This article was downloaded by:[informa internal users] On: 18 January 2008 Access Details: [subscription number 755239602] Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Civil Wars Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=t713634578 Neomedievalism, civil war and the new security dilemma: Globalisation as durable disorder Philip G. Cerny a a Professor of International Political Economy, University of Leeds, Online Publication Date: 01 March 1998 To cite this Article: Cerny, Philip G. (1998) 'Neomedievalism, civil war and the new security dilemma: Globalisation as durable disorder', Civil Wars, 1:1, 36 - 64 To link to this article: DOI: 10.1080/13698249808402366 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13698249808402366 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.informaworld.com/terms-and-conditions-of-access.pdf This article maybe used for research, teaching and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, re-distribution, re-selling, loan or sub-licensing, systematic supply or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae and drug doses should be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material.
Transcript
This article was downloaded by:[informa internal users]On: 18 January 2008Access Details: [subscription number 755239602]Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK
Civil WarsPublication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information:http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=t713634578
Neomedievalism, civil war and the new securitydilemma: Globalisation as durable disorderPhilip G. Cerny aa Professor of International Political Economy, University of Leeds,
Online Publication Date: 01 March 1998To cite this Article: Cerny, Philip G. (1998) 'Neomedievalism, civil war and the newsecurity dilemma: Globalisation as durable disorder', Civil Wars, 1:1, 36 - 64To link to this article: DOI: 10.1080/13698249808402366URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13698249808402366
PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE
Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.informaworld.com/terms-and-conditions-of-access.pdf
This article maybe used for research, teaching and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction,re-distribution, re-selling, loan or sub-licensing, systematic supply or distribution in any form to anyone is expresslyforbidden.
The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents will becomplete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae and drug doses should beindependently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings,demand or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with orarising out of the use of this material.
Neomedievalism, Civil War and the NewSecurity Dilemma: Globalisation As
Durable Disorder
PHILIP G.CERNY
Globalisation is creating a growing range of complex challenges tothe autonomous policy-making capacity, authority and legitimacy ofnation-states, while a new security dilemma is challenging the abilityof states and of the states system to provide both international anddomestic security as a public good. These changes are leading to anunbundling of basic state functions and the growth of uneven, cross-cutting and overlapping levels of governance and quasi-governance,the fragmentation of cultural identities and the reconfiguation ofsocial, economic and political spaces. At the same time, systemicpressures for the consolidation of new forms of transnational andinternational authority are insufficient, resulting in a governance gap.Exit is becoming an increasingly viable option for a growing range ofactors and groups, leading to endemic civil and cross-border wars.The result will be not mere chaos, however, but something resemblingthe 'durable disorder' of the Middle Ages.
THE CRISIS OF THE OLD SECURITY ORDER
States have been the structural lynchpin of the modern international system,but the structure of the international order today1 is undergoing a long-termtransformation. One of the most salient features of that change is a shift inthe dominant form of violence and conflict from one characterised byinterstate wars to one in which civil and cross-border wars increasinglypredominate and proliferate. Of course, significant structural pressures onthe nation-state have been identified at several levels not only in recentdecades but over the longer run of modern history too, and civil and cross-
An earlier version of this paper was presented to a Workshop on Globalisation: CriticalPerspectives, Department of Politics and International Studies, University of Birmingham, 14-16March 1997.1 am particularly grateful to Grahame Thompson and Bob Jessop for their extremelyhelpful comments.
Civil Wars, Vol.1, No.l (Spring 1998), pp.36-64PUBLISHED BY FRANK CASS, LONDON
Dow
nloa
ded
By:
[inf
orm
a in
tern
al u
sers
] At:
09:4
7 18
Jan
uary
200
8
GLOBALISATION AS DURABLE DISORDER 37
border wars are certainly nothing new. Alternative attempts to analysestructure and change in the international order have focused predominantlyon the relationship of states and state forms with economic changes, and themost significant variable in recent versions of this debate has been theadvent of the so-called 'Third Industrial Revolution' and the deepening oftransnational economic interdependence or globalisation. But alongsidethese economic developments have come a range of social and politicaldevelopments too.
New information and communication technologies have intensifiedpressures resulting from the interaction of previously compartmentalisedsocial and cultural categories, with an emphasis on the sheer speed of thatinteraction.2 The development of Marshall McLuhan's 'global village'3 hasbeen parallelled (or, for some, superseded) by a postmodernistfragmentation of cultures and societies. In political terms, the re-identification of societies as 'multicultural', emphasising shifting identitiesand loyalties,4 is unravelling the consolidation of national culture societies5
which was at the heart of the nation-state project from Bismarck'sKulturkampf'to postcolonial 'nation-building'.6 Many major social causesand cause pressure groups, as well as sectoral interest groups, are thusbecoming less concerned with negotiating direct benefits from the state andmore focused on transnational issues such as the environment, women'sissues, the international banning of landmines, opposition to the holding ofpolitical prisoners worldwide, promoting sustainable development and thelike. And in security terms, the end of the Cold War is said to haveunleashed a huge number of social and political demands which hadpreviously been kept in ideological and political check.
In this context, the very notion of the 'public interest' and the viabilityof the national state as a form of political community are being questioned.Whether democracy itself can be an effective form of political organizationis under challenge too - not only in terms of what actors want fromgovernments, but also as to whether national, territorially-basedinstitutional structures in the future can reasonably be expected toeffectively aggregate and reconcile divergent individual and sectoraldemands in the first place.7 National-territorial institutions are beingoverlaid, cross-cut and even replaced by a range of multilayeredpublic/private arrangements bridging the micro-level,8 the meso-level andthe transnational in ways the state cannot.' This is the essence of whatHedley Bull and others have called 'neomedievalism'.10 At one level, thesechanges may be seen as part of a wider transnational restructuring ofdomestic political systems, challenging the operation and even the verylegitimacy of nation-states from within. After all, transnationalisation is as
Dow
nloa
ded
By:
[inf
orm
a in
tern
al u
sers
] At:
09:4
7 18
Jan
uary
200
8
38 CIVIL WARS
much a domestic political process as an international one. But they alsochallenge the states system from what has been thought of as the 'outside',cutting across and blurring the traditional 'inside/outside' distinction. Inparticular, as already mentioned, the end of the Cold War has had aprofound effect on international relations as they have been understood inthe modern world. Indeed, the phrase 'the end of the Cold War' per se doesnot merely denote an event that occurred in 1989 or thereabouts. It involvesa longer-term process which has progressively (if unevenly) undermined thestates system from both above and below, inside and out, since the 1960s.
THE NEW SECURITY DILEMMA
The central mechanism of stabilisation and ordering in the states system -taken, as it has been in the study of mainstream international relations, as aseparate level of analysis from domestic politics - has usually been seen tobe the way balances of power operate to counteract the so-called 'securitydilemma'. The security dilemma is the notion that perceived external threatsgenerate feelings of insecurity in those states that believe themselves to bethe targets of such threats, thereby leading to measures to counteract thosethreats (alliances, arms buildups, and so on). These countermeasures in turnare perceived as threatening by others, leading to further counter-countermeasures, and so on - undermining existing power balances andcreating a vicious circle of ever-increasing insecurity. Only by creating andrecreating balances of power, whether through war, through developing andmanipulating power resources, or through politically effective (strong-willed) foreign policy, can this tendency to system breakdown becounteracted. In structure-agent terms, specific structural conditions limitthe options faced by particular agents, limiting the range of likelybehavioural outcomes. In game-theoretic terms, the payoff matrices builtinto the international system create incentives for players to "defect" ratherthan co-operate, unless restrained by the operation of the balance of power.Such an analysis has been at the heart of both classical realism" andneorealism.12
But the end of the Cold War did not result so much from the breakdownof a particular balance of power - the bipolar balance between United Statesand the Soviet Union - as from the increasing ineffectiveness of interstatebalances of power generally to regulate the international system. Forexample, the failure of large powers to determine outcomes in the ThirdWorld through traditional security means - the most salient examples beingVietnam for the United States and the Sino-Soviet split (and later Angolaand Afghanistan) for the Soviet Union - Was merely the first major shock
Dow
nloa
ded
By:
[inf
orm
a in
tern
al u
sers
] At:
09:4
7 18
Jan
uary
200
8
GLOBALISATION AS DURABLE DISORDER 39
to the balance-of-power system. The demise of the Soviet Union did notresult just from some change in its relative overall power position vis-a-visthe United States. The USSR collapsed because of the evolvingconfiguration of domestic and transnational pressures stemming fromtechnological backwardness, international economic interdependence,awareness of social and cultural alternatives by individuals and groupsmade possible by international contacts and communications, the growth ofconsumerism and other pressures for "modernisation" which the USSR wasless and less able to meet. Likewise, growing complex interdependence inthe West undermined the hierarchical alliance structures set up in thepostwar period by the United States, for example through the developmentof Gaullism in France.'3 Both superpowers became weaker in systemicterms, because traditional forms of power could not cope with thechallenges of the late twentieth century international order.
