What Is the Polity? A Roundtable Author(s): Yale H. Ferguson, Richard W. Mansbach, Robert A.

Denemark, Hendrik Spruyt, Barry Buzan, Richard Little, Janice Gross Stein and Michael Mann Reviewed work(s): Source: International Studies Review, Vol. 2, No. 1 (Spring, 2000), pp. 3-31 Published by: Wiley-Blackwell on behalf of The International Studies Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3186437 . Accessed: 04/09/2012 10:32
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Wiley-Blackwell and The International Studies Association are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to International Studies Review.

http://www.jstor.org

What
A

Is

the

Polity?

Roundtable

YaleH. Ferguson,RichardW. Mansbach, RobertA. Denemark, HendrikSpruyt, BarryBuzan, RichardLittle,Janice Gross Stein, and Michael Mann

INTRODUCTION

YALE
The

H.

FERGUSON

and RICHARD W.

MANSBACH

in and sovereignstatetriumphed a temporal spatialcontextbecauseit

proved its superiorcapacity to allocate material and psychological values and to subordinatecompeting political forms. Westphalian states established their authorityin Europe over segmentaryauthoritiesand kept relative peace at home, helped markets to flourish, collected taxes, provided for the common defense, and made war effectively. Afterward,Europeanempires imposed state institutions atop older political forms in the New World, Asia, and Africa. Earlier polities and identities and loyalties associated with them rarely vanished entirely but nested in modified ways within successor polities. statesface increasedchallengesfromeconomic andculToday,contemporary turaltrendsand institutionsthat transcendand permeatetheir legal boundaries, as well as from nationalistand many other subgroupswithin. Civil wars and terrorismseem far more frequentand importantthaninterstateviolence. Improved communications,and informationhave diminishedphysical and transportation, distance among individuals.Better-educated citizens are becompsychological ing more critical consumers of the public goods states presumeto deliver. A global crisis of authoritylooms. Transnational corporations,financial institutions,and criminalnetworksare majorallocatorsof economic security.Religious, ethnic,andtribalidentitiesareon therise. Numerousdevelopingcountries are little more thanquasi- or failed states.International regimes, nongovernmental organizations(NGOs), regions, and cities are increasinglysignificantactors.
? 2000 InternationalStudies Association
Published by Blackwell Publishers, 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA, and 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK.

Ferguson et al.

The sovereign state is certainly not likely to disappearany time soon. Some states acting individually or in concert may improve their capacity to deliver certain services, encourage entrepreneurship, improve economic competitiveor create new rules to curb market abuses and instability. But the state ness, appearsto be evolving into a much less dominantpolitical form, only one of a growing number and variety of polities that engage in governance-that is, substantially influence or control value outcomes. Human identities and loyalties-multiple and competing throughouthistory-now appearless surely wedded to the sovereign state form.1 Distinctions between public and private authorityare ever harderto maintain.Mininationalismsare more of a threatto the state than a testamentto its continued viability. There is an urgentneed for innovations in political institutionbuilding and ideology throughoutthe global system. The centralquestions for present-daytheoristsof global politics are:"If you were free to redrawthe 'map' of global political space better to capturewhat you perceive to be contemporary'reality,' what sorts of polities, boundaries, and identities would you highlight-and why? What majorchanges in that map would you foresee in the next centuryor so?"We asked six distinguishedsocial scientists, whose own work has stressedhistoricalperspective,to addressthese key questions in a short statement. Our contributorsapproachedour questions in distinctive ways. Diversity, even among like-minded scholars, emerges as one theme of this round table. Yet all recognize the need to remapglobal politics in a world far more complex than that enshrinedby Westphalia.There is also a need to rethinkthe natureof boundariesand the relationshipbetween territoryand space. Robert A. Denemark and HendrikSpruyteach choose to concentrateon requiredapproaches. They argue for the development of new forms of system(s) theory that can accommodatechange, and they make macrohistoricalcomparisons across disciplinaryboundaries.Denemarklooks for furtherdevelopmentof world system history, while Spruyt, taking issue with Kenneth Waltz's reading of Emile Durkheim and the static natureof the Waltzianmodel, seizes on ideas that he believes are implicit in structuralrealism to advocate historical sociological of understandings internationalsystems. Spruyttries to salvage structuralrealism by adding a dose of constructivismto the mix. From this perspective, he reassesses the essential meaning of anarchyand hierarchy. realism as their point of BarryBuzan and RichardLittle also take structural we should keep in mind that they have previously urgedus departure,although to go beyond any "thin"or static conceptualizationof "internationalsystem" ' Fora fullerdiscussionof W. and identitypolitics,see YaleH. Ferguson Richard of Basesof 'Us'and "Global PoliticsattheTurn theMillennium: Mansbach, Changing
'Them,' " InternationalStudies Review 1, No. 2 (1999).

WhatIs the Polity?

and search as well for "deep structure"evolving across world history.2Their brandof structuralrealism can accommodatemany actors that, we submit, are like our "polities."3 The model they advance here is of a world divided into a center and periphery.The center is a "core security community"of "postmodern" states that no longer conduct their relations "on realist principles"and, in International fact, are negotiating "permeableboundaries." governmentalorganizations (IGOs) like the EuropeanUnion (EU) and transnationalNGOs are prominentin the mix. The peripheryis a "realistzone of conflict" where many states are literally struggling to survive. Even in that zone, some of the same influences that affect postmodernstates are beginning to be felt.4 Janice Gross Stein insists that our traditionalconceptualizationof "security" needs to be far broaderand that, by any definition, the capacity of most states to deliver it has been on the decline for decades.5Her term "privatization of security"bears some resemblance to Michael Mann's description of medieval Europe. It ranges from a shift in the state's role to that of an ineffective umpire of the rules of the game because it works mainly for the owners of the clubs-in the global marketplace-to the collapse of internalorderand the rise of private armies and security forces. The result, she maintains,can only be "a diminished state as the focal point of political identity." By contrast, although Mann acknowledges that trends differ among states and regions, he does "notsee a large global decline in the role of states."States for him are part of a "continuingincrease in national, inter-nationaland transnationalregulationalike";they "regulate increasinglydiverseactivities,on behalf of increasingly diverse constituencies."Mann's assessmentis perhapsexpected for one whose work tracedthe rise of "theautonomouspower of the state,"6 yet

Barry Buzan, Charles Jones, and RichardLittle,TheLogic of Anarchy:Neorealism to Structural Realism(New York: Columbia Press,1993). University 3 YaleH. Ferguson andRichard Mansbach, W. Polities:Authority, and Identities, S.C.:University SouthCarolina of Press,1996). (Columbia, Change 4 Other modern, analystsmightsuggestthata tumultuous meetingof premodern, andpostmodern a bettercharacterization the conflictzone. is of has of state.Somescholsecurity beena leadingfunction thesovereign 5 Providing WilliamMcNeill,areoptimistic aboutthe futureof the state ars,like realisthistorian alternative the territorial to of because"no promising organization armedforce has H. StatesBuried Soon," Too evenbegunto emerge." William McNeill,"Territorial See Mershon InternationalStudies Review 41, Supplement2 (1997), p. 274. In part, such
6

a view ignoresthe declinein interstate warsandthe reorganization militaryforce of todayin alliancesandpeacekeeping.

See Michael Mann: The Sources of Social Power, vol. 1: From the Beginning to 1760AD (New York:CambridgeUniversityPress, 1986); TheSourcesof Social Power, vol. 2: The Rise of Classes and Nation-States, 1760-1914 (New York: Cambridge

Powerof theState;Its Origins, MechPress,1993);and"TheAutonomous University

Ferguson et al.

his analysis is anything but a reaffirmationof the traditionalrealist vision. He arguesthatstates "crystallizein multipleform"-that is, "arepolymorphous"and are so incoherentthat "'they' do not really exist as singular actors at all." Mann-like Buzan and Little, Stein, and ourselves-recognizes that the issue is not whetherstates will continue to exist but ratherthe ways in which they will increasinglydivergefromtheWestphalian model. ForMann,othersocial actors have power, but only states exercise "political"power. That seems to us to suggest, misleadingly,thatthe control or influence over the allocation of values exercisedby nonstateactorsis separateor inherentlydifferentfromthatof states.7 Also, thoughMann'sconception of politics is restrictive,his notion of "state"is so broadas to embraceancientpolitieslike Greekcities, bureaucratic actorswithin states that are acting for "diverse constituencies," and internationalorganizations that are presumedinstrumentsof states. We are indeed titillatingly "promiscuous"(his term) in our use of "polity"and straitlacedin our conception of stateform,distinguished We "state." preferto reserve"state"for the Westphalian only by its legal statusas independentand sovereign. Mann and we recognize the need for a long historical perspective;the multiple, overlapping,intersectingnetworksaspect of societies; the broadrange of influentialand rule-makingactorsin world affairs;and the diverse, nonunified, and changing nature of states in the contemporaryworld. For us, the state's glass is more than half empty, while Mann sees it as possibly more than half full, althoughwe would all surely agree with Buzan and Little that some states are far more substantialthanothers.We do see the nation-stateideal challenged ratherthan strengthenedin the proliferationof mininationalisms.Mann gives rules. By contrast, we stress both the terripriorityto "centralized-territorial" torial "reach"of nonstatepolities and the degree to which political influence or control,identities,andloyalties typicallylie withinor transcend legal boundaries.

