Raymond D Duvall

Power in International Politics

The concept of power is central to international relations. Yet disciplin- ary discussions tend to privilege only one, albeit important, form: an actor control- ling another to do what that other would not otherwise do. By showing conceptual favoritism, the discipline not only overlooks the different forms of power in inter- national politics, but also fails to develop sophisticated understandings of how global outcomes are produced and how actors are differentially enabled and constrained to determine their fates. We argue that scholars of international relations should employ multiple conceptions of power and develop a conceptual framework that encourages rigorous attention to power in its different forms. We first begin by producing a tax- onomy of power. Power is the production, in and through social relations, of effects that shape the capacities of actors to determine their circumstances and fate. This general concept entails two crucial, analytical dimensions: the kinds of social rela- tions through which power works (in relations of interaction or in social relations of constitution); and the specificity of social relations through which effects are pro- duced (specific/direct or diffuse/indirect). These distinctions generate our taxonomy and four concepts of power: compulsory, institutional, structural, and productive. We then illustrate how attention to the multiple forms of power matters for the analysis of global governance and American empire. We conclude by urging scholars to beware of the idea that the multiple concepts are competing, and instead to see connections between them in order to generate more robust understandings of how power works in international politics.

The State and Dependent Capitalism

The twentieth century appears to be the era of the state. In contemporary capitalist societies it is difficult to distinguish the private from the public sector because the state is so intimately bound up with the structures and processes of both production and consumption. In the context of dependency, this has taken common expression as a syndrome of state capitalism, one important feature of which is extensive state ownership and operation of productive enterprises in conformance with capitalist criteria. A comprehensive theoretical argument about this phenomenon, the entrepreneurial state in the context of modern dependency, is outlined and schematically represented.

Sovereignty and the UFO

Modern sovereignty is anthropocentric, constituted and organized by reference to human beings alone. Although a metaphysical assumption, anthropocentrism is of immense practical import, enabling modern states to command loyalty and resources from their subjects in pursuit of political projects. It has limits, however, which are brought clearly into view by the authoritative taboo on taking UFOs seriously. UFOs have never been systematically investigated by science or the state, because it is assumed to be known that none are extraterrestrial. Yet in fact this is not known, which makes the UFO taboo puzzling given the ET possibility. Drawing on the work of Giorgio Agamben, Michel Foucault, and Jacques Derrida, the puzzle is explained by the functional imperatives of anthropocentric sovereignty, which cannot decide a UFO exception to anthropocentrism while preserving the ability to make such a decision. The UFO can be “known” only by not asking what it is.

The Techno-Bureaucratic Elite and the Entrepreneurial State in Dependent Industrialization

A common characteristic of dependent industrializing countries is a substantial direct entrepreneurial role for the state. One explanation for this is that in dependent industrializing countries the system of allocation and production has been captured by a key group, the techno-bureaucratic elite. The argument is that this elite lends its political support to the state, in return for the state substituting as entrepreneur in the industrialization process. In this article we analyze the theoretical implications of this explanation of the entrepreneurial state. A formal model is constructed of the relationship between state entrepreneurship, material consequences for the techno-bureaucratic elite, and important domestic and international constraints. We then use deductive methods to analyze the logic of state entrepreneurship. Among other things, we show how cyclical fluctuations in the global economy are reflected in constantly changing levels of state entrepreneurship, and we investigate the consequences of alternative kinds of dependency syndromes for histories of entrepreneurial substitution and for streams of benefits to the techno-bureaucratic elite. It is demonstrated that there is an inverse relationship between the tendencies to reach stable levels of state entrepreneurship and the long-term potential for economic growth.

Determinants of Political Institutionalization in Black Africa A Quasi-Experimental Analysis

The characteristic concern of “development” literature is with factors causing (or failing to cause) nation-states of the Third World to behave like “modern” polities. While a myriad of definitions of the concept of political development exists (Pye, 1965; Diamant, 1966) and a plethora of independent variables has been hypothesized to cause this ambiguous concept, it is possible to assemble a set of literature which meshes in providing a testable list of causal variables. For present purposes, we are interested in hypotheses relating to the creation or building of viable political institutions capable of performing some set of functions for and in the social system (Eisenstadt, 1962). In particular, we take as an interesting potential component of development the institutionalization of political party systems as primary tweway transmission belts between publics and government.’ The research reported here involves an attempt to assess the importance of hypothesized determinants of party system institutionalization in new nations. An examination of literature sufficed to indicate that at least three social phenomena are consistently believed to be influential in affecting

