Helge Hveem

The Regional Project in Global Governance

The world is in need of governance. Global institutions, notably the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Trade Organization (WTO), are not delivering on the promises made when they offered themselves as the anchor of global governance and, together with the World Bank, claimed hegemony over the agenda of economic and development politics. They still retain a considerable role, but they do not suffice. In this situation The regional project’ — to use international regions as a layer of global governance — is becoming increasingly relevant.

Political Regionalism: Master or Servant of Economic Internationalization?

Economic internationalization, mainly in the form of foreign direct investment (FDI), has been a characteristic of the world economy for many decades. It has, however, grown at an uneven pace during the last two decades. After a slump during the ‘debt crisis’ from 1982 to 1988, growth resumed and has become almost exponential in the 1990s. Growth, however, was faster in some sectors and macroregions of the world economy than in others.

Pluralist IPE: A View from Outside the ‘Schools’

Benjamin J. Cohen’s book is a well-written and interesting set of biographies by a scholar who has come to IPE from economics and contributed much to it (Cohen 2008). It made me confirm that I am not a full member of either of the two ‘schools’. A ‘school’ is characterised by high internal consistency and marked difference with other ‘schools’. After having reflected further, I concluded that the dichotomy he proposes is not very useful; in fact I question whether the idea of constructing ‘schools’ in IPE is a good one. As a field IPE is variety and it should continue to be. Pluralism is our comparative advantage, not a nuisance. Unlike neoclassical economics, it makes us able to view the real world as it is: varied, complex, dynamic and changing, producing disequilibria as much as equilibria. And, if after all we were to construct ‘schools’, doing it along geographical lines is absolutely not a good idea. Although he offers a fairly generous account of alternative approaches, Cohen basically reduces the criteria he applies for constructing the two schools down to methodological difference. At the same time an informal additional criterion emerges from his text, that of methodological sophistication. This criterion makes him observe that the International Organization (IO) represents ‘the American school’. I suggest that the problems and themes we address, the analytical perspectives we apply, and the normative aspects and policy implications we address all represent key criteria for establishing what IPE is. According to these criteria, to which I return below, IO used to be one of my preferred readings. Its turn towards economism and ‘scientism’ has made me less enthusiastic, although I sometimes find something useful there. But long before IO turning monocultural, I had turned with interest to Susan Strange and other non-American scholars of a pluralist tradition. I have come to see IPE not as a subset of international relations (IR) but a multidisciplinary field with an anchor in political science and a considerable overlap New Political Economy, Vol. 14, No. 3, September 2009

Globalisation, Governance and Development: A Political Economy Perspective

The article is an attempt to identify those theories on the role of the state in development which have stood up well against the critique from neo-liberal economics. It then proposes to integrate these theories with perspectives that integrate domestic with global political economy. The latter represent both internationalisation processes such as decisions to liberalise the economy and take part in multilateral co-operative institutions at the global and regional level, and transnationalisation processes associated with corporate and civil society actors at the national and transnational level. The author argues that globalisation is a complex process consisting of partly conflicting subprocesses and that it is in disaggregating the globalisation process that one also discovers new options for agency and alliance building across national boundaries.

Scandinavia, the Like-Minded Countries, and the NIEO

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses Scandinavia, the like-minded countries, and the New International Economic Order. The Scandinavian and the so-called like-minded countries, in general, have earned a reputation for being among the most progressive countries of the Northern Hemisphere in dealing with the developing south. The social fabric of these countries is relatively egalitarian, although class contradictions and conflicting group interests still exist. They are mixed economies with a relatively wide support for public intervention in the economy. High levels of exports and imports, taken as a share of gross national product, are a common feature of small industrialized nations such as the Scandinavian countries. They are open economies, a characteristic they share with many developing countries.

Small Countries under Great Pressure. The Politics of National Vulnerability during International Restructuring

The international economic system is characterized by rapid and radical restructuring. The causes of change are located in one or several of the following factors: instability resulting out of a declining or changing US hegemony and the responses of US economic policies to change; conflict over distributing the costs imposed by surplus capacity in many industries; an innovation race among the major powers and cor porations ; and the emergence of a new international division of labour resulting out of economic nationalism and internationalization of production at one and the same time. In the process, nations have become more economically vulnerable, a fact experienced in particular by small and open economies like those of the Nordic countries. The author sets out the options of these countries for facing the challenges of increased vulnerability: seeking niche power, cooperating, playing on their democratic corporatism and welfare state policies as a means towards securing national support for economic policy, or improving their external organization. The hypothesis is presented that the latter — external organization — is a crucial factor inter alia because it addresses some inevitable choices that international development is highlighting: the tendency to deregulate financial markets and regulate trade; the drift from multi lateralism to bilateralism and protectionism in trade; and the reinforced international sedimentation process most visible in North-South relations but witnessed also within the South as well as within various countries (rising unemployment).

Participants in Peace-Keeping Forces

Galtung, J. & Hveem, H. Participants in Peace-Keeping Forces. Cooperation and Conflict, XI, 1976, 25-40. The article is based on a questionnaire mail study of participants in the United Nations peace-keeping forces in Gaza and in the Congo. It is focussed on the problem of closeness vs. distance to the phenomenon of peace-keeping. By and large the studies show that the participants wanted more closeness to the local inhabitants, whereas the way the UNPKF was organized, was based on considerable distance. There was also a demand for a much higher level of insight in the conflict and the operation than had been given during the briefings. Questions about the attitude to the concrete conflicts reveal relatively standard Western attitudes and prejudices both in the Middle East and the Congo theaters. Finally, the possibility of some type of peace-keeping force based on more closeness and involvement is dis cussed, concluding that under the present political conditions this would hardly be feasible. Johan Galtung, Chair in Conflict and Peace Research, University of Oslo. Helge Hveem, International Peace Research Institute, Oslo.

Summary and Conclusions: Adjusting Trade Liberalization and Environmental Protection Demands in an Era of Globalization

The story told in this book is one about public policy adjustment to environmental and economic change. The phenomenon analysed and partly explained is the outcome of such adjustment activity at the national level.

The North-South Dialogue: Protracted Crisis and Prospects

has been doing in the past. In order to redress this evil situation, a new international order has been demanded. Its purpose would be not to solve the development problem, but to detach the underdeveloped societies from the exploitative processes of the present system so as to establish one precondition for development to take place. It would have to be not simply a new economic order (NIEO) but a reordering of the entire international system a NIO.

Arms Control Through Resource Control: The Link between Military Consumption of Raw Materials and Energy and the Disarmament Question

are ’extra-systemical’ to the military system. It is often emphasized that the military system drains resources away from civilian socio-economic usage. This is the perspective underlying the special UN report on the Economic and Social Consequences of the Armaments Race (UN, 1977). It is proposed that military expenditure should be cut in order to plough more resources to development purposes. The 5 percent proposal goes in the same direction (BPP, 1977). In the present paper, it is proposed to turn this perspective the other way round: arms control could be exercised through restricting the supply of socio-economic resources for military purposes. Among such resources manpower, R&D, industrial production capacity, natural resources or raw materials only the latter will be dealt with. Such a proposal does not appear to be any more utopian nor unrealistic than such measures as are aimed