The lack of utility not only of nuclear weapons (increasingly seen asunthinkable and unusable) but also of limited 'low intensity warfare' (moreand more costly and counterproductive, as demonstrated in Vietnam andAfghanistan) is leading to a common sense realisation that neither nationalnor collective security can any longer be reliably based on balances ofpower among nation-states perse. Furthermore, this change has entailed notmerely the replacement of interstate competition for military security bynew forms of interstate competition, for example, for 'economic security',but rather a realisation that security based on the simple interaction ofunitary nation-states itself is becoming a cause of even greater insecurity. Anew sense of generalised insecurity has emerged, symbolised not only fromabove by a general threat of uncontrollable nuclear annihilation, but alsofrom below, by the rise of civil wars, tribal and religious conflicts, terrorism,civil violence in developed countries, the international drugs trade, and soon. This sense of insecurity has led to a growing realisation that theprovision of security itself as a public good - the very raison d'etre of thestates system - can no longer be guaranteed by that system.
A kind of generalised 'insecurity from below' has emerged, bound upwith the dual character of globalisation as a global-local dialectic,whipsawing the state between the international and transnational, on the onehand, and an increasingly complex set of micro- and meso-level phenomenaon the other - what Rosenau has called 'fragmegration'.14 Post-feudal stateformation and consolidation, from Westphalia to the twentieth century,revolved around the capacity of the Janus-faced state to provide securitysimultaneously at two levels: Weber's 'monopoly of legitimate violence' inthe domestic sphere; and the capacity for Clausewitz's 'pursuit of politicsby other means' in the international sphere. Institutionalising a more rigid
Dow
nloa
ded
By:
[inf
orm
a in
tern
al u
sers
] At:
09:4
7 18
Jan
uary
200
8
40 CIVIL WARS
inside/outside distinction - providing a stable internal arena for collectiveaction, alongside the capacity of states to make 'credible commitments'externally - made politics into an increasingly coherent two-level gamearticulated around and through structurally differentiated states.15 Statestoday, however, are increasingly challenged at both levels. In this 'newsecurity dilemma', changing payoff matrices crystallising in the latetwentieth century international order are creating a range of incentives forplayers to defect from the states system itself- unless restrained from doingso by the as yet embryonic constraints of complex, especially economic,interdependence.
The decline of interstate wars at the end of the twentieth century and theincreasing prevalence of civil wars today therefore mirror deep structuralchanges in the international order itself. Whether a layer of institutionalisedpower will crystallise and converge to provide effective collective security ata global level is highly problematic. Of course, new constraints are also beingcreated by expanding intergovernmental and multilateral cooperation.However, these essentially involve a process of 'catch-up', lagging thedevelopment of micro- and meso-level processes. They are also vulnerable tomicro- and meso-level defection. What we are left with, then, is a newsecurity dilemma. In this situation, attempts to provide international anddomestic security through the state and the states system actually becomeincreasingly dysfunctional. They create severe backlashes at both local andtransnational levels, backlashes which further weaken the state and underminewider security. Furthermore, these backlashes do not develop in a vacuum;they interact with economic and social processes of complex globalisation tocreate overlapping and competing cross-border networks of power, shiftingloyalties and identities, and new sources of endemic low-level conflict - a'durable disorder' analogous to some of the key characteristics of themedieval world.16 This article, then, seeks to examine the complex interactionof globalisation, on the one hand, and the fragmention of security, on theother. Its underlying theme is that this interaction is indeed leading towards akind of new medievalism that challenges a wide range of familiarunderstandings of social structure and change.
GLOBALISATION AS COMPLEXITY
The new security dilemma, then, is inextricably intertwined withglobalisation, broadly defined. Critics of globalisation discourse present thevery idea and image of globalisation as representing an oversimplifiedlinear approach. 'Globalises' argue, these critics say, that the world isincreasingly being pushed by market forces (or, in the Marxist version, by
Dow
nloa
ded
By:
[inf
orm
a in
tern
al u
sers
] At:
09:4
7 18
Jan
uary
200
8
GLOBALISATION AS DURABLE DISORDER 41
the requirements of global capital accumulation) into becoming ahomogenised, undifferentiated economy and, ultimately, society andpolity.'71 would argue, on the contrary, that globalisation, like any processof the expansion and development of social systems, is characterised not byincreased homogeneity, but by increased complexity and circularity.'8
Complexity signifies the presence of many component parts, intricatelylinked in ways which create multiple potential equilibria; as a systemexpands, so the number of parts and the intricacy of their linkages alsoexpands. Circularity means that the evolving relationship between theseparts develops along multiple pathways which interact with each other,feeding back in loops which do not merely repeat themselves but provide adynamic which multiplies the effect of otherwise static complex structures.Thus sufficient slack is present (and continually being recreated andreshaped) within the system to make any process of change 'pathdependent', i.e. open to some extent to the influence of agents as to thedirection of future developmental pathways - although the scope for agencyis always circumscribed in various complex ways.19 Furthermore, whilecomplexity and circularity can mean a sophisticated and elegantly co-ordinated structure on the one hand, they can also mean that the differentparts mesh poorly, leading to friction and even entropy, on the other.20
Thus globalisation is constituted not by unambiguous homogeneity, butby the interaction of differences — not just of national differences, of course,but of differences which persist or arise along a variety of levels anddimensions - in a complex process of divergence and convergence. Thisprocess, in sociological terms, is path dependent because complexity andcircularity are to some (variable) extent reflexively monitored and shapedby social actors, making the process not merely a Darwinian one but partlya Lamarckian one. However, at each potential evolutionary moment in aprocess of globalisation (as with any form of structural change), althoughmultiple potential equilibria exist, existing conjunctural conditions,previously embedded structural constraints and underlying structuraltensions21 none the less limit the possibilities and probabilities for suchreflexive action either being undertaken in the first place or, indeed,succeeding.
COMPLEX GLOBALISATION AND THE EVOLUTION OF GOVERNANCESTRUCTURES
Even the structural predominance of nation-states and the internationalstates system per se represents the crystallisation of a particular set ofsuccessive, path dependent equilibria in global politics. Broader social,
Dow
nloa
ded
By:
[inf
orm
a in
tern
al u
sers
] At:
09:4
7 18
Jan
uary
200
8
42 CIVIL WARS
economic and political structures beginning with the transition fromfeudalism to capitalism became absorbed and 'locked in' (to useGranovetter's phrase) to this increasingly embedded order; indeed, statesand the states system became the core around which other complexstructures in turn emerged and developed.22 Of course, the fully-fledged'modern' state did not thoroughly develop until the Second IndustrialRevolution and the Great Transformation.23 Globalisation, however, impactsthat system in a range of complex, circular ways which challenge both ofthe main characteristics which gave the nation-state the edge in the lastround of 'institutional selection' - that is, the multi-tasking ormultifunctional character of the nation-state as an institutional structure, onthe one hand, and the ability of state actors and their allies to make the side-payments necessary to effectively maintain the provision of collectivegoods and the credibility of international commitments, on the other.24
In this context, the debate has opened up not merely on whatglobalisation will really mean for nation-states and other interstate forms ofgovernance, but, more importantly, on what sort of governance structuresmay eventually emerge from the globalisation process. Both themultifunctional character of nation-state institutions and processes and thecapacity of the state to make side-payments are under threat. With regard tothe first, the different tasks, roles and activities of nation-states and stateactors are being increasingly 'unbundled' by cross-cutting linkages amongdifferent economic sectors and social bonds. With regard to the second, thecapacity of the state to make effective economic policy, especiallyredistributive policy, along with challenges to state ideological and culturalsupremacy in the ongoing quest for loyalty and identity, have significantlytransformed - and, some would say, undermined - the ability of the state tomarshal both material and ideational resources in its interaction with othersocial and economic (and political) structures. The state, as David Lake hasput it, is in the process of 'disarticulation'.25 Complex globalisation thuscreates a governance gap which is likely persist and deepen.
PROBLEMS OF STATE CAPACITY AND AUTONOMY UNDER COMPLEXGLOBALISATION
If the state is in the process of disarticulation, what kinds of rearticulationmight conceivably occur in the next phase of the process of institutionalselection? For example, to expect the sort of fragmented, disarticulatedinternational and transnational governance structures which are emergingfrom the processes of globalisation to maintain, expand or even defend theinstitutional gains of existing liberal democratic nation-states is simply not
Dow
nloa
ded
By:
[inf
orm
a in
tern
al u
sers
] At:
09:4
7 18
Jan
uary
200
8
GLOBALISATION AS DURABLE DISORDER 43
credible. Even as nation-building and democratisation processes areostensibly being extended in the Second and Third Worlds, state policycapacity is being both hollowed out and put at the service of enforcing theoutcomes of globalisation themselves.
On the one hand, states today are increasingly bad at certain key taskswhich have been important for their social, economic and politicaldevelopment and effectiveness in the modern era. These underperformedtasks include redistribution, structural regulation (the broad 'design capacity'to structure the way social and economic activities are carried out26) and thedirect delivery of public services. Conservative neoliberals applaud suchchanges. And even social neoliberals, for example the 'reinventinggovernment' school, try to make a virtue out of this: 'Governments shouldsteer but not row', say Osborne and Gaebler.27 The 'New Labour'Government in Britain today is pursuing such a course.28 Of course, statecapacity is being eroded at different rates in different sectors, and thesedifferent sectors are evolving distinct public, private and mixed governancestructures - on multilayered domestic, global and transnational levels.
