Category Archives: Globalization

Global Political Economy, Globalization, US Politics, World Politics

Trump and the US(S) Titanic (Talk)

Enjoy my talk on March 11th at Okanagan College in Penticton!  Since the mid-20th century observers have been debating the rise, peak and decline of the United States as the world’s leading superpower. In this session, we will go beyond Trumpism to look at the deeper underlying economic, political and social factors that have led up to the current era of US leadership (or lack of), and ask what might be the impact of these changes on the rest of the world, especially Canada. Is the US in decline? What might that ‘look like’ in the years to come? How bad (or good) can it get?

References

Beckley, M. (2017). The Emerging Military Balance in East Asia: How China’s Neighbors Can Check Chinese Naval Expansion. International Security, 42(2), 78–119. https://doi.org/10.1162/ISEC_a_00294
Beckley, M. (2012). China’s Century? Why America’s Edge Will Endure. International Security, 36(3), 41–78. https://doi.org/10.1162/ISEC_a_00066
Borger, J. (2014). Risk of nuclear accidents is rising, says report on near-misses | World news | The Guardian. Retrieved March 8, 2019, from https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/29/nuclear-accident-near-misses-report
Devlin, K. (2018). Foreign affairs experts, U.S. public agree: America is less respected globally | Pew Research Center. Retrieved March 8, 2019, from http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/12/17/international-relations-experts-and-u-s-public-agree-america-is-less-respected-globally/?amp=1&__twitter_impression=true
ERlanger, S., & Bennhold, K. (2019). Rift Between Trump and Europe Is Now Open and Angry – The New York Times. Retrieved March 8, 2019, from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/17/world/europe/trump-international-relations-munich.html
Faturechi, R., Rose, M., & Miller, T. C. (2019). Years of Warnings, Then Death and Disaster: How the Navy Failed Its Sailors. ProPublica.
Friedberg, A. L. (2018). Competing with China. Survival, 60(3), 7–64. https://doi.org/10.1080/00396338.2018.1470755
Gold, H. (2019). The U.S. Is Getting Closer to a Recession, Data Show – Barron’s. Retrieved March 8, 2019, from https://www.barrons.com/amp/articles/the-u-s-is-in-the-late-stages-of-expansion-data-show-51549642305
Jacques, M. (2012). When China Rules the World. Penguin.
Klein, E. (2011). Ezra Klein – The U.S. Government: An insurance conglomerate protected by a large, standing army. Retrieved March 8, 2019, from http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2011/02/the_us_government_an_insurance.html
Long, H. (2019). A record 7 million Americans are 3 months behind on their car payments, a red flag for the economy – The Washington Post. Retrieved March 8, 2019, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/02/12/record-million-americans-are-months-behind-their-car-payments-red-flag-economy/?utm_source=reddit.com&utm_term=.1fc9b4020266
Mahbubani Kishore. (2009). The New Asian Hemisphere.
Nougayrede, N. (2019). Why Trump and his team want to wipe out the EU | Natalie Nougayrède | Opinion | The Guardian. Retrieved March 8, 2019, from https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/feb/18/trump-pompeo-bolton-eu-eastern-european-states
Quackenbush, C. (2019). U.S. Slips Out of Top 20 in Global Corruption Index | Time. Retrieved March 8, 2019, from http://time.com/5515195/united-states-slips-corruption-index/
Reuters. (2019). $1.5 trillion U.S. tax cut has no major impact on business capex plans: survey | Reuters. Retrieved March 8, 2019, from https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-economy-investment-idUSKCN1PM0B0
Sammon, A. (2019). Elwood, Illinois (Pop. 2,200), Has Become a Vital Hub of America’s Consumer Economy. And It’s Hell. | The New Republic. Retrieved March 8, 2019, from https://newrepublic.com/article/152836/elwood-illinois-pop-2200-become-vital-hub-americas-consumer-economy-its-hell
Schweber, N., & Miller, T. C. (2019). In Navy Disasters, Neglect, Mistakes, and 17 Lost Sailors. ProPublica.
Shifrinson, J. (2018). The rise of China, balance of power theory and US national security: Reasons for optimism? Journal of Strategic Studies, 1–42. https://doi.org/10.1080/01402390.2018.1558056
Tanzi, A. (2019). U.S. Student Debt in `Serious Delinquency’ Tops $166 Billion – Bloomberg. Retrieved March 8, 2019, from https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-16/u-s-student-debt-in-serious-delinquency-tops-166-billion
Wright, T. J. (n.d.). All measures short of war : the contest for the twenty-first century and the future of American power.
Zakaria, F. (2009). The post-American world.

