IPC2602 Study Guide: The Modern World System PDF

1 THEME 1 1 The modern world system, the nation-state and the world order OBJECTIVES FOR THEME 1 After you have completed this theme you must be able to do the following: Discuss the origins and the nature of the modern world-sy...

1 THEME 1 1 The modern world system, the nation-state and the world order OBJECTIVES FOR THEME 1 After you have completed this theme you must be able to do the following: Discuss the origins and the nature of the modern world-system. Discuss the modern world-system from the decolonial perspective. Discuss the emergence of the nation-state from the Westphalian peace of 1648. Discuss the difference between Westphalian sovereignty and the United Nations sovereignty. Differentiate between the world-system and the world order. Discuss how the world order is constituted in the 21st century under the hegemony of the United States. KEY CONCEPTS Modern world-system, interstate system, world order, nation-state, global colonial- ity, colonialism, state sovereignty, hegemony. 1.1 INTRODUCTION The modern nation-state exists within a broader economic, political and legal framework that is called the world-system. Within the world-system, there exists a certain world order that has evolved with the emergence of the inter-state system in the 17th century. The current nation-state is also part of the same world order constituted within the modern world-system. In other words, there exists a close relationship between, the world-system, the nation-state and the world order. In this theme, you will be introduced to the origins, the nature and the defining features of the world- system. We will also learn about the emergence of the nation-state and the world order, all being part of the modern world-system. It is also important to understand that foreign policy takes place within this complex environment. 1.1.1 The origins and the nature of the modern world system The world in which we live today, the modern world-system was produced by a long history of colonialism. This world had its origin in the long 16th century and it has been intact for many centuries. To be specific, its origin dates back to 1492, a period considered to be the foundation of modernity/coloniality. This world-system was then located in only a part of the globe (primarily in parts of Europe and the Americas), but over time it expanded to engulf the entire planet. Wallerstein (2004:22) describes it as a world economy and a capitalist economy. To elaborate his argument, he claims that a world economy must necessarily be capitalist, and that capitalism can only exist within the framework of a world economy. Hence, the modern world-system is IPC2602/11  a capitalist world economy. It is further argued that this system gives priority to the endless accumulation of capital. For that reason, Wallerstein (2004:23) has concluded that only the modern world-system has been a capitalist system. The capitalist world economy needs the nation-states, and most importantly the alternating presence of hegemonic powers within a regulated world order. This clarifies the relationship that exists between the world system, the nation-state and the world order. In this theme we will use Wallerstein’s analysis to examine how he came to think about this system to understand how the world in which we live work. You will also be expected to critically analyse this capitalist world-system by using his analysis. Many scholars in different disciplines such as political sciences, sociology, history, development studies, economics, and so forth, had produced a variety of literature that sought to explain how the world-system is constituted. While some have praised it, others have vehemently attacked it. Above all, theories have been produced about the modern world-system to understand how it functions. The most popular theory has been the ‘world-system analysis’. The world-system analysis, as a perspective, owes much to Immanuel Wallerstein who made a momentous contribution through his publication of The Modern World System that appeared in three volumes in 1974, 1980 and 1989. Wallerstein had consistently used his model to critique modernity, but his critique has been contested in certain quarters. Similarly, scholars, academics and students have for many years used this theory or approach as a unit of analysis to understand the social world. That said, it is important to indicate that in developing his world-system analysis, Wallerstein has built on earlier arguments and critiques, notably those of Fernand Braudel and Karl Marx. This then begs a question of what is the modern world system and how it is characterised. Let us now look at this question. 1.1.1.1 The modern world-system and the characterisation of the contemporary world An analysis of how the contemporary world is characterised, requires as a prerequisite a clear understanding of the concept of the modern world system. So, let us start by defining this concept. The modern world system is defined by Wallerstein (1974: 347)as: “a social system, one that has boundaries, structures, member groups, rules of legitimation, and coherence. Its life is made up of the conflicting forces which hold it together by tension and tear it apart as each group seeks eternally to remold it to its advantage. It has the characteristics of an organism, in that it has a life-span over which its characteristics change in some respects and remain stable in others. One can define its structures as being at different times strong or weak in terms of the internal logic of its functioning.” This definition speaks to a number of factors that describes the system, firstly, it highlights the tension and power hierarchy that exists within the system in which each force wrestles for power to shape the system according to its own advantage. Secondly, its characteristics can change or remain stable over time, depending on the internal dynamics within the system. Lastly, the internal logic of its functioning determines the strength or the weakness of this system. It is most interesting that the dynamics of its development are largely internal, that is, everything takes place inside the system. 