Globalization and the Transformation of Power

Philip G. Cerny

Manuscript version of Chapter 7 in Mark Haugaard and Kevin Ryan, eds., Political Power: The State of the Art (Barbara Budrich: Leverkusen Opladen [Germany] for the International Political Science Association, Research Committee on Political Power), pp. 187-215.

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Philip G. Cerny is Professor Emeritus of Politics and Global Affairs at the University of Manchester (United Kingdom) and Rutgers University (U.S.A.). He has also taught at the Universities of York and Leeds in the U.K. and has been a visiting scholar or visiting professor at Harvard University (Center for European Studies), the Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques (Paris), Dartmouth College, New York University and the Brookings Institution. He is the author of The Politics of Grandeur: Ideological Aspects of de Gaulle’s Foreign Policy (Cambridge U.P, 1980; French edition, Flammarion, 1986), The Changing Architecture of Politics: Structure, Agency and the Future of the State (Sage, 1990), and Rethinking World Politics: A Theory of Transnational Neopluralism (Oxford University Press, 2010). He is co-editor of Power in Contemporary Politics: Theories, Practices, Globalizations (with Henri Goverde, Mark Haugaard and Howard H. Lentner) (Sage, 2000) and Internalizing Globalization: The Rise of Neoliberalism and the Erosion of National Varieties of Capitalism (with Susanne Soederberg and Georg Menz) (Palgrave, 2005) among others, and has published numerous academic journal articles and chapters in edited books. He lives in York (U.K.). His current research interests include the politics of financial regulation, the changing nature of power in a globalizing world, and the desecuritization of world politics.

Correspondence address:260 Bishopthorpe RoadYork YO23 1LGUnited Kingdompgcerny@rutgers.edu

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I. Introduction

Both the concept and the realities of power in international relations and world politics have evolved significantly since the middle of the 20th century. Whether this process involves a fundamental transformation in the charcter of power in the world is hotly debated. In this chapter, the outlines of some of the major trends will be traced through and their implications explored. The main conclusion, nevertheless, will be that these changes do indicate that such an overall transformation is taking place. This is particularly true in terms of the way both academic observers and practitioners have long seen power in international relations as being essentially distinct in its structure and functioning from power at other levels of politics, economics and society—what has been called the “inside-outside distinction” (Walker 1993) or the “levels of analysis distinction” (Hollis and Smith 1990). Globalization is not only eroding and blurring this distinction but also generating new patterns of power that involve deep-seated changes in the ways actors behave and structures develop in a more complex and interdependent world.

In particular, this chapter challenges the traditional notion at the heart of modern state-centric social science and the disciplines of Political Science and International Relations, namely Max Weber’s contention that the state holds the “monopoly of legitimate violence” in the world. I argue that, on the contrary, (a) the state no longer holds a monopoly of violence in world politics, whether legitimate or not, and (b) state violence is increasingly seen as fundamentally illegitimate in key contexts, to some extent domestically but especially internationally. As a result, state violence is increasingly (although not totally) ineffective and counterproductive in a world characterized by a “new security dilemma” (Cerny 2000a). Both “power over” and “power to”, often fused in the way power is perceived in the international context, need to be fundamentally rethought in this environment.

The chapter is made up of five sections, in turn focusing on:• the centrality of power in the traditional understanding of international relations;

• the structure and dynamics of the traditional paradigm itself;

• the major dimensions of change in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, especially the impact of globalization;

• how some practitioners of power at the foreign policy level are attempting to take some of those changes on board, especially through the notion of “soft power”; and

• the changing dynamics of both power to and power over in several crucial issue-areas in contemporary world politics.

Globalization in this context involves a disarticulation of power relations cutting across the old international system of sovereign nation-states (Cerny 2000b), in turn leading to the emergence of a “multi-nodal” politics (Cerny 2009) that not only undermines the capacity of states to behave as “unit actors” (Waltz 1979) exercising sovereign power, but at the same time also empowers non-state actors—and some state actors in certain bounded issue-areas—to engage in crosscutting, cross-border political processes, especially those characterized by transnational and “glocal” (i.e., linking the global and the local) characteristics. Political power at the level of world politics is thus becoming less like old-fashioned “power politics” or Realpolitik, and more like the domestic politics of:

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• interest group pressure, competition and conflict;

• the clash of ideologies and social values;

• the construction of—and resistance to—evolving norms and rules of the game; and

• an uneven but growing “civilianization” of power relations.More controversially, I argue that, paradoxically, while these crosscutting processes can be destabilizing at some levels, they are likely to be broadly stabilizing at system level.

I. The Centrality of Power in International Relations

The concept of power has traditionally played a crucial role in the analysis of International Relations and World Politics. It has been seen as the key factor, variable, driving force or “currency” in relations among states. Indeed, this role has been seen by many observers since Thucydides as the defining attribute of the international system itself. This interpretation of the role of power is derived from the understanding that no seriously effective level of organized, authoritative or legitimate governmental or socio-political structure exists above the level of the state that does not itself emanate from and in the last analysis remain responsible to autonomous, sovereign states. In other words, there is no genuinely supranational overarching power structure or political process in world politics. Therefore in order to explain what happens in world politics—as distinct from politics within states—it is necessary to privilege (a) power-seeking actions of states (taken as structurally coherent “unit actors” in and of themselves: Waltz 1979) and of “state actors” (actors acting through or on behalf of states, mainly politicians and bureaucrats) and (b) structured, ongoing relations of power between and among states, over the claims of other potential actors or causal variables. This interpretation is usually labeled the “realist”—or, in a revised version that has become widespread in academic International Relations since the 1970s, “neorealist”—paradigm, derived originally from the thought of such political theorists as Machiavelli and Hobbes and central to the 19th century German concept of Realpolitik.

In this understanding of the world, there is no agreed, overarching political forum in which individuals, economic interests and social groups can systematically and effectively express their views and pursue their goals—in other words, engage in collective action—other than by going through the level of the state and of those international institutions and international regimes and less formal processes licensed by sovereign states and ultimately constrained by them in terms of the basic structural dynamics of the system. In the words of Aristotle, “justice” and “friendship” on a social level can only exist within the politeia or political community. Aristotle argued that people are essentially “social animals”; however, that sociability stops at the border, or the proverbial “water’s edge”. All other people and communities are by definition outsiders—foreigners—and relationships with them, even if they are relatively peaceable most of the time, are in the last analysis, when external threats to the polity are perceived, dominated by asocial relations of force. Therefore, despite claims that an “international society” or “world society” has developed that includes and sometimes transcends the power-based relations of states (Bull 1977; Hurrell 2007); despite assertions that the world order is essentially rooted in capitalist economic structures (Gill and Law 1987); and despite the hypothesis that a “global civil society” is developing from below, indeed relations of power among states are still seen to constitute the bottom line of world politics.