Environmental Research, Global Political Economy, Globalization, Inequality, Sustainable Development, World Politics

Is the World Getting Better or Worse (Talk)?

This presentation takes a practical look at recent trends in the world and analyze whether the world is getting better or worse. We will look at trends in democracy, human rights and freedoms, economic growth and inequality, environmental degradation and climate change, human health, population, and governance, among others.

Global Political Economy, Globalization, Inequality, Uncategorized, US Politics, World Politics

Canada’s Role in a Changing World

The liberal international order (LIO) has been in place for half of Canada’s 150-year existence and Canada has been an integral part of it from the beginning. As one of the founding members of this order Canada has a stake and a role in preserving international law, peace, prosperity and human rights. However, the LIO is under stress. What will be Canada’s response to a new era of diverse challenges? From the U.S. effort to abandon NAFTA to the challenges of terrorism and environmental breakdown, Canada’s capacities are being put to the test. This session will open a conversation about Canada’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats in a world of rapid and unexpected change.

Globalization, political theory, US Politics, World Politics

The Deep State or the Degraded State?

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Both the Left and the right have adopted the terminology of the Deep State to describe those hidden structures and relationships that permeate a state’s administrative apparatus and represent a set of semi-permanent structures that sit below the political level.  On both sides, the so-called Deep State has come to represent a fundamentally anti-democratic and secretive force operating out of public view and without accountability or transparency.   The argument from the left is that the revolving doors of Wall Street, the military and the bureaucracy have created a club of common interests that works towards favourable policies for the wealthy, including low taxes, de-regulation, militarism and regressive social and economic policies that penalize the poor. For the right, the deep state has become a force for endless bloat, overspending, over-regulation and failed global liberal projects of democratization and cosmopolitanism. In particular, the right has focused on the Obama administration’s expansion of healthcare services as a wedge to entrench even more state bureaucracies.

The polarized state of politics in the US means that there is a tendency on both sides to overstate the power, significance and uniformity of the Deep State.   In political science the term ‘deep state’ as it is presently used  does not have technical or analytical meaning.  However, political scientists sometimes made a distinction between 1. the state administrative apparatus; 2. the government, which changes frequently in response to democratic cycles; and 3. the semi-political institutions that are termed a ‘regime’, which melds the political and bureaucratic elements.  These three elements (the bureaucracy, the government, and the regime) form a larger, and much more permanent organization termed ‘the state’ which encompasses and supersedes all of these components by embodying a single legal entity from which the authority of all of the other parts flows.   The separation of institutional powers among the branches of government, and among the various bureaucracies, is permanently enshrined in the Constitution in order to prevent the abuse of power by any one of these components, all underpinned by the permanence of the rule of law.

The polarized state of politics in the US means that there is a tendency on both sides to overstate the power, significance and uniformity of the deep state.

The fact is, the directly ‘democratic’ components of the state are relatively shallow, since the temporary election of a government on top of a large permanent experienced bureaucratic apparatus cannot, of necessity, institute revolutionary changes in the short term which it is allotted.  This transience of the government is by design. Changes are always contingent on the maintenance of popular support., because any program of policies and institutions must be vetted by the people periodically. The permanence of the administration and the transience of government are complementary forces which maintain stability by the periodic checks and balances provided by democratic elections, which provide sufficient flexibility for the state to maintain relevance and responsiveness to the needs and wishes of the people. This is one key way in which a democratic state is distinguished from an authoritarian one, since in an authoritarian state like Pakistan or Turkey (as it is becoming) the Deep State acts wholly independently IMG_20161116_210123of the electoral process and has much greater power as a result.

