics of “social system,” a concept that for many social scientists is associated with systems theories such as those of Parsons, Easton, or Luhmann. However, I am not convinced that concepts such as “social sites” (Tilly) or “social fields” (Bourdieu) improve upon the systemic ontology advocated here, but rather that they may invite confusions between social systems, symbolic systems, and conceptual systems (cf. Bunge 1996a). See further on this ch. 1. 6. Other examples of imagined communities that do not have any independent social existence are “the good guys” and “the bad guys” (cf. U.S. President George W. Bush’s view of the world) or the fan community of a Rock star. 7. This definition attempts to incorporate the subjective, intersubjective, and objective dimensions of nation. The statement itself is objective (it reports a widely held social representation), recognition is intersubjective, and experience is subjective. 8. In states with more than one numerically and politically strong nation, cultural hegemony may to some extent be shared (cf. the Canadian case). In all other states, the dominant nation’s cultural hegemony may be more or less openly contested, both from within the dominant nation and by the subordinate nations. 9. Samuel Huntington (2004) sees this cultural hegemony at risk as a result of recent Latino immigration to the United States. Similar fears are voiced in other countries of immigration, including recently also European countries. 10. To take the case of Germany, Auslandsdeutsche are individuals of German ethnicity who are entitled to German citizenship; more than 2 million from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union emigrated to Germany in the 1980s and 1990s. They are legally and politically fully integrated as citizens, yet culturally barely integrated (therefore a “subordinate nation”). Second- and third-generation Turks, on the other hand, may be fully integrated culturally but not politically if they do not have German citizenship. 11. This conception of the national therefore includes individual cognition, social discourse, and social structure (usually studied separately by psychology, discourse analysis, and sociology). It also takes to heart Elias’s point that “[i]t is not enough to seek structures in language, thought or knowledge as if they had an existence of their own independently of the human beings who speak, think or know. In all these cases one can connect characteristics of the structure of language, thought or knowledge with the functions they have in and for the life of human beings in groups” (1991b, 68). 12. This breakdown closely follows, but is not identical with vanDijk 1998, esp. 37, 39, 120, 126, 196. VanDijk’s project is to develop a new concept of ideology “that serves as the interface between social structure and social cognition” (ibid., 8). He is however opposed to the concept of habitus (ibid., 47) and does not speak about national culture. 13. See however Goodin et al. 1997, who explore the wider claim for “sovereignty” for the nonhuman great apes, in light of some debates in political theory and of contemporary developments in the theory and practice of sovereignty. 14. Of course it would be naïve to assume that premodern societies necessarily had a more harmonious relationship with their natural environment. For striking counterexamples, see Diamond 2005.

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15. I use culture here in its anthropological sense of symbolic or meaning systems. 16. For a brief survey of literatures on national economies, national states, economic nations, and national economic cultures, see ch. 3; Pickel 2003; 2005b. 17. While the world’s two most populous states, China and India, have greatly accelerated their integration into the world economy, it is important to keep in mind that large majorities of their respective populations have seen a reduction in their life chances as a result. 18. For more on this, see Bunge 1997. 19. This is a distinction that in its narrow form applies only to modern liberal societies that are functionally highly differentiated and in which society and economy are systems with a significant degree of autonomy from the state. In other words, economy and civil society are formally empowered to be actors in the political system. Nonliberal civil societies do not have the same degree of functional differentiation and autonomy from the state as liberal civil societies. On the distinction between Civil Society (i.e., in its Western liberal sense) and civil society in a general sense, see Gellner 1994. 20. Speaking of functions does not make this analysis functionalist in a general sense. One can replace “function” with “effect” without altering the argument. On functions and functionalism, see Mahner and Bunge 2001. 21. This is why the NM is also particularly relevant for the extensive literature on democratic consolidation. See Linz and Stepan 1996. 22. Economic nationalism, however, is alive and well. See Helleiner 2002; Pickel 2003, 2005b; Helleiner/Pickel 2005. 23. These cases of state dissolution and national reformation are probably best understood by combining the NM with change mechanisms based on the existence of federal state institutions in those multinational states. For an argument to this effect, see Roeder 2001. 24. Major exceptions include Canada, Northern Ireland, and Spain. 25. The argument that regions are able to bypass the national level is at best partially true (Hettne and Soderbaum 2000). 26. On collective memory, see also Bruner (2002), Olick and Robins (1998); Schudson (1997). 27. This general model of nationalizing mechanisms has drawn on vanDijk’s model of the reproduction of ideologies (1998, 229–30). As mentioned above, I view nationalism/nationality/national identity, in short the national, as a meta-ideology and a meta-discourse based in concrete social systems. 28. NMs also operate in the global economic system and in “global culture,” but these global structures are more controversial and more difficult to model. This is why they are not included in this brief sketch. 29. That is, political practices taking for granted the fundamental character of national sovereignty. 30. Brubaker (1998, 300), for instance, similarly distinguishes between “state-framed” and “counter-state” forms of nationalism. Tilly (1998, 475–76) speaks of “state-led” versus “state-seeking” nationalisms.

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31. Note: Nationally specific experiences, policies, and ideologies, usually originating in dominant state-societies, can become transnationalized and may then be promoted through globalizing mechanisms such as isomorphism, conditionality, et cetera in international organizations such as the IMF, World Bank, and UN. Cf. also the “snowball effect” in Eastern European civil-society movements in the late 1980s. 32. In systemic ontology, individual human beings are both members of social systems and constitute biosocial systems themselves (Pickel 2005a; cf. also Bunge 1979).