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As a result, traditional analyses of international relations assert, such goals as justice, fairness, equality, democracy, redistribution and the like are ultimately trumped by power rivalries and only stabilized by balances of power among states (Little 2007). Indeed, the very definition of power in the international arena power is constituted by the relative power of states vis-à-vis each other—even if exercised by states themselves in some sort of collective fashion through inter-state institutions and bargaining. Power as such in the international arena therefore concerns the relative power of different states, rooted in both direct relations of force and, more indirectly, the resources, political, economic and social, necessary for the potential use of force. And because states as endogenously entrenched collective action organizations have clear, historically, geographically, economically and socially derived imperatives and priorities in the international arena—the core of which are national defence and the promotion of “national interests” in the wider world—these imperatives and interests will trump any international or transnational “public good” or “general interest” when push comes to shove.

Power in its international manifestation has therefore been seen since Ancient Greece as fundamentally distinct from its internal or domestic manifestation. Power as a means to pursue the “highest good” within the polity (Aristotle again) is, in contrast, externalized in the form of the state’s power to pursue national interests over, above and against the national interests of other states in an anarchic world. Higher ends like social justice, economic welfare or even civil peace itself are subordinated to the underlying requirements of survival, national self-interest and “self-help” (Waltz 1979). Those higher ends are not forgotten, but are only effectively operationalized internationally through the medium of state action—where they are subordinated to underlying relations of force and potential force. Indeed the dominant power imperative of world politics therefore prioritizes and privileges qualitatively different kinds of ends, requires quite different means, and justifies radically different standards of conduct by actors—such as killing and repressing enemies—from government leaders down to ordinary people, especially, but not exclusively, when they become soldiers.

However, this traditional conception of power has always had a range of critics:• believers in transcendent religious, spiritual, moral and/or ethical values, whether

metaphysical or humanistic;• economic liberals, who see market forms of exchange as entailing imperatives of

growth, efficiency and prosperity that ultimately expand onto a transnational or global scale;

• Marxists, who, in contrast, see the same capitalism as creating ever-evolving means for an increasingly internationalized ruling class to expand its domination, and ultimately look to its replacement by socialism;

• liberal democratizers who seek to expand democracy not only within a growing number of nation-states but also across borders in more democratic and/or pluralistic institutions, legal principles and political processes (Held 1995); and

• political science pluralists who see political behaviour as increasingly driven by transnational interests, values and identities rather merely domestic ones (Cerny 2006a, 2010a).

Today, realism and neorealism are being challenged and revised in the light of these critiques. In particular, each of the critiques does not merely involve interpreting the deep-rooted and historically robust debates about international politics in general as

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reflected in the history of political philosophy since Aristotle, Thucydides, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Smith, Marx and the rest. In addition, and more importantly for this book, each critique also carries with it an underlying understanding of how the structure of the international system has been undergoing fundamental change and transformation over time—particularly in the light of developments in the late 20th and early 21st century usually called globalization. All sorts of economic, political and social relationships that cut across borders are today seen from a range of diverse perspectives as undermining—or at least potentially undermining—the “realist” inside/outside distinction that has been constituted historically not only through international relations theory but also through practices of war, diplomacy, economic competition and the like.

In these critiques, the world is seen as being constituted more and more through revived, emerging and even hegemonic cross-cutting linkages and loyalties of friendship, justice, class, economic self-interest, identity and/or belonging—the traditional stuff of domestic political philosophy and politicking. These increasingly dense linkages do not merely constrain the actions of states but, more importantly, enable social, economic and political actors to develop modes of “transnational” action, creating webs of collective action that differ not merely in degree, but also in kind, from the crude relations of force characteristic of traditional international relations. States are being cut across, run around, manipulated and re-shaped by complex transnational and “glocal” (global-local) linkages that are transforming state behaviour itself.

II. The Traditional Conception of Power in International Relations

Earlier modes of all of these trends have existed since time immemorial. Indeed, the era of a clearly defined “system of states”—an historically contested concept, normally dated back to the 1648 Peace of Westphalia but in many ways more recent—and of the “high nation-state” from the mid-19th to the mid-20th centuries has been relatively short in the longue durée of history. In Roman times, the inside/outside distinction was symbolized by the god Janus, the god of the city. Janus, whose statue was placed at the city gates, had two faces, looking in opposite directions—one looking inside the city, and one looking outside, the first seeking to nurture social bonds, solidarity and community, the second prepared to fight invaders and pursue the city’s external interests against aliens by force. This division of world politics into inside and outside requires a dual the role for the state and state actors, today often called “two-level games” (Putnam 1988). There are four main ways in which power is seen as different in the international context from power in domestic political systems.

The first derives from the oft-noted statement that there is no world government, no overarching authority structure or supranational political process to define norms, make decisions, and impose sanctions on those transgressing those norms or defying those decisions. States and state actors cannot appeal to a higher authority either to pursue their own goals or to prevent others from pursuing theirs. As in Thomas Hobbes’s state of nature, the international world is a potential “war of all against all”, in which potential “defection”—the willingness and incentive to opt out of cooperative arrangements when a state’s fundamental national interests are seen to be threatened—is the “default” state of affairs. This kind of self-regarding imperative is furthermore said to be the only legitimate course of action in a world made up of sovereign states accountable only to their own “people”. Only actors who effectively pursue the genuine national interests of their states can be truly moral as well as practical (Morgenthau 1949; Pin-Fat 2005).

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The second dimension, which follows from the first, is that the goals states pursue will be fundamentally different on the “outside”, international level from those that state authorities and political actors pursue “inside” the domestic political system. It is not only exceedingly difficult but regarded as illegitimate for states to impose their social values on other independent sovereign states. Pursuing and enforcing norms of social and economic justice, the distribution and redistribution of wealth or other resources, and furthering elemental social bonds among “the people” can only be done within states—unless there is a process of alliance, emulation or interactive economic growth in which other states voluntarily adopt the same values. In other words, in Aristotelian terms, the principles of “justice” and “friendship” only operate within states; all others are outsiders.

This dimension therefore rests on an apparent philosophical paradox. Each state is entitled to possess a different internal moral, ethical and socio-economic system, although the extent of this autonomy is historically uncertain. Indeed, in this context what one might call moral realists argue paradoxically that peace can only be promoted through non-interference and mutual recognition of the ultimate sovereignty of states to determine their own priorities and national interests. The existence of a plurality of different kinds of states with different values and interests can therefore be seen to be a guarantee of a kind of state-based pluralism based on mutual recognition of those differences (Hurrell 2007), almost a kind of vertically containerized international multiculturalism. The Peace of Westphalia was in fact fundamentally a religious truce between Protestant and Catholic European monarchs after centuries of religious warfare and complex institutional conflicts between monarchs (and between them and the Papacy), with each agreeing not to interfere in the others’ choice of religion within their “own” states. This principle was later extended to other choices, including modern ideologies.