GLOBAL POLITY PERSPECTIVE

ROBERT A. DENEMARK
The question of what sorts of polities, boundaries, and identities we should highlight to help apprehendthe future of global politics, posed here by Ferguson and Mansbach, is part of a protracteddebate over the shape of the discianisms, and Results," in John A. Hall, ed., States in History (Oxford, U.K.: Basil Authorityand International Affairs(Albany:StateUniversityof New YorkPress, 1999). Also A. Claire Cutler, "Locating 'Authority'in the Global Political Economy,"International Studies Quarterly 43, No. 1 (1999).

Blackwell,1986). and A. eds.,Private Haufler, TonyPorter, Cutler, Virginia 7 See, forexample, Claire

WhatIs the Polity?

pline. The field has been long dominatedby those definingthemselvesas students of states as they interact with one anotherand cope with forces in their environment.Extantnorms and institutions,distributionsof power, or modalities of decisionmaking form the core of the discipline. Changes outside the political sphere are importantonly insofar as they impinge upon those concerns. It was by no means foolish to focus on states. After Westphalia,European states not only capturedterritoryand the majorinstrumentsof force, but dominated finance, culture, and religious practice as well. This state-centricsocial orderwas then exported as bullion-richand labor-poor(hence more technologically inclined) Europeansslowly conqueredthe planet.8 Placing states at the core of the discipline has its advantages.A focus on state behavior provides a unified sense of the outcomes that need to be understood. Yet costs are inherent in any discipline that decides a priori upon the unit of its study. Units may be less durableor salient than students appropriate think, as Spruyt's treatmentof the historically contingent nature of the state eloquently demonstrates.9A focus on states alone robs us of the insights that comparativeanalysis might provide. The real shortcomingdeals with the apprehensionof change. Only some of the variables driving fundamentalalterationsin the state system derive from within that system. When it comes to explaining such change, the field falls apart, going to war with itself over what constitutes an appropriatestarting point and being quickly overtaken by the events it is supposed to apprehend. The end of the Cold War,for example, broughtmass confusion. As if to underscore our ignorance,scholarsholding broadlysimilarviews engaged in a frenzy of contradiction.We were cautioned that we would one day miss the Cold War (by John J. Mearsheimer)and that history had now happily ended (by Francis Fukuyama).10Both were wrong. The focus on state relations proves selflimiting. The kinds of changes that are most interestingto leaders of states are exactly the ones we cannot apprehendin this manner. Thereis anotherway to look at these issues. We can abandona prioriassumptions about what unit to focus upon and chronicle the development of the various mechanisms by which we have organized ourselves over time. The map Ferguson and Mansbach suggest we create is actually an historical atlas. Flipping through the pages creates an animated version of relevant change. Such

8 9

of Calif.:University California Press, 1998).

Andre Gunder Frank, ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age (Berkeley,

226, No. 2 (1990); Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New

Press,1994). Change(Princeton, N.J.:Princeton University 10 WeShallSoonMisstheColdWar," Atlantic JohnJ.Mearsheimer, Monthly "Why

An HendrikSpruyt, The Sovereign State and Its Competitors: Analysis of Systems

FreePress, 1992). York:

Ferguson et al.

explicitly historical analysis recognizes not just transitions from some early organizationalform to that of states, but both earlier changes and systemic continuityas well. Before we think aboutwhat constitutesfundamentalchange, we must have a grasp of what we are comparing. How far back must our analyses go? It would be dangerousto select some arbitrarystarting point before which we could learn nothing about changing patterns.A decade ago, few scholars thoughtit importantto study global politics before the Cold War.Today,most every introductoryinternational relations textbook begins with an analysis of the last several hundredyears. The only concern back satisfactoryoption is to push our study of issues of contemporary as far as we can. The historicalrecordis richerand more illuminatingthanmost would imagine, as recent analyses by ChristopherChase-Dunn and Thomas Hall (10,000 years), Andre GunderFrankand BarryK. Gills (5,000 years), and George Modelski and William R. Thompson (1,000 years) demonstrate.11 The state should not be allowed to occlude our vision, so "politics"may be too narrow a concept. Ferguson and Mansbach offer a broad definition of "polity"-the ability to mobilize persons and their resources for value satisfaction, generally requiring a degree of institutionalizationand hierarchy.From this perspective, polity is made up of mechanisms to create and spreadbelief systems and provides institutions to serve as focal points for those belief systems. These belief systems must be consistent with the creation of a viable social order that allows for the creation and use of materialgoods with which the society supportsand reproducesitself. Steps are clearly missing. Once belief systems are created,spread,and provided with a focal point, individuals must choose to identify with them; once a conducive social order is in place, actual productionof goods must proceed. when they suggest that Ferguson and Mansbachillustratethe interrelationship Themoreinclusivepolitiesincorporate do not completely but overwhelm old andidentities; theirvery successin creating centralized loyalties powermay set off a strugglefor control.And centralization resultin an ideological may economictake-off,and/orforeignadventures havean impact that revolution, socialgroupsandloyalties.'2 upon Fromthis perspectivewe see thatthree processes are at work here: identity, organization,and production.These processes cannotbe successfully compart1 ChristopherChase-DunnandThomasHall, Rise and Demise: ComparingWorldFrankandBarryK. Gills, Colo.:Westview,1997);AndreGunder Systems(Boulder,
eds., The WorldSystem:Five HundredYearsor Five Thousand?(London: Routledge, ers: The Coevolutionof Global Politics and Economics (Columbia,S.C.: University of

R. Powand Sectorsand World 1993);GeorgeModelski William Thompson, Leading

12

SouthCarolina Press,1996).

Ferguson and Mansbach,Polities, p. 53.

WhatIs the Polity?

mentalized, yet we fail to study them together.One is cultural,the purview of sociologists; one is political, the purview of political scientists; and one is economic, where economists have their way. Why have we divided ourselves so? The quest to understandour world is hardly new, but its division into various bits is no more than two centuries old. The disciplines as we know them emerged as a result of attemptsto derive objective knowledge from empirical evidence. The problem was that society was too large to apprehendall at once. Historians and their ideographic techniques could offer little in terms of systematic knowledge suitablefor informingpolicy. The parcelingout of the problem to "multipledisciplines was premisedon the belief that systematicresearch requiredskilled concentrationon the multiple separatearenasof reality, which was partitionedrationallyinto distinct groupingsof knowledge." 13 These divisions became fixed in the organizationof universitydepartmentswith independent budgets and standardsfor tenure. But this division of labor, although productive, creates high transaction costs. Studentsin the various disciplines find themselves separatedby different definitions of the same concepts, thick professionaljargon, and failure to communicate about problems of mutual interest. Specialists in some areas possess evidence that allows them to accept positions that remainproblematicfor others who lack access to the specialized materials. The quest for information about our world led us to divide up the problem, but our successful use of that strategynow standsin the way of the reintegrationof thatknowledge into some more coherentform. Whateverdefinition we adopt for the global polity, it must be understoodprimarilyas partof a broaderglobal system, which we must seek to apprehendas a unit if we are to make much sense of it. mustbejoined The searchbackthrough timeandacrossdisciplinary boundaries institutions,althoughnow cruby anotherelementas well. The studyof European aboutany uniquelyEuropean is insufficient.No argument cial, processcan be discerned from the study of Europeansocial processes alone, nor can any unique qualities be deduced from Europeandominance. For historical and transdisciplinary studies to be successful, they must be truly global. This means the integration of the rest of the world into our map, but not just as places that need to unsuccessful organizationalmodes. We "develop"or as zones of (temporarily?) need a world system historythatrecognizes exploitationandthatviews relations built aroundwinners and losers, not in ideological terms of superiorityor inferiority,but as one of the continuousand importantprocesses of the global order. Many scholars will be displeased with this plan for creating a new map of the global order. It is a far larger task than those traditionallyundertakenby