Chapter 7


1. In the globalization debate, an influential but false opposition between global and national orders is often tacitly assumed. This relationship is often portrayed as a zero-sum game between two sets of players. Simplistic frames such as this can clearly serve a purpose in ideology and political mobilization (witness neoliberalism and the antiglobalization movement), but at the expense of the deeper understanding that social science tries to achieve. 2. What Scholte (2000, 55–58) refers to as “methodological territorialism.” 3. Quoting Scholte (2000, 59) once more, “we should not replace territorialism with a globalist methodology that neglects territorial spaces. The end of territorialism owing to globalization has not meant the end of territoriality. To say that social geography can no longer be understood in terms of territoriality alone is not to say that territoriality has become irrelevant. We inhabit a globalizing rather than a fully globalized world. Indeed, the rise of supraterritoriality shows no signs of producing an end to territoriality” (emphasis in original). 4. This would be a handy explanation for the burgeoning nationalism literature since the early 1980s, though few of its major contributors such as Hobsbawm (1990) predict the imminent decline of nation and nationalism. 5. At the individual level, for example, even a person who de facto does not own anything has property rights under a liberal constitution. Or, rich and poor alike have the freedom to sleep in the street, even if the rich do not take advantage of it. 6. On sovereignty and European integration, see Preuss 1996; Heinemann-Gruder 2000; Bellamy and Castiglione 2003; on sovereignty in the context of the UN, see Held 1995; Gow 2000; Urquhart 2000. 7. International relations theorists talking about the nation-state have traditionally had little to say about the national. With the “constructivist turn” in IR, this is gradually changing. See, for example, R.B. Hall 1999. 8. On changing conceptions of “the people” in the history of political theory, see ch. 1; Hinsley 1966. 9. On the concept of international regime as elements of global order, see e.g., Krasner 1983; Rittberger 1993; March and Olsen 1998. 10. It should be recognized that existing states differ widely in the degree to which they constitute highly structured domestic orders. As, for example, Migdal (2001) and Scott (1998) have argued, the “orderliness” of nation-states domestically is in

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12.

13. 14. 15.

16. 17. 18. 19. 20.

21.

22.

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part the result of conventional analytical frameworks rather than of a more simply structured social reality. This is a core assumption in so-called Realist theories of international relations, which have been the subject of strong criticisms. For a recent defense of structural realism, see James 2002. This is not the place to review the debates between Realists, Idealists, and Critical Theorists dominating debates in the (sub-) discipline of international relations, which in the twentieth century has claimed scholarly responsibility for explaining world politics. That field is a good example of disciplinary self-ghettoization in which social reality is confined to what is called the international level. Moreover, the distinct tasks of social science and social technology have often been collapsed into agendas freely mixing scientific, normative, and ideological problems, ranging from the defenders of the status quo to the advocates of oppressed classes, regions, and gender groups. This is not to belittle the real contributions the field has made to our understanding of world politics, nor to dismiss normative and ideological theorizing as such, especially of the progressive kind. However, the resulting confusion between different types of problems is unlikely to advance either social science or social technology. See the contributions in Helleiner/Pickel 2005 on the effects of economic nationalism on domestic and foreign policy. See Hofstede 1999, and the large literature devoted to the relationships between national cultures and business. By sectoral, I mean that such ideologies have a one-sided orientation and focus on economic, political, cultural, moral, gender, or ecological dimensions of global order. By culture-bound, I mean that many of these ideologies are strongly tied—in their origins and significance—to specific national cultures or civilizationally distinguished sets of national cultures (e.g., Western, Muslim, Confucian). Of course not in the sense of global culture. It is true for conceptions based on Western philosophies and values, but also for holistic native cosmologies. On the historical origins of disciplines and the role of states in their development, see Wagner et al. 1991. This is not to deny that they have their own—transnational—internal cultures. The fragmented political order and the problem of coordinated policy-making is well illustrated by the case of post-Dayton Bosnia (Donais and Pickel 2003). Lichbach and Seligman (2000) provide a useful account of the two basic modern approaches to the problem of social order, the Hobbesian and the Marxist; see esp. ch. 2. Similarly, Elster (1989, introduction) speaks of “the two problems of social order.” “Types” of social system is a conceptual category. Real social systems cannot always be neatly categorized, but the types of social system proposed here can serve as useful approximations. For example, the U.S. film industry is both a cultural system and an economic system. This is not a particularly controversial statement. In fact, lip service is often paid to the need for interdisciplinarity, a need that is all too obvious to be denied. At

Notes

23. 24. 25. 26.

27.

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the same time, social mechanisms of disciplinary reproduction and differentiation ensure that this remains largely a rhetorical appeal. See also ch. 2. Neoclassical economics has no theory of the firm (cf. Bunge 1998, ch. 3). For a recent critique and alternative, see White 2001; Fligstein 2001. For a useful introduction to rational choice approaches in the study of politics, see Friedman 1996. For a critique, see Green and Shapiro 1994. A devastating general critique of rational choice theory from the perspective of the philosophy of science is contained in Bunge 1999, ch. 5. The various “new institutionalisms” are a more fruitful case of interdisciplinary cooperation (Fligstein 1997; Hollingsworth 2000).


