International Relations in India

Kanti P. Bajpai
Siddharth Mallavarapu

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Title: International Relations in India
Author: Kanti P. Bajpai, Siddharth Mallavarapu
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Begin Content
i
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS IN INDIA
ii
[Page Blank]
iii
International Relations in India
BRINGING THEORY BACK HOME
Kanti Bajpai
Siddharth Mallavarapu
Orient Longman
iv
ORIENT LONGMAN PRIVATE LIMITED
Registered Office
3-6-752 Himayarnagar, Hyderabad 500 029 (A.P.), India
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© Orient Longman Private Limited 2004
First Published 2005
ISBN 81 250 2639 8
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Orient Longman Private Limited
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e- mail: olldel@del6.vsnl.net.in
v
Contents
Acknowledgements
Notes on Contributors
Introduction 1
SIDDHARTH MALLAVARAPU
ONE International Studies in India:
Bringing Theory (Back) Home 17
KANTI BAJPAI
TWO States, Nationalisms and Modernities in
Conversation: Problematising International Relations in India 39
SIDDHARTH MALLAVARAPU
THREE Communicative Discourse and Community
in International Relations Studies in India: A Critique 71
A.P. RANA AND K.P. MISRA
FOUR Marxism and International Law:
A Contemporary Analysis 123
B.S. CHIMNI
FIVE Gramscian Hegemony and the Legitimation
of Imperialism 173
RAIEN HARSHE
vi
SIX The Gaze of Orientalism: Reflections on
Linking Postcolonialism and International Relations 223
A.K. RAMAKRISHNAN
SEVEN Human Security: Concept and Measurement 275
KANTI BAJPAI
EIGHT Bringing Gender into National Security and
International Relations 333
ANURADHA M. CHENOY
NINE Human Rights and International Relations
Theory 351
SABYASACHI BASU RAY CHAUDHURY
TEN Economic Sanctions as a Foreign Policy Tool 367
RAHUL MUKHERJI
ELEVEN The Long and Short of Peace 384
RANABIR SAMADDAR
TWELVE 1945 to 1989: The Realist Paradigm and
Systemic Duality 400
ACHIN VANAIK
THIRTEEN Structure and Interaction in the
Global System 422
RAJESH M. BASRUR
FOURTEEN Reconsidering the State in International
Relations 451
SHIBASHIS CHATTERJEE
FIFTEEN Realism, Neorealism and Critical Theory:
A General Essay 490
M.S. JOHN
Index 521
vii
Acknowledgements
For permission to reproduce copyright material in this Reader, the
volume editors and publishers with to make the following
acknowledgements:
Kanti Bajpai, 'International Studies in India Bringing Theory (Back)
Home'. Originally published in M.S. Rajan ed., International and Area
Studies in India, New Delhi, Lancer Books, 1997.
B.S. Chimni, 'Marxism and International Law: A Contemporary
Analysis'. Originally published in Economic and Political Weekly,
February 6, 1999 issue.
Rajen Harshe, 'Gramscian Hgemony and Legitimation of Imperialism'.
Reproduced from Rajen Harshe Twentieth Century Imperialism:
Shifting Contours and Changing Conceptions. Copyright © Rajesh
Harshe, 1997. All rights reserved. Reproduced with the permission of
the copyright-holder and the publishers, Sage Publications India Pvt.
Ltd., New Delhi, India.
A.K. Ramakrishnan, 'The Gaze of Orientalism: Reflections on Linking
Postcolonialism and International Relations'. Originally published in
International Studies, Vol. 36, No. 2 (1999), pp. 129-63. Copyright ©
Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright-holder and the
publishers, Sage Publications India Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi, India.
Anuradha M. Chenoy, 'Bringing Gender into National Security and
International Relations'. Originally published in International Studies,
Vol. 37, No. 1 (2000), pp. 17-29. Copyright © Jawaharlal Nehru Univerity,
New Delhi. All rights reserved. Reproduced with the permission of the
copyright-holder and the publishers, Sage Publications India Pvt. Ltd.,
New Delhi, India.
