Power, Politics and Global Civil Society

747

Power Politics and Global CivilSociety

Ronnie D Lipschutz

Although there remains considerable dispute about Global Civil Society(GCS) ndash whom or what it includes whether it is international or trulyglobal and how it is constituted ndash there is no doubt that the agents actorsorganisations and institutions of transnational social and economicexchange and action exist But what is GCS Is it a space or locus ofsovereign agents or merely a structural effect Does it wield compulsorypower or it is a mere epiphenomenon a reflection of the state system IsGCS an institutional phenomenon the result of the exercise of power byother actors or is it a productive phenomenon constituted by the socialroles and relations growing out of contemporary states and markets Inthis article I adopt a neo-Hegelian approach and propose a dialecticalrelationship between developing modes of global political rule and themarkets that it shapes and governs I problematise GCS as a central andvital element in an expanding global neo-liberal regime ofgovernmentality which is constituted out of the social relations within thatregime and which to a large degree serves to legitimise that regime

ndashndashndashndashndashndashndashndashndashndashndashndashndashndashndashndashndashndashndashndashndashndashndashndash

My objective in this article is not to argue for the existence of Global CivilSociety (GCS) but rather to ask what it is and what has produced it IsGCS a space or locus of sovereign agents or merely a structural effectDoes it wield direct power over states or it is a mere epiphenomenon areflection of the state system Is GCS an institutional phenomenon ndash theresult of the exercise of power by other agents and actors acting withinand through institutions ndash or is it a product of that power through whichsociety is produced constituted by the social roles and relations growingout of contemporary states and markets In surveying the growingliterature on GCS one can find advocates of each of these as well asother perspectives This is not wholly surprising since there is hardly aconsensus to be found about the origins of domestic civil societies ortheir relationship to state and market1

____________________

This article is drawn from my forthcoming book (with James K Rowe)Globalization Governmentality and Global Politics Regulation for the Rest of Us(New York Routledge 2005)

1 See for example Jean Cohen and Andrew Arato Civil Society and Political

copy Millennium Journal of International Studies 2005 ISSN 0305-8298 Vol33 No3 pp 747-769

748

Millennium

In this article I propose that GCS is best understood in terms of adialectical relationship between developing modes of public globalgovernance and a global market system that is only weakly regulated bystates and international institutions2 In particular I problematise muchof GCS as a central and vital element in an expanding global neo-liberalregime GCS is constituted out of social relations within that regime andwith and through the lsquocapillaries of productive powerrsquo3 helps tolegitimise reproduce and sometimes change that regime In this respectGCS is generated by agents who seek to resist or moderate the expansionof the market into various realms of social life but who may act in waysthat unwittingly perhaps support the logics of the market and itsfurther expansion Paradoxically perhaps the same relations of powerthat give rise to this form of social action also produce movements thatpursue major structural change in the global political economy in a questto alter the social ethics that enable or constrain individual and corporateautonomy within politics and markets

I argue in other words that GCS manifests in two forms a moral andan ethical or alternatively through markets and politics In this I draw onHegelrsquos distinction between moral and ethical behaviour the formerhaving to do with individual conscience the latter with the foundations ofpolitical community (in his terms the State)4 There is no global State ofcourse but to a growing degree the global political economy constitutes asingular transnational capitalist social formation that resembles more andmore a state-in-formation Inasmuch as its regulatory elements largelyreflect the post-World War II preferences and practices of an increasingly-imperial United States this state-in-formation remains quiteunderdeveloped by comparison with its market elements In light of thegrowing global role of US military and market discipline in keeping orderwe might even call it an emerging lsquowatchmanrsquo state5 To put the pointanother way following Empire6 this entity is bound together through an

____________________

Theory (Cambridge MA MIT Press 1992) and Alejandro Colas InternationalCivil Society (Cambridge Polity 2002)

2 The former is discussed in Anna Holzscheiter lsquoDiscourse as Capabilityrsquo inthis issue

3 Michel Foucault lsquoGovernmentalityrsquo in The Essential Foucault eds PaulRabinow and Nikolas Rose (New York The New Press 2004) 229-45

4 Colas International Civil Society and GWF Hegel Philosophy of Right TMKnox trans (Oxford Clarendon Press 1942) see also [httpmarxistsanueduauref-erencearchivehegel] (10501)

5 Stephen R Gill lsquoThe Global Panopticon The Neoliberal State EconomicLife and Democratic Surveillancersquo Alternatives 2 no 1 (1995) 1-50 Power andResistance in the New World Order (Houndsmill Basingstoke Palgrave Macmillan2003) ch 7

6 Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri Empire (Cambridge MA Harvard

749

Power Politics and Global Civil Society

____________________

University Press 2000)7 Ronnie D Lipschutz rsquoThe Clash of Governmentalities The Fall of the UN

Republic and Americarsquos Reach for Imperiumrsquo Contemporary Security Policy 23no 2 (2002) 214-31

8 I use the economic term lsquoexternalityrsquo for both analytical and ironic reasonsFirst when lsquonormalrsquo production and economic exchange generate social coststhat are not absorbed by the beneficiaries of those activities a classicalexternality results Second many economists are quick to point out that suchsocial costs are more appropriately subsumed under the category of comparativeadvantage and market equilibrium Consequently the low wages received byworkers in lsquoThird Worldrsquo factories represent the normal functioning ofinternational supply and demand rather than a subsidy ndash or positive externalityndash to lsquoFirst Worldrsquo consumers See Lipschutz Globalization Governmentality ch 2

integrated global network of accumulation and exchange but thegovernmentality through which it is managed emanates from the centerand is struggling to gain full domination through military means7 Thisemerging global unit is moreover a single capitalist formation in which newproperty rights and rules of the political economy are being createdthrough a system of national and international institutions dominated bythe American executive and legislative branches and through whichlsquoimperialrsquo law comes to trump international law

Within this arrangement GCS is generated through productivepower ndash in a sense it is willed into existence ndash as particular agents incommand of certain discursive resources seek to impose limits on theautonomy of market-based actors in the face of a very weak globalethical and normative regulatory structure As explained later in thisarticle most of these agents pursue their goals through institutions ndashthat is through the rules and authority of national and transnationalagencies and association ndash and attempt to induce change in the moralbehaviour of state- and market-based actors Some agents ndash especiallythose commonly described as lsquosocial movementsrsquo ndash work throughproductive power in an effort to transform the ethical bases of politicalaction and thereby to reconstruct the structural principles governingboth domestic and global political economy

The empirical grounding for the arguments presented here is foundfirst in the welfare activities of many GCS organisations Here I discussrecent activities by private relief organisations following the IndianOcean tsunami as well as social struggles to regulate the negative effectsndash what I call lsquoexternalitiesrsquo8 ndash of global capitalist accumulation In contrastto these welfare activities those who are active in the more inchoatelsquoglobal justice movementrsquo appear to be intent on changing the structuralframework of political action through the state and its domestic andtransnational agencies than in reforming capitalism or making it

750

Millennium

____________________

9 At the extreme some seek to abolish or destroy capitalism See for exampleNotes from Nowhere WE ARE EVERYWHERE The Irresistible Rise of Global Anti-capitalism (London Verso 2003)