Nevertheless, such sovereign autonomy often masked desires for conquest, as demonstrated by the history of European imperialism and colonialism, while Nazis, Fascists and Communists attempted to spread their values forcefully by conquering or promoting revolution in other states. In this sense, therefore, the notion of power as sovereign autonomy on the one hand and power as the use of force to pursue national interests on the other has always represented a complex dialectic or contradiction within the traditional conception of power in world politics—one which was summed up by the Roman writer Vegetius in the famous maxim: “If you want peace, prepare for war.” As has often been pointed out, however, preparation for war often leads to the vicious spiral known as the “security dilemma” (Herz 1950), potentially leading to arms racing and the possibly unintended outbreak of war. Thus the history of the modern world has been one of an unstable dialectic of war and peace stemming directly from the clash of national interests not only with each other but also with outwardly-oriented, even universalistic, ideological goals.

The third dimension, again following from the first two, is that power is organized differently within the state’s internal domain from its external environment. Neorealists in particular label “inside” politics as “hierarchical”, in the sense that there is some sort of vertical, centralized structure that can be either authoritarian or liberal democratic, or all shades in between. In principle, however, more domestically liberal and pluralist forms of this centripetal state allow competing actors to co-exist with each other, relating and interacting through a range of “horizontal” processes such as elections, shared and/or competing economic interests, multiple social institutions including churches, families,

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etc. Different groups, factions, individuals and interests accept (at least up to a point) common “rules of the game” and conflicts are resolved through common procedures and processes, whether through political institutions and parties, courts and the legal system, rule-governed bureaucracies, and/or shared social norms.

Nevertheless, whether hierarchical or pluralistic, the role of power within a state tends to concern the use of power as a means to a “higher” end rather than an end in itself—“power to” is ostensibly meant to trump “power over”. Although power struggles, corruption and domination by particular individuals, groups and classes over others is ever crucial to domestic policy processes and institutions, one of the main trends of the past few centuries in developed countries, and today increasingly in developing countries (although there are always steps backward too), has been the institutionalization of power as a stabilizing force. “Power over” has moved from the foreground—as it has been when tribal elites, medieval nobles, mafias and “warlords” of various stripes have used brute force for the direct expropriation of wealth and assertion of control—to the background. This primacy of “power to” is an essential part of what is generally accepted to constitute progress, modernization or development, only seen as legitimate when it is applied in the service of social stability, development, social values and the “public interest”, and exercised through constitutionally constituted forms such as the “police power”, courts, political institutions, rights, and the like.

However, it is often said that “politics” of this sort nevertheless “stops at the water’s edge”. Because the international system is, in contrast, “anarchical”—a description accepted by a range of different approaches to International Relations, meaning not chaotic and disordered but simply without an effective overarching system of government or governance—the state is dominated by the imperatives built into the international system itself to act as if it were a single, fused unit in foreign policy. The “outside” state, if it is to be effective, needs to act as if it were genuinely organized “vertically”—both an effective “container” in its external environment (see Brenner, Jessop, Jones and MacLeod 2003) and also an efficient endogenous command system for coordinating and mobilizing potential domestic material and human resources for the pursuit of power on the international level. Not only is the state, to use Waltz’s term, required to act as a “unit actor” vis-à-vis other states analogously organized, but leading politicians have to act like “statesmen” representing a holistic “national interest”.

The outward-facing state is thus primarily organized through command hierarchies like armed forces, intelligence agencies and foreign policymakers, rather than competitive political processes or economic markets. This capacity has often been seen to be stronger in authoritarian than in democratic states or in states with strong, autonomous executives—as in the “unitary executive” theory of the George W. Bush Administration (Savage 2007). It is also at the core of contemporary debates about transatlantic relations, summed up in the statement that “Americans are from Mars; Europeans are from Venus” (Kagan 2003; cf. Sheehan 2008). The result, as noted by Rosenau, is to separate out in organizational terms domestic policymaking—left to “parochial” interests and actors—from foreign policy, which is effectively the preserve of “cosmopolitan elites” (Rosenau 1961). Thus there is a continual tension within even the most democratic of polities between accountability and transparency, on the one hand, and control and secrecy, on the other. The effect is to create a kind of dual state, reflecting the Janus image mentioned earlier.

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The fourth dimension, then, that of raw power—the use of force and violence and the primacy of “power over”—is seen as the “currency” of world politics. The influence of a particular state depends upon its basic stock of potential power resources or “capabilities”, its ability to mobilize people and resources to fight, and its capacity to use—or threaten—force in order to impose its will beyond its borders. The concepts of “resources” and “capabilities” in this context are extremely fungible, however. As the Russian Empire learned in 1905 and 1914, having biggest fleet and the largest army are not much help against a better organized and more highly motivated opponent. “Hard” capabilities themselves are often difficult to assess and measure except in the heat or wake of actual battles. For example, guerrilla warfare has classically been able to counter much larger conventional forces; the apparent technological superiority of American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan today is sometimes said to be a de facto disadvantage against the improvised methods of insurgents; and major weapons systems like nuclear missiles may be only useful to the extent that they are not used, as in the doctrine of deterrence and “mutually assured destruction”.

Even more problematic are the “softer” capabilities of strategic planning, tactical skill, efficient organization, communication, and the general psychological state of the armed forces. However, these are themselves dependent upon the existence not only of an economic infrastructure that can provide the required finance, technological and production capabilities, workforces, etc., to supply the armed forces with effective equipment and weaponry, but also of a social and human infrastructure—the sense of identity, loyalty and belonging to the “nation” rather than to ethnic, family or religious ties, warlords or mafias, particular subnational or cross-national geographical regions and the like. And political resources are necessary too—reliable and effective leadership, legitimate and efficient political institutions, and inclusive political processes. The effective building, marshalling and use of traditional forms of power are thus highly problematic.

In the traditional understanding of international power relations, then, the international system itself is defined as a structure of relative power. Alliances are precarious: a Chinese proverb has it that: “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Balances of power are ultimately contingent. They emerge from wars, and conditions change over time. Even when there is relative peace and stability, balances are maintained by underlying relationships of force. However, often the very use of force has counterproductive effects: where miscalculated aggression leads to defeat; where overambition leads to “imperial overstretch” (Kennedy 1987); where “planning for the last war” proves useless in the face of technological and organizational advances; where force triggers multiple layers of conflict such as civil wars; where domestic opposition leads to defeat at home; and where the very structure and foundations of the state are threatened with destabilization, disintegration and state failure.

III. Beyond Anarchy and Hierarchy: Crosscutting Forms of Power in the World Order

The traditional conceptualization of power has nevertheless been challenged at many levels. “Idealists”, “liberal internationalists” and “liberal institutionalists” argue not only that growing interdependence among states since the First World War has led to the development, however uneven, of a range of institutions such as the United Nations and the World Trade Organization, but also that a raft of smaller specialized regimes, along with transgovernmental networks, together constitute an important and relatively

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autonomous superstructure that increasingly leads to cooperative outcomes (Keohane 1984; Ruggie 1993; Slaughter 2004). Marxists have of course long argued that the inherently internationalized infrastructure of capitalism, rooted in the relations of production, constitutes an authoritative socio-political superstructure too—a superstructure that in the era of globalization takes on an even more transnationalized form which Gill calls the “new constitutionalism” (Gill 2003). Postmodernists perceive a fragmentation of traditional “narratives” of the state and the states system, but with no emerging alternative conception of power except the interaction of micro-“circuits of power” (Foucault 1980). Economic liberals and neoliberals argue that transnational market forces and new forms of market friendly regulation at multiple levels—transnational, regional, national and local—are creating a range of norms, practices, policies and institutional reforms that spin new webs of power within and below—as well as across—borders.