Ranabir Samaddar, 'The Long and Short of Peace'. Originally published
in Calcutta journal of Political Studies, Special No. 1999.
Rajesh M. Basrur, 'Structure and Interaction in the Global System .
viii
Originally published in International Studies, Vol. 31, No. 4 (1994), pp.
377-97. Copyright © Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. All rights
reserved. Reproduced with the permission of the copyright-holder and
the publishers, Sage Publications India Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi, India.
Shibashis Chatterjee, 'Reconsidering the State in International
Relations'. Originally published in International Studies, Vol. 35, No. 3
(1998) pp. 269-93. Copyright © Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.
All rights reserved. Reproduced with the permission of the copyright-
holder and the publishers, Sage Publications India Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi,
India.
M.S. John, 'Realism, Neorealism and Critical Theory: A General Essay .
Originally published in the Indian Journal of Political Science, 1993.
ix
Notes on Contributors
SIDDHARTH MALLAVARAPU, Assistant Professor, Centre for
International Politics, Organisation and Disarmament, School of
International Studies, JNU, New Delhi.
KANTI BAJPAI, Headmaster, Doon School, Dehradun.
A.P. RANA, Former Professor, Political Science Department, Maharaja
Sayajitrao University of Baroda, Baroda.
K.P. MISRA (Late) Former Professor, Centre for International Politics,
Organisation and Disarmament, School of International Studies (SIS),
JNU, New Delhi.
B.S. CHIMNI, Professor, Centre for Studies in Diplomacy, International
Law and Economics. Currently serving as Vice Chancellor, West Bengal
National University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkata.
RAJEN HARSHE, Professor, Department of Political Science, School of
Social Sciences University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad.
A.K. RAMAKRISHNAN teaches at the School of International Relations,
Mahatma Gandhi University, Kottayam, Kerala.
ANURADHA M. CHENOY, Professor, Centre for Russian, Central Asian
and East European Studies, School of International Studies, JNU, New
Delhi.
SABYASACHI BASU RAY CHAUDHURY, Reader, Department of Political
Science, Rabindra Bharati University, Kolkata.
RAHUL MUKHERJI, Assistant Professor, Centre for Political Studies,
School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University.
x
RANABIR SAMADDAR, Director, Calcutta Research Group, Kolkata.
ACHIN VANAIK, Visiting Professor, Department of Political Science,
Delhi University, Delhi.
RAJESH M. BASRUR, Director, Centre for Global Studies, Mumbai.
SHIBASHIS CHATTERJEE, Senior Lecturer, Department of International
Relations and Strategic Studies, Jadavpur University, Kolkata.
M.S. JOHN, Lecturer, School of Gandhian Thought and Development
Studies, Mahatma Gandhi University, Kottayam, Kerala.
1
Introduction
SIDDHARTH MALLAVARAPU
The idea of an anthology of International Relations theory emerging
from India may be surprising to anyone conversant with the
intellectual origins and mainstream concerns of this discipline. Yet,
this is precisely what this collection seeks to acknowledge and
consolidate. To acquiesce in the notion that the task of the developing
world is merely to apply and tinker with prevailing frames of reference
and not to fashion theory has been a fairly widespread understanding.
The tragedy of such an assessment is that scholars, for the most part
not merely from the metropoles but often from the developing world,
have been complicit in viewing themselves as mere recipients of a
discourse shaped elsewhere.1 This anthology is the beginning of an
effort to dislodge this notion and forge an intellectual collective from
within, committed to enlarging the boundaries of International
Relations theory in India.
Even a cursory glance at the contents of this volume will reveal that
Indian International Relations (IR) scholars have engaged a range of
theoretical themes. What is, however, more pertinent from our
perspective is the critical consciousness of time and space context
and circumstances that these contributions reveal. An evaluation of
the nature of imperialism, the proclivities of contemporary
international law, unraveling the
2
links between identity and foreign policy imperatives, and
reconsidering political economy, human rights, nationalism, states,
regions, terrorism and borders in the domestic-regional-international
continuum all serve as grist to the mill in this effort. These articles
reveal in their own analytic idioms the inherent tensions and
possibilities that lie at the intersection of international, regional, and
national norms. It would be misplaced to imagine that this debate
culminates at this point. Arrays of theoretical positions are opened up
encompassing liberal, realist, Marxist, postcolonial, and feminist
approaches among others. We begin in this context with a brief
reflection on the rationale that prompted this anthology.
