Critical Perspectives on Global Governance

University of Helsinki, Friday 7 May 2010, 10:00-17:00
Venue: Small Assembly Hall, Fabianinkatu 33, University of Helsinki

There will be a landmark one-day event, open to the public, in Helsinki organized in conjunction with my Visting Chair at the Collegium for Advanced Studies. It is devoted to critical reflections on the current global crises, the question of political leadership and the nature and future of global governance. The event includes some of the world’s leading critical thinkers on global political economy, law and international relations. They will address the challenges of achieving sustainable and democratic global governance in the 21st century.

For full details please follow this link: http://www.helsinki.fi/collegium/events/critical_perspectives.htm

In aphabetical order, the participants are:

ISABELLA BAKKER, Professor of Political Economy and former Chair of Political Science at York University, Toronto.

UPENDRA BAXI, Emeritus Professor of Law in Development, University of Warwick. He was previously Professor of Law, University of Delhi (1973-1996) and was its Vice Chancellor (1990-1994).

SOLOMON (SOLLY) BENATAR, Emeritus Professor of Medicine, University of Cape Town and Professor, Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto.

CLAIRE CUTLER, Professor of International Relations and International Law in the Political Science Department at the University of Victoria, Canada.

HILAL ELVER, Visiting Professor in Global and International Studies at the University of California Santa Barbara.

RICHARD FALK, Albert G. Milbank Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University and Visiting Distinguished Professor in Global and International Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

ADAM HARMES, Associate Professor in Political Science at the University of Western Ontario, Canada.

MUSTAPHA KAMAL PASHA, Professor and Chair of the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Aberdeen, UK.

NICOLA SHORT, Associate Professor of Political Science at York University, Toronto.

TEIVO TEIVAINEN, Professor of World Politics at the University of Helsinki as well as Director of the Program on Democracy and Global Transformation at the San Marcos University in Lima, Peru.

THEMES OF THE DISCUSSIONS

Participants will develop a dual perspective on the nature, and future of global leadership and governance.

First, they will consider global governance as the practices associated with enduring forms of international rule beyond the purview of individual nations – that is as it has been normally understood in politics and diplomacy since ancient times. Thus global governance involves consideration of the main mechanisms that have emerged to stabilize, modify and legitimate the global status quo, such as the G8 or the G20. Thus global governance is mainly evaluated from the perspective of the most powerful states and economic interests. In this sense global governance today involves devising durable methods, mechanisms, and institutions – including those of peace and war – to help sustain an international order that is premised on the primacy of capitalism and the world market as the key governing forces of world politics.

Second, participants will also develop critical perspectives on global governance – involving not only a demystification of the power relations between leaders and led, but also assessment of the potential for changes in those relations. Participants will analyze global governance not just from the vantage point of dominant power but from the perspectives of subaltern forces. Participants will question the necessity, desirability and sustainability of existing institutional arrangements in light of global economic, social and ecological crises and challenges.

Thus a central question to give political focus to our considerations is encapsulated in this quotation:

"In the formation of leaders, one premise is fundamental: is it the intention that there should always be rulers and ruled, or is the objective to create the conditions in which this division ... of the human race ... is no longer necessary?" (Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1971).

The speakers in Helsinki will therefore engage with contested political issues such as: the legitimacy of global institutions; social justice, taxation and redistribution; privatized security governance; gender, race and equitable development; environmental issues and climate change; global health; the rights of subordinated peoples in an era of globalization: Islamic conceptions of justice and leadership; corporate social responsibility and public-private partnerships; and various mechanisms of regulation in finance, the workplace and in trade and investment.

Enlightenment and Engagement in "Dark Times": Notes on the Contribution of Richard A. Falk

The following are my remarks delivered at the Panel in Honour of Richard Falk in New Orleans on 18 February 2010 at the International Studies Association's 51st Annual Convention. The remarks review the theoretical and practical contributions of one of the world's leading scholars of international studies and international law, and reflect on Falk's conception of the role of the intellectual in American and global political life.

The full text (102KB PDF) can be downloaded here

Photographs of the event can be found at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ipeguy/sets/72157623464282694/

The Global Organic Crisis: Paradoxes, Dangers and Opportunities

The capitalist world has experienced its deepest economic meltdown since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Paradoxically, whereas the earlier period saw the breakdown of liberal capitalism, the rise of fascism and Nazism, and the Soviet alternative to liberal capitalism (the Soviet Union), today neo-liberalism and capitalist globalization still remain powerful, and apparently supreme, on the stage of world history. Despite the financial implosion on Wall Street and its "near-death experience" for financial capitalism and the G8’s somnambulant political leaders, few coherent left alternative programs have commanded sufficient political organization or popular support to mount a serious challenge or to pose credible alternatives.

So what arguments can progressive political forces use to begin to mobilize transformative resistance in ways that can give credibility to new forms of politics and society? We start with the simple observation that appearances can be deceptive and indeed this is to be expected in the present politically paradoxical global conjuncture. This conjuncture corresponds, in part, the Chinese character for crisis, a character that combines moments of danger and opportunity. It is linked to the fact that the current global political situation involves far more than a crisis of capitalist accumulation since it is pregnant with the following paradox: "The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear."

The full version of this article has been published online by Monthly Review. To access the full text, click here.

International Relations: a radical view

On May Day 2009, capitalism is in crisis. For academic readers interested in theoretical approaches to International Relations and world capitalism, here is a copy of the English version of an entry I wrote for the Critical Dictionary of Marxism which was published in 2004. It outlines various approaches to International Relations and contrasts them with critical approaches including those of Marx and Engels and what has come to be known as the Neo-Gramscian perspective.

The PDF can be downloaded here.