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Name Index

Abdelal, Rawi, 175 Albert, Hans, 178 Anderson, Benedict, 6 Aquinas, Thomas, 57 Aristotle, 2 Ascham, Anthony, 173 Bacon, Francis, 50 Bader, Veit, 86 Balcerowicz, Leszek, 96 Bartley, William W., 52–3, 172 Bauer, Bruno, 175 Bellamy, Richard, 181 Bendix, Reinhard, 6, 84 Berend, Ivan T., 176 Bhaskar, Roy, 170 Billig, Michael, 149, 175 Bodin, Jean, 2, 8, 56, 58–60, 62–3, 66–7 Boudon, Raymond, 170 Bourdieu, Pierre, 71, 75, 174, 179 Brada, Joseph C., 177 Brubaker, Rogers, 180 Bruner, M. Lane, 180 Bunge, Mario, 18–19, 26, 28, 126, 170–1, 177–8, 180 Camic, Charles, 71–2, 174 Castiglione, Dario, 181 Cederman, Lars-Erik, 174 Cohen, Jere, 33–4, 43 Comte, Auguste, 72 Crane, George T., 175

Dahrendorf, Ralf, 113 Dante Alighieri, 57 Descartes, Rene, 50 Deutsch, Karl, 84 Diamond, Jared, 179 Donais, Timothy, 182 Dryzek, John, 176 Durkheim, Emile, 70–1, 84, 88, 175 Easton, David, 179 Elias, Norbert, 68, 70, 73–6, 88, 174, 179 Elster, Jon, 170 Faeges, Russell, 175 Fligstein, Neil, 183 Frank, Andre Gunder, 6 Franklin, J.H., 59, 62, 173 Friedman, Jeffrey, 183 Friedman, Milton, 35 Gellner, Ernest, 6, 148, 175, 180 Gerschenkron, Alexander, 6, 177 Goodin, Robert E., 179 Gow, James, 181 Green, Donald P., 183 Greenfeld, Leah, 175 Greskovits, Bela, 176 Grimm, Klaus, 177 Habermas, Jürgen, 126 Hall, Peter A., 177

204

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Name Index

Hall, Rodney Bruce, 181 Hayek, Friedrich, 12, 30, 95, 99, 178 Hedström, Peter, 170 Hegel, G.W.F., 60 Heilbroner, Robert L., 171 Heinemann-Gruder, Andreas, 181 Held, David, 181 Helleiner, Eric, 180, 182 Heraclitus, 53 Hewett, Ed, 176 Hinsley, F.H., 56–7, 60 Hirschman, Albert O., 128, 176 Hobbes, Thomas, 2, 8, 56, 58, 60–3, 66–7, 124, 173 Hobsbawm, Eric, 181 Hofstede, Geert, 78, 80, 182 Hollingsworth, J. Rogers, 183 Holmes, Leslie, 176 Hume, David, 50 Huntington, Samuel, 6, 145, 179 Ibn, Khaldun, 124 Inglehart, Ronald, 175

Macchiavelli, Nicolo, 58, 67, 124 Macpherson, C.B., 60, 174 Mahner, Martin, 171, 180 Mann, Michael, 136 March, James G., 181 Marsilius of Padua, 57 Marx, Karl, 2, 27, 70, 72, 84, 124, 175 Mayntz, Renate, 171 McAdam, Doug, 178 McFalls, Laurence, 174 Merton, Robert, 27–8, 41 Meyer, John, 175 Migdal, Joel S., 181 Miliband, Ralph, 6 Mill, John S., 124–5 Miller, Ross A., 174 Moessinger, Pierre, 178 Montesquieu, Baron de, 124, 173 Moore, Barrington, 177 Müller, Klaus, xi Murrell, Peter, 176–7 North, Douglass, 98

Jackman, Robert W., 174 Kant, Immanuel, 50 Kautsky, Karl, 175 Klaus, Vaclav, 96, 107, 176 Kolodko, Grzegosz, 96 Krasner, Stephen D., 171, 181 Kropotkin, Peter, 124 Kurtulus, Ersun N., 171, 173 Lamont, Michele, 174 Laski, Harold, 124 Lawson, George, 173 Lenin, V.I., 175 Lichbach, Mark I., 182 Linz, Juan, 180 Lipset, Seymour M., 6, 84 Locke, John, 2, 8, 62–3, 66–7, 124, 173 Luhmann, Niklas, 18, 179 Luxemburg, Rosa, 175

O’Leary, Brendon, 175 Olick, Jeffrey K., 180 Olsen, Johan P., 181 Paine, Thomas, 124 Parker, Henry, 173 Parsons, Talcott, 18, 27, 72–3, 179 Plato, 2, 46, 48, 95 Popper, Karl, 9, 12, 40, 45–55, 59–61, 63–4, 87, 99, 112–16, 123–5, 171–2, 176–7 Pound, Roscoe, 177 Prebisch, Raul, 6 Preuss, Ulrich, 181 Quaritsch, Helmut, 172 Reinhardt, Karl, 53 Rittberger, Volker, 181

Name Index Robbins, Joyce, 180 Rockett, John, 173 Roeder, Phillip G., 176 Rousseau, J.J., 173 Rutland, Peter, 175 Sachs, Jeffrey, 102, 177 Scholte, Jan Aart, 181 Schudson, Michael, 180 Scott, James C., 181 Seligman, Adam, 182 Shapiro, Ian, 183 Simmel, Georg, 72 Skocpol, Theda, 6, 84 Slay, Ben, 176 Smith, Anthony D., 175 Socrates, 114 Sorokin, Pitirim, 27 Soysal, Yasemin N., 174 Spillman, Lynn, 169, 175 Spinoza, 124 Spruyt, Hendrik, 171 Stepan, Alfred, 180 Stinchcombe, Arthur, 170 Streeck, Wolfgang, 81–2