On the other hand, states are left with a range of important but none theless residual tasks, and some of those tasks may paradoxically be expandedand reinforced in a complex globalising world. In the first place, the statewill still be left with ensuring the provision - increasingly indirectly,however - of some distributive public services; that is, those which are notsufficiently profitable or altruistically motivating for transfer into theprivate or voluntary sector. Minimal welfare states will have to bemaintained; the absence of any public safety net would lead to social unrestand destabilisation. This function, however, is primarily in evidence in theadvanced capitalist world; in areas of the world where the welfare state hasremained underdeveloped or essentially absent, there will be little effectivestructural pressure to create or develop one. Secondly, some states are stillrelatively good at prudential regulation and the ex post enforcement ofcontracts, as well as the promotion of certain forms of competitiveadvantage in a more open world through limited industrial and trade policymeasures.29 Furthermore, older, more entrenched states still have somethingof a comparative advantage in providing identity and a sort of ersatzGemeinschaft, but such ties are less compelling in newer states or latent andmanifest non-states. However, the Gemeinschaft function too is beingunevenly eroded by the postmodern fragmentation of national identities. Infact, however, what the state is best at is enforcing the norms generated anddecisions made at the international and transnational levels.30
As market outcomes, the transformation of production processes,technological innovation, socio-cultural globalisation, and the marketisation
Dow
nloa
ded
By:
[inf
orm
a in
tern
al u
sers
] At:
09:4
7 18
Jan
uary
200
8
44 CIVIL WARS
of the competition state combine to transform nation-state structures andprocesses - in the absence of effective direct international 'police powers'and judicial and legal systems - state capacity in terms of enforcement willcontinue to grow and certain kinds of state intervention to expand. Indeed,the weight of state intervention overall - and its penetration into social andeconomic substructures - is actually increasing, not declining, as the resultof globalisation. What is different, then, is the substance of the tasks, rolesand activities that fall within the state's remit, with a particular emphasis onenforcement - and with a growing deficit with regard to redistributionbetween different socio-economic groups or to designing the structuralcontexts within which social and economic processes take place. Thereforethe range of goals that political actors, both elite policymakers and masspublics, can aspire to is becoming increasingly circumscribed. The processof enforcement, furthermore, increasingly involves enforcing norms, rulesand decisions which have not in the first place been arrived at throughautonomous, endogenous (including democratic) processes, but which willinstead reflect market decisions and the preferences of transnationally-imbricated, private oligarchic or oligopolistic structures. Challenges to thelegitimacy of enforcing such decisions and preferences may therefore insome circumstances rapidly evolve into challenges to the state's primoridalclaim to represent the public interest or common good and therefore to amonopoly of legitimate violence. A policy deficit is leading to a legitimacydeficit. This is already having far-reaching effects, especially in weakerstates.
THREE SCENARIOS OF COMPLEX GLOBALISATION
So how is governance likely to evolve in this context, and what are theprobable consequences of this for states? A range of hypothetical scenarioscan be situated along a scale running from ideal-type global hierarchy at oneend to ideal-type global chaotic anarchy at the other. In the middle of thescale we find a 'rosy scenario' - an image of a relatively stable, quasi-pluralistic system, which I have elsewhere called 'plurilateralism'.31 In thiscase, whereas the formal democratic chain of popular sovereignty andgovernmental accountability ideally characteristic of national state forms ofdemocracy may still be broken, there could be a strong possibility for thedevelopment of niches of individual and group autonomy to persist andeven for pluralist norms of what David Held has called called 'cosmopolitandemocracy' to emerge." However, given the increasingly embeddedcharacter of transnational private interest governments and theiroligopolistic control of resources in the more transnationalised sectors -
Dow
nloa
ded
By:
[inf
orm
a in
tern
al u
sers
] At:
09:4
7 18
Jan
uary
200
8
GLOBALISATION AS DURABLE DISORDER 45
along with the continuing fragmentation of nation-state-based identities andinstitutions - I find this scenario less than credible."
Towards the 'hierarchy' end of the scale, another scenario which I call'sectoral hegemony' can be situated. Instead of a core state being'hegemonic' in determining the rules of the game and in controlling free-riding (as is the case with realist versions of hegemonic stability theory ininternational relations), this function will fall to particularly autonomous,well-entrenched, highly transnationalised economic institutions andprocesses. The two major candidates for the role of such a sectoral hegemonare first, the largest multinational corporations, engaged in transnational-scale production and/or strategic alliances on the one hand, and, second,global financial market on the other. But whereas the former are only likelyto be clearly dominant in their particular specialist sectors, financial marketsand institutions are present in and cut across all sectors, setting the basicconditions, as well as making concrete decisions, for determining the priceand distribution of capital - capital which constitutes the lifeblood andsinews of the international economy. To the extent that financial marketsand institutions can organise an effective private regime across stateboundaries, they would be the best placed sector for exercising some sort ofco-ordination and control - governance - function. Nevertheless, bothpotential hegemons would still be dependent on states to provide legalmechanisms for the enforcement of decisions and market outcomes.
Towards the other end of the scale, however - that of chaotic anarchy -is the neomedieval scenario. With nation-state-based institutions andprocesses having been transformed into transmission belts and enforcementmechanisms for decisions arrived at on different levels of the wider globalsystem, but with that system as a whole becoming increasingly incapable ofgenerating effective, authoritative, multifunctional coordination and controlmechanisms or governance structures, the international system is likely tobe characterised once again by a number of attributes which echo featuresof the medieval world, attributes which will be considered in greater depthbelow. These include: first, competing institutions with overlappingjurisdictions (states, regimes, transgovernmental networks, private interestgovernments, and so on); second, more fluid territorial boundaries (bothwithin and across states34); third, a growing alienation between globalinnovation, communication and resource nodes (global cities) on the onehand and disfavoured, fragmented hinterlands on the other; fourth,increased inequalities and isolation of permanent sub-castes (theunderclass); fifth, multiple and/or fragmented loyalties and identities (ethnicconflict and multiculturalism); sixth, contested property rights and legalboundaries ( disregard for rules and dispute resolution procedures, attempts
Dow
nloa
ded
By:
[inf
orm
a in
tern
al u
sers
] At:
09:4
7 18
Jan
uary
200
8
46 CIVIL WARS
to extend extraterritorial jurisdiction, and so on); and seventh, the spread ofwhat Alain Mine has called 'zones grises', or geographical areas and socialcontexts where the rule of law does not run (both localised ghettoes andinternational criminal activities).35
THE NEOMEDIEVAL SCENARIO
According to Mine, the medieval system - which, in its own terms, was arelatively successful one in political and economic terms over the longterm36 - was not genuinely chaotic, but nor was it a stable, coherent order ofthe sort that could support a modern nation-state, much less a democraticone. Rather, it was characterised by a 'durable disorder', a situation ofrelative (but increasing) entropy over the centuries. The medieval era, takenas a whole, was one of increasing social, economic and politicaldevelopment as economic efficiency and an uneven quasi-stability led togrowing surpluses, the spread of knowledge and innovation, and theemergence of more centralised bureaucratic hierarchies - althoughunderlying tensions in its economic and political substructures eventuallyevolved into contradictions and crises in its political order. Today we nowlive in an era of increasing speed, global scale and the extremely rapiddiffusion of information and technological innovation, characteristics toowhich seem to be outgrowing the political capacities of the existinginstitutional order. An extended phase of neomedievalism, punctuated byepisodic structural mutations and the uneven maintenance of pockets ofplurilateralism and elements of sectoral hegemony, seems the most likelyscenario.
Can a neomedieval durable disorder endure as long in the context of thetwenty-first century as it could during the several centuries of the medievalera? Must it evolve either towards postmodernistic fragmentation andbreakdown, on the one hand, or towards increasingly hierarchicaltransnational governance, on the other? Only in the first of the three sub-scenarios canvassed above - the 'rosy scenario' - would there be muchhope for recreating the preconditions necessary for developing a relativelypluralistic and quasi-democratic, "cosmopolitan" form of effectivegovernance, for a rearticulation of the multitasking character ofauthoritative institutions and for a renewed capacity of authoritative agentsto make the kind of side-payments and engage in the kind of monitoringnecessary to control free-riding and assimilate a huge range of alienatedgroups into such a society. Such an outcome seems highly unlikely,however. Quasi-democratic, cosmopolitan niches may be found, as theywere in some medieval cities. But the nation-state and the states system will
Dow
nloa
ded
By:
[inf
orm
a in
tern
al u
sers
] At:
09:4
7 18
Jan
uary
200
8
GLOBALISATION AS DURABLE DISORDER 47
no longer function effectively in this world of fragmented globalisation, andthere is unlikely to be any other coherent, regularised and stable institutionallocation or site for the pursuit of the 'public' as a whole, la chose publiqueor res publica. Until it does, then neomedievalism would constitute the mostprobable, and indeed the 'least worst', scenario.