Press,1996),p. 7. University

13 ImmanuelWallersteinet al., Open the Social Sciences: Report of the Gulbenkian Commission on the Restructuringof the Social Sciences (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford

10

Ferguson et al.

individual disciplines and may be perceived as too great a challenge. But it is necessarybecause the prevailingmodel of parcelingmay prove inherentlyincapable of allowing for a greater understandingof the global system. Efforts towardtransdisciplinarity still in their infancy but offer more hope of copare social ing with complex phenomenathanthe disparateanalyses of the traditional sciences.14 Least pleased will be those who take various "post"positions and who fear the returnto a metanarrative global relations. Such metanarratives of are prone to bias, imperialism,and intellectual corruption.This may be so, but a metanarrative based on a truly global, long-termhistorical and transdisciplinof the global social ordermight be less domineeringand corruptthan ary study either local narrativeswithout those inclusive qualities or the currentideological synthesis that we see trumpetingits dominance in transhistorical terms. scholarswill still offer insightfulanalysesaboutwhatthe next sevIntelligent eraldecades mightlook like. But, until we gain some perspectiveon the natureof continuity and change in our past, until we can begin a transdisciplinarydialogue, anduntil we begin to see in more global terms,we areunlikely to generate the systematicknowledgenecessaryto help us successfullymapthis next century. MACROHISTORICAL COMPARISONS AND THE WESTPHALIAN MOMENT HENDRIK SPRUYT Structuralrealism, despite being one of the preeminent approachesto international studies today, has also served as the foil against which alternative approacheshave defined themselves. Constructivistshave argued that structural realism treats interests exogenously ratherthan endogenously. Although structural analysis has value, the realist view has failed to recognize how agents and structure mutually constitute each other.15 Epistemologically, poststructuralistshave abandonedstructuralrealism altogether.They repudiateits empiricistbias and submitthatarchaeologicaland genealogical tracingof structures and units more accurately reveals the constraints and opportunities, as well as the hidden power relations,in the internationalsystem.16 A thirdline of
14

Robert Denemark, A. K. Jonathan Friedman, Barry Gills,andGeorgeModelski,

eds., World System History: The Social Science of Long-Term Change (London: Rou-

tledge,forthcoming). 15 AlexanderWendt,"The Agent-Structure Relations Problemin International

Theory,"InternationalOrganization41, No. 3 (1987), pp. 335-370.
16

Ashley, "The Poverty of Neorealism," in Robert Keohane, ed., Neorealism and Its

The literature voluminous now. For one prominent is by critique,see Richard

Columbia Critics(New York: Press,1986). University

WhatIs the Polity?

11

critique suggests that even if structuralrealism presents a plausible account of unit behavior in a Westphaliansystem of sovereign, territorialstates, it is ill equipped to deal with other types of internationalsystems or units or to lend insights into how the Westphalianmoment might be coming to an end."7 All three strandsof critique question the ahistoricity of structuralrealism. At the same time, many have recognized the benefits of startingfrom the relatively parsimoniousassumptionsof thatapproach.The deductive model offers potentially useful explanations of empirical reality. Structuralrealists submit that rich historical analysis would challenge such parsimonious deductivism, can even question whetherany type of structure be ascertaineda priori,and cast doubt on the value of systems analysis as a whole. Criticism of the historical turn in internationalstudies has also come from anothercomer. Historiansproperhave challenged the macrohistoricalcomparisons trade by political scientists. They debate the sources cited, accuracy of and primarymaterials.Political scientists interpretations, the use of appropriate should be concerned but not overly worried. The issues are ultimately resolvable, even if the historical discipline itself is rife with such dissension. More disconcerting and more damning is the claim that all macrohistoricalcomparison is inevitably flawed. This essay aims to refute both lines of critiqueof the historical approachto internationalstudies. Contraryto the claim that historical analysis of the interI is of nationalstructure reductionist, suggestthata broadening thedeductivepropositions would do more justice to the historical record but still lack a simple of realismstill providesa useful startextrapolation observedbehaviors.Structural system. To be more fruitful, ing point for examiningbehaviorin the international systems theorists need to reexamine several elements thathave informed structuralrealism but have been neglected in the currentstrandsof the theory. Nor do I believe that political scientists should relinquish the field to historians.Whereas historical studies may challenge the feasibility of broadcomparative studies, certainly in the postmodern narratives that dominate the historical discipline today, they also relinquishthe ability to provide more generalized theoretical understandingsof the world aroundus. Infinite micronarratives, however illuminating,remainat thatlevel. Macrocomparative analysts apologize for particularreadings of the historical record or their choice might of particulardata, but they can refuse admonishmentfor venturinginto a territory that many historianstoday seem to have abandonedaltogether. In this essay, I first highlight Kenneth Waltz's interpretation of Emile Durkheim'swork, and I arguethat within Durkheimlies a more dynamic interpretationof the relation between unit and structure.I then discuss how histor-

17

ed., Neorealism and Its Critics; Spruyt,Sovereign State and Its Competitors.

in in JohnRuggie,"Continuity Transformation theWorld and Polity," Keohane,

12

Ferguson et al.

ically informedcomparativeanalyses may inform systems analysis beyond the Westphalianframeworkimplied in structuralrealism.

Reinjecting Durkheim's Dynamic Variablesin Systems Theory

The contemporary formulationof structural realism is well known.18 The structureof the internationalsystem is characterized the absence of hierarchy,the by lack of functional differentiation,and the relative distributionof power. Given that anarchyhas dominated throughouthistory, differentiationamong polities has always been low, and the key variablefor classifying various architectures of internationalsystems must thereforebe the polarity of the system. The latter is analogous to classifying some as price setters and others as price takers in a marketsystem. Waltz partially derives this characterizationof structure, and the consequences of hierarchy and anarchy,from his reading of Durkheim's work on comparativesocial systems. In premodernsocieties, Durkheimargued,human associations showed few signs of formally institutionalizedhierarchy,and indiin vidualsexhibitedonly marginal differentiation the knowledgeandskill required to perform economic tasks. Modern societies, by contrast,manifested formalized administrativemachineries and a highly advanced division of labor. Premodern societies were organized around mechanical solidarity. Modern ones evinced organic solidarity.19 Waltz transposesDurkheim'sclassification of mechanical and organic solidarity from the societal level to the internationalsystem. The international system, analogous to premodernsociety, lacks hierarchyand division of labor. Waltz takes the correlationbetween the lack of formally institutionalizedhierarchy and the lack of division of labor as causal. The lack of hierarchycauses the absence of functionaldifferentiation.Given the continuedabsence of world government,the levels of functional differentiationwill continue to be low. John Ruggie has been one of the most vocal critics of this reading of Durkheim's work, and justly so.20 In Waltz's formulation,anarchycauses the lack of a division of labor. Consequently, without hierarchy,the division of labor cannot change, and, hence, the internationalsystem is doomed to perpetuate itself. But Durkheim's comparativesociology is concerned with the very This dynamic opposite:the forces thatlead to the emergenceof organicsolidarity.
18 Ibid., pp. 131-157; Spruyt,Sovereign State and Its Competitors. 19 "There then,a socialstructure...to whichmechanical is,

Labor in Society (New York:Free Press, 1964), p. 180. First published in 1893.
20

The ferentorganseach of which has a specialrole."Emile Durkheim, Divisionof

Ruggie, "Continuity," pp. 148-152.

Where organic solidarity is preponderant they are constituted. . . by a system of dif-

solidarity corresponds. it What characterizesis a systemof segments and to homogeneous similar eachother....

WhatIs the Polity?