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205

Swedberg, Richard, 170 Szacki, Jerzy, 169, 175 Tarrow, Sidney, 178 Thurow, Lester, 175 Tilly, Charles, 6, 28, 30–2, 36, 43, 84, 178–9 Tönnies, Ferdinand, 72 Tsygankov, Andrei, 175 Urquhart, Brian, 181 van Dijk, Teun A., 179–80 Verdery, Katherine, 35–9, 43, 127 Wagner, Peter, 182 Wallerstein, Immanuel, 6, 18 Weber, Max, 30, 33–4, 70–2, 84, 88, 125 Wedel, Janine, 177 Werner, Wouter, 171 White, Harrison C., 183 Wierzbicka, Anna, 170 Woo, Wing T., 102 Zubrzycki, Genevieve, 175


Subject Index

aboriginals, 138–9 accountability, 9, 36, 49 agency, 25 animals, social, 1, 143, 170 anthropology, 35, 150 economic, 82 Auslandsdeutsche, 139, 179 authority, 47, 54–5, 61 global, 161 as puissance publique, 59 religious, 57–8 secular, 57 scientific, 111 see also legitimation Bayer Corp., 20, 23 beliefs collective, see social representations evaluative, 140–1 “best practices,” 154, 161 bonds, 20–2, 30, 136, 138 Botswana, 70 boundary change, 30–2, 43 definition, 31 disciplinary, see under disciplines “fuzzy,” 40 of imagined communities, 139 see also under mechanisms Britain, 70 business studies, 10, 78–80, 89, 123

Canada, 79 capital cultural, 71 social, 174 capitalism, 12, 29–30, 33, 38, 48, 113, 117, 120 emergence, 33–4 opposition to laissez-faire, 100 spirit, 33 transition to, see postcommunist transformation varieties, 81, 142 catalysts, 129; see also under design categories, see types Catholic Church as global social system, 159 causal mechanisms, 31, 178 relations, 31 Central and Eastern Europe, 10, 36, 94, 102, 104–5, 113, 118–19, 121, 153 China, 37–8, 102, 177 citizenship, see under nation-states civil society, 61–2, 147, 153 liberal, 180 nonliberal, 180 civilizations, 20, 73, 142, 144, 166 civilizing process, 73, 75 concept, 145 class, 138

208

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Subject Index

collective memory, 150 commitment, 102, 151 reform, 105 communism, 10, 12, 48, 64, 94, 112–13, 117 collapse, 4, 47, 100, 116, 174; see also under regime economic reforms during, 38, 176 Communist Party, 106 consensus, religious, 57 constructivism, see social constructivism conventionalism, 50 convergence thesis, 126 cosmopolitanism, 86 Cuba, 153, 177 cultural studies, 111 culture business, 35, 182 and economic life, 33–4, 78, 81 global, 143, 180, 182 and ideology, 34 national; see under national political, 81, 86 as social process, 83 see also under mechanisms Czech Republic, 102, 106 Czechoslovakia, 4, 93, 102, 149 decolonization, 10, 66 democracy, 12, 48, 50, 83, 124, 153 as control of rulers, 48–9, 54–5, 62–4, 124 capitalist, 10, 94 consolidation, 180 democratization, 122, 126, 134 and economic transformation, 101 liberal, 10, 47, 86–7, 94, 100, 117, 120 representative, 24, 49 demography, 111 design, 128 catalytic, 128–9

rational, 128 “rationalistic,” 129 development concept, 6, 10, 74 disciplines, 3, 5, 12, 112, 122 crossing, 111, 120 divisions, 111, 113, 121, 123, 126, 159, 164, 167, 182 historical origins, 182 reproduction, 183 discourse analysis, 84, 167, 179 international, 167 levels, 96, 107–9 meta, 180 national, see under national economics, 3, 5, 111, 119, 126 evolutionary, 96, 98, 103, 107 neoclassical, 25–6, 96–9, 108–9, 115, 119, 121–2, 125, 148, 167, 183 neoinstitutional, 99, 168 see also political economy economists, 11, 94, 96, 121, 168 see also policy, experts elections, 49, 56 emergent properties, 125, 128–9, 137, 161 empires, 4, 84, 88 Habsburg, 4 Ottoman, 4 Russian, 4 empirical evidence interpretation, 102, 119 empiricists, 26, 50 England, 4, 87 epistemology, 114–15, 123–4, 143 fallibilist, 9, 46, 51–2, 114–15, 171 realist, 124 “essentially contested concepts,” 17 ethnic minorities, 142 ethnicity/ethnie, 138, 142, 149–50 ethnocentrism, 148 ethnographic approaches, 35

Subject Index Europe civil and religious wars, 46, 59, 158 identity, 175 integration, 7, 128 145 European Union, 22, 35, 145, 166 accession process, 40, 106, 120, 128 constitutional crisis, 153 pooling of sovereignty, 65 expatriate communities, 35 explanation, 8, 23, 26–8, 30, 32, 41–3, 127, 134, 146, 154, 162 functional, 8, 18 historical, 42–3 mechanical, 18 “overdetermined,” 32 teleological, 8, 18 theoretical, 43, 95 see also under mechanisms fact-value distinction, 87 falsificationism, 52 families, 133, 149, 166 farmers, 35–6, 39 firms, 142, 159, 168 theory of, 183 framing ideological, 8, 11, 95 political, 8 France, 4, 59, 87 French Revolution, 95 functionalism, see under methodology gender roles, 80 see also systems, biosocial geography, 13, 111 Germany, 4, 25, 70, 81 East, 113, 173 Turkish population, 179 unification, 160, 173 global economy, 144–5, 150 globalization, 2, 5, 10, 42, 45, 64, 66, 70–1, 78, 82, 134, 145, 148, 150,