Clearly, something has gone wrong with this careful balance.  As Eisenhower knew well, the ‘military-industrial complex’ was not made of and by the state, nor did it arise from state action, but was the main threat to the state.  When Eisenhower warned at the conclusion of his term about the creeping power of the ‘military-industrial complex’, he was referring to the entrenchment of relationships among the component parts that had become a semi-permanent structure of interests antithetical to democracy. Similarly, Mike Lofgren refers to the Deep State not as “a secret, conspiratorial cabal” but rather as “hiding mostly in plain sight, and its operators mainly act in the light of day.” As he says “it is not a tight-knit group, and has no clear objective. Rather, it is a sprawling network, stretching across the government and into the private sector.”  This complex is composed of a loose network of relationships among ruling elites from the commercial, financial, military, scientific and governmental sectors.  In other words, it is both public and private in origin and nature.

So, what is going on? First of all, the transfer of power from one government to the next has fundamentally broken down, not only because of excessive partisanship, but also due to social divisions of interest within the ruling elites, whose ability to maintain a common interest has been compromised.

Second, this set of alliances threatens the state writ large, because it can potentially affect the more permanent institutions without reference to the vetting of the periodic democratic checks of elections.  The problem with these relationships is not that they are secret (they aren’t) nor that they are hostile to social, political and economic progress (because they have been and can be progressive) but because they have failed in their most important function: to create and maintain legitimacy.  Until recently, this admittedly problematic arrangement could be relied upon to organize and underpin (or at least, not obstruct) peaceful and orderly transitions of government that, if not democratic, at least could be said to command the legitimate support of sufficient numbers of the public to maintain the authority of the state itself.

Finally (and you can probably see where I’m going here) the system has been broken by an inability of the ruling elites to agree on the fundamental direction of the state.  The state itself is not broken, nor is the Constitution, nor (yet) is the democratic mechanism for transferring power between regimes.

What could once be a strategy for election, must now be a strategy of grasping for the broken pieces of the state that have been set adrift and unclaimed.

What is broken is the legitimacy of the state, its ability to rally support and meet demands, the most basic functions of statehood.  The problem is not that the Deep State is a monolithic and autonomous shadowy force acting against the democratic will, the biggest problem is that the state is being broken apart into its component parts due to the inability of the ruling elite to maintain legitimacy and enable a peaceful transition of power.

What could once be done in public must now increasingly be done behind closed doors. What could once be said openly must now be cloaked in distraction and lies. What could once be a strategy for election, must now be a strategy of grasping for the broken pieces of the state that have been set adrift and unclaimed.  The real threat is to the state, in its larger, wider meaning as a social, political and legal community of common interests and values.

 

 

 

 

Globalization, Teaching and Learning

Disruptive Innovation in Higher Ed (Talk)

This is a talk I gave for Okanagan College’s employee get-together Connections on August 23rd, 2016. In this session the group learned how to identify and think about potential disruptive innovations in higher education and what we can do about it in both the short term and the long term. The session also outlined the work of OC’s Disruptors Group.

Disruptive Innovation Prezi
Go to Disruptive Innovation Prezi by Ros.
Global Political Economy, Globalization, Human Rights, Inequality, Politics in Canada, World Politics

Unsettled Balance: Ethics Security and Canada’s International Relations

Book Cover 2015

New Website for Unsettled Balance Book here!

Since 9/11, the wars on terror, economic crises, climate change, and humanitarian emergencies have led decision makers to institute new measures to maintain security. Foreign policy analysts tend to view these decisions as being divorced from ethics, but Unsettled Balance shows that arguments about rights, obligations, norms, and values have played a profound role in Canadian foreign policy and international relations.

Examining a wide range of events in Canada and abroad, the contributors to this volume collectively explore three key questions. What is the meaning of ethics and security, and how are they linked? To what extent have considerations of ethics and security changed in the twenty-first century? And what are the implications of a shifting historical context for Canada’s international relations?

Whether probing how Canada handles the tension between ethics and security when hosting large-scale international events, engaging in humanitarian aid initiatives, or entering into military operations, each chapter provides insight into key decisions in recent Canadian history. In a time of rapid change, this book is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand how Canada responds to the challenges of an increasingly volatile world and why it responds the way it does.