13

element that typifies Durkheim'swork is missing in the Waltzianformulation. of How might the structure the international system change over time? Durkheim arguesthatthe level of dynamicdensity is the key. Increasinginteractionsamong members of the original society, or with members of other societies, lead to greaterdivision of labor, aggregationsof scale, and formal authoritystructures. This reading of Durkheim suggests no particularprimacy for governance structuresor interactiondynamics. It is equally plausible that increasing interactions precipitatethe changes in governance structures.Underlying environin transformations technology mentalchanges(developmentsin communications, and modes of transportation,demographic shifts, and new military technologies) may influence the intensity of interaction and precipitate a search for to governancestructures meet the challenges andopportunitiesof these changes. In the parlance of internationalrelations, the interactions among states and nonstateactorsmay bringaboutalternative effects, governanceforms.Interaction criticized as reductionist,may (but need not) alter the structureof the system in which the elements of that system are embedded. They cannot be discarded a priori as having no causal effect on the architectureof the system. The point is not whether Durkheim concerned himself primarilywith the relation of governance and division of labor. Nor is it pertinent that he was unconcernedwith internationalstudies. The issue is that this particularreading in of his analysis of structurehas been interpreted a static manner.Structurehas been segregated from process. The second way to open up contemporary realism to a readingsof structural of more historical-sociological understanding the internationalsystem is to recognize how anothercomponentof Durkheim'scomparisonof mechanicalandorganic societies has gone unnoticed. This component is his emphasis on the normative structuresthat socialize individual behavior in premodernassociations andthe conversein modem societies (anomie).Toremainfaithfulto the analinternational society andthe anarchical system,one would ogy betweenpremodern have to addresswhether,like premodernsocieties, anarchicalsystems may also demonstratesocially constitutedpatternsof behaviorin which the individual(the state) is embeddedand that the individualmust largely take for granted.In premodernsocieties, the social rules may substitutefor formally articulatedgovernance structures.(Ostracismor social prestige may performsimilarfunctionsin andperhapseven moreeffectively-as governancestructures modem society.) Conversely,the absence of hierarchylogically fails to preclude societal rules.21 In other words, structural realism advances an analytic postulate. Given the absence of hierarchy,actors, however conceived, face a rational choice prob-

21 Fora briefdiscussion Durkheim this issue, see Bertrand of on BadieandPierre The of ChicagoPress, 1983), Birnbaum, Sociologyof the State(Chicago: University pp. 11-17.

14

Ferguson et al.

lem. (In this sense, neoliberalismand neorealism can both be groupedas rationalist theories.)Underuncertainty, does well to choose behaviorsthatpursue one one's self-interest.As an analytic statement,the claim is uncontestable. But if one perceives the structuralrealist argument as a set of synthetic statements-that is, as a set of statementsaboutthe empiricalworld-the argument becomes questionable.As noted, there is no reasonto assume that anarchy is the more important causal determinantof behavior, rather than the level of interactiondynamics. Consequently,one need not assume that the absence of formalized governance structuresnecessarily correlateswith the absence of social rules within the system. Systems with high levels of interaction may constructalternativesto hierarchy. Two reactions are possible. One is to argue that the Durkheimianlead is a red herringand misleads us in our understanding internationalsystems. Preof modernsocieties and internationalsystems arefundamentallydissimilar.Structural realism would have been better off advancing its deductive argumentthatis, the rationalchoice elementsin the theory-without referenceto Durkheim. That answer would seem unsatisfactory,given that the particularinterpretation of his work allows Waltz and other structuralrealists to advance arguments about the relative primacy of orderingprinciple over interaction,to differentiate structurefrom process, and to critique a variety of alternativetheories as reductionist. A second approach,taken here, explores how sociological understandings of systems and societies might aid our understandingof behaviors. For our purposes in this short essay, we have taken the lead from Durkheim(but other sociological literaturesmight be even more fruitful). A closer reading of his work suggests an emphasis on the dynamic factors behind changes in ordering principlesand functionaldifferentiation.It also suggests that interactioneffects cannot be relegated analytically to secondary status. One could then explore the consequences of the claim that social ordering might be present in the face of anarchy.In internationalsystems analysis, this could mean thatelements thatinteracton a regularbasis and constitutea system might show few signs of formal institutionalhierarchybut demonstrateregularized patternsof behavior among themselves which differ from the patterns of behavior of actors considered outside the system. Some historical cases, discussed by FergusonandMansbach,might be of this type.22The Greekpoleis, city states, lacked a formal hierarchy-at least until their incorporationunder Macedonia. Yet there were clearly rules that governed interactions(functional regimes, diplomatic practices, modes of alliances, religious affinities) that differentiated interactions within the system of Greek poleis from interactions between the poleis and non-Greekactors, such as the barbaroi, the non-Greek22

and Polities. Ferguson Mansbach,

WhatIs the Polity?

15

speaking peoples. Different types of systems would at least seem to coexist: systems with high interactionamong its members and certain sharedrules (the Greekinternationalsystem of independentpoleis) and othersystems with actors that demonstratedneither (the Greek poleis and the actors outside). It is impossible in this short essay to proceed with this argumentin depth. I suggest that starting with a closer look at the apparentheritage of structural realism, and emphasizing implicit but unexamineddimensions within that herof itage, reveals avenues of entry for historicaland sociological understandings internationalsystems.

Is ComparativeMacrohistorical Analysis Valid?

intellectualaffinitybetween political scientists who engage Despite the apparent in historical analysis of internationalsystems with sociologists and historians, the various representativeshave sometimes disagreed.The differences, I argue, follow from various motives informing their respective research, as well as from differences within the subfields with which political science shares common ground.In the rest of this essay, I attemptto distinguishvariousapproaches to history and politics, while arguing that macrolevel comparisons in political science deserve greateremphasis. Some historiansengage in macrohistoricalresearch,but their analyses seldom take a comparative stance.23Cases are considered unique; causal arguments are implicit rather than explicit; and theoretical knowledge is not considered cumulative. Narrativespertainto the individual case alone. Indeed, the very conceptualizationof histories as "cases" is often anathemato historians. Causalargumentsfail to indicatepatternsand to provideprospectiveleverage on more recent empirical events. Macrohistorical analysis in this vein Alter (counteremphasizes the complexities of polities and their interrelations. and the historical tape plays out differently. factually) any event, Moreover, within the historical discipline itself macrohistoryis decidedly on the retreat.24Epistemological concerns about the biases in macrohistory have led to greater prominence for postmodern analyses, gender studies, and critical histories. Microhistory and the deconstructionof previously accepted canons of historiography have replaced grand theorizing. Even the French Annales school, originally known for emphasizingthe deep structural elements of history and the longue duree-that is, the long-term view-has turned to Twoprominent examplesof this genreareCarloCipollaandWilliamMcNeill, in buttheirinterest social andeconomichistoryhas fadedin the historical discipline.
Carlo Cipolla, Before the Industrial Revolution (New York: W. W. Norton, 1980);
23

William of McNeill,ThePursuit Power(Chicago: of University ChicagoPress,1982). 24 A cursory suchas theAmerican Historsurveyof the leadinghistorical journals, ical Review,will bringthe pointhome.

16

Ferguson et al.

exploringthe vicissitudes of everydaylife. Historicalstudy has become a highly inductiveenterprise,andthe suggestion thatdeeperunderlyingforces may influence and structuremicrolevel actions no longer informs the predominantmode of historical analysis. Historical sociology comes closer to the historical school of political science.25 For example, Michael Mann's work emphasizes how societies and polities emerge as the result of various combinationsof power resources (military, The political,economic, andideological).26 analysisof the historicalrecordyields a taxonomyof specific configurationsof these fourdimensionsof power,butthey are not comparativecases. There is no testing of rival theories or comparisonof causal dynamics across polities. While the dimensions of power may be derived deductively,the historicalconfigurationsof how such dimensions are amalgamated and applied in given polities can only be presentedinductively.Like ReinhardBendix's work, the logic of particularhistoricaltrajectoriesmay be evident but withoutcategorizationsalong specific causal paths.27 Political science, in its attemptsto createa historicallyinformedunderstanding of how various internationalsystems emerge and how the structureof such systems might affect behavior, differs from contemporaryhistoriographyand some versions of historical sociology. It seeks to discern regularizedpatternsof behaviorand aims to delineate key variablesthat determinesuch patterns.Systems theorizing, without collapsing into endless inductive narratives(whether informativeor not), should specify the finite parametersthat structurevarious international systems andpresenta taxonomyof behaviorswithin such systems. This work should be informedby deductive assumptions,such as how systems may differ according to governing principle (anarchyand hierarchyform that confederalandfederalarrangeonly oppositeends of a spectrum encapsulates ments);28the number of actors in a system; the level of interactionbetween membersconsidered to be within a system; and those outside of that system.29
25

somehistorical Press,1984).Clearly, sociologistsengagein explicitcausalargumentationand seek to discernhistoricalregularities. addresshere only that strandin I historical the causalregularities sociologythatrepudiates possibilityof establishing acrosscases. 26 Michael Mann: Sources of Social Power, vols. 1 and 2. 27 Dietrich "Theoretical Generalization Historical and Rueschemeyer, Particularity in theComparative of Reinhard in Skocpol, Vision Method. and Bendix," ed., Sociology 28 See DanielDeudney, "ThePhiladelphian Arms particularly System:Sovereignty, and of Circa1787-1861 InterControl, Balance Powerin theAmerican ," States-Union,
national Organization49, No. 2 (1995).

Vision and Method in Historical Sociology (Cambridge,U.K.: CambridgeUniversity

Fora description variousstrands of withinthisliterature, ThedaSkocpol, see ed.,

Forexample,Buzan,Jones,andLittleattempt introduce notionof interto the actioncapacityto theirsystemsanalysis.Buzan,Jones,andLittle,Logic of Anarchy.