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209

161–2, 167; see also global economy; see also under mechanisms globalization debate, 4, 7, 9, 12–13, 30, 46, 65, 68–70, 74, 80, 87, 118, 135–6, 142, 144–5, 154, 157, 168, 181 God, 56–8, 60 governance formal structures, 21 global, 7 see also order, political Greenpeace, 160 habitus, see also under national change, 73 combinations, 70 concept, 71–2, 75, 88 economic significance, 72–3 functions, 75, 77 global forms, 69 in natural sciences, 174 social, 69, 71, 75, 77 system-specific, 166 historians, 13, 111 historical events, 42 homo faber, 142 homo nationis, 2, 8–9, 69–70, 77–8, 80, 87–8, 159–60 homo oeconomicus, 9, 25, 68–9, 72, 78, 88, 122, 142 homo sociologicus, 9, 68–9, 78, 88 households, 142 human rights, 45–6 lawyers, 122 human species, 142–4, 163, 179 Hungary, 40, 106 idealism, 40 German, 71 radical, 33 identities collective, 140 construction, 135

210

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Subject Index

identities—continued ethnic, 72 national, see under national postmodern, 69–70 postnational, 69, 75, 174 self, 76–7, 150 social, 39, 76 ideology, 3, 7, 11, 18, 22, 26, 40, 94, 97, 103–6, 117–19, 121–2, 124, 126–9, 140, 152–4, 164, 168 concept, 124, 179 global, 162–3, 181 hegemony, 105, 115 “official,” 176 progressive, 164, 182 and reality, 105 and strategy, 107–8, 177 see also neoliberalism independence movements, 5 indicators, 127; see also empirical evidence individuals conceptualization, 2, 9, 61, 67–8, 74, 88, 122, 154, 157 see also homo nationis; homo oeconomicus; homo sociologicus historical, 68, 88, 157 individualization, 75–7, 89 rational utility-maximizing, 25, 27; see also rational choice theory self-constitution, 151 “society of individuals,” 68, 142 versus-society dualism, 77 institutions, 23 design, see design formal, 77, 98, 100–1, 107, 120, 128, 137 informal, 98, 101, 107, 121, 137 “new institutionalism,” 170, 183 transfer, 128; see also nation-state, as model instrumentalism, 50 interdisciplinary, see disciplines, crossing

international law, 5 International Monetary Fund (IMF), 35–9, 160 International Non-Governmental Organizations (INGO), 138, 142 International Organizations (IO), 142, 144, 152–3, 160, 163, 167 see also IMF, UN, World Bank, WTO international order, see order, global International Political Economy, 13 International Relations, 5, 13, 160–1, 167, 181 “constructivist turn,” 181 Realism, 182 Islam, 142, 162 Italy, 4 Japan, 4, 25, 70 nineteenth century, 177 Keynesian consensus, 35, 105 -ism, 119 kinship groups, 142, 146, 149 knowledge advance, 167 certain, 50–2 common cultural, 140–1 expert, 120; see also under policy fragmentation, 3, 12 policy implications, 3, 7, 94, 121 scientific, 11, 21, 96, 109, 112, 118–19, 122–3, 161, 164; see also science sociology of, 172 structures, 179 theory of, see epistemology Korea, South, 25 Kosovo, 5 Latinos, 139, 179 laws customary, 56, 59–60 scientific, 5, 26; see also methodology as social technology, 123

Subject Index legitimacy/legitimation, 9, 33–4, 39, 53–4, 56–7, 61–4, 66, 70, 102–3, 117–18, 124, 139, 146–7, 151, 163, 165 religious context, 58 levels of analysis essentialized, 163–4 global, 142, 152, 161, 166 individual, 142, 150–1 “international,” 163 local, 142, 153, 161, 166 “national,” 163 regional, 142, 144, 161, 166 state-society, 142, 145, 147, 149–50, 153, 161, 163, 166 systemic, 143, 160 levels of discourse ideological, 102–6, 117 strategic, 101, 100–2, 117 theoretical, 97–100 liberalism, 86 communitarian, 86 and multiculturalism, 86, 149 and nationalism, 86 liberalization, economic, 35, 37, 100–1, 114, 117, 120, 127, 161, 166 political, see under democracy life course models, 135, 153 linguistics, social, 151–2 “logic of the situation,” 9, 46, 56, 124–5 majority rule, 48–9 management theory, see business studies market concept, 24–5, 168 as coordinating agency, 167 economy, 10, 24, 36, 94, 97, 100, 113, 116, 120, 122, 126–7 free, 68 for land, 24 mechanisms, 26 society, 60, 129 see also capitalism

●

211

market reforms, 35, 38, 40; see also liberalization; postcommunist transformation; privatization Marxian dialectics, 171 materialism cultural, 8 emergentist, 8 historical, 8 radical, 33 mechanism-based explanation, 2, 8, 12–13, 17, 23, 28–9, 41–3, 127, 129, 134, 146, 157, 162, 167–8, 178 mechanismic, 171 mechanisms, 17, 23–4, 43 biological, 18 causal, see under causal causing boundary change, 31 causing property transformation, 36–8 chemical, 18 concept, 24 constituting boundary change, 31 constituting property transformation, 36–8 cultural, 36 definition, 26, 133 “designed,” 38; see also policy; social technology economic, 36 functions, 29 globalizing, 151, 157, 164, 181 and laws, 170 non-mechanical, 18 political, 23, 36 psychological, 27, 151, 171 regionalizing, 151 relational, 28 social, see social mechanisms teaching, 21–22 types, 28, 32, 42–3 mechanistic, 171