Neomedievalism as a concept is notable primarily for its metaphoricalvalue. After all, in the longue duree of human history, the nation-state is avery recent phenomenon. Most societies have been a complex mixture orcongeries of either or both small and large units, overlapping and nestingwithin and around each other, differentiated along a variety of purelyconventional as well as functional fault lines. Where the neomedievalmetaphor breaks down, of course, is the extent to which medieval socialstructures - and a whole range of other pre-state social forms - sprang fromand reflected a fundamental parochialism. In the medieval era the great bulkof social, economic and to some extent political relationships wereessentially built around the interaction of genuinely local identities,exchange relationships and power relationships. Not much room forglobalism in the simple sense in this aspect of medievalism. However, sucha picture does evoke the image of the environmentalist slogan 'Thinkglobally, act locally' as well as the clumsy but useful word 'glocalisation'which has achieved a certain celebrity in academic and policy wonk circles.It also reflects Roland Robertson's wonderful neo-Parsonian definition ofglobalisation: 'We may best consider contemporary globalisation in its mostgeneral sense as a form of institutionalisation of the two-fold processinvolving the universalisation of particularism and the particularisation ofuniversalism'.37
THE PREDOMINANCE OF SUBOPTIMAL -MULTILAYERED ANDASYMMETRIC -GOVERNANCE STRUCTURES IN PREMODERN ANDPOSTMODERN SOCIETIES
Nevertheless, in contrast to our modern notions of statehood or governance,as local societies have become interlinked and interpenetrated with eachother, they have generally not done so - prior to the consolidation of themodern nation-state - in terms of establishing consolidated, integrated,multitasking administrative hierarchies with a general grant of socialauthority analogous to the authority of village chiefs or big men, Romanpotestas, or modern sovereignty. Rather, their structures have beenmultilayered and asymmetric. Different, asymmetrically structuredhierarchies have usually held various kinds of authority, competing andoverlapping with each other within the same broad territorial expanse. Theshift of society to a wider base of interactions and linkages has usually been
Dow
nloa
ded
By:
[inf
orm
a in
tern
al u
sers
] At:
09:4
7 18
Jan
uary
200
8
48 CIVIL WARS
accompanied by locking in suboptimal equilibria (with the partial exceptionof the modern nation-state era) as layers of new and old social, economicand political relationships have essentially been imposed and juxtaposedaround and on top of each other in patchwork fashion. The development ofhuman politics and society has not on the whole been a teleological process,of evolution towards a particular goal, but one of bricolage. Indeed, thedevelopment of the modern state is the exception that proves the rule.
Village and tribal/clan societies, unless highly isolated, have usuallybeen drawn into wider systems of competing landlord/warlord relationships,in which layers of hierarchy are permeable and territorial frontiers fluid -sometimes merely around border areas, sometimes in terms of coreterritories and cities too. Such overlapping and cross-cutting landlord/warlord societies have also usually become imbricated in wider quasi-monarchical and imperial systems, ranging from tributary and suzerainsystems within which the concept of 'unity' has little social or economicdepth or penetration, to complex, quasi-confederal, quasi-patrimonialempires. Religious hierarchies have frequently cross-cut such systems incomplex ways; trade routes and fairs have sustained a limited marketeconomy, usually on the margins but with growing structural impact; andcities have provided havens for groups which find themselves either on theperiphery of, or able relatively easily to navigate across, the complex innerboundaries (and often external frontiers too) of such multilayered,asymmetric social formations. Communications and transport systems haveobviously constituted a key set of technological constraints andopportunities within which such societies could evolve.
Today, the global system ought in principle to be able to transcend thelimitations of pre-state societies, including medieval ones. Indeed, nation-states have been the incubus of the transnational as well as the international;the capacity for globalisation processes to occur in the first place is due tothe pre-existence of the nation-state/states system and its capacity toovercome many of the bounds of such parochialism. For example, nationaleconomies themselves evolved in the context of an increasing globaldivision of labour and the spread of international markets for commoditiesand finance; national societies provided the breeding ground for both theEnlightment and the spread of modern universalistic religions (in contrast tothe 'civil religions' of Ancient Greece or the insulated, centripetal beliefsystems of village societies) where previous social formations, eventraditional empires, were more particularistic in their belief systems; and theemergence of the modern state - in both its European or Western form andlater attempts at 'nation-building' - gave rise to different yet analogouspolitical systems based on an 'international of nationalisms', bureaucratic
Dow
nloa
ded
By:
[inf
orm
a in
tern
al u
sers
] At:
09:4
7 18
Jan
uary
200
8
GLOBALISATION AS DURABLE DISORDER 49
rationality, economic modernisation and the like. The fact that modernstates have had crucial structural similarities indicates that the states systemis not the antithesis of globalisation, but its precursor.38
The main problem, of course, is that the very success of the state is alsoits prison - that is, that its success limits both the capacity of the state tooperate transnationally in a global structural context and the potentialcapacity of latent or potential global-level equilibria to consolidate intosimilarly multifunctional, transnational governance structures with thecapacity to make the necessary side-payments for survival andeffectiveness. The nation-state both creates and underpins globalisationprocesses, on the one hand, and prevents those processes from effectivelyrearticulating governance at a 'higher' level, on the other.3' The result maywell be the crystallisation of increasingly suboptimal forms of governanceat both the state and transnational/international levels and the threat ofgrowing institutional entropy in world politics generally. The 'hollowingout' of the state is not matched by any equivalent 'filling in' of multilateral,transnational, regional, or whatever, governance structures — therebycreating not only a 'democratic deficit' but also a wider and deepergovernance gap as we move into the twenty-first century. In this context,neomedievalism, for all its limits as a concept, provides us with a range ofanalytical tools for understanding and evaluating these changes. One of themain consequences, of course, is the increasing breakdown of the state'smonopoly of legitimate violence, and thus the growing incidence andstructural significance of civil wars.
This paper is merely a first cut at dealing with this issue, so I will at thisstage simply outline some of the key characteristics, already listed, of theneomedieval model (see above) and ask some rather crude questions aboutthe applicability of each to the 'global era'. The result will be moresuggestive than conclusive, and some characteristics are more plausiblethan others in the contemporary context. Nevertheless, together they paint arather different picture of the world than we are accustomed to in the mainparadigmatic debates in international politics such as debates betweenneorealism and neoliberal institutionalism or globalisation versus 'inter-nationalisation'. Remember that the key common features of neomedievalstructures are that they are multilayered and asymmetric, giving rise toincreasingly suboptimal outcomes and long-term entropy.
CHARACTERISTICS OF A NEOMEDIEVAL WORLD I: MULTIPLECOMPETING INSTITUTIONS
The first characteristic mentioned is that of competing institutions withoverlapping jurisdictions. Traditional historians and state theorists have
Dow
nloa
ded
By:
[inf
orm
a in
tern
al u
sers
] At:
09:4
7 18
Jan
uary
200
8
50 CIVIL WARS
focused on the modern transcendance of this aspect of the medieval worldas the key to understanding the nature of the nation-state and the statessystem.40 The core of the medieval system, in contrast, was the developmentof complex structures of obeisance and vassalage. The early (or pre-)medieval order in Europe, often called the Dark Ages, was a period when,given reverses suffered by the Roman Empire and its eventual withdrawaland collapse, an extreme form of localism existed. Roman-era trade routeswere abandoned, Imperial legal norms forgotten, and political powerfragmented and diffused. The feudal order subsequently emergedessentially in bottom-up fashion through the exchange of obeisance andsharecropping (often imposed through predatory expansion) on the part ofvillage and local societies for military protection from other relativelylocalised predators. This patchwork stabilisation of early feudal society,however, involved overlapping claims to power and territorial lordship -claims originally settled in ad hoc fashion and later ritualised in overlappinghierarchies. Such hierarchies, originally very flat, became increasinglypyramidal as relative stabilisation enabled economic production to expand- thereby creating larger surpluses to be expropriated for conspicuousconsumption, demand for the increasingly elaborate equipment required forwarfare over strategic territorial areas (such as finite tracts of arable land),the establishment and protection of newly emerging trade routes and cities(originally for providing services to the nobility), and so on. Unevenlyintertwining and interacting with this feudal hierarchy was of course theRoman Catholic Church (and, at times, rival Churches), which had its ownextensive, complex hierarchy and problems of monitoring and controllingits vast lands and activities.
As more surplus came to be produced, expropriated and exchanged,merchants, financiers, artisans and labourers created guilds and urbancorporations which interacted with preexisting hierarchies in novel andincreasingly complex ways - often cutting across ill-defined territorialfrontiers with poorly enforced borders. There was also no real exclusive'ownership' of land (and indeed other forms of property) in the modern oreven the Roman Law sense; feudal property was 'entailed', with differentcastes having overlapping rights and privileges in the same lands and partialprivileges stretching across different territories. Hierarchies were entrenchedthrough vows of obeisance to feudal superiors and involved the provision ofservices, mainly military services, to superiors. Eventually, of course, as thearistocratic pyramid became steeper, embryonic administrative anddiplomatic classes emerged in order to monitor and control the wideningactivities undertaken by or on behalf of their noble employers or to administerquasi-autonomous cities. Dispute resolution procedures and norms of
Dow
nloa
ded
By:
[inf
orm
a in
tern
al u
sers
] At:
09:4
7 18
Jan
uary
200
8
GLOBALISATION AS DURABLE DISORDER 51
authority in feudal society therefore revolved around settling questions ofwhich individuals and groups possessed rights and privileges to territorialsuzerainty, surplus expropriation and loyalty in this multilayered andasymmetric institutional system. Wars were essentially what would now beconsidered civil wars and/or cross-border wars, only there was no overarchingcivil authority to be contested or rent asunder. Empires represented highfamily rank and prestige but little, if any, actual power or control, and borderswere merely multilevel, shifting frontiers between patchwork patrimonialestates. Such wars were not only endemic but also essential to the regulationof the system, creating new (and often unstable) obligations and relationshipsimposed over and juxtaposed with the old.