Social Mobilization, Political Institutionalization, and Conflict in Black Africa

A simple model involving five concepts-social mobilization, party system institutionalization, turmoil, internal war, and elite conflict-is specified and its structural parameters are estimated for 28 black African nations. The model is fully reciprocal, involving each concept as a function of each of the others, and the concepts are measured for two time periods, 1960-1964 and 1965-1969. Two-stage least-squares regression is utilized to generate parameter estimates. The resulting model structure is evaluated according to (1) its correspondence with extant scholarly theorizing, (2) its ability to account for variance in the concepts, (3) the systematic character of the residual, or error, terms, and (4) its predictions for the future. The major conclusions are that: forms of conflict interrelate in complex ways and are not simply different aspects of a single phenomenon; conflict affects the mobilization of society and the development of political institutions; social mobilization has little, if any, effect on conflict; and, the institutionalization of party systems as linkages between publics and governments has a real impact on the mobilization of society and on the level of conflict in society.

On the Practical Significance of Critical International Relations Theory

The question of relevance of international relations theory must be approached through an awareness of the distinctiveness of various perspectives’ relations to existing structures of power. It becomes, in effect, a matter of asking for whom and for what purposes of practical action the theory is or is not relevant. Critical theories of international relations, ranging from modernist to post‐structural forms, share a commitment to challenging the naturalness of the existing world order and the acceptability of its dominant relations and practices of power. Critical theory focuses analysis on the effects of power on the differential ability of actors to control their own circumstances. It also goes beyond that theoretical contribution to provide impetus for practical political action in challenging, confronting, and disrupting existing relations of power. Thus, in the contemporary era, critical IR theory is relevant, among other ways, as a stimulus to resist empire in its many guises.

Taking sovereignty out of this world: space weapons and empire of the future

Programs to deploy weapons in orbital space have important implications for international relations. In this paper, we analyze the constitutive logic of three modes of space weaponization currently being pursued by the United States – space-based missile defense, space control, and force application from orbital space. We show that these technologies of killing, when bundled together, constitute a new form of centralized sovereign power in a context of de-territorialized sovereignty. This is a new type of international political society, which we call empire of the future, distinct from and more ominous than the de-centralized form of Empire theorized by Hardt and Negri and the modern expression of classical hegemony now widely debated in discussions of putative American empire.

Sovereignty and sovereign power

Can the dissolution or transgression of sovereign authority – ‘failed states’, for example – be understood within a concept of sovereignty? Extant understandings provide a negative answer; approaches to sovereignty in International Relations and Political Theory conceptualize sovereignty as located in stable entities, generally states. Insofar as political societies face crises of authority, those crises arise from exogenous factors, not the structure of sovereignty. We argue that this is a restrictive notion of sovereignty. In its place, we offer a theorization that can account for the dissolution or transgression of sovereign orders, focusing on the possibility that sovereigns may not recognize their subjects as the originary structure of sovereignty. In our understanding, sovereignty is logically and temporally before sovereign power. Consequently, the possibility of dissolution is a structural condition of all sovereign orders. This enables us to theorize the relationship between sovereignty, sovereign power, and the law, and to apply this broader concept to analyze politics in ‘weak’ and ‘failed states’.

Power, fairness, and the global economy

The process of economic globalization has come under widespread attack in recent years. These attacks are not simply economic or material in nature, coming from workers or industrialists whose jobs and incomes are directly threatened by the consequences of greater openness. Beyond these interest-based grievances, a host of activists, policymakers, and scholars have come to see the policies of openness, and the associated outcomes, as being fundamentally “unfair” or “unjust” to many peoples, especially the poor, and to many countries, particularly those in the developing world. These critics question the very morality and legitimacy of existing global economic arrangements. There is no shortage of pronouncements to that effect. Thus, a Washington-based policy analyst has called the trade policies of the United States and European Union an “ethical scandal” (Gresser, 2002: 14), while the US trade representative has branded European protection of its agriculture “immoral” (Becker, 2003). The Belgian foreign minister has proclaimed the need for an “ethical globalization” (Verhofstadt, 2002), and the former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, has even launched an “Ethical Globalization Initiative.” The president of the World Bank, James Wolfensohn, laments that “something is wrong” with the global economy, while his former chief economist, Nobel prize winner Joseph Stiglitz, has glibly remarked, “Of course, no one expected that the world market would be fair …” (2002a: 24). What all these remarks suggest is that power and material self-interest have trumped fairness and justice in the design of international economic institutions and policies.