212

●

Subject Index

methodology, 17–18, 23, 25, 40–1, 46–7, 50, 52–5, 64, 68, 78, 80, 130 “covering law” model, 8, 18, 28 functional analysis, 27, 171, 180 generalization, 26, 43 globalist, 181 hermeneutic, 8, 18 holism, 8, 19, 23, 25, 28, 125, 150, 152, 170 individualism, 8, 19, 23, 25, 28, 125, 150, 152, 170 mechanism-based/mechanismic, see under mechanisms “methodological territorialism,” 88, 161, 163, 181 outmoded, 168 “theories of the middle range,” 27–9 “thick description,” 42 variable-oriented, 32, 79, 146 see also explanation; problem-oriented approach Middle Ages, 56–7, 74 middle class, 106 model, 20–23, 28, 30, 41–2, 74, 128–30, 134, 136, 167 actors’, 20, 23, 27, 170 “East-Asian,” 25 implicit, 30 neoclassical equilibrium, 25 “Rhenish,” 25 “Soviet,” 25 modernity, 10, 89, 143 modernization “catching-up,” 126 ideology, 105, 177 theory, 84, 98 monarchy, 56, 58–60, 62 Mongolia, 108, 176 multiculturalism, 86 multinational corporations, 20–21, 23, 28, 79, 133, 138, 142, 148, 150, 159–60 and national culture, 150

nation as basic unit of analysis, 88 boundaries, 147 concept, 66, 74, 84, 136–7, 147 decline, 7; see also under nation-states definition, 137; see also concept dominant, 138, 147, 179 idealist conceptualization, 175 “imagined community,” 137, 142, 144, 151, 160 “nation-building,” 6, 84, 148, 158 naturalization, 75–6 as property of social systems, 139 subordinate, 138–9, 179 without states, 65 nation-states, 43 and citizenship, 69, 83, 86 decline, 13, 30, 45, 48, 64–5, 70, 82, 135, 142–3, 148 as global order, 4–5, 8–9, 46, 66, 68–9, 75, 77–8, 83, 88, 93, 134–5, 141, 144, 159–61 as model, 5–6, 10, 30, 42, 74, 84, 87, 133, 136, 144, 153, 158 most recent new, 4, 84, 158, 176 number of, 4–5 postcolonial, 6, 65, 84 and war, 76 see also state-societies national administrative cultures, 82 anthem, 154 “character,” 69, 75, 81, 89 conception of, 7, 75, 139–40, 179 consumption styles, 80 contexts, 6, 79 discourse, 83, 134, 139–41, 147–8, 153, 159–60, 162, 166, 179 disintegration, 149 economies, 5, 12–13, 69, 81, 89, 144, 148, 159 flag, 154

Subject Index habitus, 10, 69–71, 74, 76–8, 80, 88–9, 133, 140–1, 150, 153, 166, 174–5 identities, 6, 75–6, 133, 135, 139–41, 153–4 ideologies, 6, 83 legal cultures, 82 as metaideology, 180 as political action, 83 as process, 139–40 reconceptualization, 7, 75 “repertoires of evaluation,” 82 society, 5 state, see nation-states as variable, 140 national culture, 5, 13, 25, 35, 69–70, 76–80, 86, 133–4, 139–42, 145, 153, 159, 162–3, 174, 178, 180 nationalism, 17, 70, 74, 83, 129, 135 banal, 149 civic vs. ethnic, 83, 86, 146, 175 debates/literature, 6, 82–3, 89, 135, 139, 141, 146, 148 economic, 82, 139, 180, 182 ethnic, 118 state-led vs state-seeking, 180 as a universal condition, 84 nationalizing culture, 71 process, 71, 84, 137–41, 149 nationalizing mechanisms, 13–14, 133–6, 139–55, 157–61, 164, 166–7 functions, 147 model of, 152–4 NATO, 106, 160 neoliberalism, 7, 12, 35, 37–8, 96–7, 103–6, 108–9, 114, 118–20, 127–9, 161–2, 169, 177 ideological hegemony, 35, 38, 54 and nationalism, 83 neoliberal “paradox,” 128 opposition to, 153 policies, 35–7, 39; see also market reforms

●

213

scientific basis, 120–1 “Washington consensus,” 169 North American Free Trade Association (NAFTA), 142 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, 153 ontology, 8, 18–19, 23, 28, 30, 41, 68, 123, 125, 136, 170, 181 see also systemism order cognitive/epistemic, 104, 141, 153, 159–60 cold-war, 4 dualistic medieval conception, 58–9, 61, 164, 173 fundamental dimensions of the problem, 164–8 global, 4, 8–9, 54, 66, 159–63, 167, 181; see also under nation-states Hobbesian problem, 67–8, 88, 167, 182 international, see global; see also under nation-state levels, 1; see also levels of analysis; levels of discourse liberal conception, 64 Marxist problem, 182 in modern sociology, 61 moral, 141, 153, 159–60 national, 8 political, 45–7, 53–5, 66, 71, 93, 102, 104, 124, 160 reconceptualization, 56, 61 social, 1, 67–8, 95, 124 spontaneous, 178 symbolic, 1; see also under systems unitary modern conception, 59 world, see global; see also under nation-state people, conception of, 61–3, 160, 181 personality structure, 10, 69, 75, 77, 88, 154 see also habitus; homo nationis