Indeed, the “global” is sometimes not seen as a distinct level at all, but one which is immanent and embedded in the local, whether in terms of the organization of geography and space (Brenner, Jessop, Jones and MacLeod 2003) or the dynamics of social and political relations at the micro-level (Sassen 2007)—the macrocosm within the microcosm. Transnational pluralists assert that those interest groups which have the most clout today are those that can coordinate a range of multi-level transnational linkages (Cerny 2006a). And constructivists and other ideas-oriented theorists argue that transnationally oriented ideologies, especially neoliberalism, are becoming increasingly embedded and hegemonic, shaping globalization on the one hand (Cerny 2008a) but also engendering potential resistance on the other (Gills 2000, 2010). In all these cases, analysts argue that the traditional inside/outside distinction and the vertically organized forms of power intrinsic to it are being not only eroded but also systematically cross-cut by horizontal linkages, organizational forms and power relationships, whether political, social or economic, in increasingly complex forms of transnational interdependence (Keohane and Nye 1977; Halperin 2007; Cerny 2008b). This increasingly “multilayered”, “multi-level” or “multi-nodal” structure requires a reconfiguration of all four dimensions of power discussed earlier.

In terms of the first dimension, debates focus more and more on whether some sort of system of global governance is in fact emerging (Prakash and Hart 1999). This does not constitute the equivalent of world government. On the one hand, the underlying structures of international regimes, institutions and processes are still highly intergovernmental. They are set up by states, their decisionmaking members are appointed by states, their voting arrangements most of the time reflect the relative power of states—often as determined by funding arrangements which give sometimes disproportionate power to the largest donor governments—and governments are often not bound by their decisions and have at least some sort of powers of veto and/or are able to dilute and avoid complying with institutional decisions. On the other hand, nevertheless, the crystallization of new formal and informal processes is widely seen to enable the development of cooperative arrangements that are (a) not as subject to defection as in the case of direct intergovernmental relations, (b) not as dominated by purely national interests as unmediated foreign policymaking processes are, and (c) not as dependent on self-defense and self-help as neorealist unit actors would be.

In some cases, institutionalized processes have become relatively independent from the control of states, especially where autonomous legal processes give decisionmakers formal insulation from governments. Probably the most advanced of

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these regimes is the World Trade Organization’s Dispute Settlement Mechanism. Of course, even here there are limitations. Only member states have legal standing to bring actions against other states for violating the requirements of membership by imposing trade protection measures, and there is no process for directly compelling compliance with the decisions of WTO panels—the only sanction is to permit the injured party or parties to impose retaliatory measures. However, outside groups and organizations are widely consulted in the dispute settlement process—for example, some international organizations have formal observer status—and compliance can usually be negotiated rather than imposed, often before a formal adjudication is reached (Wolfe 2005). The clamor of states to join the WTO beyond the original 123 who participated in the Uruguay Round negotiations indicates that there is a strong consensus among the overwhelming majority of states that the benefits of membership and compliance with the rules significantly outweigh the costs.

In contrast, most international regimes are less inclusive, more constrained by member governments, and/or much narrower in their remits. States often engage in “venue shopping” or “forum shopping” to find the organization they think will most likely support their national position. But the fact that they participate in such processes on a regular basis and formulate strategies and tactics around such international and transnational “rules of the game” is a strong indicator that states themselves generally act to reinforce rather than to undermine the process, sometimes called “pooling sovereignty”. The development of international regimes is often seen as having reached some sort of “critical mass” towards developing a more coherent form of global governance with significant supranational potential, at least in specific, but often structurally important, issue-areas. The main variable propelling this process is usually seen to be the nature of the policy issues and challenges that face both states and international organizations today—challenges like global economic growth, climate change and pollution, cross-border civil and insurgent wars, increasing relative inequality, and the growing public salience of poverty and uneven development, not to mention a range of significant issues concerning particular transnationally networked economic sectors, cross-cutting transportation and infrastructure issues, technological changes with global implications such as governing the internet, and the like. The enmeshing of public and private sector organizations, especially in issue-areas requiring international regulation, further reinforces the formal and informal roles of international regimes, not to mention regional organizations including the semi-sovereign European Union, has taken regime development and institutionalization to a very high level on a range of issues, rules and practices. (However, other regional organizations have proved much weaker and more internally conflict-prone.)

These characteristics of a wide range of international regimes are therefore widely thought to be leading to ever-increasing potential “absolute gains” for participating actors, rather than the zero-sum “relative gains” of autonomous nation-states pursuing their national interests in the traditional way (Keohane 1984). In other words, new if still embryonic forms of transnational quasi-authority are emerging that are increasingly rooted in cross-cutting, post-national forms of legitimacy that are less dependent upon national structures of accountability. However, operating in such a changing world is also leading to new problems of management and control, what Lake has called “the privatization of governance” (Lake 1999; Kahler and Lake 2003) and the increasing importance of “private authority” in international affairs (Cutler et al. 1999; Ronit and Schneider 2000; Hall and Biersteker 2003). Institutions and processes of global governance do not, of course, have the direct sanctioning power that has been at the

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core of state development and power in the modern era, not to mention their lack of legitimacy. Nevertheless, the inside/outside distinction is being increasingly—and systematically—transgressed in many significant ways, and states themselves are being enmeshed in transnational webs of power.

In terms of the second dimension, the goals of social, political and economic actors increasingly reflect social, economic and political values other than mere national defense, the pursuit of national interests or the position of the state in an international pecking order as determined by relations of force and balances of power. In particular, the increasing integration of transnational economic markets has led to the emergence of cross-border interest groups, both formal and informal, including groups representing such economic or “sectional” interests as multinational corporations; financial market actors, banks, accountants, auditors, investors, bondholders, and today social groups affected by the US subprime mortgage crisis; coalitions of farmers, small businesses and the like affected by the need to operate in global markets; and even trade unions and other social groups affected by global economic change (Cerny 2010a). Furthermore, international awareness of and concern about issues of social justice, poverty and the power of abusive and/or corrupt elites have led to the rapid growth of “value” groups (Key 1953) or “advocacy networks” (Keck and Sikkink 1998), now widely referred to as “global civil society”, often with close relationships with more socially-oriented international regimes.

