Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rcrh6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T11:06:13.821Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Multilateralism and world order*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 October 2010

Robert W. Cox
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

‘World order’ has become a current catchphrase of political discourse and journalism. ‘Multilateralism’ has become something of a growth sector in academic studies. What current events have brought into prominence, scholarship has an obligation to subject to critical analysis. This article raises some of the questions that should be probed in this analysis.

Type
Research Article
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 18 , Issue 2 , April 1992 , pp. 161 - 180
Copyright
Copyright © British International Studies Association 1992

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Kaufman, J.. Conference Diplomacy (Leyden, 1968)Google Scholar.

2 Gardner, R. M., Sterling—Dollar Diplomacy. The Origins and Prospects of our International Economic Order (New York, 1969)Google Scholar.

3 Polanyi, K., Arensberg, C., and Pearson, H. W. (eds.), Trade and Market in the Early Empire (Chicago, 1957)Google Scholar.

4 Harrod, J. and Schrijver, N. (eds.), The UN Under Attack (Aldershot, 1988)Google Scholar.

5 Harrod and Schrijver (eds.), The UN.

6 Carr, E. H., The Twenty Years’ Crisis 1919–1939 (London, 1946), p. 82CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Other notable authors who could be included in the Realist tradition include Hams Morgenthau, Reinhold Neibuhr, Raymond Aron and William T. R. Fox. They do, of course, differ in their relative emphasis, particularly on th e role of morality in politics; but they participate in a common discourse.

7 Carr, Twenty Years’ Crisis, p. 107.

8 Braudel, F., Civilisation matérielle, économie el capitalisme, XVe-XVIIIe siècle tome 1 Les Structures du quotidien: le possible et l'impossible (Paris, 1979)Google Scholar and ‘History and the Social Sciences: The longue duree, in Braudel, On History, trans. Matthews, Sara (Chicago, 1980)Google Scholar.

9 I have discussed the distinction between problem-solving theories and critical theories in an earlier article. See R. Cox, ‘Social Forces, States and World Order: Beyond Internationa l Relations Theory’, n i Keohane (ed.), Neorealism.

10 See, for example, Waltz, K., Theory of International Politics (Reading, Mass, 1979)Google Scholar; cf. Keohane, R. (ed.), Neorealism and its Critics (New York, 1986)Google Scholar.

11 I am using ‘Neo-realism’ to represent a perspective perhaps best expressed in the work of Kenneth Waltz (see, for example, Keohane (ed.), Neorealism). The term has also been used more broadly to include the theorizing of cooperation among interest-pursuing states in such forms as ‘regimes’. See, for example, Fox, who had in mind the work of John Ruggie and Stephen Krasner. I think this is better treated as one of the modifications of liberal institutionalism (below), although it does show the influence of neo-realism upon the liberal institutionalist tradition in American scholarship of the Cold War era. (W. T. E. Fox, ‘E. H. Carr and Political Realism: Vision and Revision,’ Department of International Politics, University College of Wales, Aberstwyth, E. H. Carr Memorial Lecture No. 1).

12 Mitrany, D., A Working Peace System: An Argument for the Functional Development of International Organization (London, 1943)Google Scholar.

13 Deutsch, K. W. et al., Political Community in the North Atlantic Area: International Organization in the Light of Historical Experience (Princeton, 1957)Google Scholar.

14 Deutsch, K. W., Nationalism and Social Communication. An Enquiry into the Foundations of Nationality (New York, 1953)Google Scholar.

15 Haas, E. B., The Uniting of Europe (Stanford, 1958)Google Scholar.

16 Haas, E. B. and Schmitter, P., ‘Economics and Differential Patterns of Political Integration: Projections about Unity in Latin America’, International Organization, 18 (1964), pp. 705-37CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 Haas, E. B., Beyond the Nation-State. Functionalism and International Organization (Stanford, 1964)Google Scholar.

18 Lindberg, L. N. and Schiengold, S. A., Europe's Would-be Policy: Patterns of Change in the European Community (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1970)Google Scholar.

19 Nye, J. and Keohane, R. O., Transnational Relations and World Politics (Cambridge, Mass., 1972)Google Scholar.

20 Haas, P. M., ‘Obtaining International Environmental Protection through Epistemic Consensus’, Millennium Journal of International Studies, 19 (1990), pp. 347-64CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 Nye, J. and Keohane, R. O., ‘Transgovernmental Relations and World Polities’, World Politics, 27, 1 (October 1974)Google Scholar.