214

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Subject Index

philosophy, 111, 123–4, 126 physics, 26, 28 Plato’s “noble myth,” 146 Poland, 79, 106 policy, 11, 23, 38, 94, 96, 100, 108, 112, 116, 118, 122. 126, 129, 164, 169 approaches, 36; see also under reform experts, 3, 10, 94, 111–12, 120–23 global, 163 ideology in, 169 “rational policy fallacy,” 128 political economy, 43, 82–3, 98, 168 international, 167 neo-Marxist, 99, 123 political philosophy, 2–3; see also political theory political science, 3, 5, 13, 84, 111, 121–2, 124, 126, 167, 170 comparative politics, 13, 42, 167, 170–1 department, 21 political scientists, 13, 21 political theory, 1, 9, 45–55, 60–4, 67, 86–7, 95, 167, 169, 172 normative, 86, 89 see also political philosophy politicians, 10, 94, 96, 100, 112, 121, 176 positivism, 26, 52 critique, 87 postcommunist transformation, 2–3, 7–8, 10–11, 30, 35, 38–40, 70, 93–4, 96, 99–101, 121–2, 124, 134 postcommunist transformation debate, 94–5, 97–8, 100, 109, 111–12, 116, 126–8, 165, 168, 176 power, 29, 46–7, 54, 58–60, 115, 161 abuse, 49, 55 constituent, 63 feudal, 59 formal structure, 59 ordinary, 63

religious, 57 secular, 57–8 unlimited, 47, 56, 59, 64 practice, see policy; social practices; social technology pragmatism, 50 pre-Socratics, 2 privatization, 35–6, 39–40, 100–1, 106, 120, 127, 129, 166 problem of induction, 172 problem of order see order; problems problem-oriented approach, 2, 9, 11, 45–7, 53, 55, 64, 67, 113, 116, 118, 123, 125, 168 problems context/situation, 1, 3, 53–5, 60, 67, 95, 105, 108–9, 115, 117–18, 172 formulation, 54, 162 global, 163 ideological, 1, 106, 116, 162 normative, 1–2, 64 perennial, 1, 54 political, 96 reconceptualization, 108 scientific, 115 strategy, 96, 109 theoretical, 1, 96, 100, 161–2 types, 11, 95–6, 116, 118, 157, 164, 182 property collective, 36 concept, 36 private, 36, 39, 97 restitution, 36–7, 40 rights, 59 state, 36, 40 Protestant ethic, 30, 33–4 psychology, 72, 111, 179 personality, 151; see also personality structure social, 150–1 Puritanism, 33–4

Subject Index Quebec, 5 race, 138, 150 rational choice theory, 8, 68, 125, 168, 170, 178, 183 rationality, 111, 121, 147, 167 realism critical, 170 scientific, 8, 133, 170 reciprocity, 22 reflexivity, 73 reform actors, 100 gradualists, 11–12, 94–6, 98, 100–3, 106–7 opponents, 107, 113 radicals, 11–12, 94–7, 100–3, 107–9, 113, 115 technologies, see social technology Reformation, 58 refutation, 51–2 regime authoritarian, 47 change, 8 collapse, 37–8, 174 international, 160, 181 relational, 171; see also under mechanisms relativism, 51, 172 religion doctrines, 33–4, 40–1, 57 wars, 57 world, 143–4, 162 research institutes, 11 revolutions 1989–1991, 4–5, 10 scientific, 112 right-wing extremism, 138 rights individual, 150 natural, 61 property, 29, 36, 181; see also under private property social, 29

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215

Romania, 35, 38, 102, 107 Russia, 24, 36, 102, 108, 127, 177 science, 11, 40, 50, 111, 120–1 biosocial, 19 demarcation from non-science, 172 ethos, 3 metaphysical reference context, 164 natural, 19, 24 scientific realism, 8; see also under realism value-neutral, 3, 169 scientism, 162 shock therapy, see reform, radical Slovakia, 106 Slovenia, 106 social change conceptualizing, 11, 127 controlled (“by design”), 7, 95, 97, 113, 116, 122–3, 177 debates, 11 as quasi-laboratory, 112 revolutionary, 99 social constructivism, 8, 41 social democracy, 96, 98 social engineering, 112 piecemeal, 113–14, 123 utopian, 113–14, 123 social fields, 71, 179 social mechanisms, 18, 22, 25–30, 41, 83, 127–8 combinations, 146, 149, 151, 157, 167, 178 definition, 134 inventory, 171 see also mechanisms social movements, 7, 137, 142, 144, 152–4, 160, 163 anti-globalization, 7, 181 social networks, 68, 80, 119, 125, 137, 142, 149, 159

216

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Subject Index

social practices, 148, 151, 153, 162, 166 management, 161 non-verbalized, 141 political, 152–3, 180 speech, 141 social processes, general, 30, 134, 139–40, 154. 159–60, 166 see also globalization; social mechanisms social reality, 23, 34, 89, 160–1, 166–7, 182; see also ontology; realism social representations, 20, 27, 84, 137, 141, 146, 149; see also systems, symbolic social science, 3–5, 8, 11, 17–19, 23, 41, 45, 47, 67, 83, 88, 94, 111, 116, 123–5, 159, 161, 163–4 applied, 3, 169 “cultural turn,” 7 integration, 12 Marxist tradition, 6, 48 post-Parsonian, 73 and social technology, 111–13, 115, 120, 164, 177, 182 see also under disciplines social systems, 18–21, 23–6, 28, 32, 35, 40–3, 68, 73, 82, 125, 133–5, 138–40, 167 animal, 170 boundaries, 30; see also boundary hybrid, 142 levels, see under levels linkages with other systems, 135, 147, 151 premodern, 143 problematic semantics of, 179 types, 152, 165, 182; see also under systems social technology, 3, 8, 11–12, 21–2, 38, 78, 112, 115–25, 127, 129, 134, 163, 165, 168–9 large-scale, 112 normative dimensions, 119