The Rationale
A constant refrain in accounts of IR in India is a progressive
'dissatisfaction' with the current state of affairs.2 Surely, something
must account for this lacuna. While a part of the culpability has been
attributed to institutional constraints, a greater part of the problem
has been focused on the conceptual 'conflation' of area studies with
international studies leading to a more narrow construction of the
discipline.3 To make matters worse, realism, the dominant tradition in
IR places a premium on the State, resulting in a disciplinary inclination
to seek patronage from the dominant actor in the discipline.4 Casting
the State as the guardian of the discipline carries with it various
implications. Above all, it has enhanced a latent desire among IR
scholars to be part of the establishment as 'insiders' who do not have
to depend parasitically for information from those in 'the know of
things.' For those outside this privileged circle, a similar temptation to
legitimate state policy and gain acceptance as national 'experts' in the
field resurfaces constantly.
Of particular criticality for the well-being of the discipline is its
periodic renewal through a new generation of scholars willing to
commit themselves to the nurturing of the field. This sense of
attachment has remained weak, primarily because the critical
3
mass that provides the basis for the reproduction of the discipline
emerges from the middle class which is unwilling to invest in a long
period of reflection without adequate recompense socially and
professionally. The question of incentives and outlets is thus a
fundamental one and needs to be addressed squarely by those
committed to the further development of the discipline. These
incentives must not be purely monetary but rather must more
imaginatively premise themselves on raising the self-esteem of Indian
scholars in the discipline.
The 'self-esteem' of the researcher in the developing world is crucially
linked to the possibility of recourse to national exemplars in the
discipline who serve as effective role models worthy of emulation. This
anthology seeks to modestly drive home the point that the Indian IR
collective possesses the potential to grapple with the subtlest
theoretical developments in the discipline. It is also important to
underscore the vitality of acknowledging differences in any theoretical
endeavour. This volume testifies to diverse strands of thought that
make gestures to different priorities in ordering the economic, social
and political universe both domestically and internationally.
IR has in the past and continues to be very much the discipline of the
hegemon. The interest of the hegemon to slice up the world into
different territorial units, to conceptualise in terms of aggregates
called regions and to relegate the self-understandings of the actors
within these units as peripheral has a long history. To make apparent
these tendencies has been a consistent concern of the scholar in the
developing world. Beginning with the domination of Britain, the
discipline slowly but surely gave way to accommodate a new
hegemon, the United States. It is not misplaced to characterise the
discipline as an 'American social science' both in terms of its reigning
paradigms and content of investigation.6 The development of
perspectives outside this prevailing conspectus is vital if we are to
enrich our understanding of the structures and processes that under
grid interaction within and outside the state system. This collection
seeks to redress partially the general neglect that has characterised
IR theory as an arena of scholarship in India.
4
Further, it has often been alleged that IR in India is concentrated in
Delhi. This anthology takes cognisance of theoretical scholarship in IR
theory from around the country. Scholars from diverse corners have
contributed to make this collective possible. In the years ahead there
needs to be greater dissemination of resources and opportunities to
scholars outside Delhi. This book is the genesis of an effort to enhance
the scope for collaborative ties in Indian IR and to acknowledge each
other in more conscious fashion. The lack of mutual acknowledgement
is most evident in the footnoting protocols of the discipline.7 The
references to each other's work are scant. These absences raise
questions relating to the insecurity of the academic in the developing
world and her anxieties relating to career advancement.
Our account of Indian IR would be incomplete if we did not factor the
relationship between IR and its parent discipline Political Science.