Globalization, Human Rights, Inequality, Politics in Canada, US Politics

The True Meaning of Differentiated Citizenship

090913_0254_TheTrueMean1.pngSometimes the language that we use as political scientists is regrettable in its implications. For example, the definition of ‘differentiated citizenship’ according to a leading introductory text to Canadian politics reads as follows: “The granting of special group-based legal or constitutional rights to national minorities and ethnic groups” (Mintz, Tossutti and Dunn 89). While accurate, the use of the term ‘special’ has many unintended implications. Who is ‘special’ and who is entitled to ‘different’ treatment by government?
For one thing, to say that a group or individual receives ‘special’ treatment is to imply that every other group is not special. Or, to put it another way, it is to imply that a group is singled out from the otherwise equal treatment that they might be entitled to receive by virtue of being equal members of the community. It assumes that the community at large includes other groups which may be equally entitled to special treatment were it not for the unique qualities which set the ‘special’ group apart. Equality before the law is both an operational concept and an aspirational standard.Using the term ‘special’ to describe a group singled out for differentiated treatment suggests that everyone else is already treated equally under the law, that equal legal treatment is in fact a reality, and not also an aspiration yet to be achieved. Under the assumption of equality, special treatment is, by definition, discriminatory. Discriminatory treatment technically only means the same as ‘special’ treatment, except for the fact that it implies a harmful result for the group being singled out. When the result of special treatment is discrimination, it is rightfully condemned. Discrimination on the basis of race, gender or ethnicity, for example, is condemned in a democracy not primarily because it constitutes special or differential treatment, but rather because of the negative effects of the judgments that tend to be made, most often based on involuntary or ascribed characteristics. The response to ‘special treatment’ is to question the basis for unequal treatment rather than to condemn all forms of harmful discrimination. Why the knee-jerk reaction to ‘special treatment’? After all, governments identify groups for a variety of special programs and services all the time. Groups are defined by age, income levels, geography, occupation, health status, and marital status. Many of these categories are based on involuntary characteristics, or at least, characteristics that are extremely difficult to change. Northerners or people who live in rural areas are entitled to unique job training or assistance for moving expenses. Fishers in the Maritimes are treated distinctly from other occupations with respect to qualification for EI benefits, young people are targeted for special job training and employment programs, and government services like healthcare are often offered in languages other than the two official languages.
090913_0254_TheTrueMean2.jpgIn truth, as discussed in the last two blog posts, equal treatment is as elusive as the abstraction of ‘equality’ itself. One is tempted sometimes to ‘test’ equality by imagining a ‘reverse onus’. In other words, we might try to test the extent of equality by asking ourselves how a given situation might be if the positions were reversed. If a black woman and a white woman are ranked equally on a college entrance application, then ‘all else being equal’, the chances of success should be equally distributed (50/50). If this is indeed true, then the white woman and black woman are being equally treated. In reality, we can more effectively test the presumption of equality by looking at outcomes. If an equal chance of success really does exist, then the number of black successful women should be roughly proportional to the number of black women in the population as a whole, and the same with the number of white women. Success is clearly not distributed proportionally among these racial groups. Because the outcomes do not support the idea that such equal treatment exists, it is unfair to apply the ‘reverse racism’ test. Treatment that might be appropriate for one group would not be appropriate for the privileged group. The two situations are not comparable. Discrimination can still be shown to exist, as the story of Yolanda Spivey reveals. Spivey, a black woman, reportedly modified her online job profile to appear ‘white’, changing her name and racial identification, but keeping all of her other information the same, including qualifications,

experience, and work history. She received many more employment enquiries as a white woman than as a black woman. The experiences of black and white people are not comparable, and so these groups should not be considered as if they were treated equally. Of course, more study and data is needed to determine the extent, nature, and form of discrimination in society. Nevertheless, differential treatment, and even differentiated citizenship, is justifiable in order to move toward equality of opportunity for all. Until equality can be demonstrated in outcomes, it should be seen as an aspirational goal, and not assumed to be already in place.

Global Political Economy, Globalization, Inequality, World Politics

The Sources of Inequality: Why Globalization Matters

1Photo Credit: Rangan Halder 500px “Materialism Versus Materialistic Capture” http://500px.com/photo/8540236

In his speech to the Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame, Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers Alan Krueger offered up some food for thought regarding the sources of inequality in American society, and globally. Krueger focused on four factors that help to explain income inequality: technology, scale, luck, and the erosion of social pressures for fairness. In this post, I want to focus on scale, and I’m going to also refer to the Atlantic’s reprint of the key points of Krueger’s talk to expand on a factor that Krueger mentions but does not develop in enough detail, in my view: globalization.