10 Warren Magnusson and Karena Shaw eds A Political Space ndash Reading theGlobal Through Clayoquot Sound (Minneapolis University of Minnesota Press2003)

11 Robert Dahl lsquoThe Concept of Powerrsquo Behavioural Science 2 (1957) 201-1812 Peter Bachrach and Morton S Baratz lsquoThe Two Faces of Powerrsquo American

Political Science Review 56 (1962) 947-952

lsquofriendlierrsquo9 In this sense the global jihadi movement of which Al Qaedais the most prominent element must also be understood as an ethically-oriented agent even if its ethics are not to our liking This articlehowever draws specifically on recent work on social movement activismin the Clayoquot Sound of British Columbia for its empirical data10

I begin by offering a typology of four types of power Two of themare of the conventional instrumental type two are structural I thenturn to a discussion of what global civil society is why it has emergedin its present form over the past few decades and the role of GCS in thereproduction of liberalism with its peculiar public-private divide Inthe third part of the article I examine the problem of lsquopolitics viamarketsrsquo which involves the use of market-based tools and techniquesto achieve political objectives This I argue represents the bulk ofGCSrsquos social activism and does little to alter the structure of eithernational or global political economies I then examine how lsquoproductiversquopower can operate to alter the structural context of politics and createzones of sovereignty I conclude the article with a few thoughts on thedifficulty of practising politics under conditions of neo-liberalglobalisation To understand GCS and its politics in short requires usto consider how lsquoglobalrsquo actors are produced in a realm characterised bydiffuse forms of power and why GCS must be recognised as a productof neo-liberal globalisation rather than something distinct from ornecessarily in opposition to it

Power Reconsidered

As a general rule scholars of political science have focused on twoforms of power direct and institutional In general political theorydirect power is seen as the ability of A to make B do something that Bdoes not want to do in International Relations (IR) direct power isgenerally the focus of realism11 Institutional power by contrast residesin the capacity and authority of established collective groups (agenciesorganisations etc) to manage and manipulate situations in theirinterest (lsquoagenda-settingrsquo power or mobilisation bias12) This is the focus

751


____________________

13 Stephen D Krasner International Regime (Ithaca NY Cornell UniversityPress 1983) 2

14 Harold D Laswell Politics Who Gets What When How (New York P Smith1936)

15 Michel Foucault lsquoTruth and Powerrsquo in The Essential Foucault 300-18 andlsquoGovernmentalityrsquo and Michael Barnett and Raymond Duvall eds Power inGlobal Governance (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 2005) ch 1

16 Foucault lsquoTruth and Powerrsquo 307 lsquoGovernmentalityrsquo

of neo-liberal regime theory in IR and the new institutionalism incomparative politics both of which focus on the lsquoprinciples normsrules and decision-making proceduresrsquo that lead to convergence ofactor expectations and constraints on actor autonomy13 Both of theseforms of power are generally directed toward distributive matters lsquowhogets what when and howrsquo in Harold Lasswellrsquos classical formation14

These do not however exhaust the types of power important inpolitics

Drawing on Foucault as well as recent work by Barnett andDuvall we can discern and define two other forms of power which arenot distributive involving the division of resources (the famous liberallsquopiersquo) but rather constitutive having to do with the structures andorganisation of society state and market15 These are structural andproductive power lsquoStructuralrsquo power resides in the sovereignrsquosauthority to establish and alter the regulatory conditions through whichinstitutions are created and by which they are able to function ndash this ispart of its sovereign authority The state for example is in a position tospecify what constitutes a market to formulate the regulationsgoverning markets and to determine the circumstances under whichthey apply The lsquosovereignrsquo is able to determine the rules that constitutea particular game and how the agents that play it can score pointslsquoProductiversquo power by contrast resides in political subjects and if weaccept Foucaultrsquos arguments about the lsquocapillaries of powerrsquo16 it alsoconstitutes them as the seemingly-autonomous individuals of modernliberalism To put this another way our subjectivity is generatedthrough the social and structural conditions ndash the cultural and materialrelations ndash that constitute individuals and collective identities Suchpower is exercised ndash if it can be said to be exercised at all ndash throughdiscursive means at the level of language cognition socialconstruction and so on

The table below offers a typology of these four forms of poweralong two axes the type of authority (either constitutive ordistributive) and the type of agent (sovereign or social) Note that noneof these categories says anything about the specific nature of the agent

752

Millennium

____________________

17 Lipschutz Globalization Governmentality ch 318 Adapted from Barnett and Duvall Power ch 119 Admittedly the extent of the contemporary statersquos lsquosovereignrsquo authority in

both regards is fiercely debated As these are ideal categories the issue ofsovereignty can be put aside for the moment

imbricated within a particular form power ndash it can be an individual acorporation a group or a state What matters here is the arena in whichpower is exercised (the household the group the company or society)and the purpose of power (constitutive or distributive)17 lsquoSocialsubjectsrsquo for the most part engage in distributive point-scoringalthough they may fight over the interpretation or legality of aparticular move or play But by drawing on productive power throughcollective political action social subjects can also produce change in theforms and exercise of structural power by the sovereign How thesedifferent forms of power are exercised can be seen in the respectiveexamples concerned with lsquorights to pollutersquo given in the table

In terms of the political economy which I define here as theorganisation of relations between production and reproduction thestate (notionally) possesses the sovereign authority to structure sociallife and make constitutional decisions that organise and legitimateinstitutions and their productive and reproductive remits19 In theoryonly the state is permitted to create or change those structures ndash that isonly the state possesses the sovereign authority to determine

Table 1 Categories of power18

Sovereign agency Social agency

Authority to define decree decide (lsquorules of thegamersquo)

Structural power The lsquosovereignrsquo can structure conditions through rules governing political economy(eg creation of property rightsto pollute)

Productive power Social subjectscan affect ethical basis of actionthrough language habitus or struc-turation (eg generating a broadethical sense that there should be nolsquoright to pollutersquo)

Authority to divide distribute expropriate (lsquoscoring pointsrsquo)

Direct power lsquoSovereignrsquo canuse force coercion manipulationor influence to protect or pursueits interests (eg imposing finesand punishments on polluters inorder to cause them to cease)

Institutional power Social subjectscan engage in agenda-setting law-making or role-setting to distributeresources to favoured interests (egtrading in pollution rights in order toreduce it as opposed to requiringreductions)

753


____________________

20 Carl Schmitt Political Theology ndash Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereigntytrans George Schwab (Cambridge MA MIT Press 1985) 5

21 In other words the state is not autonomous but reflects a balance of socialforces within the polity See Sandra Halperin War and Social Change in ModernEurope ndash The Great Transformation Revisited (Cambridge Cambridge UniversityPress 2004)