Of course, with the steepening of the pyramid of wealth and control andthe consolidation of competing dynastic monarchies claiming to inhabit theapex, the increasing autonomy and interdependence of significant sectors ofthe feudal economy (urban production, money-lending and finance, long-distance trade, and so on), and the growing institutionalistion of military andtaxation bureaucracies, the stage was set for the nation-state to emerge fromthe creative destruction of fifteenth to seventeeth century warfare.41 Thefeudal nobility, of course, did not lose their power and wealth; rather, theywere integrated into the system. Some historians have disputed whetherthere was ever a real 'transition from feudalism to capitalism' as such, ormerely a reconversion of feudal power and wealth within a new context -not finally to be relegated to anachronistic impotence until the twentiethcentury (if at all).42 Therefore disputes over the decline of the nation-stateneed not imply that nation-states will simply be replaced by some sort ofintegrated global order; they may merely be transforming themselves intostructures which will be better able to survive in a multilayered globalcontext, that is, into the 'competition state'.43 Monitoring and regulatingeconomic activities are likely to differ from sector to sector, depending uponthe scope and scale of the microeconomic and mesoeconomiccharacteristics of that sector - especially its degree of transnationalisation -with the effective purview of states limited to those sectors the organisationof which structurally corresponds to the requirements of effectivemonitoring and control at a national/territorial level. Nation-states willprobably look more like American states within the US federal system withcircumscribed remits, but retaining important residual policy instrumentsand the ability to exploit niches in the wider system through limited taxationand regulation. They will be like residual aristocracies in an increasingly'global' integrated capitalist environment, focusing on what is good fortheir own estates and seeking not to lose too much power and prestige to thenouveaux riches or transnational elites of the global economy.
Dow
nloa
ded
By:
[inf
orm
a in
tern
al u
sers
] At:
09:4
7 18
Jan
uary
200
8
52 CIVIL WARS
At the same time, it follows that the more transnationalised a sector, themore it will tend towards developing transnational self-regulatoryinstitutions - whether with the implicit or explicit authoritative delegationof nation-states, as in traditional international regimes, or in increasinglyunaccountable private regimes. Specific crucial tasks such as rating thebonds issued by firms and government institutions, maintaining commonrules and monitoring and sanctioning the activities of the larger financialfirms are already highly privatised on a transnational scale, of course.44
Transnational strategic alliances will increasingly regulate relationshipsbetween firms in sectors characterised by international-scale specificassets.45 The interaction of such private regimes will be mediated throughglobal financial markets, which are likely to retain a fairly open structure,and through certain limited, residual intergovernmental regimes such as theInternational Monetary Fund. At the same time, regulatory or policyarbitrage (seeking out the most favourable regulatory and policyenvironments for particular activities) on the part of relativelytransnationalised firms is increasingly homogenising the rules andoutcomes of public policy formulation and implementation across borders.When added to transnational interest group formation and the developmentof transgovernmental coalitions bringing regulators and policymakers inoverlapping spheres into regular networks cutting across 'splintered states',the rapid but asymmetric multilayering of political and economicinstitutions will lead, at best, to the emergence of quasi-public, quasi-privatedispute settlement regimes seeking to arbitrate competing claims for rightsand privileges in this patchwork system.
CHARACTERISTICS OF NEOMEDIEVALISM II: THE LACK OFEXOGENOUS TERRITORIALISING PRESSURES
The main causal factor missing from this process today that was present inthe transition from feudalism to capitalism is the element of exogenoussystemic competition. It was the institutionalisation of competition andconflict between increasingly powerful dynastic families in the latemedieval period which led to the consolidation of state bureaucracies andtheir growing penetration into more and more exclusively territorialisedsocial and economic bases. With the exception of unexpected intergalacticwarfare, there will be no external consolidating pressure on thecontemporary system analogous to the inter-dynastic struggles of theHundred Years' War, the Thirty Years' War and the subsequent threecenturies of interstate competition both within Europe and across the worldas Europe expanded. Just as the Chinese Empire, in Paul Kennedy's
Dow
nloa
ded
By:
[inf
orm
a in
tern
al u
sers
] At:
09:4
7 18
Jan
uary
200
8
GLOBALISATION AS DURABLE DISORDER 53
analysis, stagnated because it experienced no fundamental external threatfor many centuries,46 so the neomedieval international order will face nodirect exogenous political or military pressures for institutionalconsolidation at a transnational level. Indeed, the only analogousinstitutional development in recent decades has been the European Union,but that may prove relatively stagnant in a world of fragmentary, privatised,deregulated global economic competition. Thus an increasingly dense,multi-layered and asymmetric set of suboptimal competing institutions withoverlapping jurisdictions - including, not breaking up, a residual nation-state - will stumble on, untroubled by exogenous pressures to consolidate.
In this context, nation-states will find, weaker states first, stronger stateslater on, that their territorial and authoritative boundaries will effectivelybecome more fluid - even if legal sovereignty is not formally threatened,state borders still appear as real lines on the map, and guarantees ofdiplomatic recognition and membership of certain international institutionsremain. Collapsing states, like the Lebanon and Somalia; 'transnationalterritories' such as those unevenly controlled by the National Patriotic Frontof Liberia;47 so-called 'archipelago' states like the former Zaire, now theDemocratic Republic of the Congo; and sub-state ethnic and separatistmovements, will threaten state cohesion at the same time that existingborders are clung on to for dear life in the name of elite legitimacy.However, it is unlikely that the actual breakup of nation-states per se will beas significant a development as the exogenous and endogenousdifferentiation of their authority, as discussed above - especially for theolder and wealthier nation-states of the North. Nevertheless, centrifugalpressures on 'empire-states' like Russia and China are likely to grow inimportance as the penetration of cross-cutting sectoral and market pressuresof transnational capitalism expands within those territories. Some authorshave always believed that even if China does not break up (with, forexample, its long externally-interdependent Southern coastal region andhinterlands breaking away, among other oft-canvassed potentialdevelopments), its pre-modern structure of regional quasi-warlords looselyheld together by a weak imperial bureaucracy will return in a form adaptedto the structures of a complex global economy.
At another level, the emergence of international or transnational regionsis playing an increasing role in territorial organisation. However, what ismost interesting about these regions is not their institutional coherence orsupra-state-like structural form; indeed, the European Union is the onlyregion with that sort of quasi-state coherence. What is most interesting isthat they are themselves multilevel, asymmetric entities, with criss-crossinginternal fault lines - sub-regions, cross-border regions, local regions, not
Dow
nloa
ded
By:
[inf
orm
a in
tern
al u
sers
] At:
09:4
7 18
Jan
uary
200
8
54 CIVIL WARS
merely 'nested' but often conflicting, with national, transnational andsubnational rivalries poorly integrated - based mainly on the density oftransactions which also reflect the complexity and circularity of widerglobalisation processes.48 Will regions in the future reflect the macro-structures of the European-North American-Asian 'Triad'? Or are theyfundamentally much smaller but overlapping nodal areas in which thedensity of particular (especially sectoral) socio-economic transactions andinfrastructure is forming de facto cross-border regional clusters, such asaround the Sea of Japan, the emerging German-Central European industrialeconomy, the maquiladora export zones in northern Mexico, or the muchpoorer cross-border social economies of Kurdistan or eastern Liberia?Regionalisation is thus itself a multilayered phenomenon, reflecting theinteraction of processes of convergence and divergence in internationalpolitics - a world in which the whole is increasingly less than the sum of itscomplex parts.
CHARACTERISTICS OF A NEOMEDIEVAL WORLD III: THE UNEVENCONSOLIDATION OF NEW SPACES, CLEAVAGES, CONFLICTS ANDINEQUALITIES
The main structural fault lines - political, social and economic - in thiscomplex world reflect not clear territorial boundaries enclosing hierarchicalauthority structures, but new distinctions between different levels ofeconomic cleavage and urban/rural splits. The academic sociological andgeographical literature on global cities reflects the concept that a range of'virtual spaces' in the global political economy will increasingly overlapwith and possibly even replace the 'real' space of traditional geographicaland topological territorities. These new spaces are embodied - andincreasingly embedded - in transaction flows, infrastructural nodes ofcommunications and information technology, corporate headquarters, 'edgecity' living complexes for 'symbolic analysts', increasingly'dematerialised' financial markets, and cultural and media centers ofactivity (and identity). According to Christopher May, control of new ideasand innovations will come to be increasingly concentrated in such areas,protected and secured by a growing panoply of international andtransnational intellectual property rights.49 On the one hand, therefore, thespecific spaces which people perceive and identify with are likely tobecome increasingly localised and/or micro-level in structure (in the MiddleAges, space was highly localised, of course), while on the other hand,people may even lose their very perception of space being partitionedvertically and learn over time to 'navigate' between different overlapping,asymmetric layers of spatial perception and organisation.