Among the most potent themes of global civil society groups are human rights and human security. These groups have been successfully redefining two of the most important social and political issue-areas of the modern world for the traditional legitimation of nation-states themselves—stemming from the Enlightenment—as having a primordially international and even global dimension. Human rights are now seen as inherently international and the “responsibility to protect” civilians is increasingly salient. Thus the very concept of security has made a qualitative leap beyond the rather crude and often stalemated 20th century notion of “collective security” represented by the League of Nations and the United Nations. At the forefront some of the most significant of these changes have been environmental groups, not only transcending the nation-state but calling for global solutions to deal with a growing, imperative crisis. Cross-cutting forms of power and influence are therefore being used more and more to pursue goals of fairness (Kapstein 2006), transnational economic regulation (Jordana and Levi-Faur 2004), “green” environmental policy (Kütting 2004), human rights, multiculturalism, corporate governance (Gourevitch and Shinn 2005), criminal behaviour by governments (the International Criminal Court), the excessive use of force (the Ottawa Convention on the banning of landmines), and many others, including democratization. The pursuit of social justice and even social and economic redistribution now requires the linking of local, national, regional and international interest and value groups across borders and the building of transnational coalitions (Tarrow 2005).

In terms of the third dimension, in turn, power is clearly increasingly being organized in cross-cutting, transnational ways. Transnational circuits of power are increasingly organizing around sectors and issue-areas rather than around holistic national interests. In economic sectors characterized by the growing significance of multinational or transnational corporations, the ability of these corporations to coordinate their own actions across borders—whether in pressing for regulatory changes, playing off tax jurisdictions, etc.—is just the tip of the iceberg. Even small firms that seem ostensibly “local” are not immune, being dependent upon “foreign” raw materials, export

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markets, investment finance, migrant labor and the like, and increasingly both form parts of wider networks and coordinate their actions. Even the organization of the world of work—once embedded in the nation-state based Fordist factory system—increasingly depends upon flexible, complex transnational economic activities and circuits of political-economic power. As a result, ordinary people are becoming enmeshed in international production processes, technological developments, markets, and consumer preferences (Hobson and Seabrooke 2007).

Less formal networks and more formal interaction among firms, “private regimes”, “alliance capitalism”, and the ability of non-state actors in general to develop a range of formal and informal interconnections have led to significant degrees of policy convergence both across states and in terms of shaping the evolution of global governance more broadly (Higgott, Underhill and Bieler 1999). The linking of financial markets and institutions across borders has led to far-reaching changes in market organization, including cross-border mergers and convergence of practices (Underhill, Blom and Mügge 2010). Financial crises have played a large part in catalyzing these organizational changes, especially since 2007. Significant issue-areas such as the organization of financial markets, accountancy, auditing and corporate governance have led to ongoing negotiation processes among firms, private sector organizations representing particular industrial, financial and commercial sectors, as well as governments and international regimes (Mügge 2006, 2010). Not only have government agencies redefined their aims and objectives in the light of transnational experience—interacting increasingly through “transgovernmental networks” among governmental agencies and public/private policy communities (Slaughter 2004)—but value-oriented as well as sectoral pressure groups organized across borders have, as noted above, also come to the fore in a number of key issue-areas such as the attempt to expand “corporate social responsibility” agreements and standards (Lipschutz 2005). Thus, the organization of power is increasingly horizontally stratified according to issue-area. Indeed the “splintered state” (Machin and Wright 1985) or “disaggregated state” (Slaughter 2004) is itself characterized by horizontal cross-border power relationships.

The fourth dimension—the use of force and violence—has also undergone fundamental change (Cerny 2000a). The end of the Cold War did not result so much from the breakdown of a particular balance of power as from the increasing ineffectiveness of interstate balances of power generally to regulate the international system. This change has entailed not merely the replacement of interstate competition for military security by new forms of interstate competition, e.g. for “economic security” or even what Nye has called “soft power”, which is merely a mode of projecting traditional nation-state forms of power by different means (see below). Rather it involves a much more far-reaching realization that security based on the simple interaction of unitary nation-states itself is becoming a cause of even greater insecurity. This risk is represented not only from above by a general threat of uncontrollable nuclear annihilation—the core problematic of the bipolar balance of the Cold War itself—but also from below, by the rise of civil wars, tribal and religious conflicts, terrorism, civil violence in developed countries, the international drugs trade, state collapse, etc.

The provision of security itself as a public good—the very raison d'être of the Westphalian states system—can no longer be guaranteed by the system of states. Changing payoff matrices are creating a range of incentives for players—especially non-state players—to defect from the states system itself unless restrained from doing so by the constraints of complex interdependence. Attempts to provide international and

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domestic security through the state and the states system are becoming increasingly dysfunctional. Such attempts both lead to increasing “imperial overstretch” and provoke severe backlashes at both local and transnational levels—what has been called “blowback” (Johnson 2004)—creating a double bind for states seeking to exercise traditional forms of power. These backlashes interact with economic and social processes of complex globalization to create overlapping and competing cross-border networks of power, shifting loyalties and identities, and new sources of endemic low-level conflict.

A combination of economic interpenetration and low-level conflict—along with the post-Vietnam “body bag syndrome” in the most powerful countries (including the United States in the wake of the Iraq War), leading to popular revulsion at more ineffective forms of state-based military action—are taking over the kind of systemic regulatory role played by interstate conflict and competition in the Westphalian system. These factors increasingly constrain and counteract traditional forms of power projection—without, however, replacing them with an effective mechanism for resolving the problems of ethnic conflict, state failure, local or regional economic crises, etc., in the developing world. “New wars” and low-level conflicts can escape or undermine the constraints of balances of power, big power intervention, U.N. peacekeeping and formal international borders. Emerging mechanisms of stabilization are therefore highly uneven, riddled with structural tensions, and suboptimal in terms of effective governance, although in quite different ways from traditional balances of power and the old inter-state “security dilemma”.

The future of military force as the bottom line of power is thus being questioned once again, but in a rather different way from earlier forms of extra-governmental pacifism and antiwar protest. As noted above, a rather different model of the pursuit of power by states themselves has potentially been emerging as the result of long term change in and experience of international war and power relations over the past 50-100 years. In particular, there has been a transformation in European attitudes and foreign policy across the board as the result of having been the cradle of two devastating world wars and the geographical epicentre of the Cold War. This transformation involves a shift toward a combination demilitarization and multilateralism—reinforced by the regionalism of the European Union and primordially rooted in the experiences of European nation-states (Sheehan 2008; Moravcsik 2007)—along with what has been called “civilianization”. In particular, Europe’s identity as a new model “civilian superpower” (Galtung 1973), reflected not only in the foreign policies of Germany and other states but also in the attitudes of elites and mass publics (Harnisch and Maull 2001), is an expression of a widespread normative perspective that the use of force in international relations is just as immoral and counterproductive as the use of force by private actors domestically. The use of traditional forms of power by states is becoming increasingly delegitimized. The drive for American hegemony and empire that was represented by the George W. Bush Administration may prove to be the “last hurrah” for the use of traditional state-based methods of power and force in the international arena.