22 Halperin War and Change ch 1

lsquoexceptionsrsquo in Carl Schmittrsquos words20 In practice of course the state isthe site of struggles among all manner of social forces some of whomgain leverage or control over various parts of the state and influence orchange these structures21 Under liberalism institutions are the arenasin which lsquogamesrsquo of distributive production and reproduction areplayed Agents are constituted through the particular contractualrelationships that define their assigned role which may involveoverseeing the rules and play (eg referees) or playing the game (egworkers and staff) In other words the organisation of social life isstructured by the state and institutions and practices are reproduced byrepeated play according to distributive rules and the playersrsquo identitiesarise in the playing of the game The state has the authority to ensurethat the rules of subordinate institutions are obeyed and to punish thosewho violate those rules But inasmuch as the state is itself made up ofinstitutions that are themselves open to influence by other institutionsand social forces the exercise of structural authority in a liberal systemis never an easy or straightforward proposition Social struggle amongcontending interests and forces is the order of the day

lsquoProductiversquo power is thus more difficult to identify and locate inthis liberal scheme but it is that power rooted in the language andpractices that construct and organise social life individual andcollective identities and membership in a political community That isproductive power is that which is exercised through both collectivediscourse and action by groups engaged in social struggles anddetermined to affect both institutions and structures22 This could meanchanging the distributional rules of social institutions through lobbyinglegislatures or campaigning to influence public opinion But it couldalso involve attempts to change the constitutive structures that frameand shape the environments within which institutions operate alteringa collectively-held sense of what is lsquorightrsquo and appropriate and using avariety of tactics that ultimately result in state action and discipline

What is this lsquoCivil Societyrsquo

My argument here is that global civil society is a foundational elementof an emergent globalised neo-liberal system organised aroundindividualism private property and exchange The United States has

754

Millennium

____________________

23 Karl Polanyi The Great Transformation 2nd ed (Boston Beacon Press 2001)and Amy Dru Stanley From Bondage to ContractmdashWage Labor Marriage and theMarket in the Age of Slave Emancipation (Cambridge Cambridge University Press1998)

24 Polanyi Great Transformation see also Anna Agathangelou The GlobalPolitical Economy of Sex (New York Palgrave Macmillan 2004)

25 Halperin War and Change and Reinhart Koselleck Critique and Crisis ndashEnlightenment and the Parthogenesis of Modern Society (Cambridge MA MIT Press1988)

26 This is an admittedly very brief summary of a much more complex and

taken on the dominant role in structuring this political economy underwhich capitalism can maximise its global accumulation possibilitiesWhile a great deal of contemporary research on the activities of GCSfocus on its human rights advocacy against an overweening state wemust not ignore the comparably predatory nature of an unregulatedmarket in which the agents of capital are only too eager to commodifythe body and human labour in search of profits23 Civil society becomesan arena of social struggle over this tendency as well as certainfractions of the bourgeoisie seek to avoid impoverishment by marketforces via action through both state and market24 What we see herehowever is a dialectic rather than causality while civil society cannotexist absent a liberal system a liberal system also cannot exist if civilsociety is absent They are mutually constitutive having come intoexistence through an historical materialist process that today continuesto generate states markets and civil societies

It is possible through historical analysis to see how strugglesbetween bourgeois social forces and the absolutist state during theeighteenth century gave rise to a lsquoliberalrsquo formation composed ofrepresentative state deregulated market and what we now call civilsociety25 Under the principle of lsquodivine rightrsquo the sovereign possessedthe authority to expropriate at will and whim both possessions andbodies of the landlords and the urban bourgeoisie Quiteunderstandably neither group favored this principle since it openedthem and their property to arbitrary expropriation But unable orunwilling to invoke such divine authority themselves for the protectionof property and person these groups began to call on the Enlightenmentconcept of Natural Law as an alternative Individualism representationhuman rights and naturalisation of the market all emerged from thisdoctrine through the exercise of constitutive power In different formsand with different trajectories this pattern emerged in England Francethe United States and other liberal societies More recently a similarprocess has taken place in Eastern Europe Latin America and otherparts of the world too even in decidedly non-liberal societies26

755


____________________

contested project but it offers the essential elements for our purposes SeeHalperin War and Change and Koselleck Critique and Crisis

27 Adam Ferguson An Essay on the History of Civil Society ed Fania Oz-Salzberger (New York Cambridge University Press 1995) Adam Smith TheWealth of Nations ed Andrew Skinner (Harmondsworth UK Penguin EnglishLibrary 1982) Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels The German Ideology ed C JArthur (New York International Publishers 1970)

28 Alexis de Tocqueville Democracy in America trans George Lawrence edsJP Mayer and Max Lerner (New York Harper and Row 1966)

29 Hegel Philosophy of Right and Antonio Gramsci lsquoState and Civil Societyrsquoin Selections from the Prison Notebooks trans and eds Quintin Hoare and GeoffreyN Smith (New York International Publishers 1971) See also Walter LAdamson lsquoGramsci and the Politics of Civil Societyrsquo Praxis International 7(Winter 1987-88) 320-29 Hegemony and Revolution (Berkeley University ofCalifornia Press 1980) and Colas International Civil Society

There are two rather broad conceptualisations of civil society in traditionand in the literature that illuminate its existence if not its origins Thefirst is associated with the market and the private sphere (FergusonSmith and Marx) the second with politics and the public sphere (HegelGramsci and Alejandro Colas) Although we tend to view Ferguson andSmith as the intellectual antagonists of Marx and Engels all four workedwithin the framework of classical political economy and understoodcivil society in terms of (a) a separation between state (public) andmarket (private) and (b) as a realm of civil association beyond the reachor authority of the state27 As propagated by Alexis de Tocqueville inDemocracy in America28 the liberal version of civil society extant in theUnited States provided both public goods that the state was unable tosupply and private goods and affiliations that could only be obtainedthrough the market and outside the state Marx understood civil societyin much the same terms but regarded it as the cats-paw of a bourgeoisieconcerned to mark a very visible border between state and market inorder to fence off its private property from the grasp of both the poorand the state In Marxrsquos teleology consequently when the proletarianrevolution finally arrived not only would the state wither away but sowould civil society And with them would go private property as wellas the market

The contrasting version of civil societyrsquos origins is associated withphilosophers such as GWF Hegel and Antonio Gramsci and has morerecently been explored by Alejandro Colas29 It is in many ways a lessprosaic and more romantic explanation perhaps in keeping with itsstrong German influences All the same it is not any less correct than theclassical and marxist political economistsrsquo version As Shlomo Avineriexplains Hegel distinguishes between Moralitaumlt which is individualsubjective morality and Sittlichkeit the

____________________

30 Shlomo Avineri Hegelrsquos Theory of the Modern State (London CambridgeUniversity Press 1972) 137

31 Colas International Civil Society 4132 Hegel lsquoRemarkrsquo Philosophy of Right 33 sect25833 Kai Nielsen lsquoReconceptualizing Civil Society for Now Some Somewhat

Gramscian Turningsrsquo in Toward a Global Civil Society ed Michael Walzer (Providence RI Berghahn Books 1995) 58

756

Millennium

wider totality of ethical life Moralitaumlt regulates the relationsamong individuals with one another qua individuals Butsuperimposed on this is the broader ethical life of the community[ie the State ndash RL] of people relating to each other not asindividuals but as members of a wider community30

Expanding on this Colas points out that

for Hegel morality can only become meaningful if it operates withina community if it is given content through the individualrsquosinvolvement in public life [T]he associative elements of civilsociety take on not only a representative but an ethical role byintegrating individuals into the wider community recognizing thevalue of their work and educating them in the virtues of civic life31

