Beyond the Great Divide: Globalization and the Theory of International Relations

This article assesses the general significance for International Relations theory of the literature on globalization. It argues that globalization is a pervasively unsettling process which needs to be explained not only as an issue in its own right but for the insight which it affords into cognate areas of theory. In short, it advances an analytical model whereby globalization itself can be understood and utilizes this as a theoretical scheme that may be applied more generally. The predominant conceptualization of the globalization issue within International Relations has been the debate between the proponents of state redundancy and the champions of continuing state potency. In turn, these arguments rest upon an image of state capacities being eroded by external forces, or alternatively of external forces being generated by state action. In either case, there is the assumed duality of the state(s) set off from, and ranged against, a seemingly external environment. Instead, this article argues that the state occupies a middle ground between the internal and external and is itself both shaped by and formative of the process of globalization. In the same way that sovereignty represents both a set of domestic political arrangements and a set of principles of international order which are mutually reinforcing and mutually redefining,1 so globalization is not the mere environment in which states find themselves, but an element within the (shifting) identity of the state itself. If this argument is allowed with respect to globalization specifically, what might be its more general import for theorizing within the field? Traditionally, the discipline of International Relations has tended to reinforce the notion of a Great Divide, that the 'international' represents a field of political and economic forces distinct from the 'domestic' and hence needs to be studied within a separate framework and by means of its own tools of analysis. Typically, these have included anarchy, states-as-actors, balances of power and the resort to war. The occasional appeals to domestic 'analogies', intended to soften this separation, have, if anything, served simply to reconfirm it.2 Neorealism, in turn, amounted to a formidable reassertion of the autonomy of the international as a domain with its own political structure. Notwithstanding, recent years have witnessed a flurry of writings devoted to the idea of globalization.3 While much of this literature concen 1 See A. Giddens, The Nation-state and Violence (Oxford, 1985), pp. 263^1. Sassen also argues that 'rather than sovereignty eroding as a consequence of globalization ... it is being transformed'. S. Sassen, Losing Control? Sovereignty in an Age of Globalization (New York, 1996), p. 30. 2 The validity of the analogy is discussed in H. Suganami, The Domestic Analogy and World Order Proposals (Cambridge, 1989). 3 It is impossible to summarize the burgeoning literature. Some of it will be discussed in detail below. Standard references are: M. Albrow, The Global Age: State and Society beyond Modernity (Oxford, 1996); R. J. Barry Jones, Globalisation and Interdependence in the International Political Economy: Rhetoric and Reality (London, 1995); R. Boyer and D. Drache (eds.), States against Markets: The Limits of Globalization (London, 1996); P. G. Cerny (ed.), Finance and World Politics: Markets,