IV. From “Hard” to “Soft” Power?

Joseph Nye is famous for coining one of the most significant terms in 21st century political and international policy discourse—“soft power” (Nye 2004, 2011). Today it appears in newspapers and magazines, on television, in speeches and documents by public officials and policymakers from Washington to Beijing, and, of course, in

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academic debates about the nature of power itself, not only for understanding the changing world system, but also for prescribing a new approach for foreign policymakers, especially in the United States. Soft power as a concept is immensely appealing, especially to a range of critics of dominant types of 20th century Realist and Neorealist approaches to politics and international relations. Nevertheless, even “soft” or “cosmopolitan” power theorists like Nye and Gallarotti see a key role for hard power, both in the absence or failure of soft power resources and/or in some sort of orchestrated “smart power” strategy in which both carrots and sticks are used alongside what Nye calls “attraction” and Gallarotti calls “endearment” (Gallarotti 2010). Indeed, both authors emphasise that it is crucial to use both hard and soft power in strategic and, especially, tactical tandem. In this context, economic power is rightly seen not merely as structural power or as a positive-sum, soft power game, as is so often the case with other writers, but also as having key hard power elements, involving threats and coercion as well as growth and development. Furthermore, Nye combines economic power with military power in a sort of soft version based on evolving norms of “protection” and “assistance”.

However, soft power—even in its amalgamation with hard power into smart power—remains vague and contested. In the first place, soft power is extremely complex as an instrument or power exercise or power projection. It inhabits a lifeworld that is difficult, perhaps impossible in many circumstances, to manipulate. It inheres in social bonds, socialisation, everyday perceptions, culture and discourse—all often quite difficult to define, much less control. “Attraction” and “endearment” are essentially emotional and psychological attitudes and responses. Policymakers can follow them and try to capture them, but they do not own or control them. Foreign policy is at the mercy of sociology and anthropology, not the other way round. Attempts to conceptualize soft power in the context of traditional, state-centric notions of power (see Kearn 2011) are thus highly problematic. Second, such imagery is often vague and ineffable. To try to capture and operationalize it in concrete policy terms can be extremely difficult and sometimes impossible. Third, attempts to do so can be counterproductive if seen as misinterpreted or propagandistic. Backlashes can be the result, negating the policies. And finally, “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”. Soft power depends not on top-down imposition but on bottom-up spontaneity on the part of the so-called “target(s)”.

Nevertheless, soft power—and smart power—are increasingly important in today’s world. The role of hard power is diminishing:

• the advent of nuclear weaponry has made all-out warfare between major powers unthinkable;

• developing technologies of warfare give the advantage to small, cheap and nasty weapons such as improvised explosive devices (IEDs) that can negate many if not all of the high-tech weaponry of Donald Rumsfeld’s Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA);

• local populations resent outsiders and can easily be mobilised to oppose intervention;

• collateral damage, especially civilian deaths, create new resentments and hatreds;

• religious, ethnic and other bonds cannot easily be integrated into stable pluralistic political processes;

• democracy cannot be imposed from the outside by force;

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• the spread of information sources and networks enables opponents to control the images of what is happening better than imposed military forces;

• economic growth, social development and modernisation in general are undermined by violence and destruction, raising the costs of counterinsurgency strategies and tactics to unacceptable levels; and

• support from home populations cannot be taken for granted or easily mobilised except in the immediate aftermath of a widely perceived crisis—the significance of what in the Vietnam era was called the “body bag syndrome”.

Backlashes of all sorts of kinds against aggressive or assertive foreign policies are growing, from both outside and inside—what Gallarotti calls the “power curse” (Gallarotti 2009).

Along with the structural and historically evolving constraints on the use of hard power, however, the legitimacy and credibility of a state’s foreign policy increasingly depend on soft power. As Gallarotti writes: “It has become and is continuing to become a ‘softer world’” (Gallarotti 2010: 38). Political legitimacy derives from economic growth, not from divine right or traditional elite domination. And that legitimacy, in turn, derives from liberal democracy. Of course, democratic transitions can be highly problematic, especially where there is no peaceful alternation between “government” and “opposition” (Ionescu and de Madariaga 1968) and where winners seek to exclude and even destroy losers, as in the Iraqi notion of sahel (Wong 2007). Nevertheless, since the late 19th

century, democracy has been on an uneven but ineluctable trajectory to ideological and institutional hegemony. Once democratic forms have been tasted, even if they have failed, people remember having had a say in their governments and want it back, and people who don’t have it generally wish they did. The postwar settlement in Western Europe was not merely the result of the victory of the Allied Powers, but of socialisation and the evolution of popular attitudes. The same can be seen, however unevenly, in developing countries today, for example in the Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia.

Furthermore, the realisation that economic growth and eventual prosperity are possible has created what Gallarotti elsewhere has called the “prosperous society” (Gallarotti 2000). Although for most of the 20th century the quest for development, growth and prosperity was divided among alternative ideological pathways—capitalism, fascism and communism—the basic truth of Fukuyama’s “end of history” (1992) was that only capitalism has “delivered”. Fascistic quasi-capitalism went up in flames in the 1940s and Soviet Communism collapsed from inside in 1989. Of course, democratic capitalism has not solved a whole series of problems such as inequality, and the concept of “neoliberalism” remains highly controversial in a world where the spread of capitalism has had serious downsides in particular places and circumstances. Nevertheless, the only serious alternative to neoliberalism as it has evolved over time (Cerny 2008a) is something generally along the lines of the “Beijing Consensus” (Halper 2010), with a modified authoritarianism promoting gradual marketisation and pluralisation of the economy and, to a limited extent, of society. As Nye points out in several sections of The Future of Power, China’s soft power is the main challenger in today’s world to the soft—and perhaps also, to some extent, hard—power of the United States.

In this context, “smart power” is becoming less and less the orchestration of hard and soft power and more fundamentally soft in nature. Nye emphasizes the concept of “co-optive power”—the ability of policymakers to win over other states’ policymakers, and of course mass publics too, to share the preferences of the state which is attempting

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to change other states’ behaviours. The instruments of co-optive power are many, varied and complex, and, as pointed out above (and see below), highly problematic to actually use in any coherent way. But they are “where it’s at”. There is a growing imperative to attempt to use soft power and, of course, smart power, or else lose out. Hard power needs to take the ultimately more limited form of protection, however difficult that can be—as attested by the constraints experienced by various attempts at “humanitarian intervention” in recent years—and, more importantly, assistance, which overlaps into the soft power of development aid and the like. Attraction is increasingly crucial. Without it, other forces of attraction such as localism, ethnic cleavages, religious identities—especially newly discovered fundamentalisms—will prove more powerful. If you cannot co-opt others, your foreign policy will ultimately fail.