Moreover Hegel wrote that

[i]f the state is confused with civil society and if its specific end is laiddown as the security and protection of property and personalfreedom then the interest of the individuals as such becomes theultimate end of their association and it follows that membership ofthe state is something optional But the statersquos relation to theindividual is quite different from this Since the state is mindobjectified it is only as one of its members that the individual himselfhas objectivity genuine individuality and an ethical life32

Hegel seems not to have been much interested in the sources of thisethical life ndash whether it originated in the family civil society orelsewhere ndash only that it must be lived through the political communityBut Hegelrsquos distinction between the private life of the individual and thepublic life of the members of the political community underlines a criticalpoint that constitutive politics must be something apart fromdistributive politics and that civil society plays a central role in markingthis divide I shall return to this point below

Gramsci placed civil society between state and market and outsideof the private sphere of family and friendship In his framework thelsquocorporate-bureaucratic state order with its linked capitalist economicorderrsquo stood as a more-or-less unitary arrangement through which thehegemony of the capitalist class was both exercised and naturalised33

757


____________________

34 Adamson lsquoGramsci and Civil Societyrsquo 32535 Nielsen lsquoReconceptualizing Civil Societyrsquo 45-46 emphasis added36 Colas International Civil Society 4337 Ibid 4738 Lipschutz Globalization Governmentality ch 7 See also David Chandler

lsquoBuilding Global Civil Society ldquoFrom Belowrdquorsquo Millennium Journal ofInternational Studies 33 no 2 (2004) 313-39

Civil society then became lsquoprimarily a sphere of lsquoethical-politicalrsquocontestation among rival social groupsrsquo struggling for ideologicalhegemony34 As Kai Nielson puts it

[i]n locating civil society we must look for those organizations orpractices that are not directly governmental or economic but whichgenerate opinions and goals in accordance with which people whopartake in those practices and are a part of these organizations seeknot only to influence wider opinion and policies within existingstructures and rules but also sometimes to alter the structures and rulesthemselves35

Under these circumstances evidently civil society groups can become athreat to the established order especially if they have political objectivesor lsquoseek to alter the structures and rulesrsquo regulating the politicaleconomy

Colas draws on Gramsci to argue that civil society is the settingfrom which social movements and political activism originate lsquowithinthe context of capitalist modernityrsquo36 In order to reconcile the twoapparently conflicting views offered by the political economists and thepolitical philosophers Colas further asserts that lsquocivil society hashistorically found expression in two predominant forms ndash one linked tothe private sphere of the capitalist market the other to the strugglesagainst the all-encroaching power of the statersquo37 The former ispopulated by those organisations and actors who pursue their self-interest through the mechanisms of the market the latter by those whoseek to challenge and change the ethical structures and politics of thestate These are of course idealised forms operating within thestructures and strictures of economic liberalism in which reproductionnecessitates activities within the market even the most dedicated socialmovement cannot survive on air alone But note activism through themarket presumes that individualsrsquo morality can be relied upon to effectsocial change activism directed toward the state seeks to change theethics binding state society and the market38

Civil society thus plays a dual role in liberalism and itsmaintenance on the one hand contesting distributive policies and

758

Millennium

____________________

39 Justin Rosenberg The Empire of Civil Society (London Verso 1994) EllenMeiksins Wood The Origins of Capitalism (London Verso 2002) and LipschutzGlobalization Governmentality

40 Rosenberg Empire of Civil Society and Wood Origins of Capitalism andDemocracy Against Capitalism ndash Renewing Historical Materialism (CambridgeCambridge University Press 1995)

41 John Locke Two Treatises of Government ed Peter Laslett (CambridgeCambridge University Press 1988)

outcomes through the market on the other struggling to instantiateconstitutionally the social ethics that underpin the specific form of andlimits on both market and state Not all elements of civil society aretherefore political in this lsquoconstitutiversquo or constitutional sense indeedby the conventional definition (one shared by Locke and Marx althoughto differing conclusions) civil society exists in some twilight zonebetween state and markets engaging in activities that constitute andreproduce the fabric of everyday social life By this definition civilsociety is not considered to include the purely-private realm such asthe family or the body even though the norms of civil society as well asthe laws of the state and the practices of the market all thoroughlypermeate and colonise the household family and body

But this definition is almost surely incorrect Where then can welocate civil society In a liberal system civil society is concerned notonly with social reproduction but also with ensuring that neither statenor market take complete control of the bourgeoisie and its lsquolife libertyand propertyrsquo And it is civil society that ultimately is the location ofcontestation over the public-private divide The particular organisationof market societies with public and private constituted as distinctrealms of activity and rule is hardly lsquonaturalrsquo as so often claimed39

From the classical perspective the public-private divide is essential toprotect private property from expropriation by the state or the massesFrom a Marxist perspective however the division between public andprivate and the structural reasons for that distinction are foundationalto capitalism the liberal state and the activities of capital JustinRosenberg and Ellen Meiksins Wood both argue that capitalismrepresents a separation of the political and the economic the public andthe private that is historically unique40 Political authority oversegments of the public realm is hived off into the private sphere whereproperty rights are guaranteed by but insulated from the statersquos directand structural power

From an analytical perspective however the boundary betweenthe public and private is a puzzling one how is it created naturalisedand maintained It is one thing to argue as did Locke that privateproperty is the product of onersquos labour and investment41 It is quite

759


____________________

42 See for example Peter Drahos (with John Braithwaite) InformationFeudalism ndash Who Owns the Knowledge Economy (New York The New Press 2004)and Samuel J Barkin lsquoTime Horizons and Multilateral Enforcement inInternational Cooperationrsquo International Studies Quarterly 48 (2004) 363-82

43 CB Macpherson The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism ndash Hobbes toLocke (Oxford Oxford University Press 1962)

44 Thorstein Veblen lsquoThe Beginnings of Ownershiprsquo American Journal ofSociology 4 no 3 (Nov 1898) 352-65

45 Stanley From Bondage46 Polanyi Great Transformation47 See for example Philip G Cerny lsquoStructuring the Political Arena Public

Goods States and Governance in a Globalizing Worldrsquo in Global Political

another thing however to privatise that which is arguably orcustomarily public goods or commons property42 In particular thelsquoprivatenessrsquo as such of even private property can be contestedProperty is best understood as a relation among people rather than athing possessed by an individual43 That is for individually-heldproperty to exist others in a society must acknowledge either throughtitle or custom that an lsquoownerrsquo holds some essential relationship to thething that is lsquoownedrsquo44 Consequently property exists only by virtue ofthe willingness of society to accept both the relationship betweenowner and owned and the relation between owner and societyProperty is in other words a social construct whose privateness issubject to social intervention (and this is as well central to the conceptof the lsquosocial contractrsquo)45

In putting such a fine point on the line between constitutive anddistributive authority and between public and private spheres theliberal state is subject to social forces engaged in a struggle over themaintenance and reproduction of that boundary To wit the expansionof the private realm can take place only under the authority of the stateand at the expense of a contraction of the lsquopublicrsquo as seen for examplein the privatisation of formerly state-provided services and protectionsThis particular and peculiar organisation of liberal societies with publicand private constituted as distinct realms of authority and activity reliesheavily on civil society to maintain and reproduce the boundary and thedistinction Because of competition between capitals and capitalistorganisations as well as the uneven distributive outcomes of capitalistaccumulation the threat of an unravelling of the social contract anddestabilising of society is always present as Polanyi argued46 Underconditions of globalised neo-liberalism however the mechanismsthrough which such struggles occur are very underdeveloped and thelsquostatersquo is engaged primarily in providing attractive and stable conditionsfor capital and is less interested in addressing externalities or marketfailures47 Under these circumstances it falls to civil society to become