While there are several Political Science departments in the country,
IR does not compete in terms of either the number of outlets or quality
of courses available to students. IR has received inadequate attention
and has often consisted of an amalgam of world history and geography
with bits of Hans Morgenthau's classical realism thrown in. There is
little exposure if any to the provenance of concepts, their fluidity in a
changing world and the available repertoire of theoretical insights to
illuminate the dynamics of the international system. Political Science
at least gestures to theory and a lineage of thinkers who shared
certain assumptions of human nature and collective life. IR on the
contrary is taught as divorced from the world of political theory with
the exception of a Hobbes or a Machiavelli to demonstrate the eternal
circulation of power and interests. This has left us with a very
restricted appreciation of the discipline as it has evolved.
Our anthology also needs to be situated as a response to the prevailing
political economy of the publication marketplace in India. Academic
books have limited buyers given the specialist audiences they address
as well as the pricing of these volumes. The main buyers are
institutions, and, on occasion, government
5
departments and public utility libraries. The academic in India, as
probably elsewhere, is also in competition with journalistic accounts
that provide an early first take on any episode. Academics, who
normally reflect over an episode after the dust has settled, are usually
denied the privilege of quick reactions. This is because the pace of
events in international affairs can outdate a particular development
that appeared salient at a moment in time. This anthology will have
served its purpose if it affirms the existence of a critical community of
IR scholars in India and lays the ground for an extended scholarly
conversation on events in international affairs and on how we should
best interpret those events.
A final word here on the links between theory and policy. It would be a
fallacy to posit the world of theory as autonomous and unrelated to the
real world of policy. Good theory often illustrates the nature of the
compact and is suggestive of the broader patterns of influence on
policy within and across issue-areas. IR theory is no exception to this
rule. It seeks to grapple with the political underpinnings and principal
rationales of particular foreign policy positions. To argue that policy
makers make no theoretical assumptions and that academics have no
inkling of a policy universe is quite misleading. What is perhaps crucial
is to strike a balance between the demands of expedient policy
prescriptions and long-term theoretical elaborations.
Revisiting the Indian IR Problematic
A common thread running through accounts problematising IR in India
is the question of the legitimacy' of the State. Kanti Bajpai argues that
this legitimisation crisis has been a rather prolonged one and
attributes this to the image of the State after decolonisation, which
changes from an oppressor to a protector. In his view the new
perception of the State has impeded a more critical appreciation of its
role, and the discipline of IR has often found itself in connivance with
the status quo. Building on a critical liberal position, Bajpai warns
against the dangers of
6
subverting the quest for an Indian IR into some crude version of
'nativism'. While conflict has been the focus of much attention in IR,
Bajpai enlarges on the need to consider cooperation and 'mutual
regulation' in an environment of constant suspicion in contemporary
IR. While partaking of contemporary constructivist insights, he
provides a useful axis for the IR scholar interested in the evolution of
the discipline. Key questions about any theoretical endeavour are
'...whose interests were served by various ontologies? What patterns
of dominance were produced and reproduced? What legitimations,
complicities, and exertions were deployed and with what effect? How
is power represented and for what purposes?'8
Although the emphasis in this anthology is on 'recent' Indian writings
on IR theory confined substantially to the last decade, there remains
one important exception. A.P. Rana and K.P. Misra's intervention
originally made during the 1980s retains a special relevance as we
think about the problematic of IR studies in India. It candidly
acknowledges the 'absence' of a national discursive community in IR
theory and provides a diagnosis of what has gone wrong in IR
scholarship. Concentrating on the institutional constraints facing the
discipline in India, Rana and Misra advance the case for a greater
sensitivity to the epistemological premises informing studies in IR.
Their account also alludes to a strand of 'conservatism in writings on
Indian foreign policy, originating from a familiar IR enchantment with
state practices most widespread in the sphere of strategic studies.
The key challenge to the Indian variant of the discipline, in their
reading, is to encourage cumulation in the years ahead. While not
opposed to an 'India-centrism', Rana and Misra's more pressing
concern is 'what sort of "Indiacentricism" comes into play and "how
disciplinary-salient?" this turns out to be.'10 They are against recourse
to indigenism as an alibi for a lack of rigour or unfamiliarity with
existing developments across the globe. The sources of a cautious
optimism in this account emerge from the understanding that '[i]n one
sense, Indian writing does have a submerged "theoretical base", which
may be difficult to conceptualise, but which does need to be explicitly
7
explored.'11 Ultimately, they insist on the criteria of quality over
quantity of theoretical output and argue that any body of relevant
scholarship in this area must be appraised in terms of its overall
contribution to the global field of IR.