Dow
nloa
ded
By:
[inf
orm
a in
tern
al u
sers
] At:
09:4
7 18
Jan
uary
200
8
GLOBALISATION AS DURABLE DISORDER 55
The poorer residents of such areas will find themselves increasinglyexcluded from decision-making processes. And in those areas wherenavigation among complex structural layers is more difficult - for example,where such nodes, infrastructure, activities, etc., do not exist within easyreach and perception, such as across large geographical spaces - manypeople will simply be 'out of the loop', country bumpkins or even roaming,deprived bands, like Hobsbawm's primitive rebels50 (consider contemporaryAlbania) forced once again to become predators or supplicants on the cities,as in the Middle Ages. Changes in institutions, the fluidity of territorialboundaries and the increasing hegemony of global cities will interact withnew forms of 'flexible' labour processes and economic organisation toincrease inequalities and turn downwardly mobile workers (especially theless skilled, the ghetto dwellers, and so on) into a new lumpen proletariat,underclass or sub-caste - a process well underway in the First World andalready dominant in large parts of the Third World. In this context, it willnot be merely ethnic loyalties and tribal enmities which will undermine theersatz Gemeinschaft of the nation-state, although they have so far been theleading edge of cultural fragmentation. It will be the development ofcomplex new inequalities of both real class and virtual geography. Suchinequalities will be far more difficult to counterbalance and neutralisewithout effective or legitimate state institutions, and, especially when theyare allied to other cleavages, they are likely to comprise an increasingsource of civil and cross-border violence.
CHARACTERISTICS OF A NEOMEDIEVAL WORLD IV: FRAGMENTEDIDENTITIES
Such a situation will not merely be one of fragmentation, but one of multipleloyalties and identities. As in the Middle Ages, loyalty to or identity withfamily, local area, region, occupational solidarity, economic class, religiousor ethnic group, ideological preferences, national and/or cosmopolitanvalues, etc., will no longer be easily subsumed in holistic images orcollective identities. Indeed, a neomedieval world will be one of social andpolitical schizophrenia, with shifting patchwork boundaries and postmoderncultural images. The presentation of this aspect of neomedievalism has beena controversial one. On the one hand, it has often come under fire from'inter-nationalists' and believers in the continuing strength of deeplyembedded national identities. However, I would argue that thefragmentation of identities will basically cut across, coexist and overlapwith pre-existing national identities, although the latter will becomeincreasingly empty rituals divorced from real legitimacy, system affect51 or
Dow
nloa
ded
By:
[inf
orm
a in
tern
al u
sers
] At:
09:4
7 18
Jan
uary
200
8
56 CIVIL WARS
even instrumental loyalty. On the other hand, the question of how suchmultiple identities can coexist in a stable fashion has led some observers toattempt to develop analogies with the unifying ideological and cultural roleof the Roman Catholic Church in the Middle Ages. Such writers haveattempted to identify possible successors to this role in a neomedievalworld, considering such phenomena as New Age philosophy or theenvironmental movement. However, the role of pre-modern imperialreligions tended to fragment and/or become assimilated into the traditionsand social bonds of differentiated local strata, whether in the Holy Romanor the Chinese Empires, either becoming absorbed into and manipulatedwithin the multilayered politics of the imperial and aristocratic veneer orshaping themselves to the substructure in which they operated. Any trulyglobal cultural identity structure will have to be not so much homogeneousor unifying as intrinsically multilayered and flexible, being able to adaptchameleon-like to a wide range of differentiated contexts.
CHARACTERISTICS OF A NEOMEDIEVAL WORLD V: PROPERTYRIGHTS - AN EXCEPTION TO THE RULE?
One aspect of the medieval world which seems at first glance to be lessproblematic today is that of mixed, contested and overlapping propertyrights. Probably the most consensual and homogenising dimension ofglobalisation is the spread of Western, capitalist conceptions of propertyrights at both national and international levels. The conclusion of theUruguay Round and the establishment of the World Trade Organisation,linked to the residual structural power of the Western nation-states and thegrowing authority of multinational corporations, global financial markets,and so on, are likely to ensure not merely the continuation but the furtherentrenchment of such rights into the future. Indeed, this will be the mainsource of the residual power of nation-states - their role as enforcers ofnational, transnational and international property rights. This role willcontinue to have an impact well beyond the technical bounds of such issues,and will lend a de facto coherence to global politics and economics, cuttingacross the competing institutions, differentiated sectoral regimes andmultiple loyalties discussed above. Nevertheless, the enforcement ofproperty rights, without the capacity for states to effectively pursue othercollective values through public policy, may actually undermine statelegitimacy in many circumstances. Governments themselves, by expandingtheir monitoring and enforcement roles through such measures asextraterritorial legislation, may create conflicts which weaken both propertyrights and identities.
Dow
nloa
ded
By:
[inf
orm
a in
tern
al u
sers
] At:
09:4
7 18
Jan
uary
200
8
GLOBALISATION AS DURABLE DISORDER 57
Therefore it is still unclear what role property rights, especiallyintellectual property rights, will play in such a context. In some ways,capitalist society developed despite rather than because of the existence ofan intellectual property rights regime. The diffusion of scientific and .technological ideas in the modern period still had something of the characterof a public good, and public or quasi-public institutions like universitiesemerged to increase the supply of knowledge on a widely available basis. Ifa strict intellectual property rights regime were to be constructed, it mightactually prevent such diffusion in the future - reinforcing monopolisticpractices in leading edge industries, turning university research into anadjunct of private profit-making by globally-linked firms, and effectivelyconcentrating innovatory practices in global cities and their hinterlands (orvirtual hinterlands, via electronic connections). Such a regime might wellcreate an unevenness of access - a new form of 'enclosure' - that wouldreinforce other social, economic and political asymmetries in a neomedievalworld.52 Therefore a more carefully specified and strongly entrenchedproperty rights regime may paradoxically reinforce rather than counteracttendencies towards neomedievalism.
CHARACTERISTICS OF A NEOMEDIEVAL WORLD VI: THE SPREAD OF'ZONES GRISES'
Finally, although there is little concrete than can be said in generalisableterms, it must be recognised that in a neomedieval world, there will not onlybe 'niches' for the maintenance of pluralist autonomy for individuals andgroups; there will also be increased escape routes- and organisationalopportunities - for those operating more or less 'outside the law'. Exit frompolitical society is likely to become a more viable option for a wider rangeof actors and activities. At one level, such phenomena involve more thanjust international (and domestic) criminal activities such as the drugs tradeor the (semi-transnational) Russian mafia; they also involve the areas whereexcluded people live - especially urban ghettoes, at one geographicalextreme, and enclaves in inaccessible areas (jungle, mountains, and so on),at another. Indeed, the toughest problem in this area is where differentdimensions of extra-legal activities intersect with legal or quasi-legal ones,for example where the resources and networks of the drugs trade not onlycreate alternative power structures and social identities for members of theunderclass physically located in ghettoes but also extend into statebureaucracies and 'legitimate' private firms, as mafias have always done.Mine, as I have pointed out, calls these areas 'grey zones'. Excluded ruralhinterlands may also become grey zones.
Dow
nloa
ded
By:
[inf
orm
a in
tern
al u
sers
] At:
09:4
7 18
Jan
uary
200
8
58 • CIVIL WARS
At another level, however, it is likely that many traditionally mainstreamsocial and economic activities will expand as much through grey zones asthrough legitimate means, much as the so-called 'black economy' has donein many areas during the modern era. A transnationalised black economyconstitutes a major challenge to the enforcement function of even theresidual state, and the inclusion or integration of such areas and activitiesinto the complex governance structures of a globalising world is likely to beextremely uneven. At a third level, too, Singer and Wildavsky, indistinguishing between 'zones of peace' and 'zones of turmoil' in the widerworld order, were inadvertently pointing to another dimension of thisphenomenon which cuts across borders and regions too - shifting the focusand locus of conflict and violence even farther away from the interstatepattern and towards the intractable complexities of the micro- and meso-levels.53 The 'new security dilemma' identified at the beginning of thisarticle means that as the reliability of interstate balances of power declines,and as alternative possibilities for global and transnational security arefound wanting - as the governance gap grows - the growth of 'insecurityfrom below' will create conditions in which increasingly intractable andcomplex civil and cross-border wars will become the norm.
CONCLUSIONS: DURABLE DISORDER AND THE GOVERNANCE GAP
As noted earlier, the medieval world was not a world of chaos andbreakdown. It was a relatively 'durable disorder'. Conflicts and crises didnot cumulate into overall system crisis until the system itself wastranscended by an alternative proto-system.54 This transformation consistedof the consolidation over several centuries of a steeper pyramid of powerthan had existed in the Dark Ages - or, rather, a set of steeper pyramids,each rooted in the rise to wealth and power of one of a small number ofcompeting dynastic families across Europe. Out of the entropy of the feudalsystem grew a structured competition that engendered the emergence andconsolidation of hierarchical nation-states, states which could consolidatebecause they were multitasking and because they could afford to makeincreasing side-payments to new and increasingly indispensable groups -especially the bourgeoisie and the popular classes - seeking to be includedin a growing range of political and economic processes. In today'sglobalising world, as in the medieval world, there is no external threat to thesystem as a whole which could galvanise a sufficiently hierarchicalresponse to engender the emergence of genuinely 'global governance', andno prospect of a sufficiently autonomous and powerful collective vision -religious, social, economic or political - to transform such a world into a
Dow
nloa
ded
By:
[inf
orm
a in
tern
al u
sers
] At:
09:4
7 18
Jan
uary
200
8
GLOBALISATION AS DURABLE DISORDER 59
new transnational res publica.Consequently, if a neomedieval international order is eventually to be
transformed into a more hierarchical and authoritative global system,capable of effectively pursuing genuinely collective values on a wider,global level, then the sources of that transformation must come from withinthe newer, essentially transnational structures of such a world. They areunlikely to come from nation-states as such, however much states engage inmultilateral cooperation as a pragmatic response to transnational challenges.Nation-states are too limited in the scope and scale of what they can do(especially in a post-hegemonic world) and too beholden to narrowdomestic interests to be able to lead such a transformation process. Theycan, of course, play a facilitating role, especially as domestic enforcers ofglobal norms and practices, and - paradoxically - as 'competition states', inpushing forward a process of economic globalisation in order to maximisedomestic returns, a kind of barrier-lowering tit-for-tat. However, suchdevelopments will merely widen the governance gap, not fill it in.