2  It is vital to stress that in modern days, the power hierarchy highlighted above, has been explained in terms of the tension that exists between the core (North) and periphery (South) states, in which the powerful and wealthy societies of the global North (core) dominate and exploit the weak and poor societies from the global South (periphery) (Martinez-Vela 2000:4). It is argued that countries from the core (North) benefited the most from the capitalist world economy. This enabled them to develop strong central governments, extensive bureaucracies and large mercenary armies. In turn, this development permitted them to expand their control to other parts of the world (in particular to the Americas and Africa) through colonial conquest and dispossession. The impact of colonialism converted the colonised and dispossessed communities of the Americas and Africa into wage earners and left them with no land to own. It is against this background that domination and exploitation became the order of the day. As Mignolo (2011) observed, for domination and exploitation to take place, people must first be colonised, dispossessed and be made inferior, before they can be dominated and exploited. On the other hand, global colonialism has inhibited countries from the South, in particular African countries to develop in the same pace as their Northern counterparts. The process of conquests has also destroyed the local authority structures and replaced them with weak bureaucracies controlled by the colonial powers. As a consequence, the Northern countries continued to exploit African countries through the import of raw material, the implementation of coercive labour practices and the expropriation of much of the capital surplus generated by the South through unequal trade relations (Martinez-Vela 2000: 4). In most cases, these dominant states used both their soft and hard power to enforce unequal rates of exchange between the North and the South. For this reason, countries from the South remained financially constrained to the point where they are unable to compete equally in the international trade with the Western countries. It can be argued that the modern world-system is characterised by domination and exploitation. These are sustained by the continued existence of global coloniality without which, domination and exploitation will be inconceivable. Global coloniality is part of the world-system that emerged in the 16th century and this world-system has produced the nation state and world order that have been dominated by the West for many centuries. We will also discuss the nation-state and the world order in this theme. As indicated earlier, the world-system approach proposed by Wallerstein has been subject to intensive criticism, especially from proponents of the decolonial paradigm, simply for its Eurocentric representation. Indeed, Wallerstein was looking at the modern world-system critically, but from the perspective and the experience of the West. In other words, he was providing a Eurocentric critique of modernity. In this way, his analysis was blind to what is termed coloniality (Quijano 2007). In fact, he never conceived of coloniality as a fundamental problem. Coloniality is best described by Maldonaldo-Torres (2007:243), as the long-standing patterns of power that originate from colonialism. These power patterns continue to exist in modern day world and they are exercised even in the absence of the colonial administration. Coloniality is not colonialism, it outlives colonialism. Analysing the world-system through the coloniality/decolonial perspective, allows one to critique the system through looking at a broader perspective, the perspective that derives from the worldview of the marginalised or people from the receiving ends, that is a perspective from the South. In this regard, Grosfoguel (2011:10) has IPC2602/13  provided a valuable insight in his critique of the world-system by using coloniality/ decolonial perspective. He differed dramatically with Wallerstein’s argument that the world-system is a capitalist economy. For him, this is a narrow and Eurocentric perspective based on Marxist’s economic determinism in which human society is analysed in terms of a base-superstructure relationship. On the contrary, Grosfoguel (2011:10) argues that the modern world-system comprises interrelated hierarchies that were initiated by colonial conquest since the 16th century and were subsequently exported to the rest of the world through the expansion of European civilisation after 1492. Instead of focusing on capitalism as a sole factor in the constitution of this system, Grosfoguel posits that the world-system is an “entangled package” comprising racialised, capitalist, imperialist, patriarchal, gendered, colonialist, Christian-centric, epistemic, inter-state system and Eurocentric power hierarchies and it affects all dimensions of social existence (Grosfoguel 2007:21). In his view, racial hierarchy is instrumental in structuring all the multiple hierarchies in the world-system and therefore it has become an organising principle. While Wallerstein’s model of analysis has its own flaws, it has nevertheless, been valuable and influential in providing a foundation for most scholars to critique the system by using different perspectives. This also applies to the proponents of the decolonial perspective who have adopted the world-system (although moderate one) as unit of analysis. Self-assessment activity 1.1 (a) Critically discuss the origins and the nature of the modern world-system. (b) Define the concept of the modern-world system and explain how power plays out within the system. (c) What do you understand by the concept of coloniality and how it differs from colonialism? (d) Discuss the position of the global South within the modern world system with specific reference to Africa. (e) Critically discuss the modern world-system by using a decolonial approach. (f) Compare and contrast Wallerstein and Grosfoguel’s analysis/critique of the modern world system. 