Employing post colonialism as a common referent in IR writings in
India, I argue that two images of the state have competed in the
framing of the Indian problematic.12 The benevolent and malevolent
representative strains of these arguments are sampled for the reader
in order to elucidate the assumptions at work in these accounts.
Similar contestations are revealed in the assessments of nationalism
and modernity. While not denying the impulse of the IR scholar to
indulge in the immediate moment, the need to be alive to the wotking
of larger forces is highlighted in this intervention.
Intellectual history has often recognised the need to outline '...parallel
histories of the state and social science.'13 In the Indian instance too
the temptation of the state to actively participate in shaping the
contours of the discipline is apparent. This is not true of India alone. In
a recent volume on Security Studies in South Asia, Jayadeva Uyangoda
endorses the view that '[m]ost of the social science inquiry in South
Asia is an accomplice to the project of the State.'14 However, it would
be wrong to argue that this is true of the entire range of scholarship.
This volume brings to bear a certain degree of detachment from this
dominant impulse in the discipline and adds a moderate corrective to
the asymmetry that has plagued the configuring of Indian IR as a
discipline.
The end of the Cold War did provide an opportune moment to reassess
the claims of realism. It was principally critiqued for its inability to
predict systemic change.15 While this introduced greater caution and
created room for other theoretical approaches such as Constructivism,
it did not however result in an abdication of realism's pre-eminent
status in the field. Realism still finds a number of adherents and is
accepted particularly in policy circles as persuasive in evaluating
outcomes. While we have already alluded to Morgenthau's classical
version of realism in mainstream International Relations, it would be
8
misplaced to ignore the more dominant contemporary voice within this
lineage, that of Kenneth Waltz. The latter variant lays a special
emphasis on the anarchical character of the international system, the
relevance of the prevailing structural distribution of capabilities and
treats states as axiomatically predisposed towards utility-maximising
in the interests of survival.16 Structural neo-realism has also been the
subject of critical engagement within the Indian context across
different issue areas. While the traditional focus of structural realists
has been on conflict in the international system in the realm of
security studies one also encounters assessments of its operation in
the sphere of political economy.
Neorealists have largely been skeptical of the possibilities of
cooperation, privilege relative over absolute gains, and often stress
the influence of capabilities over intentions.17 Neoliberal
institutionalists in contrast have recognised the potential of 'absolute
gains from international cooperation' and lay an emphasis on the
intent of states and institutions over mere distribution of capabilities. 18
Contemporary mainstream International Relations theory has been re-
cast as a debate between rationalism and refiectivism. In a recent
account of this debate, Peter Katzenstein, Robert O. Keohane and
Stephen D. Krasner observe that '[t]he key terms for rationalists are
preferences, information strategies, common knowledge, and
interests. The key terms for constrtlctivists are identities, norms,
knowledge and interests.'19 While one cannot ignore the influence of
the rationalist legacy in mainstream International Relations, the
absence of sufficient exposure to quantitative techniques in India has
resulted in its more marginal employment. What is however more
debatable is the extent of philosophical agreement or disagreement
over the quantification of international life among scholars in the
discipline. It is hard not to notice the desire for a 'scientific' approach
within the discipline especially in the first few decades of the
discipline.20 An unramiliarity with quantitative techniques is more
plausible a reason for the neglect of rationalist
9
methodology than a serious disagreement over the measurability of
international phenomena.
A more positive development over the last decade relates to the spurt
in critical reflectivist accounts on a whole range of themes. These
encompass identity politics, human rights, (Sabyasachi Basu Ray
Chaudhury) specific re-appraisals of neorealism from a critical
perspective, (M.S. John) critical geopolitics, (Ranabir Samaddar) and
evaluations of the potential political abuse of certain episodes for
broader domestic political goals. This anthology also consciously
incorporates critical perspectives conceptualising 'imperialism' (Rajen
Harshe), the class character of international law (B.S. Chimni), the
gendered nature of IR theory (Anuradha Chenoy), neo-colonial impulses
in contemporary IR (A.K. Ramakrishnan) and re-assessments of the
Cold War toll on theoretical scholarship (Achin Vanaik) within the
discipline. The intent is to provide an inviting menu for those willing to
engage in/with the dominant terms of discourse within the discipline.