In reality, the source of any further consolidation of genuine globalgovernance would have to come from a political process, perhaps oneinvolving both the increasing international and transnational entrenchmentof property rights, on the one hand, along with consequent claims forcountervailing rights and privileges from specific transnational economicactors and sectors, on the other - restructured through an ongoing processof interaction with and among transnational interest groups and policynetworks. Bentley's and Truman's 'governmental process' - that is, thepredominance of functional representation over territorial representation55 -would have to be refocused on genuinely global structures, howeveruneven. Both Held's cosmopolitan democracy and my own notion ofplurilateralism would require a transformation of such pressures and formsof representation into a form of self-balancing pluralism within a complexglobal environment. But such actors and groups are most likely to interactoutside the formal-legal bounds of both state sovereignty and/or formalmultilateral political processes. Indeed, the most powerful and effectiveactors and groups in the globalisation process are likely to be the mostmonopolistic or structurally homogenous ones, such as multinational firms,transnational strategic alliances and global financial markets. Thus theoutcome of a phase of neomedievalism is more likely to lead to some formof sectoral hegemony or transnational oligarchy than to genuine worldgovernment or to the establishment of pluralist cosmopolitan democracy.
In any case, the range of potential equilibria characteristic of such aneomedieval system will be increasingly diverse. Complex situations arelikely to produce complex outcomes. Whether any particular overall
Dow
nloa
ded
By:
[inf
orm
a in
tern
al u
sers
] At:
09:4
7 18
Jan
uary
200
8
60 CIVIL WARS
equilibrium eventually gets 'locked in' will depend on a kind of uneven -punctuated, sometimes regressive, probably entropic - evolutionaryprocess. The best that can be hoped is that such a process will be sufficientlyLamarckian, rather than Darwinian, that enough people can find a fewvirtual spaces within which to construct limited collective decisionmakingprocesses and perhaps quasi-democratic values. However, such an outcomeseems both Utopian and highly improbable, at least in the medium term andperhaps even in the long term, in the light of the current transformation andsplintering of the nation-state and the continuing anarchy of theinternational system. The new security dilemma identified at the beginningof this article means that as the reliability of interstate balances of powerdeclines, and as alternative possibilities for global and transnational securityare found wanting - as the governance gap grows - the growth of insecurityfrom below will create conditions in which increasingly intractable andcomplex civil and cross-border wars will become endemic. So long as theprocess of reshaping the political environment in reaction to complexglobalisation remains uneven and multidimensional in time as well as space,we can expect civil and cross-border wars to predominate and proliferate.
Nevertheless, such turbulence does not necessarily mean chaos. Indeed,the medieval order was a highly flexible one which created a wide range ofspaces which could accommodate quite extensive social, economic andpolitical innovations - eventually laying the groundwork for the emergenceof the post-feudal, nation-state-based international order. In today's worldof global finance, multinational firms, multilateral regimes and privateauthority, therefore, the emerging neomedieval world order, reflecting itsmedieval predecessor, is most likely to remain a kind of durable disorder forthe foreseeable future. Nation-states will take on ever more onerousenforcement tasks in the face not only of endemic multilevel violence butalso of peaceful but cross-cutting forms of political and social conflict.Nevertheless, in structural terms they will be essentially equivalent to localgovernments, with neither an effective general policymaking capacity noran authoritative central government to appeal to. They will not regain theirmultifunctional character and will increasingly lose their ability to makeside-payments to disaffected actors and groups, increasing the benefits ofexit to the detriment of voice and loyalty and undermining the sense of thepublic interest and therefore of their own legitimacy. It can only be hopedthat in the much longer run, the global order will prove to be structurallyadaptable enough, as was its medieval predecessor, to leave open thepossibility of its eventual evolution into something more structurallycohesive and normatively acceptable.
Dow
nloa
ded
By:
[inf
orm
a in
tern
al u
sers
] At:
09:4
7 18
Jan
uary
200
8
GLOBALISATION AS DURABLE DISORDER 61
NOTES
1. For an exploration of the notion of 'international order', as distinct from the concept of'international system', see Robert Latham, 'History, Theory and International Order: SomeLessons from the Nineteenth Century', Review of International Studies, 23/4 (October 1997),pp.419-43.
2. Ian R. Douglas, 'Globalisation as Governance: Political Technology and the Assembly ofForces', in Aseem Prakash and Jeffrey A. Hart (eds), Globalisation and Governance(forthcoming).
3. Marshall McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 1962).4. Peter J. Dombrowski, 'Fragmenting Identities, Shifting Loyalties: The Influence of
Individualisation on Global Systems Change', Global Society (forthcoming, September1998).
5. Florian Znaniecki, Modern Nationalities: A Sociological Study (Westport, CT: GreenwoodPress, 1973; originally published 1952).
6. Reinhard Bendi, Nation-Building and Citizenship (New York: Anchor Books, 1969;originally published 1964).
7. P.G. Cerny, 'Globalisation and the Erosion of Democracy', European Journal of PoliticalResearch (forthcoming).
8. Often this micro-level is referred to as the 'local', as in the environmentalist slogan: 'Thinkglobally, act locally'. However, this usage of 'local' implies that the phenomena concernedare intrinsically micro-territorial, whereas the argument here concerns a range ofmicropolitical, microcultural, microsocial and microeconomic phenomena which are notbased exclusively on some clearly indentifiable territorial base but also rooted ingeographically cross-cutting structural linkages. This is even more true for meso-levelphenomena such as industrial sectors.
9. See, e.g., P.G. Cerny, 'Globalisation, Governance and Complexity', in Prakash and Hart (seenote 2).
10. See, e.g., Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society (London: Macmillan, 1977), pp.254-5.11. E.g., Henry A. Kissinger, A World Restored: Metternich, Castlereagh, and the Problems of
Peace 1812-1822 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1957).12. Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1979).13. See P.G. Cerny, The Politics of Grandeur: Ideological Aspects of de Gaulle's Foreign Policy
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980).14. James N. Rosenau, Along the Domestic-Foreign Frontier: Exploring Governance in a
Turbulent World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).15. Hendrik Spruyt, 'Institutional Selection in International Relations: State Anarchy as Order',
International Organization, 48/4 (Autumn 1994), pp. 527-57.16. Alain Minc, Le nouveau Moyen Age (Paris: Gallimard, 1993).17. Paul Hirst and Grahame Thompson, Globalisation in Question? The International Economy
and the Possibilities of Governance (Oxford: Polity Press, 1996); cf. John Zysman, 'TheMyth of the Global Economy: Enduring National Foundations and Emerging RegionalReality', New Political Economy, 1/1 (Summer 1996), pp. 157-84. Such critics then presentthe presence of differences in state/societal arrangements, government policies, valuesystems, forms of corporate governance 'architectures of supply', technological formations,patterns of productivity, regional systems, etc., as evidence that 'globalisation', in theirterms, is not really happening.
18. P.G. Cerny, 'Globalisation, Governance and Complexity' (see note 9). On complexity andcircularity in the industrial economics literature, see Herbert Kitschelt, 'IndustrialGovernance Structures, Innovation Strategies, and the Case of Japan: Sectoral or Cross-National Comparative Analysis?', International Organization, 45/4 (Autumn 1991),pp.453-93. See also Mark Granovetter, 'Economic Action and Social Structure: TheProblem of Embeddedness', American Journal of Sociology, 91/4 (November 1985),pp.481-510 and Granovetter, Economic Institutions as Social Constructions: A Framework
Dow
nloa
ded
By:
[inf
orm
a in
tern
al u
sers
] At:
09:4
7 18
Jan
uary
200
8
62 CIVIL WARS
for Analysis', Acta Sociologica, 35 (1992), pp.3-11 on multiple equilibria and pathdevelopment, and Peter M. Blau, (ed)., Approaches to the Study of Social Structure (NewYork: Free Press, 1975) on the concept of structure in the traditional sociological literature.
19. P.G. Cerny, The Changing Architecture of Politics: Structure, Agency and the Future of theState (London and Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1990), pp.4-9.
20. On entropy, see Cerny, 'Political Entropy and American Decline', Millennium: Journal ofInternational Studies, 22/1 (Spring 1989), pp.27-51.