1.2 THE EMERGENCE OF THE MODERN NATION-STATE The modern nation-state is part of the world-system of capitalism. The modern state exists within a larger cycle of states, which is commonly known as the inter-state system. The modern state as it is known today is said to be a product of the long thirty years of inter-state wars that resulted in the signing of the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648. The Westphalian Treaty was part of a long process that saw European powers come together and agreed to respect the territorial sovereignty of each other. They also established “consensual rules of mutual acknowledgement and recognition” of established borders (Grovogui 2002:324). Because of these processes and with the institutionalisation of the inter-state system through the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, the modern nation-state came into being. It also became synonymous with territorial sovereignty. At the same time, the political authority became exclusively the competence of the sovereign ruler within defined borders. In subsequent centuries, Europe witnessed several changes as the state continues to evolve towards the modern 4  state. The states became homogenous entities, reflecting uniformity in terms of the nation; hence the nation-state. It is interesting to note that in the context of Africa, the nation-state is a foreign concept and does not exist for various reasons. Firstly, the historical process of state formation in Africa has followed a different trajectory than the one followed by its European counterpart. Secondly, the formation of the state in Africa is a recent process, it was rather imposed through the process of colonialism. To be more specific, during the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885 the European colonial powers embarked on the scramble for Africa. The borders were arbitrarily drawn and defined for the convenience of the European colonisers to protect their own economic interests. It is against this background that the African state has never enjoyed stability in the true sense. For many years, the African state was embroiled in relentless political violence and intra-state wars. Moreover, the African state was marginalised economically from the modern world-system upon decolonisation and this has exacerbated its problems. Grovogui (2002:325) ascribes this incongruence between Western and African state to what he terms the “regime of sovereignty” imposed by European powers to Africa. He described African sovereignty as negative sovereignty that has rendered the state in Africa dysfunctional. Self-assessment activity 1.2 (1) Critically discuss the different processes of state formation in Europe and in Africa. (2) What is the difference between ‘territorial sovereignty’ and the ‘regime of sovereignty’? (3) Explain the concept of negative sovereignty as developed by Grovogui. 1.3 THE WORLD ORDER Closely associated with the concept of the world-system is the concept of the world order and the two concepts are often used interchangeably. However, the world-system is different from the world order in that the world order changes from time to time, but the world-system is static. For example, since the emergence of the interstate- system until today, the world order has been alternating between the different imperial powers such as Spain, Portugal, Holland, France, England and currently the USA (Mignolo 2011:xviii), while the world-system has remained a capitalist economy (Wallerstein 2004) or entangled package (Grosfoguel 2007). In other words, the world order is a political construct that emerged after the Peace of Westphalia was signed in 1648 by European states (Nimako 2011:5) and it operates and transform within the world system. In Nimako’s view (2011:22), the world order that emerged since the 17th century can be categorised into Westphalian sovereignty and the United Nations sovereignty. He argues that the world order represented by Westphalian sovereignty gave rise to the colonisation of Africans and placed Africa at the periphery of the world-system and the one represented by the United Nations sovereignty gave rise to the decolonisation of Africa and transformed Africans to subjects of neo-colonial states (2011:22). The world order is also managed and maintained by a strong hegemony who attempts to create stability within the world system. To maintain hegemony, the hegemonic power IPC2602/15  must transform itself into a political and military power (Wallerstein 2004:58). At a point when the superiority of a hegemon is challenged by an emerging hegemon, the use of military force is likely a possibility. The hegemon’s use of military power is often viewed as a sign of weakness and this undermines its hegemony politically and economically. A good example is the USA’s threat or use of military force over emerging nuclear power states, such as Iraq, Libya and recently North Korea. The way in which the world order emerged, operated and operates help us to understand the status and position of regions and states within the world-system (Nimako 2011:3). Currently, Africa is part of the world order within the modern world-system that is defined and shaped by the global coloniality and this finds expression through the coloniality of power that continues to maintain the asymmetrical relationship between the global North and the global South. From the above argument, it is evident that the world order has been steadily changing from one hegemony to the other, but while this is so, it has not meaningfully changed the position of Africa within the world system. Foreign policy therefore takes place within the context of the world-system comprising the nation-states within a defined world order Self-assessment activity 1.3 (a) Discuss the difference between the world system and the world order. (b) Discuss the world order represented by the Westphalian sovereignty and the United Nations sovereignty. (c) Define the concept of hegemony and how it is employed within the context of the world order. (d) Discuss the current world order under the hegemony of the United States of America. 6