29

WhatIs the Polity?

17

Macrohistoricalanalysis can serve as a proving groundfor deductively derived hypotheses, but it also serves as a catalystfor generatingnew hypotheses.These latter criteria evaluate the validity of comparative macrohistorical work for political scientists. The questionis not whethercomparativecase analysis meets epistemological sensibilities in other fields or whetherpolitical scientists must concede a priori that the historical record fails to indicate causal regularities.

ONE WORLD TWO?30 OR

BARRY BUZAN AND RICHARD LITTLE

To investigate the future or the past of contemporarystates, it is essential to locate them within the broaderframeworkof an evolving internationalsystem. States are partly constituted by the system within which they interact. The Westphalianmodel of the internationalsystem, for example, presupposes that the state is constitutedby both internaland externalsovereignty.Whereasinternal sovereignty is defined by the hierarchicalstructures formed within the state, a state's autonomy and equal status, with respect to other states, constitute external sovereignty in the system. The anarchicstructureof the international system and the autonomy of the state are, in theory, mutually constituted. The idea of the internationalsystem being constitutedby a set of sovereign and equal states has always representedan aspirationratherthan a reality-a useful fiction against which to measurethe actualconditions in the world. During the Cold War,for example, the fiction had to be set against a bipolarreality with the two superpowersboth claiming a legitimaterightof interventionwithin their respective spheres of influence. Instead of viewing the internationalsystem as an anarchyof independentstates, it is more accurate,but still an oversimplification, to depict it as two interactinghierarchies.31 With the collapse of communismin EasternEurope,andthe laterdemise of the Soviet Union, bipolarThe followingdiscussiondrawson the sectionon international processesin "A Post Modern International ch. 16 in BarryBuzanandRichard Little,InterSystem,"
national Systems in WorldHistory: Remaking the Study of International Relations
30

andCharles Kupchan, A. and "Socialization Hegemonic International Power," OrgaWendt DanielFriedheim, and "Hiernization47, No. 3 (1990),pp. 79-91; Alexander of Informal and in State," Thomas archyin a World Anarchy: Empire theEastGerman
J. Biersteker and Cynthia Weber, eds., The Social Constructionof State Sovereignty

tions betweenStates in the ModernWorld (London:Routledge, 1997); G. JohnIkenberry

Press,2000). (Oxford,U.K.:OxfordUniversity 31 Thereis for growingsupport the idea thatthe international systemcan be charin acterized hierarchical terms.See AdamWatson, Limitsof Independence: The Rela-

U.K.:Cambridge Press,1996). (Cambridge, University

18

Ferguson et al.

ity was almost immediately erased as a defining feature of the international system. Despite the presence of nuclear weapons in the newly constituted Russian Federation,no one considers that the internationalsystem is still constitutedin bipolarterms.The states within the system are now boundtogetherby a new set of processes. But thereis considerabledisagreementand uncertaintyabouthow the international Neorealistshave depicted systemnow shouldbe characterized.32 the world, at least temporarily,in unipolarterms, with the United States as the last global hegemon. Whether or not unipolarity in the contemporaryworld Few theorists find this forgenerates hierarchyfor the neorealists is unclear.33 mulation entirely satisfactory.It underestimatesthe extent and significance of the changes that have taken place before and after the end of the Cold War.A second, more complex model of states and system has emerged, providing a more radical reassessment.According to this model, the uneven levels of economic and political development across the globe are seen to be pulling the internationalsystem apartto form two distinct worlds.34The geopolitical space that encompassed the globe duringthe Cold Warand ran on realist rules of the game now is seen reconstitutedinto two distinct zones or worlds, one at the core of the internationalsystem and the other at the periphery. These two zones are perceived as occupied by differenttypes of units, interactingon the basis of very differentprocesses. A securitycommunityof powerful advancedindustrialdemocraciesdefines the world at the core, where internationalrelations are no longer conducted on realist principles. States in this world, it is argued,do not expect or preparefor war against each other, and, since the zone contains most of the great powers, this development is significant for the internationalsystem as a whole. The economies and societies of the states that make up this zone are open and interdependent,transnationalplayers are numerous and strong, and the international society within which the states and transnationalplayers interact is

The problem of partlyarisesfromthe very "thin" conceptualization the interin national thatprevails thediscipline. anattempt enrichtheconcept,see For to system
Buzan and Little, InternationalSystems in WorldHistory. "The Unipolar Moment,"Foreign Affairs 70 (1990/ 33 See Charles Krauthammer,

32

tics,"International Security18 (1993), pp. 44-79. The authorsassumea sharpdistinction between unipolarityand hierarchy,whereas Robert Gilpin, Warand Change in World

Structure International of PoliWaltz,"TheEmerging 91), pp. 23-33, and Kenneth

Periphery in the Post-Cold War Era," International Organization 46, No. 2 (1992), pp. 467-491; Max Singer and Aaron Wildavsky, The Real World Order: Zones of Peace, Zones of Turmoil(Chatham,N.J.: ChathamHouse Publishers, 1993).

Politics (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge to UniversityPress, 1981), links unipolarity in worldhistorybefore 1500A.D. hierarchy 34 See James M. Goldgeier MichaelMcFaul, Taleof TwoWorlds: "A and Coreand

WhatIs the Polity?

19

well developed. This is not to suggest that conflict and competition have been eliminated from the system. One can assume that economic and political processes are now privileged over militaryprocesses in the internationalsystem, a of transformation millennial significance. Yet at the periphery,realist rules still apply in relations among states, and war continues to be a usable and used instrumentof policy. States expect and preparefor the possibility of serious tension with their neighbors. Deterrence but (in a few places nucleardeterrence)provides some restraint, economic interbetween neighbors is generally low, and populations often can be dependence easily mobilized for war.35Political power in many of the newly emerging states is still frequentlycontested by force, so civil war is not uncommon.Even in the modernizingstates of EastAsia, where economic interdependenceamong neighbors is growing, states are still fragile and highly protective of sovereignty, and use of force among some of them cannot be ruled out. Underpinningthis model is the assumptionthat the units at the center and the periphery of the internationalsystem, although still identified as nationstates, take different forms. The states at the periphery are still struggling to establish and maintaintheir sovereign independence.There is also little scope for the development of democracy and civil society. Conversely, the states at the center seem to be changing in a way that suggests we may be witnessing the formationof an entirely new type of unit. The traditionaldesire for hardboundaries and strong sovereignty is being replaced by a willingness to negotiate and permeableboundaries,layeredsovereignty,andcommon international transnational"spaces,"such as cyberspace,civic space, commercialspace, and legal and space. Formanypurposes,such as tradeandfinance,communications media, and some aspects of law, boundarieshave become not just permeable, tourism, but also shot throughwith large holes. If hardboundariesand hard sovereignty are being politically abandoned in important ways, then perhaps we are no longer looking at national states but at something else: the postmodernstate. This development is most obvious within the subsystem of the European arises in relationboth to Union (EU), where the question of unit transformation of entity with actor quality and to its effect on its the EU itself as a new type member states. The EU seems unlikely to become simply anotherlarge federal state. Instead, it is experimentingwith a new form of unit and subsystem structure, where the sharp inside/outside features of the modernist era are blurring into a mixture of the domestic and the international.States still exist, but they are embedded in a layered sovereignty, and, for many purposes, their bound-

35 Thereis emerging criticismof attempts applysecurityconceptsand theory to in formulated the contextof Europeto the contemporary ThirdWorld. Stephanie See

U.K.:Macmillan, 1998).