760

Millennium

more politicised and through its own regulatory activities reinforce orreinscribe the separation between the public (politics) and the private(markets)48

To what then does all of this add up Structural power exercisedby and through the state reflects not only the conventional lsquobalance ofsocial forcesrsquo within a society ndash both directly and institutionally asdiscussed above ndash but also a discursive sense of how things should be(lsquocommon sensersquo in Gramscian terms) Growing contradictions in thesocial and material organisation of a society tend to affect thisdiscursive sense which can ultimately inspire the formation of socialorganisations and movements seeking to resolve the contradictionsthrough social and class strugglesHowever for the most part civilsociety organisations (ie non-governmental organisations) focus oninstitutions and the practices associated with them trying to exertdirect influence (eg through consumer boycotts of offendingcompanies) to induce capital to protect human rights But theseparticular struggles serve only to reform the practices of concern Thatis they do not articulate or instantiate those ethical limits thatmovements demand society expects and states have agreed to (eglabour and other rights environmental protection etc) It is onlythrough changes in the structural rules that do articulate such limits thatthese struggles and demands can be transformed into social ethics towhich agents must adhere and which structurally constrain themThus much of what is regarded as political activity by global civilsociety is the exercise of institutional power taking place within thecontext of the market the so-called private realm

Politics via Markets

Keeping in mind the bifurcation of global civil society into distributiveand constitutive fractions the relative lack of constitutional politicalmechanisms in the emerging arrangements of global rule leavesdistributive politics through markets as the most-accessible mode ofaction open to social activists The process and consequences that resultcan be seen in two examples I present here first the upsurge in NGOactivities and solicitations in the wake of the tsunami in the IndianOcean on 26 December 2004 and second lsquoCorporate SocialResponsibilityrsquo (CSR) projects in which NGOs and companies compete

____________________

Economy ndash Contemporary Theories ed Ronen Palen (London Routledge 2001)48 For a discussion of the growing role of business in global politics see Doris

Fuchs lsquoCommanding Heights The Strength and Fragility of Business Power inGlobal Politicsrsquo in this issue See also David L Levy and Peter J Newell eds TheBusiness of Global Environmental Governance (Cambridge MA MIT Press 2005)

761


to protect workersrsquo labour rights Although in the first case the privateprovision of donations and relief services to the victims of the disasterhave been dwarfed by public commitments the global response to thetsunami shows how lsquointernational emergenciesrsquo have become one of themainstays of financial support for aid organisations In the secondinstance CSR campaigns seek to influence producer and consumerbehaviour as a means of pressuring corporations to do well by doinggood In both instances the statersquos responsibility to treat people in anethical fashion as a public good has been displaced by private provisionof services and protection

In the ten countries hit by the tsunami as many as 250000 peopledied while millions were made homeless in desperate need of foodwater and medical care For the most part the affected states had onlyvery limited capacity to respond to the disaster lacking the personnelresources and equipment needed to provide both short- and medium-term relief We need not explore here the reasons for this chronic lacunain underdeveloped states ndash it is worth noting that only India refused atfirst to accept outside assistance ndash except to point out that to a growingdegree an extensive network of private international relief and aidagencies have become mainstays of global responses to such lsquocomplexemergenciesrsquo49 Within days of the tsunami growing numbers of groupsaround the world were soliciting private donations from concernedindividuals while others were consulting and contracting with donorand recipient governments to provide both immediate and longer-termrelief services Radio and television stations schools corporations andothers were holding fund-raising campaigns as well with the intentionof supporting international aid groups

Undoubtedly these NGOs which are indisputably part of globalcivil society do serve important international and institutionalfunctions providing a range of goods that states are either unable orunwilling to offer Yet it is also the case that many of them rely on statepermission and often protection to enter a disaster zone and workthere While many non-profit international relief organisations relyheavily on volunteers willing to work in these disaster zones theynonetheless are lsquobusinessesrsquo that require a steady income in order tocontinue their operations Staffs must be paid offices maintainedtravel and transport costs paid They are part and parcel of the globalcapitalist economy and to generate revenues rely on the full panoply

____________________

49 Michael Dillon and Julian Reid lsquoGlobal Governance Liberal Peace andComplex Emergenciesrsquo Alternatives 25 no 1 (2000) 117-43 Amitai Etzioni lsquoTheCapabilities and Limits of Global Civil Societyrsquo Millennium 33 no 2 (2004) 341-53 and William Powers Blue Clay People ndash Seasons on Africarsquos Fragile Edge (NewYork Bloomsbury 2005)

762

Millennium

of techniques used by corporations seeking to increase profits Whetherdonors are called members associates customers or consumers thegoal is to grow and reproduce the organisation Thus relief activitiesare not only charitable they are also fundamental to the production ofthese organisations

This is not to deny that non-governmental aid organisations playan important role in disaster relief and assistance Without them manymillions of people would go without basic needs and essential servicesIn this respect they may indeed be part of and integral to what John GRuggie calls lsquoa fundamental reconstitution of the global public domainrsquoin which states NGOs and corporations lsquoseek to take advantage of thescope of the transnational private sector in the attempt to create globalpublic valuersquo50 Nonetheless these NGOs are for the most partdedicated to complementing the distribution of such social services asare available (or not) and not working to restructure the politicaleconomy that leaves people impoverished and at risk in the first place51

In that respect they are expanding the realm of private action at theexpense of the public

The nature of politics via markets can be seen more clearly in CSRcampaigns The refusal of many states to regulate the activities ofcapital and force it to internalise or eliminate various social costs hasled to the generation of a vast number of national and transnationalcampaigns that utilise lobbying public pressure influence andexpertise to impose regulation on capital52 The majority of thesecampaigns seek regulation through markets trying to convinceindividuals to engage in lsquosocially conscious consumptionrsquo andbusinesses to adopt lsquocorporate social responsibilityrsquo53 In other words

____________________

50 John G Ruggie lsquoReconstituting the Global Public Domain ndash Issues Actorsand Practicesrsquo European Journal of International Relations 10 no 4 (2004) 499-531500 517-18

51 Although no one could have foreseen this particular tsunami the vastmajority of the people who perished or were left homeless were already quiteimpoverished Few organisations and agencies paid any attention to theseconditions during the decades prior to the disaster

52 See for example Rebecca DeWinter lsquoThe Anti-Sweatshop MovementConstructing Corporate Moral Agency in the Global Apparel Industryrsquo Ethicsand International Affairs 15 no 2 (December 2001) 99-115 Jill EsbenshadeMonitoring Sweatshops Workers Consumers and the Global Apparel Industry(Philadelphia Temple University Press 2004) and Ben Cashore Graeme Auldand Deanna Newsom Governing Through Markets Regulating Forestry throughNon-State Environmental Governance (New Haven Yale University Press 2004 )