political, 151 see also under social engineering; social science socialism, see communism; social democracy society, see state-society sociology, 3, 5, 72, 74, 83, 98, 152, 179 cultural, 84 economic, 82, 168 historical, 84, 89 sovereignty, 2, 4, 8–10, 30, 171 approaches to, 171 early conceptualization, 46, 172 exercise, 59 external, 160 internal, 48, 137, 160 nominal, 144 for nonhuman great apes, 179 normative doctrine, 45–6, 48–9, 55, 60–1, 64–5, 77, 87, 137, 144, 152, 158–60 “pooling,” 65 theory, 45–50, 54–6, 58–64, 66–7, 77–8, 87, 137, 158, 164 South Africa, 70, 139 Soviet Union, 4, 66, 84, 93, 149 state bureaucracies, 11, 153 and civil society, 62, 166 communist, 94 concept, 136–7 domestic power, 65, 158; see also nation-state, decline and economy, 35, 82, 103, 105, 128 formation, 82 international power, 65, 152–3, 158 and nation, 82, 138; see also nation-state “of nature,” 67–8 postcolonial, 70 psychosocial foundations, 77, 87

Subject Index restructuring, 7, 35, 37, 39, 106 rogue, 48 territorial, 4, 30, 133, 136, 139, 147, 153 theory of impersonal, 58 state-societies, 6, 9, 86, 133, 139–40, 142, 147–8, 153, 166, 169 status, 22, 151 uncertainty, 22 structural adjustment programs, 102, 161 structural functionalism, 8, 19, 30, 73 structure, social, 20–5, 30, 41, 125, 129 interface with social cognition, 179 symbols, 40, 154 see also under systems systemic framework, see systemism systemism, 2, 8, 12–13, 17–19, 22–3, 30, 134, 136, 140–1, 144, 150, 152, 157, 160, 162, 166, 168, 171, 181 critical function, 23 systems autopoietic, 18–19 biosocial, 135, 142–4, 146, 149, 165–6, 181 cognitive, 147–8, 159; see also symbolic communication, 19, 41, 84 composition, 21–5, 41 concept, 24 conceptual, 18, 20, 40–2, 171, 179 concrete or material, 18, 20, 23–4, 40 cultural, 23, 135, 142, 144, 165 definition, 20, 24 economic, 142, 144, 165; see also capitalism; global economy; market environment, 20–5, 41 global, 19, 22, 46, 66, 68, 78, 143

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217

hybrid, 127 “metaphor,” 19 molecular, 40 political, 43, 135, 142, 144, 147, 165 semiotic, 18, 20, 40–2 social, see social systems sociotechnical, 121 subsystems, 19, 21 symbolic, 22, 25, 82, 136–7, 159, 171, 179–80 theories, 18–19, 27, 170, 179 types, 43, 142 usefulness of concept, 19 world, see global; see also world systems theory Taiwan, 25 technological change, 148 territoriality, 181 supraterritoriality, 181 Third Way, 103 ties, see bonds Timor-Leste, 169, 175 totalitarianism, 48, 64 traditionalism, 72 transformation, see under postcommunist transformation transnational culture, 75 migrants, 65, 138, 148 political integration, 65 “spillover” of national culture, 178 systems, 127 truth, 50–1 trust, 22 Turkey, 177 types, 24; see also under mechanisms; problems; social systems; systems Ukraine, 107 unintended consequences, 13, 38, 41, 77, 101–2, 113–14, 128–9, 147

218

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Subject Index

United Nations, 5, 7, 144, 153, 160 conventions, 161 United States, 4, 70, 79, 84, 139 foreign policy, 173 Founding Fathers, 173 global anti-terror campaign, 154 immigration, 179 post-cold war, 153 universities, 11, 21–2 utilitarianism, 71

variables, 26–7, 32, 79, 133, 140, 146, 159, 174 see also under methodology Venezuela, 153

validity, 51, 100 empirical, 99 values, 140, 166, 175; see also habitus; order, moral

Yugoslavia, 4, 93, 149 breakup, 160

wealth, 33–4 world systems theory, 6, 19, 168 World Bank, 35, 38 World Trade Organization (WTO), 153, 160 World War I, 4, 76, 84 World War II, 4, 64, 76

zoon politikon, 142

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Political Economy and the Changing Global Order

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Global Governance in the Information Age

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Complex Deterrence: Strategy in the Global Age

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Performance and Evolution in the Age of Darwin: Out of the Natural Order

Nature Out of Place: Biological Invasions in the Global Age

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The Age of Elizabeth in the Age of Johnson

Violence at Sea: Piracy in the Age of Global Terrorism

Order in the Universe

The Problem of Order in the Global Age: Systems and Mechanisms

The Global Age

Circuits and systems in the information age

Global Order and Global Disorder: Globalization and the Nation-State

Political Economy and the Changing Global Order

Political Economy and the Changing Global Order

NGOs, Africa and the Global Order

ReORIENT: Global Economy in the Asian Age

Global Governance in the Information Age

ReORIENT: Global Economy in the Asian Age

ReORIENT: Global Economy in the Asian Age

Asia: Cultural politics in the global age

Complex Deterrence: Strategy in the Global Age

ReORIENT: Global Economy in the Asian Age

Reaction Mechanisms of Inorganic and Organometallic Systems

A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide

Negotiating world order: the artisanship and architecture of global diplomacy

Partial-Order Methods for the Verification of Concurrent Systems: An Approach to the State-Explosion Problem

The Mechanisms of Governance

European Financial Systems in the Global Economy

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America Alone: The Neo-Conservatives and the Global Order

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The Servant Problem: The Home Life of a Global Economy

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