G. Neumann,ed., International Relations Theory and the Third World(Basingstoke,

20

Ferguson et al.

aries are highly porous. Civil society is highly developed, andit has takenon an important internationaldimension. Internationalnongovernmental organizations (INGOs), such as Amnesty International,are startingto play an increasingly importantrole in internationalgovernmentalorganizations(IGOs), such as the United Nations. Although an oversimplificationof a more complex reality,how these divergent worlds will relate to each other is one of the great unansweredquestions for the twenty-firstcentury.Will the weaker,but perhapsmore aggressive, conflict zone begin to penetrateand impinge upon the peace zone throughthreats of terrorism,long-range weapons of mass destruction,migration,disease, debt Will the illegal drugs producedin the conflict zone and for sale in repudiation? the peace zone underminethe economic institutionsthat have guaranteedprosperity in the peace zone for the past forty years? Will the United States be willing or able to lead the unquestionablymore powerful peace zone to penetrate and influence the conflict zone by using geoeconomic levers, and occasionally more robust forms of intervention?Will the postmodernworld try to insulate itself by constructingbuffer zones in Mexico, CentralEurope,Turkey, and North Africa, and try to stay out of the more chaotic parts of the conflict zone? Or will it try to engage with the whole, pushing toward a new world order in its own image? We can only guess at the answers to these questions, but it is clear that complete, or even substantial,separationof the two zones is highly unlikely. The most optimistic scenario suggests that it is only a matterof time before a growing and synergistic link between global communicationsand incipient civil societies within the conflict zone begins to transformthe dominantunits in this region into postmodernstates.36From this perspective, states in the peace zone can forego putting direct pressure on states like China, for example, to democratize. The process could prove to be self-generating once it has been kick-started.The Chinese governmenthas certainly found it difficult to resist Even the inhabitantsof nonthe growing invasion of global communications.37 existent states, like Kurdistan,have been able to establish links among themselves across the globe, throughthe Internet,and promote a sense of common identity by establishingtheir own satellite broadcastingstation.38The disparity between the postmodernstates at the center of the internationalsystem and the premodernstates on the peripherycould remain enormous for many years in

36

Frances Cairncross, The Death of Distance: How the Communication Revolution

Will Change Our Lives (Boston: HarvardBusiness School Press, 1997). 37 Henry S. Rowen, "Off-Centeron the Middle Kingdom," National Interest 48 (1997), pp. 101-104.
38

Well on TV," The Independent,February21, 1999, p. 17.

TimHodlin,"TheE-mailRevolution," Nick Ryan,"Kurdistan Alive and and Is

WhatIs the Polity?

21

the future.Only if, or when, the units on the peripherybegin to take the form of those at the center is there any possibility that the two worlds will transform into one.

THE PRIVATIZATION OF SECURITY IN GLOBAL POLITICAL SPACE

JANICE GROSS STEIN The dominantplayer in the Westphalianorder has been the state. Although it does much more, the baseline function of the state has been to provide security for its citizens. More so than in any other century, in the last hundredyears, states have assumed the exclusive responsibility for securing their citizens.39 The capacity of the state to secure its citizenry and, for larger states, their ability to contributeto securityas a collective global good arethe criticalbarometers of their relative importance in emergent maps of global political space. Globally, as state capacity to provide security declines, and internationalinstitutions retreatfrom the challenge, private suppliersof security increasingly fill the gap. The privatizationof security has profoundimplications for the importance of the state as a focal point of political identity. The capacity to provide security as a public good to citizens has been both constitutive and defining for the modern state. It has been constitutive insofar as war-making by the state directly and indirectly expanded its capacity to provide other public goods at home to its citizenry, and it has been defining in creating citizens' loyalty to the state, becoming their most importantshield.40 States as security providers as a public good are the hard case and the critical test for those who argue that fundamentalshifts are occurring in the tectoniclandscapesof global political space. Individuals,nongovernmental organizations, multinationalcorporations,and internationalinstitutionscan play in global markets or push the frontiers of global humanitarianspace, but their actions miss the core function of states. I argue that, at home and abroad, the role of the state as a provider of security as a public good has begun to change in subtle but importantways. The process of change has been both uneven and erraticacross time and space but should not obscure its transformativeimpact. The process began at least forty
39 Janice E. Thompson, Mercenaries, Pirates, and Sovereigns: State Building and ExtraterritorialViolence in Early ModernEurope (Princeton, N.J.:PrincetonUniver-

sity Press, 1994).

40

N.J.:Princeton Press, 1975). University

Charles Tilly, The Formation of National States in WesternEurope (Princeton,

22

Ferguson et al.

years ago. In the nuclear age, the modern state could no longer defend its citizens against attack by a nuclear power.41At best, the state could hope to deter an attack against its citizens by threateningpunitive retaliation,but the created by capacity to retaliate failed to mask the fundamentaltransformation weapons of mass destruction:the security of the citizenry was hostage to the reason of other state leaders. Boundaries were no longer barriersas security from attackrested on a gossamer net of interdependenceand interlocking reason. The state stood one step removed from the security of its citizens, even if its citizens did not fully appreciatethe distance. The last decade has witnessed even moredramaticchanges in the capacityof the state to secure its citizens and to provide security as a collective public good abroad.At least three importantchanges have occurred.As vestiges of the great ideological struggles of the twentieth century disappearedand integrationcreated an elaborateset of supranational institutionsin Europe,the prospectof a catof of nuclear exchange weaponshasdeclinedandthethreat a conventional astrophic attackhas almost disappeared.In the postindustrializedworld, states have become less necessaryto theircitizenryas securityproviders fromattack fromabroad. Citizens, no longer seized by the fear of nuclearwar, began to thinkbeyond physical security and to shift their agendas from the public to the private.In the postindustrialAnglo-American world, for example, citizen values are increasingly postmaterialist and private.42New apolitical identities are growing in importanceas the state provides and demandsless from its citizens. As security from outside attack becomes less of a preoccupationthan it has been at any time in recent historical memory,the frequency of situationaltriggers that traditionally activate and affirm identificationwith the state could decline. Underthe exacting discipline of global markets,while the state became less relevant as a shield from abroad, it also began to disengage as a provider of other public goods. States in the postindustrializedworld increasingly define themselves as regulatorsof the rules of the game. It is far more difficult to cheer for or identify with an umpirethan for a team. Shifts in political identities are unlikely to lag long behind transformingshifts in the functions of states in the postindustrialworld. It is also unlikely that the political identity of citizenry and loyalty to the state will disappearor even decline dramatically;ratherthese identities will be triggeredless often and less intensely as threatdeclines with the capacity to secure and provide in the postindustrialworld.

Revisited," Polity 1 (1968).

42

in State of Press,1959)andhis modification his argument "TheTerritorial University

Ronald Inglehart, Modernization and Postmodernization: Cultural, Economic,

John Herz, "The Rise and Demise of the TerritorialState," WorldPolitics 9 (1957). See also his International Politics in the Atomic Age (New York: Columbia

41

and Political Changein 43 Societies (Princeton,N.J.:PrincetonUniversityPress, 1997).

WhatIs the Polity?

23

The capacity of the state to protect its citizens at home has also declined. It has declined in differentregional spaces for differentreasons. In the postindustrial United States, for example, the rise of "gated"communities with private security systems behind walls is remarkable.Many large institutions-banks, schools, hospitals, universities-now use private security forces to secure their local populations. Even public security providers are being contracted to the private sector to augmentbudgets. In the extreme, in Moscow, for example, public suppliers of security serve organized crime, even as the capacity of the state to protect its citizens crumbles. Over the long term, privatemarketsfor security can help only the affluent and diminish identification with the state across social boundaries.While state bordersbecome less important,divisions within society may deepen if markets ratherthan states provide security.Political identities arereshapedover time by the declining importanceof state bordersand the growing importanceof boundaries for private security markets. The privatizationof security is not restrictedto the emergenceof marketsto supply the needs of the affluent within postindustrializedsocieties. Following the Cold War and the decline of empire, the major powers have disengaged from regions they no longer consider strategicallyimportant.Only key strategic areas, like the Gulf, parts of Asia, and Europe,remainthe concerted objects of global collective security. The largestatesareincreasinglyless willing to supplysecurityas a publicgood in the rest of global political space. They rarelywere willing suppliers,butthe extension of the Cold Warthroughoutthe global system expandedthe definition of with the securityanddemandedtheirengagement.This presencehas disappeared Cold Warrivalryandhas been replacedby a strongreluctanceto supply security as a collective good, along with an unprecedentedfear of the political consequences of militarycasualties that flow from engagement abroad.43 Sucked into this new security vacuum, weak states have fragmented.In the extreme, some have collapsed, and a few have been capturedby strong parochial interests within the broadercommunity.Such interests then use the state to perpetuate violence andeven genocide againstrivalpoliticalandethnicgroups. Fragmentingstates are an especially acute problem in parts of Africa but occur in the former Soviet Union and LatinAmerica as well. In Colombia, for example, the state military,private paramilitaryforces, and several guerrillaorganizations compete to provide contractedprotectionto multinationalcorporations. Some of these fragmentingstates no longer are able to provide securityfor their

For an analysisthattracesthis fear of casualtiesto the demographics the of see Edward Luttwak: "Toward Post-Heroic Forworld, Warfare," postindustrialized No. 3 (1995),and"APost-Heroic eignAffairs74, Foreign Affairs75, Military Policy," No. 4 (1996).
43

24

Ferguson et al.