The Allure of Insularity in the Study of IR
One of the constant dangers inherent in the study of IR is to succumb
to one form of parochialism or the other.21 The discipline has a well-
documented history of
Anglo-American parochialism. It is tempting for scholarship to
participate from the limited perspective of one's national location and
obscure similar predicaments elsewhere. A.J.R. Groom in his account
of the dominant British variant of the discipline in the early years,
notices that '[a]s the new discipline of IR spread, it was transplanted
wholesale, so that where it took root, it was, for the most part, a
colonial transplant.'22 What is more, there were very few hybrids where
the Anglo-American tradition was grafted on to an indigenous tradition
of political analysis.23 In a self-consciously 'parochial survey' of the last
fifty years of the discipline, Groom takes stock of the World Society
conceptions of Morton Kaplan, John Burton and David
10
Mitrany. He also grapples with some more recent forms of inquiry in
contemporary IR deriving insights from historical sociology to cyclical
accounts of change in the international system. The neglect of
capitalism is no coincidence, according to Groom, given that
'...Marxism had never taken a deep root in the Anglo-American
tradition', consequentially, the '[c]onsideration of the capitalist-
imperialist structure...did not play a prominent role in academic
discourse in the Anglo-American tradition.'24
The American variant also clearly reveals strands of an
'exceptionalism'.25 In a scathing indictment of this exceptionalism
manifest across the making of the social sciences, Dorothy Ross
records that '[w]hat is so marked about American social science is the
degree to which it is modelled on the natural rather than historical
sciences and imbedded in the classical ideology of liberal
individualism.'26 The recognisable characteristics of this
exceptionalism in contemporary America are manifest in '[i]ts liberal
values, practical bent, shallow historical vision, and technocratic
confidence.'27
Ross has also unequivocally established that the modernist accent on
'progress' and 'scientific laws' which derived their inspiration and
legitimacy from the Enlightenment lineage eventually lodged
themselves in the 'social-science' disciplinary constructs that
emerged in the eighteenth and nineteenth century in the United
States.28 These developments entailed an understanding 'of modern
civilisation as a realm of progressive diversification [with] its faith in
commercial development, science and representative government.'29 In
cosy alliance with this Enlightenment legacy, positivism advanced its
grandiose claim 'that scientific knowledge was the only certain
knowledge, and therefore that it was the preferred form of
knowledge.'30 This rationale also created the climate for a new social
engineering impulse built on an American exceptionalism although this
was inevitably posited in the framework of universalism.31 It
manifested in 'the willingness to place America at the forefront of the
quintessential center of liberal change and to cast its exemplary or
vanguard role in world history.'32
11
This modernist epistemic project also obscured the 'existence of class
conflict' and laid emphasis on the 'promise' of new possibilities in an
era 'where science promised control.'33 The linkages between modern
science and capitalism are also explicitly posited in Ross's reading of
the 'exceptionalist' heritage. Thus, she observes that in order to
survive '[i]n the American context, social science required the imprint
of "objective" science to build an institutional power base in a
capitalist society.'34 However, more revealing from our perspective is
the enduring impact of these efforts in the shaping of the
contemporary agenda of the social sciences. Ross records that '...the
two most influential paradigms in American social
science...instrumental positivism and neoclassical economics with its
offshoot of social and public choice theory...most clearly embody the
individualistic and ahistorical premises of liberal exceptionalism.' 35
Further by '[s]ystematically excluding attention to historical structures
of the modern world and the power relations that sustain them, these
paradigms provide only such critical purchase on the future as
established structures allow.'36 Thus, '[i]ts prophecies are self-
fulfilling.'37
The American 'exceptionalist' projection in the social sciences impels
contemporary scholars to question what values continue to hold sway
in the guise of a neutral 'positivist social science.'38 Despite claims to
the country, '... theories necessarily construct worldviews and most
often they are propagated as worldviews.'39 Rejecting monolithic
approaches to interpreting international realities will better advance
the long-term interests of IR as a discipline.