53 Lipschutz Globalization Governmentality ch 3 See also Margaret Keck andKathryn Sikkink Activists Beyond Borders ndash Advocacy Networks in InternationalPolitics (Ithaca NY Cornell University Press 1998)

763


through an elucidation of lsquorealrsquo interests within market settings civilsociety organisations seek to use institutional (market-based) power toinfluence consumer and corporate behaviour as a means of improvinglabour conditions in factories reducing environmental effects fromindustry and managing international trade in various kinds of goodssuch as clothing and coffee54 Consumers come to believe their selectivepurchasing can induce fear of loss of market share and profits incorporations who will then internalise social costs in order to protecttheir bottom lines

Many of these campaigns have been successful in terms of theseinstrumental goals but they suffer from serious political limitations55

The most significant of these arises from the ways in which those whoserights are being violated by externalities are treated as objects ratherthan subjects of the campaigns and are thereby deprived of bothstructural and productive power Moreover although individualcorporations may change their behaviour those individual changeshave little or no effect outside of the factory walls Under neo-liberalconditions in other words the only obvious and acceptable means ofregulating markets ndash in effect moving the public-private boundary ndash arebased on the methods of the market that is action articulated throughinstitutional power Consequently what appear to be acts by theautonomous agents of civil society to promote workersrsquo rights becomeinstead programs to privatise these rights within a corporationrsquoscommodity chain

Thus the crucial question what have been the constitutive (asopposed to distributive) effects of such campaigns How have theyaltered either corporations or capitalism in structural terms Forexample are workers in the Nike commodity chain now able to exercisetheir productive power that is to unionise and bargain collectivelyHas the public-private boundary actually been moved Nike offersimproved conditions and higher wages to the workers in itssubcontractorsrsquo factories but workers as well as consumers remainfully-integrated into the regime of consumption that constitutescontemporary globalisation and subjectifies those workers andconsumers Workers are still unable to influence or changeconstitutional arrangements on the factory floor or in society at largeThey remain the object of corporate authority To put this another wayin host societies as a whole there has been little in the way of political

____________________

54 Ans Kolk lsquoCorporate Social Responsibility in the Coffee Sector TheDynamics of MNC Responses and Code Developmentrsquo European ManagementJournal 23 no 2 (April 2005) 228-36

55 For a discussion of successes and failures see Lipschutz GlobalizationGovernmentality ch 45

764

Millennium

reform of stronger state regulation or greater exercise of labourrsquos rightto unionise Capital continues to exercise institutional power which isstructurally authorised by the state At the end of the day the result islittle social change Structures receive a paint job so to speak butunderneath they are still the same

What is lacking in these regulatory campaigns is any sense of thepolitical inherent in the very notion of social policy or a recognition ofthe ways in which power constitutes not only that which activists seek tochange but the activists themselves Decisions must be made by those whoare subjectified about what is necessary for the good and just life that isthey must become autonomous subjects themselves rather than objectsdependent on corporate munificence What we find instead are versionsof what Sheldon Wolin attacks as lsquofugitive democracyrsquo56 that is non-political decision-making or lsquosubpoliticsrsquo through markets and expert-ise57 or what Chantal Mouffe calls the lsquodemocratic paradoxrsquo in whichliberalism seriously constrains the political in the name of order andprofit58

Productive power and political change

Foucaultrsquos conception of governmentality helps to illuminate andclarify the problem of lsquopolitics via marketsrsquo discussed aboveGovernmentality as he put it lsquohas as its purpose not the action ofgovernment itself but the welfare of the population the improvementof its condition the increase of its wealth longevity health etcrsquo59 Indeveloping this concept Foucault proposed in particular that itreplaced sovereignty60 that is the autonomy of the sovereign61 Todaythe residue of such autonomy is to be found in the concept of lsquoconsumersovereigntyrsquo the freedom to choose in the market62 Foucault did notargue that autonomy is impossible but thought that at best it is highlyconstrained within contemporary liberal systems Global socialactivism dependent on producer behaviour and consumer choice for

____________________

56 Sheldon Wolin lsquoFugitive Democracyrsquo in Democracy and Difference ed SeylaBenhabib (Princeton NJ Princeton University Press 1996) 31-45

57 Ulrich Beck What is Globalisation trans Patrick Camiller (CambridgePolity Press 2000 translated by Patrick Camiller)

58 Chantal Mouffe The Democratic Paradox (London Verso 2000)59 Foucault lsquoGovernmentalityrsquo 241 See also Mitchell Dean Governmentality

ndash Power and Rule in Modern Society (London Sage 1991)60 Michel Foucault lsquoGovernmentalityrsquo 236 24461 Schmitt Political Theology62 Milton Friedman and Rose Friedman Free to Choose (New York Harcourt

Brace Jovanovich 1980)

765


political effect thus becomes one more manifestation of this very limitedautonomy But Foucault also argued that power is lsquoproductiversquo and notsomething that can be accumulated for the purposes of compulsion Ashe famously wrote

If power were never anything but repressive if it never did anythingbut say no do you really think one would be brought to obey itWhat makes power hold good what makes it accepted is simply thefact that it doesnrsquot only weigh on us as a force that says no but thatit traverses and produces things it induces pleasure formsknowledge produces discourse It needs to be considered as aproductive network that runs through the whole social body muchmore than as a negative instance whose function is repression63

On the one hand power lsquoproducesrsquo the subject but the subject that isproduced is not always as standardised as the parameters ofgovernmentality might suggest We are not mere social automatons Onthe other hand agency seems to be highly constrained Is there no wayto break out In a discussion of lsquoThe Subject and Powerrsquo Foucaultsuggested that lsquoin order to understand what power relations are aboutperhaps we should investigate the forms of resistance and attemptsmade to dissociate these relationsrsquo64 He described a set of lsquotransversalstruggles that are not limited to one countryrsquo

These are lsquoimmediatersquo struggles for two reasons In such strugglespeople criticize instances of power that are the closest to them thosewhich exercise their action on individuals They look not for thelsquochief enemyrsquo but for the immediate enemy Nor do they expect tofind a solution to their problem at a future date (that is liberationsrevolutions end of class struggle) In comparison with a theoreticalscale of explanations or a revolutionary order that polarizes thehistorian they are anarchistic struggles65

In the course of these struggles people attack those things that ineffect lead to alienation of the individual from others from thecommunity indeed from himself they are struggles against thelsquogovernment of individualizationrsquo66 And argued Foucault if werecognise that power generates its own resistance insubordination andlsquoa certain essential obstinacy on the part of the principles of freedom

____________________

63 Michel Foucault lsquoTruth and Powerrsquo 30764 Michel Foucault lsquoThe Subject and Powerrsquo in Essential Foucault 12965 Ibid66 Ibid

766

Millennium

then there is no relationship of power without the means of escape orpossible flightrsquo67 But flight is not a simple matter there is no abrupt orglobal escape lsquoby a sort of radical rupture or by a flight withoutreturnrsquo68 What is required is strategy69

In a recently-published volume on activist struggles to defendforests in and around Clayoquot Sound in British Columbia CanadaWilliam Chaloupka addresses the question of strategy He writes thatlsquoethics alone does not a strategy makersquo and that lsquowhen we strategizewe bring the normative into contact with the pragmaticrsquo70 According toChaloupka