22 Nye, J. and Keohane, R. O., Power and Interdependence (Boston, 1977)Google Scholar.

23 S. Krasner (ed.), ‘International Regimes’, a special issue of International Organization, 36 (1982).

24 See above, footnote 12, p. 20.

25 Keohane, R., After Hegemony. Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy (Princeton, 1984)Google Scholar.

26 Durkheim, E., The Division of Labour in Society (New York, 1984)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27 Keohane, R., ‘Multilateralism: An Agenda for Research’, International Journal (Autumn, 1990)Google Scholar; Young, O., International Cooperation: Building Regimes for Natural Resources (Ithaca, 1989)Google Scholar.

28 Keohane, After Hegemony, pp. 119–20, 254.

29 Wallerstein, I., The Modem World System (New York, 1974)Google Scholar.

30 Frank, A. Gunder, Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America. Historical Studies of Chile and Brazil (New York, 1969)Google Scholar.

31 Wallerstein, I., ‘The Rise and Future Demise of the World Capitalist System: Concepts for Comparative Analysis’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 16 (1974), pp. 387–415CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

32 Hayter, I., Aid as Imperialism (Harmondsworth, 1971)Google Scholar; Payer, C., The Debt Trap: The International Monetary Fund and the Third World (New York, 1974)Google Scholar; Mittelman, J. H., ‘International Monetary Institutions and Policies of Socialism and Self-reliance: Are They Compatible? The Tarzanian Experience’, Social Research, 47 (1980), pp. 141-65Google Scholar.

33 Cox, R. and Jacobson, H. et al., The Anatomy of Influence. Decision Making in International Organization (New Haven, 1974)Google Scholar.

34 Erler, B., L'aide qui tui (Lausanne, 1987)Google Scholar; Mittelman, J. H., Out from Underdevelopment: Prospects for the Third World (London, 1988)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

35 Cox, R., ‘Ideologies and the New International Economic Order: Reflections on some Recent Literature’, International Organization, 33 (1979), pp. 257–302CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Krasner, S., Structural Conflict. The Third World against Global Liberalism (Berkeley, 1985)Google Scholar.

36 Runciman, W. G., Social Science and Political Theory (Cambridge, 1965), pp. 109-34Google Scholar; Brenner, R., ‘The Origins of Capitalism Development: A Critique of Neo-Smithian Marxism’, New Left Review, 104 (1977), pp: 25–92Google Scholar.

37 I have discussed this concept more fully in earlier articles. See Cox, R., ‘On Thinking about Future World Order’, World Politics, 28 (1976), pp. 175-96CrossRefGoogle Scholar and ‘Social Forces, States, and World Orders; Beyond International Relations Theory’, in Keohane, (ed.), Neorealism.

38 Dahrendorf, R., Class and Class Conflict in Industrial Society (Stanford, 1959), pp. 125-6Google Scholar.

39 Polanyi, K., The Great Transformation (Boston, 1957)Google Scholar.

40 Madeuf, B. and Michalet, C.-A., ‘A New Approach to International Economies’, International Social Science Journal, 30 (1978), pp. 253-83Google Scholar.

41 Strange, S., States and Markets (London, 1988)Google Scholar.

42 Cox, R., Production, Power and World Order. Social Forces in the Making of History (New York, 1987)Google Scholar, chapter 9.

43 Gill, S., American Hegemony and the Trilateral Commission, (Cambridge, 1990)Google Scholar; Van der Pijl, K., The Making of an Atlantic Ruling Class (London, 1984)Google Scholar.

44 Bull, H., The Anarchical Society. A Study of Order in World Politics (New York, 1977), pp. 254-5Google Scholar.

45 Cox, R., ‘Gramsci, Hegemony and International Relations: An Essay in Method’, Millennium Journal of International Studies, 12 (1983), pp. 162-75CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

46 On this, see for example, Kennedy, P., The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (New York, 1987)Google Scholar; Nye, J., Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of American Power (New York, 1990)Google Scholar; Strange, S., ‘The Persistent Myth of Lost Hegemony’, International Organization, 41 (1987), pp. 551-74CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Gill, S., American Hegemony and the Trilateral Commission (Cambridge, 1990)Google Scholar.

47 This would seem to be Nye's thesis in Bound to Lead.

48 Envisaged notably in Keohane, After Hegemony.

49 For example, speculations about a Pax Nipponica. See Vogel, E., ‘Pax Nipponica?’, Foreign Affairs, 64 (1986), pp. 752-67CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and a sceptical comment by Cox, R., ‘Middlepowermanship, Japan, an d Future World Order’, International Journal, 44 (1989)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

50 For example, Gilpin, R., The Political Economy of International Relations (Princeton, 1987)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.