Defying Adaptations of Parochialism
The backdrop of Anglo-American parochialism is a vital reminder to IR
scholars doing theory in different parts of the world to guard against
such temptations. Almost all Indian scholars associated with the
pioneering of the discipline in India have warned against such pitfalls.
M.S. Rajan, for instance, has
12
clearly expressed a hope that the '...new field of study/research would
hopefully reduce the traditional preoccupation of IR specialists with
power politics between/among nation states.'40 In a similar plea for a
'disciplined catholicity and eclecticism', A.P. Rana warns that '[i]f
"relevance" means substituting one sort of ethnocentrism and
parochialism for another, then the future of a genuinely relevant study
of IR in this country stands doomed.'41 J.N. Dixit has also pointed to
the state's reluctance to share information with academics, as the
discipline's inherent 'subversive' potential remains a matter of
exaggerated concern. Similarly, Mahendra Kumar observed some years
ago that while '[t]here is nothing wrong in analysing India's foreign
policy in the framework of India's past traditions', nevertheless 'that
analysis should be based on sound reasoning and not on
emotionalism.'43 While it is important to remind ourselves with some
dispatch that 'scholars are not government spokesmen' equally
significant is the need to '...communicate the field to Indian
students.'44 It has come to be accepted that there is a '...dearth of
reliable textbooks written by Indian scholars reflecting, in a
responsible way, the world as seen from India.'45
Conservatism in the Indian variant in all its forms needs to be
countered effectively. For instance in one rendition of Indian history it
has been pointed out that there is in our context 'deep-rooted
complexes' which have impeded '...a commitment to the security of
this national community.'46 While this becomes a plea for a more robust
strategic studies programme in India, the underlying rationale for this
has not gone uncontested. In fact, contrary to this, it has been argued
that precisely because of these 'deep rooted complexes' there is an
'inflated strategic consciousness'47 in our environment which requires
us to be cautious about its potential for disciplinary and political
excesses. It is just as important for IR scholars to account for the links
between nationalism, militarism and the ruling classes even within
their own national settings as it is to participate in debating the
normative goals worth pursuing both domestically and
internationally.48
In the ultimate analysis, it is important to appreciate that the
13
configuring of '...International Relations is quite different in different
places.'49 While '...American IR scholars are prone to think in
universalistic categories, ...they are likely to be reminded of the
cultural specificity of these categories.'50 Indian IR theory will have to
be wary of ethnocentric pulls, without compromising on an accurate
rendition of the concerns that emerge from a shared space and time.
Notes
'Production-consumption asymmetries' receive attention in the
contribution by A.P. Rana and K.P. Misra in this volume.
Kanti P. Bajpai addresses this issue in 'International Studies in India:
Bringing Theory (Back) Home' in M.S. Rajan ed. International and Area
Studies in India (New Delhi: Lancer Books, 1997), pp. 31-51, p. 31.
Also A.P. Rana and K.P. Misra; p. 1.
A clear expression of this may be found in Kanti Bajpai 'International
Studies in India: Bringing Theory (Back) Home' esp. p. 36.
The political and epistemological bases of 'area studies' have received
increasing attention in a number of recent works. It has been argued
that '[t]he political motivations underlying its origins were quite
explicit. The United States, given its worldwide political role, needed
knowledge about, and therefore specialists on, the current realities of
these various regions, especially since these regions were now
becoming polirically more active.' See Immanuel Wallerstein et. al.
Open the Social Sciences; Report of the Gulbenkian Commission on
the Restructuring of the Social Sciences (California: Stanford
University Press, 1996), p. 37. In similar vein it has been alleged that
'...the heuristic impulse behind many of these cartographies and the
contingent form of many of these spatial configurations was soon
forgotten and the current maps of "area" in "area studies" was
enshrined as permanent.' See Arjun Appadurai 'Grassroots
Globalisation and the Research Imagination' Public Culture, vol. 12, no.