[e]very movement based on civil disobedience (or other forms ofethical protest) must confront the gap between the moralism ofprotestrsquos justifications and the strategies such protest must usuallydeploy when it interacts with the political world which is contingentand multileveled71

Strategy is exercised by all actors as they seek to achieve their ends itinvolves the exercise of power but not simply the power to influence orcoerce Instead it is the power that emerges through doing those thingsthat are naturalised discursively and normally In the case of timbercompanies for example

[t]hey are engaged in (more or less effective and thus challengeable)strategies of maintaining their power to continue their operations asthey see fit They wish to appear inevitable and the notion that theirprerogative is a question of property rights abets this wishi

And continues Chaloupka lsquothe moral power associated with protestsagainst logging is not ldquopossessedrdquo or owned on the basis of righteousanalysis That authority has to be created in actionrsquo72

Those who participated in and those who later analysed theactivism at Clayoquot Sound seem to agree that such authority (orlsquoauthorisationrsquo) was created there Over the course of more than twodecades First Nations in coalition with a broad range of local nationaland transnational NGOs were able to create a political space fromwhich to upset and restructure the authority of both province and the

____________________

67 Ibid 14268 Foucault cited in William Chaloupka lsquoThere Must be Some Way Out of

Here Strategy Ethics and Environmental Politicsrsquo in Political Space 7369 Foucault lsquoSubject and Powerrsquo 142-4470 Chaloupka lsquoMust be Some Wayrsquo 68 7171 Ibid 6972 Ibid 77

767


Canadian state From that space activists interrupted the predominantpattern of development in the region ndash one of timber extraction ndash andforced an alternative developmental path The regional politicaleconomy that has emerged ndash one that emphasises tourist attractionmore than resource extraction ndash is not without its problems73 but isinteresting insofar as it safe-guards environmental sustainabilitywithout completely denying resource extraction and productiverelationships with the land This newly-constituted economy did notemerge until after considerable struggle among activists and betweenactivists state and capital and its continued existence is neverguaranteed Yet what made it possible was the productive powerinherent in that social activism74

The exercise of productive power evident at Clayoquot and othercomparable sites of social movement politics seem to allow for whatmight be thought of as ruptures or discontinuities in the web ofgovernmentality the creation of small zones of lsquosovereign actionrsquoThese ruptures are small and are hardly noticeable at best but theyrepresent zones of agency autonomy resistance and contestation withinwhich forms of sovereign politics can take place Such zones mightinvolve lsquounauthorisedrsquo actions focused on the environment themobilisation of political movements or mass demonstrations that drivepresidents from office Whether peaceful or violent political action insuch zones of agency serve to expose the contradictions inherent in theincreasingly dense web of global governmentality and make it possiblefor people to act in spite of those webs Whether political resistance andcontestation can change or overcome governmentality is much lessclear Perhaps new webs can be spun within these ruptures webs thatbegin to restructure the state through the weaving of ethical strands asit were75

The image of a lsquowebrsquo of governmentality is only a very crudemetaphor but it begins to suggest something about power it must beexercised within the microspaces and capillaries of contemporary lifein the lsquospaces of appearancersquo76 and it must be a politics in which notonly Habermasian discussion but also group action are possible

____________________

73 Ibid emphasis added74 Timothy W Luke lsquoOn the Political Economy of Clayoquot Sound The

Uneasy Transition from Extractive to Attractive Models of Developmentrsquo andCatriona Sandilands lsquoBetween the Local and the Global Clayoquot Sound andSimulacral Politicsrsquo in Political Space

75 See James Rowe lsquoRethinking Politics Rethinking Theoryrsquo forthcoming inTheory and Event

76 But for a critique see Chandler lsquoBuilding Global Civil Society lsquoFromBelowrsquorsquo

768

Millennium

____________________

77 Hannah Arendt The Human Condition 2nd ed (Chicago University ofChicago Press 1958)

78 Ronnie D Lipschutz with Judith Mayer Global Civil Society and GlobalEnvironmental Governance (Albany NY State University of New York Press1996) chs 78

79 Mouffe Democratic Paradox80 For a more developed version of this argument see Lipschutz

Globalization Governmentality ch 881 See eg Keck and Sikkink Activists Beyond Borders

Politics in the sense I mean it here has to grow out of some form offace-to-face praxis not because place is central as manyenvironmentalists have argued77 but because a democratic politics issubsumed into governmentality when it comes to depend wholly onrepresentative forms And politics must involve action for it is onlythen that power becomes productive and the political can be practiced78

This suggests a rather different conception of democracy than thatcommonly held one that is based in practice rather than platitudes onewhose apotheosis is not the vote but debate and action as it were79

Conclusions

The lsquoproblemrsquo of accounting for GCS in its many variants andalternatives as well as explaining its relationship to global governancearises for several reasons First many scholars are more interested inanalysing and fostering the efficiency and transparency of non-governmental participation and process Second they seek to elucidateand develop mechanisms through which the desires needs andinterests of those blocked by powerful actors can be fulfilled80 They areless interested in the normative implications and consequences of howpower is exercised and the results of that exercise There are forms oftheorising aptly suited to a liberal worldview which eschewsfoundational questions of politics and power and deals with distributionrather than constitution Such a focus accepts the deployment of poweras a given and begs for dispensations from the powerful

From this view global civil society is less a lsquoproblemrsquo for powerthan a product of power It is deeply enmeshed with forms andpractices of governmentality It accepts the naturalisation of the marketas lsquoefficientrsquo and lsquoeffectiversquo GCS is a means whereby those matters thatcannot or will not be addressed by the agents of the state or interstateinstitutions will nonetheless be dealt with by someone In this mostof the organisations of GCS accept the order of governmentality as agiven81 This account of GCS does not undermine its potential so muchas it forces us to recognise how particular forms of society andgovernmentality are constituted and reconstituted sometimes through

769


the very agency that at first glance appears to be a means of oppositionand resistance if not liberation

It also motivates us to ask whether it is possible to (re)create formsof political sovereignty that can function perhaps to challenge thediscourses and structures of neo-liberal governmentality I would arguethat a sole concern with distributive issues not only leaves the offendingdiscourses and structures intact but also leads to collaboration withthose who exercise domination and institutional power What is moreimportant in my view is finding ways of generating productive politicalengagement directed toward social transformation through thestructural capacities of the state Mixing up metaphors it is notsufficient to focus on the size of the piersquos slices it is necessary to act tochange the filling the crust and indeed the pudding82 And that issomething that the agencies and organisations of global civil society asthey are constituted today cannot do and will not do

Ronnie D Lipschutz is Professor of Politics at the University of California at Santa Cruz USA


748

Millennium

In this article I propose that GCS is best understood in terms of adialectical relationship between developing modes of public globalgovernance and a global market system that is only weakly regulated bystates and international institutions2 In particular I problematise muchof GCS as a central and vital element in an expanding global neo-liberalregime GCS is constituted out of social relations within that regime andwith and through the lsquocapillaries of productive powerrsquo3 helps tolegitimise reproduce and sometimes change that regime In this respectGCS is generated by agents who seek to resist or moderate the expansionof the market into various realms of social life but who may act in waysthat unwittingly perhaps support the logics of the market and itsfurther expansion Paradoxically perhaps the same relations of powerthat give rise to this form of social action also produce movements thatpursue major structural change in the global political economy in a questto alter the social ethics that enable or constrain individual and corporateautonomy within politics and markets