The authors discuss the music industry as an example. As they point out, the music industry creates a ‘star economy’ focused on a few ‘winners’ or ‘stars’ who are able to drive growth in the system. The ‘star economy’ in music has produced a skewed income curve. If you look at incomes across the industry, the greater benefits are concentrated at the top. However, if one considers not just the artists (who are essentially the workers producing the product) but the entire ecosystem of label CEOs, CFOs, managers, R & R people, the marketing department, etc. then one gets a better idea of the scope of the real economy of music. In fact, music industry bloggers and observers have been criticizing the inequality in the music industry for a long time: As Bob Lefsentz points out in a recent post, the corporate labels, the entertainment mega-giants like Sony and Universal, are the real structural beneficiaries of the sharper inequalities imposed upon all musicians, just as the fat cats in the garment or manufacturing industry are the real beneficiaries of inequality in those economies.

The power of the music industry has grown in lock-step with globalization, offering command of larger and larger shares of music consumption. The incomes of the music industry managers have survived the recent purge caused by the technological challenges. They have survived for a reason: it is their machines that generate the wealth, rather than the luck or talent of the artists. Ultimately, as Krueger suggests, ‘luck’ and the perception of popularity have a huge impact on success in the music industry, but ‘luck’ is not some impartial uncertain or random arbiter of fortunes, since success comes through the perception of popularity, which is heavily influenced by these industrial complexes.

As Salganik et. al. have discovered through experimenting with a controlled ‘music market’, social perceptions of the popularity of songs increase the degree of inequality among them (although they don’t make it any easier to predict success). Frankly, no matter the uncertainty caused by the internet or disruption of the industry by downloading, any artist that can command the attention of the marketing machine and the vast resources of a label can succeed beyond their wildest dreams through these social effects. Many high-quality and deserving artists don’t succeed, while a few poor quality and undeserving artists succeed beyond their wildest dreams. Youtube doesn’t ‘make’ you a star, but the attention that Youtube brings can make you popular. Attention from the music elite (increasingly, from successful artists) or from a label with a hyper-marketing machine behind it makes you a star, since you can then marshal the resources necessary to maintain that attention.

Globalization has had one important impact on the 1% that should not be downplayed: it has vastly expanded the freedom to disengage from local economies and impose conditions upon all other economic activities. What matters is the decisions made by the elite to affect the market, and these decisions are not based on luck, fairness, or even on quality. In political science this is termed ‘structural power’: the ability to not only win the game, but to affect the rules of the game for all other players. The inequality of today arises from specific decisions made by earlier masters of the universe in the 1980s to protect the interests of their class. Krueger hints at some of these decisions in his article: the demise of labour unions, the deliberate erosion of the minimum wage policy, and changes to taxation. These factors cannot be explained by the impartial workings of a global market or by luck, rather, these are conscious government policies aimed at expanding the scope and freedom of movement for the wealthy.

I would allow that there is some room in this analysis for what might be termed ‘unexpected’ consequences in the form of a severe recession and political backlash against perceived unfairness. Krueger’s analysis seems to suggest that the erosion of a social commitment to fairness in income distribution is some kind of ephemeral byproduct of historical forces and global and cultural change. However, I would argue that society has always appreciated the importance of fairness. Indeed, when elites overreached in their efforts to influence the public’s perception of fairness, it created the present global backlash and protests against inequality.

Given the true nature and extent of the cultural power that elites have garnered over the last 50 years, their expectation of being able to manage the change to a more unequal society was not unrealistic. And they may still succeed! Leaving out the element of cultural power, and the broader impact of corporate globalization and the effects of structure, neglects one of the key explanations for the continuation of inequality. The perception that success comes from luck or from effort, and not from the structure, is central to the perception of inherent fairness in the system that allows inequality to persist.

So, Krueger’s piece gives us much to think about: technology, scale, luck and the erosion of fairness have played their parts in the rise in inequality. I would put the focus on scale and the rise of globalization, which has fundamentally altered not only the rules for economic acquisition, but also the rules for social, political, and technological relationships. The change in these rules has helped to produce the profound social and economic inequalities we see today.