21. For example, those posited by Williamson concerning specific and non-specific assets or byOlson regarding public and private goods: Oliver E. Williamson, Markets and Hierarchies(New York: Free Press, 1975) and The Economic Institutions of Capitalism (New York: FreePress, 1985); Mancur Olson, The Logic of Collective Action (Cambridge, MA: HarvardUniversity Press, 1971).
22. The notion of the 'centrality' of state structures is examined in Cerny, Changing Architecture(see note 19).
23. Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., Scale and Scope: The Dynamics of Industrial Capitalism(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990); Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation:The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time (New York: Rinehart, 1944); Cerny,Changing Architecture, op. cit.; P.G. Cerny, 'Globalization and the Changing Logic ofCollective Action', International Organization, 19/4 (Autumn 1995), pp.595-625.
24. Spruyt (note 15); cf. Cerny, 'Globalization and the Changing Logic of Collective Action',(note 23). Also see Cerny, 'Globalisation and the Erosion of Democracy', (note 7)., andCerny, 'Communication', Political Studies, 45/1 (March 1997), pp. 1-2.
25. The argument both for Lake and for myself is not so much that the state is beingfundamentally 'undermined' by globalisation, but rather that its functions are beingdisarticulated — unevenly broken up and partly eroded — in a context of increased cross-cutting affiliations and conflicts, transnational pressures, 'third-level games', etc. DavidA. Lake, 'Global Governance: A Relational Contracting Approach', in Prakash and Hart(note 2).
26. Vipond makes a distinction between 'operational capacity' and 'design capacity' in financialregulation: Peter A. Vipond, 'The European Financial Area in the 1990s: Europe and theTransnationalisation of Finance', in P.G. Cerny, ed., Finance and World Politics: Markets,Regimes and States in the Post-Hegemonic Era (Cheltenham, Glos., and Brookfield, VT:Edward Elgar, 1993), p. 187.
27. David Osborne and Ted Gaebler, Reinventing Government: How the Entrepreneurial Spiritis Transforming the Public Sector, from Schoolhouse to Statehouse, City Hall to the Pentagon(Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1992).
28. P.G. Cerny and Mark Evans, 'New Labour, Globalisation and the Competition State', paperto be presented to the annual conference of the Political Studies Association of the U.K.,University of Keele, 7-9 April 1998.
29. Grahame Thompson, 'Some Observations on the "International Competitiveness Debate"and International Economic Relations', unpublished paper, the Open University (September1996).
30. Or the 'global' level - as I prefer to use the word 'global' to mean the level at which theprocesses and practices of both internationalisation and transnationalisation interact andoverlap.
31. P.G. Cerny, 'Plurilateralism: Structural Differentiation and Functional Conflict in the Post-Cold War World Order', Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 22/1 (1993),pp.27-51.
32. David Held, Democracy and the Global Order: From the Modern State to DemocraticGovernance (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995).
33. Cerny, 'Globalisation and the Erosion of Democracy' (note 7).34. For example, see François Prkic, 'End of the Cold War and Democratisation in Sub-Saharan
Africa: The Emergence of Transnational Rebel Territories in Today's Conflicts', paperpresented to the Workshop on Democratisation and the Changing Global Order, Annual Joint
Dow
nloa
ded
By:
[inf
orm
a in
tern
al u
sers
] At:
09:4
7 18
Jan
uary
200
8
GLOBALISATION AS DURABLE DISORDER 63
Sessions of Workshops, European Consortium for Political Research, Bern, Switzerland, 27February-4 March 1997; see also Robert D. Kaplan, The Ends of the Earth: A Journey at theDawn of the 21st Century (London: Macmillan, 1997).
35. On the relevant characteristics of the medieval era and its application to understandingcontemporary issues, see: Minc, Le nouveau Moyen Âge (note 16); Robert D. Kaplan, 'TheComing Anarchy', The Atlantic Monthly (February 1994), pp.44-76; Bruce Cronin andJoseph Lepgold, 'A New Medievalism? Conflicting International Authorities and CompetingLoyalties in the Twenty-First Century', paper presented to the annual meeting of theInternational Studies Association, Chicago, 23-27 February 1995; and Stephen Kobrin,'Back to the Future: Neomedievalism and the Post-Modern World Economy', paperpresented to the annual meeting of the International Studies Association, San Diego, 17-21April 1996.
36. See also Perry Anderson, Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism (London, New Left Books,1974).
37. Roland Robertson, Globalisation: Social Theory and Global Culture (London and ThousandOaks, CA: Sage, 1992), p. 102.
38. Consider Kenneth Waltz's application of Durkheim's notion of 'simple structures': Waltz,(note 12), p.72, and Waltz, 'Reflections on "Theory of International Politics": A Response toMy Critics', in Robert 0. Keohane (ed.), Neorealism and Its Critics (New York: ColumbiaUniversity Press, 1986), esp. pp.323-6. For a critique of Waltz's usage of Durkheim, seeCerny, 'Plurilateralism' (note 31), pp.28-31.
39. Lake (note 25).40. E.g., Gianfranco Poggi, The Development of the Modern State (Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press, 1978).41. See Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military
Conflict from 1500 to 2000 (London: Unwin Hyman, 1988), esp. pp. 16-30; Perry Anderson,Lineages of the Absolutist State (London: New Left Books, 1974); R.J. Holton, TheTransition from Feudalism to Capitalism (London: Macmillan, 1985); and Charles Tilly(ed.), The Formation of National States in Western Europe (Princeton, NJ: PrincetonUniversity Press, 1975).
42. Arno J. Mayer, The Persistence of the Old Regime: Europe to the Great War (London:Croom Helm, 1981).
43. P.G. Cerny, 'Paradoxes of the Competition State: The Dynamics of Political Globalisation',Government and Opposition, 32/2 (Spring 1997), pp.251-74.
44 Karsten Ronit and Volker Schneider, 'Private Organisations in Global Governance', paperpresented to the conference on the Problem Solving Capacity of Transnational GovernanceSystems, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, Cologne, 8-9 November 1996;Timothy J. Sinclair, 'Reinventing Authority: Embedded Knowledge Networks and the NewGlobal Finance', paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political ScienceAssociation, Washington, DC, 28-31 August 1997; Virginia Haufler.'Private Regimes:Theory and Evidence', paper presented to the annual meeting of the American PoliticalScience Association, Washington, DC, 28-31 August 1997; Miroslava Filipovic, 'A GlobalPrivate Regime for Capital Flows', paper presented to the annual conference of the BritishInternational Studies Association, University of York, 18-21 December 1994; and A. ClaireCutler, 'Locating "Authority" in the Global Political Economy', paper presented to theannual conference of the British International Studies Association, University of Leeds,15-17 December 1997.
45. On the spread of complex transnational strategic alliances and the 'new competition', seeBrian Portnoy, 'Transnational Networks and Industrial Order', paper presented to the annualmeeting of the American Political Science Association, Washington, DC, 27-31 August1997.
46. Kennedy (note 41).47. Prkic (note 34).48. Richard Higgott, 'Mondialisation et gouvernance: L'émergence du niveau régional',
Dow
nloa
ded
By:
[inf
orm
a in
tern
al u
sers
] At:
09:4
7 18
Jan
uary
200
8
64 CIVIL WARS
Politique Étrangère, 66/2 (Summer 1997), pp. 277-92.49. Christopher May, Knowing, Owning, Enclosing: A Global Political Economy of Intellectual
Property Rights, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Nottingham Trent University (June 1997).50. E.J. Hobsbawm, Bandits (Harmondsworth, Middx.: Penguin, revised edn. 1972).51. The notion of 'system affect', which is said to mean 'rain or shine' loyalty to the political
system, is explored in Gabriel A. Almond and Sidney Verba (eds.), The Civic Culture:Political Attitudes in Five Nations (Boston: Little, Brown, 1965), pp. 192ff.
52. May (note 49).53. Max Singer and Aaron Wildavsky, The Real World Order: Zones of Peace/Zones of Turmoil
(Chatam, NJ: Chatham House Publishers, 1993).54. According to Grahame Thompson, however, the medieval order as I have set it out is not
actually 'medieval' per se. He regards the medieval order as characterised by a more'antagonistic pluralism' even a 'radical disorder'. The kind of durable disorder describedhere ismore akin to the system of the Holy Roman Empire (HRE).
The HRE is ... interesting and important because it was the first truly internationalgovernance system. ... [Its] plurality of organised political forces and institutions washeld together in relative social peace and relative harmony by the constitutional order ofthe HRE. The complexity of those estates and domains that existed under the umbrellaof the HRE ... [consisted of a] vast array of religious groupings, principalities, guilds,city states, free cities, leagues, and so on [which] existed as definite political entities ...exercising their own political business, as at the same time they owed some allegianceto the constitutional order of the HRE.
(Thompson, 'The "New Medievalism" and the International System', unpublished paper,The Open University [1996)], p. 5.) My own view is that the HRE represented a high pointof the later medieval period rather than constituting a separate model, and that the HRE itselfwas still characterised by frequent systemic turbulence and disorder.
55. Arthur. F. Bentley, The Process of Government: A Study of Social Pressures (Chicago, IL:University of Chicago Press, 1908) and David A. Truman, The Governmental Process:Political Interests and Public Opinion (New York: Knopf, 1951).