I argue in other words that GCS manifests in two forms a moral andan ethical or alternatively through markets and politics In this I draw onHegelrsquos distinction between moral and ethical behaviour the formerhaving to do with individual conscience the latter with the foundations ofpolitical community (in his terms the State)4 There is no global State ofcourse but to a growing degree the global political economy constitutes asingular transnational capitalist social formation that resembles more andmore a state-in-formation Inasmuch as its regulatory elements largelyreflect the post-World War II preferences and practices of an increasingly-imperial United States this state-in-formation remains quiteunderdeveloped by comparison with its market elements In light of thegrowing global role of US military and market discipline in keeping orderwe might even call it an emerging lsquowatchmanrsquo state5 To put the pointanother way following Empire6 this entity is bound together through an

____________________

Theory (Cambridge MA MIT Press 1992) and Alejandro Colas InternationalCivil Society (Cambridge Polity 2002)

2 The former is discussed in Anna Holzscheiter lsquoDiscourse as Capabilityrsquo inthis issue

3 Michel Foucault lsquoGovernmentalityrsquo in The Essential Foucault eds PaulRabinow and Nikolas Rose (New York The New Press 2004) 229-45

4 Colas International Civil Society and GWF Hegel Philosophy of Right TMKnox trans (Oxford Clarendon Press 1942) see also [httpmarxistsanueduauref-erencearchivehegel] (10501)

5 Stephen R Gill lsquoThe Global Panopticon The Neoliberal State EconomicLife and Democratic Surveillancersquo Alternatives 2 no 1 (1995) 1-50 Power andResistance in the New World Order (Houndsmill Basingstoke Palgrave Macmillan2003) ch 7

6 Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri Empire (Cambridge MA Harvard

749


____________________







750

Millennium

____________________







Power Reconsidered


751


____________________









752

Millennium

____________________













753


____________________








754

Millennium

____________________







755


____________________







____________________




756

Millennium








757


____________________








758

Millennium

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759


____________________








760

Millennium





____________________



761





____________________


762

Millennium





____________________





763






____________________



764

Millennium





____________________






765







____________________


766

Millennium








____________________



767





____________________





768

Millennium

____________________







Conclusions



769






749


____________________







750

Millennium

____________________







Power Reconsidered


751


____________________









752

Millennium

____________________













753


____________________








754

Millennium

____________________







755


____________________







____________________




756

Millennium








757


____________________








758

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759


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760

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____________________



761





____________________


762

Millennium





____________________





763






____________________



764

Millennium





____________________






765







____________________


766

Millennium








____________________



767





____________________





768

Millennium

____________________







Conclusions



769






750

Millennium

____________________







Power Reconsidered


751


____________________









752

Millennium

____________________













753


____________________








754

Millennium

____________________







755


____________________







____________________




756

Millennium








757


____________________








758

Millennium

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759


____________________








760

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761





____________________


762

Millennium





____________________





763






____________________



764

Millennium





____________________






765







____________________


766

Millennium








____________________



767





____________________





768

Millennium

____________________







Conclusions



769






751


____________________









752

Millennium

____________________













753


____________________








754

Millennium

____________________







755


____________________







____________________




756

Millennium








757


____________________








758

Millennium

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759


____________________








760

Millennium





____________________



761





____________________


762

Millennium





____________________





763






____________________



764

Millennium





____________________






765







____________________


766

Millennium








____________________



767





____________________





768

Millennium

____________________







Conclusions



769






752

Millennium

____________________













753


____________________








754

Millennium

____________________







755


____________________







____________________




756

Millennium








757


____________________








758

Millennium

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759


____________________








760

Millennium





____________________



761





____________________


762

Millennium





____________________





763






____________________



764

Millennium





____________________






765







____________________


766

Millennium








____________________



767





____________________





768

Millennium

____________________







Conclusions



769






753


____________________








754

Millennium

____________________







755


____________________







____________________




756

Millennium








757


____________________








758

Millennium

____________________








759


____________________








760

Millennium





____________________



761





____________________


762

Millennium





____________________





763






____________________



764

Millennium





____________________






765







____________________


766

Millennium








____________________



767





____________________





768

Millennium

____________________







Conclusions



769






754

Millennium

____________________







755


____________________







____________________




756

Millennium








757


____________________








758

Millennium

____________________








759


____________________








760

Millennium





____________________



761





____________________


762

Millennium





____________________





763






____________________



764

Millennium





____________________






765







____________________


766

Millennium








____________________



767





____________________





768

Millennium

____________________







Conclusions



769






755


____________________







____________________




756

Millennium








757


____________________








758

Millennium

____________________








759


____________________








760

Millennium





____________________



761





____________________


762

Millennium





____________________





763






____________________



764

Millennium





____________________






765







____________________


766

Millennium








____________________



767





____________________





768

Millennium

____________________







Conclusions



769






____________________




756

Millennium








757


____________________








758

Millennium

____________________








759


____________________








760

Millennium





____________________



761





____________________


762

Millennium





____________________





763






____________________



764

Millennium





____________________






765







____________________


766

Millennium








____________________



767





____________________





768

Millennium

____________________







Conclusions



769






757


____________________








758

Millennium

____________________








759


____________________








760

Millennium





____________________



761





____________________


762

Millennium





____________________





763






____________________



764

Millennium





____________________






765







____________________


766

Millennium








____________________



767





____________________





768

Millennium

____________________







Conclusions



769






758

Millennium

____________________








759


____________________








760

Millennium





____________________



761





____________________


762

Millennium





____________________





763






____________________



764

Millennium





____________________






765







____________________


766

Millennium








____________________



767





____________________





768

Millennium

____________________







Conclusions



769






759


____________________








760

Millennium





____________________



761





____________________


762

Millennium





____________________





763






____________________



764

Millennium





____________________






765







____________________


766

Millennium








____________________



767





____________________





768

Millennium

____________________







Conclusions



769






760

Millennium





____________________



761





____________________


762

Millennium





____________________





763






____________________



764

Millennium





____________________






765







____________________


766

Millennium








____________________



767





____________________





768

Millennium

____________________







Conclusions



769






761





____________________


762

Millennium





____________________





763






____________________



764

Millennium





____________________






765







____________________


766

Millennium








____________________



767





____________________





768

Millennium

____________________







Conclusions



769






762

Millennium





____________________





763






____________________



764

Millennium





____________________






765







____________________


766

Millennium








____________________



767





____________________





768

Millennium

____________________







Conclusions



769






763






____________________



764

Millennium





____________________






765







____________________


766

Millennium








____________________



767





____________________





768

Millennium

____________________







Conclusions



769






764

Millennium





____________________






765







____________________


766

Millennium








____________________



767





____________________





768

Millennium

____________________







Conclusions



769






765







____________________


766

Millennium








____________________



767





____________________





768

Millennium

____________________







Conclusions



769






766

Millennium








____________________



767





____________________





768

Millennium

____________________







Conclusions



769






767





____________________





768

Millennium

____________________







Conclusions



769






768

Millennium

____________________







Conclusions



769






769






Documents

Power, Politics and Global Civil Society