But then comes the real problem, which is the other face of the hard power dilemmas enumerated above in this chapter. How do you do it? Nye certainly believes it can be done. He calls his approach “liberal realism”. In his concluding chapter (Nye 2011), he outlines “An American Smart Power Strategy” in five steps. The first step is to have a thoroughgoing and clear review of objectives. In particular, in conceptual terms, there is the need to upgrade the role of “values” and not just focus on national “interests”. In this particular case, the focus should be on the provision of public goods to the international system. He specifically mentions six categories. The first three are a reprise of Britain’s 19th century hegemonic legacy: the maintenance of a balance of power; an open economic system; and the preservation of an international “commons”, including seas. The other three are more recent legacies: support for international regimes and institutions; international development; and playing the role of a mediator and convenor of coalitions. All desirable things to aim for, of course.

The second step is more straightforward and concrete in principle—to identify and “inventory” the resources available to policymakers, both in the way of constraints and opportunities—but fearfully complex in practice. These include a careful tally of military strengths and weaknesses, but also a pragmatic understanding of where the opposition will come from; the economic position in a changing world; and the underlying possibilities of soft power—i.e., what types of “attraction” can be called upon and used by policymakers. However, given that earlier in the book Nye has critiqued the very concept of “resources”, such an inventory is highly problematic from the start. In particular, soft power may be a resource, but how can it be used by policymakers? I will deal with this question later.

The third step is even more problematic—“an assessment of the resources and preferences of the targets of attempts at influence”, i.e. understanding attitudes and, in particular, examining the roles of non-state actors in other countries. Misunderstandings and misperceptions of this sort are many and inevitable, as history shows. The fourth step is essential—whether to choose “command power” or “co-optive power” in different situations, adjusting tactics to fit the circumstances. This is perhaps the most challenging step, and I will return to it below. The fifth step is to try to assess—or guess—what the outcomes of different tactics would be. It is necessary for American policymakers to realise that: “The number one power does not have to man every boundary and be strong everywhere” (2011: 227). Nye explicitly returns to the model of the Eisenhower Administration and argues for “a return to traditional prudence” (2011: 228).

All of this seems extremely sensible in ideal type policymaking terms, given the constraints and opportunities of the current international situation. However, it

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underplays two crucial factors. The first, which Nye stresses but in my view overestimates, is the capacity of governments in general and the United States government in particular to develop the critical and coordinating capacities to undertake this project. Policymakers may agree on the desirability of such a soft power dominated strategy, but the constraints are huge. As Nye himself writes, “…many official instruments of soft power—public diplomacy, broadcasting, exchange programs, development assistance, disaster relief, military-to-military contacts—are scattered around the government, and there is no overarching strategy or budget [emphasis added] that even tries to integrate them with hard power into an overarching smart power strategy” (2011: 226). Neither is there a viable conception of how to relate to non-state actors, especially as NGOs are far more trusted than governments (much less, business, banks or the media) today (Financial Times, 25 January 2011). Nye sees the possibility of “network power”—using the United States’s key position in a wide range of networks—as providing the potential leverage for continuing clout. However, actors in those networks, including for example transnationalised financial markets, often are in a position to manipulate and make end runs around the United States government (and other governments too, of course) for their own purposes, rather than the other way round (Cerny 2011).

Furthermore, the United States in particular, as I have argued for many years, increasingly suffers from having an outdated political system, dominated by “checks and balances”, chronic gridlock, multiple competing agencies (including at state level), a dysfunctional party system and a populist, backlash dominated mass politics. The American political system is shot through with “political entropy” (Cerny 1989), making coherent policymaking extremely difficult, especially on an everyday basis. To expect the United States to develop a coherent smart power strategy and to implement it systematically may be hoping too much. Of course, this sort of constraint applies to other major “powers” too. The European Union suffers dramatically at times from the fact that it is only semi-sovereign and that the ultimate decisionmakers are nation-state actors with competing interests. It is quite an achievement for the EU to have become as effective as it has been, given these constraints. In fact, much of the EU’s success has come from a particular kind of soft power, or reverse hard power—the evolution of its member states from the ultimate hard power states that had created two world wars into what have been called “civilian states” (Sheehan 2008). Europe’s inadvertent soft power threatens no-one, but the soft power of European civilisation, the retreat from empire in the middle of the 20th century, and its economic success (despite the current sovereign debt crisis) have made it into a model for the rest of the world. China, for all its strengths, is still largely an underdeveloped country in many ways and is likely to face both growing internal crises as its economy expands and external crises as its regional military-political role evolves.

In other words, the problem of the future of power is not one that promises to maintain or reinforce the role of states as such in a states based system. Nye talks about “power diffusion” but in the last analysis sees it as something that needs to be controlled by the US. His main chapter on this is about “cyberpower”, which despite its positive elements in diffusing power, is seen as primarily as a threat to effective foreign policymaking. But the notion that non-state or cross-border webs of power—including Slaughter’s “transgovernmental networks”—may be increasingly challenging the sovereign autonomy of states per se, while given occasional lip service, is relegated to the background in the sort of policy oriented terms in which Nye thinks. Thus although some commentators might think Nye provides a basis for a strategic restoration of

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American influence, even a new, rejigged, soft power based American hegemony, his “liberal realist” approach is ultimately old wine in new bottles.

Of course, better to have a nicey-nicey United States pursuing international public goods than a Dick Cheney style “New American Century”. But if those public goods are difficult to attain—as financial regulatory convergence is difficult to attain despite the Dodd-Frank Act (Acharya, et al. 2010) and the advent of the G20 and the Financial Stability Board—and if the veto power of the Tea Party controls the domestic shots, then not only is an effective American “soft power” strategy unviable, it may not be normatively good for the rest of the world—or even for itself. John Winthrop’s (and Ronald Reagan’s) “shining city upon a hill”, the ultimate basis for American soft power attraction and endearment, may not be so shiny or so “attractive” in the future. To paraphrase Dean Acheson, the United States has lost an (informal) empire but has not yet found a role. Nye’s smart power strategy is unlikely to be enough for America to reinvent one as power in the future drains away from the states system itself. Power in Nye’s analysis has, for example, little room for Foucault’s decentralised and fragmented “circuits of power” (Foucault 1980). With hindsight, then, it may well be too late to recapture American hegemony, despite our new understanding of soft power. After all, in Hegel’s words: “Only when the dusk starts to fall does the owl of Minerva spread its wings and fly.”

V. Conclusion: Globalization and the Transformation of Power

The role of state power as the crucial building-block of the international system is being undermined and transformed by fundamental structural shifts that are empowering a wider range of actors and enmeshing states in complex “webs of power.” While this new power structure presents serious new challenges for the stability of world politics, they are fundamentally different from the challenges presented in the international system of the 19th and 20th centuries. They involve, in particular, an increased focus on globally interconnected economic growth and development in a more open world economy, the transnationalization of social bonds, the pluralization and flexibilization of ideology, a “civilianization” of world politics, and an uneven but unremitting shift toward pluralization and democratization in the structure and operation of political institutions and processes.