populations;on the contrary,competing militias that supplantthe forces of the state deliberatelytargetcivilian populations. Private providersof security are enjoying growing markets.At times, they are contractedby internationalinstitutions;at other times, by weak states who seek to augment their capacity to coerce their own populations or rivals who challenge their authority.Sierra Leone contractedthe now defunct Executive Outcomes,a privatesecurityprovider,to reinforceand expandits militarycapability. Occasionally,nongovernmental organizations,which seek access to insecure and vulnerable populations that are being systematically victimized by predatorymilitias, have turnedin desperationto private securityforces. Private security marketsare expanding in the shadow of fragmentingstates and by the unwillingness of the majorpowers and internationalinstitutionsto supply security as a collective good anywhere but in core areas of strategicinterest.44 The privatizationof security,if it continues to expand, will reshapethe role of the state and shift political identities in global political space. The state, no longer the exclusive supplier of security, becomes one among several focal points of political identity.Borders,no longer the only or even the most importantshield againstattack,will become increasinglyless important,save as juridical divide betweenstates,while boundaries-cultural andsocial divisions among spaces-drawn by private security markets become more important. These boundarieswill not be as stable as state borderswere in the twentieth century, nor will private purveyorsof security be the focus of the kind of political loyalty that states were able to command. Analysis of the core function of the state, its capacity to secure its population and to provide security as a public good, confirms importanttransformations in global politicalspace on the hardestpossible issue. It suggests a declining role for the state, the fragmentationof political space as borders lose their defining importance, and the privatization of public functions. These three together, other things being equal, could intensify a shift away from a diminished state as the focal point of political identity in the next century.To where political identity will shift is far less clear. STATES AND OTHER RULE MAKERS IN THE MODERN WORLD MICHAEL MANN Fergusonand Mansbachadvance the propositionin theirrecent book, Polities,
Authority, Identities, and Change, that states are not the only polities, defined

MichaelBryans,BruceJones,andJaniceGrossStein,"Mean Times:HumanitarianAction in ComplexPoliticalEmergencies-StarkChoices,CruelDilemmas,"

44

Coming to Terms1, No. 3 (1999).

WhatIs the Polity?

25

as any value-orientedmobilization of persons and resources that is institutionalized and hierarchized. Families, villages, voluntary and business organizations, as well as states, can be considered polities. The book takes us on a fascinating tour throughvarious historical periods, showing that states are politically less hegemonic than most scholars (or perhaps most political scientists) have thought them to be. The antirealistdrift of the authors'argumentcontinues in the final pages into the contemporaryworld, where the state is now declining before the influence of various other "polities," some more local, others more transnational.Since I cannot address all these issues here (and have published extensively on the earlierhistorical periods), I will focus on the contemporarysituation. First, both parallels and differences exist between this approach and my own. In TheSources of Social Power, I make a parallel"anti-unitary" argument and focus on societies ratherthan polities: societies have always consisted of I multiple, overlapping,intersectingnetworksof interaction.45 distinguish four primarypower networks:culturalandideological, economic, military,andpolitical. Since the entwining of these four forms of societies, they have never been unitarybut multiply bound. In particular,they must not be identified simply with states or nation-states, as has been common sociological practice.On the otherhand,my conception of political power appearsto be exactly what Ferguson and Mansbachreject. Of course, terminology does not matter much (though I doubt their promiscuous use of "polity"will catch on). We may define politics narrowlyin terms of the state or broadlyin terms of any collective mobilization. Each will have its blind spots. They prefer the broad; I prefer the narrow.By political power, I mean only control of the state, which I see as a distinctive source of power, since the state is a differentiatedset of institutionsoccupying the center of a territorially defined unit over which it commands some authoritativerule making, usually laws. States also jointly provide much of the very limited regulation of the space that exists between states-that is, they practice geopolitics as well as politics. ones are Though not only the state makes rules, "centralized-territorial" distinctive. Only the state has the capacity to make its rules stick for the inhabitants of a particularterritorialarea: if you live here, you must do this. For modern states, this rule making overlaps considerably with the deployment of military force, yet I preferto separatepolitical from militarypower. "Bodies of armedmen" have always been importantin humanaffairs (as William McNeill argues).But they may or may not be controlledby the state, even in our century. Is "centralized-territorial" rule making by states now declining? At one extreme, it is difficult to imagine a world totally without states. It is also diffi45

Mann,Sources of Social Power, vols. I and2.

26

Ferguson et al.

cult to imagine a world with only a single state-or at least to imagine one with any degree of sensitivity to the needs of the six billion people who are spread over Earth'svaried continents.Yet it is easy to perceive great variationsin the density of rules and how much those rules are set by states. In early medieval Europe,much of social life was regulatedby custom, as embodied in very local institutionslike the village, the manor,and the family. Broaderregulationconsisted not only of the prince's laws, but also of the rule-makingpowers of the Church(ideological power), tradingguilds and leagues (economic power), and bodies of armedmen (decentralizingfeudal retinues-military power). None of these three were centralized-territorial. The overall combinationwas particularistic,but then the modern sovereign state (increasingly taking a nation-stateform) arose to centralize and territorialize some of these rules. But not the state alone: duringthe same period transnational regulation also increased-as capitalist markets expanded overseas and as the values of European civilization (religious, scientific, racist, etc.) were also carriedto the corners of the Earth. Local regulation was declining, and several sources of long-distanceregulationwere growing. Is the world now beginning to reverse direction, now needing less centralizedand territorialrule making than it used to? Can other social organizations ("polities") provide many of the rules that states used to provide? I have discussed elsewhere how much states today are being underminedby global capitalism, global environmentalissues, the new social movements of a transnationalcivil society, and postnuclear (even postmilitary) geopolitics.46 Globalizing capitalism and demilitarization within the North (especially in Europe) have greatly weakened the traditionalbackbone of many older states. Yet most of these states are also acquiringnew rule-makingpowers, especially over "soft geopolitics" (internationalnegotiationsby states over issues relating to the global economy, environment,population,etc.) and new areas of moralpolitical regulationconsidered local and "private"(principally family, gender, and sexual matters). States are losing some rule-making powers and gaining others. Some nation-states are happily losing powers (as in WesternEurope), others are doing so most unhappily (as in collapsing African countries where rule making of any kind is diminishing), while others are still acquiring new powers (as in successfully developing countries). Some of this variationis explicable if we note three disparatetypes of state decline involving varying time and space locations: (1) the leveling off of the "riseandrise"of the Northernnation-states,probablyinvolvfour-century-long ing some decline in rule-making power in Europe, though not in the United States; (2) the collapse of more "nation-statist" pretensionsamong some North46Michael Mann, "Has Globalization Endedthe Rise and Rise of the NationState?"Review of InternationalPolitical Economy4, No. 3 (1997).

WhatIs the Polity?

27

ern social movementsand statesduringthe firsthalf of this century-communism and fascism seem dead, social democracy is stagnant;(3) the sudden collapse of the two-century global domination by European empires in mid-century, followed after a few years by the decay of some of the postcolonial states. These are varied patterns of state declines, not easily reducible to a single process-of globalization or anything else. If states are declining, we are unlikely to recreate medieval forms of rule making: the more complex and differentiatedthe society, the more its need for formal rules rather than custom. Over several centuries, this factor led to a massive increase in the numberof laws provided by states.47 The world's people are now constrainedby immense bodies of state laws. The legislative flow is not currentlydeclining, but let us see whetherregulationby economic, ideological, and military power organizations might in the future replace state regulation. Could global capitalismprovideits own transnational Thatwould regulation? involve propertyrights and marketexchange being enforced by sanctions from within the marketitself-whereas capital leaves countries attemptingto deviate from currentcapitalistnorms. Undoubtedly,thereis a trendin this direction. Yet the marketappearsto need continuous "soft geopolitical" regulation from interstatebodies like the GeneralAgreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) or the InternationalMonetaryFund (IMF). The states involved agree to legislate and police economic rules over theirterritoriesprovidedthatthe other states do the same in theirs. Capitalismis backed by diplomaticcoordinationof multiple sites of centralized-territorial regulation. This is still intermittentlybacked up by "hardgeopolitics," primarilymilitarythreatand force applied by the United States and its allies against deviants-for example, to enforce propertynorms in Kuwait. Thus transnationaleconomic activities still seem to need both hard and soft interstateregulation. Transnationalcapital requires competent states to enforce law and order within each countrybefore it can even penetratethere. If states cannot provide territoriallaw and order, capital flees from them. For example, countries like Zaire or Russia cannot be broughtto heel (though they would probablylike to be). The consequence is to narrowthe global scope of capitalismand its norms, for the capitalist marketcontinues to be dominatedby the same Northerncountries that have now constituted its core for a century. Parts of East Asia have been added, but Russia and other easterly countries of the Soviet bloc have been lost for the foreseeable future. In these cases, the successful developers possessed effective states, while the collapsing economies hadjettisoned theirs. If there is a slight secular growth trend in the effective worldwide reach of capitalism, it is one substantiallydependenton a web of effective states. DonaldJ. Black,TheBehaviorof Law(New York: AcademicPress, 1976).

47

28

Ferguson et al.

Second, ideological power might providetransnational regulation.Is a more cultureemerging,bearingnormsof cooperationthatmight functionautonglobal omously of states, as religion did in medieval Europe?Mass consumerculture is becoming more homogenous throughoutthe world. Yet it is difficult to see global regulation emerging throughthe trivial leisure pursuits on which "culturalist"scholars write so prolifically. Is the global watching of MTV or the global wearing of blue jeans, t-shirts, and leatherjackets of much significance? After all, Serbian paramilitariesand off-duty Wall Street stockbrokersshare these leisure tastes, but not much else. New ideological movements like feminism or environmentalism differ because they generate significant transnational identities. In this respect, they resemble the past ideologies of liberalism and socialism, though they are equipped with far better communicationstechnology. But these movements are compelled to focus most of their mobilizations on states, since they want legislative change and states still monopolize law (the EU is a partial exception). It is true that recent years have seen the increased transnationalflow of neoliberal ideology, overlapping somewhat with thin conceptions of human rights and formal conceptions of liberal democracy. U.S.-trained economists from Southerncountries have returnedhome to wield ideological power over their home economies. Of course, neoliberalism also reflects the economiccum-geopolitical power of Westerncapitalists. It is unlikely to remain dominant for long, as its trail of visible economic disasters from Russia to Mexico grows. Since we do not live in the same world, we cannot all share the same ideologies. Some contemporary global culturedivides ratherthanregulates-especially of ethnicity and religion. This is no recent reversal of direction. ideologies From about 1860, Europe has seen the rise and fall of monoethnic states, with only a pause between 1945 and 1989. In the South, ethnicity and religion were cultivated during the same period by the colonial powers and then masked for a while by postcolonial settlements and "ThirdWorld socialism." They resurfaced from the 1970s. In certain respects, culture is becoming transnationally denser than in the past, though culture has never been much constrained by states.In otherrespects,andoften in differentpartsof the world, cultureremains divided by religion, ethnicity, and nationalism. Third,this affects greatly the possibilities of singularmilitary regulationin the contemporaryworld. The obvious candidate is that the military power of the United States, flanked by its many allies, might provide some regulationto the world while underminingthe power of other states. To some extent it does. Yet most of the world's conflicts, especially the many smaller ethnic and religious ones, may be more out of reach of the Great Power(s) than they were in the past. Military expenditure figures also reveal that though most Northern states' military backbones are weakening, many Southernones are strengthening. Of course, some of the most chronic regional conflicts go further and

WhatIs the Polity?

29

undermineeven theirown states. They degenerateinto conflicts between armed bodies of men, such as paramilitarieseffectively outside the control of their state, and weaken its capacity for law and order. Yet most armed ethnicreligious rebels no longer want mere communal rights or regional autonomy within a confederal state. They want their own nation-state.Where their rebellions are solved, the result is now less likely to be confederalism than either "cleansed"or new nation-states.The nation-stateideal has virtually hegemonized the world. Even militant Islam or Hinduismthat has traditionallyundercut regulation by the state is now demanding a tighter, purer,cleansed state. The nation-state lives-sometimes as reality, sometimes as a peaceful ideal, and sometimes as a very violent ideal! Thereare severaltypes of competingrule-bearing power organizations ("polities" if you prefer) in the world today. If asked to generalize about overall trends during the last century or two, I see more continuity than reversal: a greaterdensity of overall social regulation,involving a decline at the local and customary level, and continuing increase in national, international,and transnationalregulation.Yet the trendsvary between states and regions of the world. I do not see a large global decline underwayin the role of states. My deviation from realist theory is different.States increasinglyregulatediverse activities on behalfof increasinglydiverseconstituencies. They crystallizein multipleforms48 In any given year, diverse importantissues surface they are "polymorphous." in U.S. politics. Some remain,others come and go, but there are few structured relations between them. Be they abortion, gay rights, social security, the environment,race discrimination,the NorthAmericanFree TradeAgreement, Kosovo, or China-these issues (andtheirdiverselobbyingconstituencies)all require state attention.States remainimportant,but they are not very cohesive. In fact, "they"do not really exist as singular actors at all. CONCLUSION: THE PAST AND GROWING COMPLEXITY OF GLOBAL POLITICS YALE H. FERGUSON AND RICHARD W. MANSBACH Trying to avoid what John Agnew and StuartCorbridgerefer to as "the terri49 torial trap," We conceive of political space in which a vast arrayof polities overlap, layer, nest, and interact-coexist, cooperate, and conflict in the context of particularissues that often overlap. Polities regularly share some or all
Mann, Sources of Social Power, vol. 2, ch. 3. 49 John Agnew and Stuart Corbridge,Mastering Space. Hegemony, Territoryand InternationalPolitical Economy (London: Routledge, 1995).
48

30

Ferguson et al.

of the same political space. The domain of each polity consists of those persons who identify with it, the resources it can command, the "reach"it has with respect to adherentslocated in "space"in the broadestsense (for example, for firms and markets-even cyberspace), and issues. All polities are "authorities" and "govern"within their respective domain.50 Authorityor governancein our definition is effective control or significant influence within a domain. Such authorityneed not be exclusive (it can be and often is shared), nor need it be regarded as legitimate, although legitimacy is an asset. "Nested" polities are those that lie partiallyor wholly within the domain of anotherpolity. They may be completely dominatedby the host polity, share some functions with it, or be completely autonomous. Much of our concern is the subjective dimension of global politics. "Reality" is socially constructed,but the objective dimensions of reality thatmany or most persons perceive also inevitably shape thatconstruction.Individualshave multiple identities, which themselves vary as they are constructed.Although coercion often plays a role in governance and some identities can be imposed, most are willingly acceptedin exchange for psychological andmaterialrewards. Ideology plays an importantrole in justifying a polity to its adherents.Overemphasizing coercion, as does McNeill, misses most of what makes polities cohere.5' Loyalties differ from identities and are also variable,flowing only to those polities and identities that provide satisfaction. Many identities and loyalties coexist without conflict for long periods of time, but periodically issues arise that force individualsto choose among competing identities and loyalties. When one polity incorporatesanother,identities and domains associated with the formerpolity are rarelyobliteratedentirely and often may be resurrectedto "haunt"the successor polity. Like HendrikSpruyt,we regarda focus on the sources of global change as essential. Polities are always "becoming."Although the evolution of polities is occasionally so slow as to be almost imperceptible,the processes are continuous by which boundariesbecome more or less porous and the domains of some polities diminish while others grow. Sometimes a polity evolves into another polity type, but change is not unilinear, and fragmentationof polities is as common as their integration.As James Rosenau's term "fragmegration" suggests, the processes of fission and fusion are closely related.52 More encom-

James of of Rosenau describes worldas "acongeries spheres authorthe similarly with thatare subjectto considerable andnot necessarily flux coterminous ity (SOAs)
the division of territorial space."JamesN. Rosenau,Along the Domestic-ForeignFrontier: Exploring Governance in a TurbulentWorld(New York:CambridgeUniversity

50

Press,1997),p. 39. 51 McNeill,"Territorial StatesBuriedToo Soon."

52

Rosenau, Along the Domestic-Foreign Frontier, p. 38.

WhatIs the Polity?

31

passing polities like the EU or globalizing financial markets appear to offer breakaway polities new affiliatedoptions, while alienationfrom McWorldmakes the near and familiar all the more dear. We are currentlyin a period so turbulentas to be virtually chaotic, and very little is predictable.The tired debate about whether states are gaining or losing misses the sheer flux of the contemporaryera. The tunnel vision of realists, neorealists, institutionalists,neoidealists, and state-centricconstructivistssimply cannot encompass a political reality that does-and will increasingly have to-accommodate an ever wider variety of political forms, horizontaland vertical relationships, identities, ideologies, and loyalties. A range of polities at numerouslevels will be engaged in most majorissues of global politics, and it is unlikely that any single polity type will dominate in the future as the Westphalian state did in the past. In sum, politics will go on much as it has since the dawn of civilization, only with a scope, pace, and degree of complexity that has vastly increased over the millennia. Our crystal balls at the turn of the millennium are all perforce clouded. But one thing is certain: we have left the Westphalianlandfall far behind and are navigating unchartedseas.