The key to understanding the role of state power in the 17th-20th centuries was the multifunctionality of the state itself. In a series of policy arenas or issue-areas “state actors” could coordinate their actions through “institutional economies of scale”. The state appeared to be the “natural” unit of politics. Central among these arenas were:

• War and violence (Weber’s “monopoly of legitimate violence”), especially the industrialization of warfare;

• Economic policy and Second Industrial Revolution—“Fordist”—industrial organization and technology;

• Social inclusion, cultural bonds, common welfare (“peasants into Frenchmen”);

• Ideology (economic liberalism, socialism, etc., co-opted into nationalism); and

• Institutional organization and accountability (the domestic “political system”).However, all of these have begun to shift in deep structural ways.

In the first place, then, the era of industrial warfare between states (from Clausewitz and “total war” to nuclear deterrence) is over. Civil wars, transnational ethnic

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and religious wars, guerilla wars, etc., are simply quagmires for external interventionist states. The Vietnam-style “body bag syndrome” operates at home. Technological change reinforces this shift, with big weapons systems unfit for purpose; small-scale technology like IEDs and robots can be used most effectively by small groups. The future for effectiveness of nation-states themselves lies with becoming multilateralist “civilian states”, i.e. in developing more complex forms of interaction and cooperation. At the same time, most violence today concerns struggles for (and against) greater participation in political processes and for more comprehensive economic development—the “revolution of rising expectations”—rather than “realist” struggles for national power in a zero-sum international system.

Second, international production chains, multinational corporations, information and communications technology, and the transnationalization of markets increasingly limits states in their use of both macroeconomic and microeconomic policy. The “Competition State”—prioritizing international competitiveness—and the “Regulatory State” replace most direct intervention (Cerny 2000c, 2010b). Indeed, the economic role of the state today is to support activities that can be effective in a global context. “Neoliberalism” is not so much a form of laissez faire capitalism as one of pro-competitive regulation in a more open world political economy, as presaged by the Ordoliberals of the 1930s and 1940s (Foucault 2008). However, “compensating losers” from globalization becomes increasingly important, requiring the maintenance of a more targeted welfare state and micro-interventionist industrial policy—what I have called “social” and “managed” neoliberalism (Cerny 2008)—to counteract domestic backlashes and market failures. At the same time, political and bureaucratic actors have learned—up to a point—how to deal with financial crises without letting them turn into new depressions (although they are still learning, and it is a controversial process …). “Complex interdependence” (Keohane and Nye 1977) is increasingly a fact on the ground.

Third, the character of social bonds is also changing. Migration, diasporas, and the “fragmegration” (Rosenau 1997) of McLuhan’s “global village” are leading to a world characterized by a “majority of minorities” rather than containerized, pseudo-natural “national culture societies” (Znaniecki 1952). Interest groups are increasingly crosscutting (although we often underestimate how they always have been: Kotkin 1992); the capacity to coordinate their activities across different levels of governance and geographical areas is what gives them “clout”. Multiculturalism—in the inclusive rather than the “enclave” sense—is messy and creates conflict as well as new identities, but it also creates greater cross-cultural awareness and increases the possibilities for peaceful coexistence. Although transnational “civil society” is weak, it is increasingly perceived as playing a core role in this process. We may not be heading toward a “global village”, but a multi-level, multi-nodal system of crosscutting social bonds and the awareness of their increasing ubiquity is emerging.

Fourth, ideologies are being transformed too. Nationalism is challenged from both above and below, partly by awareness of “globalization” and a consciousness of wider political, social and economic processes I have elsewhere called raison du monde (Cerny 2010a), and partly by populist and especially pro-democratic backlashes such as the recent Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia. “Nations” as ideal-type sociological units, always problematic in practice—the nation-state has always been an unfinished political project in a more complex world—have become increasingly artificial political constructs unsuited to 21st century realities. Nationalism is no longer just about the nation-state as

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such, but is hijacked domestically by radical subnational movements that paradoxically undermine the state, while wider social movements become transnationalized. At the same time, neoliberalism is becoming an increasingly pluralized and flexible paradigm, and its emphasis on openness and economic growth is being appropriated in a range of different circumstances by a growing number of interest and value groups.

Finally, the 21st century is a century of institutional pluralization. Multi-level governance, the proliferation of international regimes, attempts to coordinate policy through bodies like the G20 (however redundant and powerless), regional institutions, sub-state bodies (“the re-scaling of statehood”: Brenner 2004), and the increasing density of “transgovernmental networks” (Keohane and Nye 1977; Slaughter 2004)—all enmesh the state in webs of power that can lead to policy incoherence and political gridlock, yet require imaginative rebuilding. At one level, competing institutions and overlapping jurisdictions dominate—what has been called “neomedievalism” (Cerny 1998). At the same time, however, institutional practices and political processes are becoming more and more inextricably intertwined across borders, and a significant amount of convergence is emerging, sometimes planned but often inadvertent, in response to increasingly transnational crises and challenges.

In the last analysis, then, a whole range of political, sociological and economic “spaces” have opened up that undermine the multifunctionality and centrality of the nation-state and fundamentally transform political power itself. These shifts are particularly important insofar as attempts by nation-states possessing traditional economic and military “capabilities”—especially so-called “hegemons”—are less and less able to translate those capabilities into real “power over” and/or “power to” (Cerny 2006b). Even traditionally “powerful” states thus face the possibility of growing “entanglement” rather than the capacity to effectively pursue national interests—themselves more problematic to define and implement in the first place. The downside is that crosscutting problems and challenges are more complex and some may be endemic, including ethnic conflict, cross-border wars, the destabilization of pseudo-nationalistic authoritarian or quasi-authoritarian regimes. However, the upside is that a growing awareness of the global/transnational dimension of these issues is crystallizing, along with more flexible and crosscutting political processes and a wider (if still just emerging) range of instruments to respond to these challenges. New world wars between states or even all-encompassing Cold Wars are virtually impossible. Alain Minc has referred to this condition as one of “durable disorder” (Minc 1993). Nevertheless—within limits—the traditional international predominance of “power over” may be tempered by the increased prospects for positive “power to” in crucial issue-areas, especially those with transnational or global scope.

Power at the international level has traditionally been seen as constituting the underlying structural dynamic of the international system—beyond and outside the bounds of domestically rooted relationships of “friendship” and “justice”, and ultimately manifested in the real or latent use of force, i.e. through war or the threat of war, embodied by and embedded in nation-states, the fundamental building blocks and unit actors of international relations. Today, a process of the reconfiguration of power cuts across state borders. Power is increasingly embedded in new but still embryonic forms of world politics; reflects the sort of higher normative values that domestic actors have always pursued at home (Rothman 2011); is shaped by transnational interests and global civil society rather than interstate conflict; is organized through transnational and transgovernmental networks rather than unified foreign policy elites and military

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command structures; and is informed by a growing sense that the use of force is becoming increasingly counterproductive in an international system characterized by complex interdependence—and indeed, that international power must be “civilianized” and domesticated, less about “power over” and more about “power to”, in order to be both effective and legitimate in a globalizing world.

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