1, Winter 2000, pp. 1-19.
It continues to be acknowledged today that in the case of IR '...an
American hegemony exists and that it influences the theoretical
14
profile of the discipline.' See Ole Waever, 'The Sociology of a Not So
International Discipline: American and European Developments in IR' in
Peter J. Katzenstein, et al. (ed.) Exploration and Contestation in the
Study of World Politics (Cambridge, Massachusetts and London: The
MIT Press, 2000), pp. 48-87, p. 48.
The question of 'mutual acknowledgement' also emerges in the
discussion by A.P. Rana and K.P. Misra.
The initial poser by Kanti Bajpai referred to here throughout is
'International Studies in India: Bringing Theory (Back) Home' Specific
reference to the broader constructivist interpolation is recorded here
on p. 46.
This finds mention in this context as an issue of 'cumulativeness' p. 19.
A.P. Rana and K.P. Misra, p. 14.
Ibid., p. 4.
Siddharth Mallavarapu, 'States, Nationalisms and Modernities in
Conversation: Problematising the Discipline in India'.
See Ole Waever, 'Sociology of a Not So International Discipline:
American and European Developments in IR', p. 55.
Jayadeva Uyangoda, 'Nation-State, Security Studies and the Question
of Margins in South Asia' in Dipankar Banerjee (ed.) Security Studies in
South Asia: Change and Challenges (New Delhi: Manohar, 2000), pp. 15-
23, p. 19.
Jon Gerard Ruggie, 'What Makes the World Hang Together? Neo
Utilitarianism and the Social Constructivist Challenge', in Katzenstein
et al., ed., Exploration and Contestation in the Study of World Politics,
pp. 215-45.
Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading, Mass:
Addison-Wesley, 1979).
David A. Baldwin, 'Neoliberalism, Neorealism, and World Politics' in a
book by the same author entitled Neorealism and Neoliberalism: The
Contemporary Debate (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993).
David A. Baldwin, 'Neoliberalism, Neorealism, and World Polities', pp. 5,
7.
Peter J. Katzenstein, Robert O. Kcohanc and Stephen D. Krasner,
'International Organisation and the Study of World Politics' in
Katzenstein et al. (ed.) Exploration and Contestation in the Study of
World Politics..., p. 39.
15
21. See for instance, Mahendra Kumar, 'Indian Writings on Foreign
Policy: A Trend Report' in A.P. Rana, 'Studying International Relations:
The Baroda Perspective', Occasional Review II, vol. 12, no. 2, March
1989, pp. ??.
'Parochialism' as a characteristic pitfall in the discipline of IR has
found mention in the writings of several scholars both domestic and
international. In the Indian instance, see for example K.P. Misra,
'India's Contribution to IR Theory' in a co-edited book by the author
and Richard Smith Beal, IR Theory: Western and Non-Western
Perspectives (New Delhi: Vikas, 1980), pp. 215-227, p. 215.
A.J.R. Groom, 'Anglo-American Aspects: A Study in Parochialism' in
Kanti P. Bajpai and Harish C. Shukul (eds.) Interpreting World Politics
(New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1995), p. 12.
Ibid., p. 45.
Ibid., pp. 64-65.
American 'exceptionahsm' in the formation of modern social sciences
receives extensive treatment in Dorothy Ross, The Origins of American
Social Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).
Ibid., p. xiii.
Ibid., esp. p. 17.
Ibid., p. 17.
Ibid., pp. 92-93, 150.
Ibid., p. 150.
Ibid., p. 403.
Ibid., p. 473.
Ross in the same work urges her national audiences to no '...longer...be
unaware of the moral ambiguities of our own history, and of the heavy
exceptionalist overlay that encrusts our own history, and of the heavy
exceptionalist overlay that encrusts our characteristic languages of
liberalism, history, and social science. A more differentiated
understanding of our national history will give us a better chance to
discern what liberty, equality and solidarity in the world could mean',
p. 476.
Ibid., p. 472.
16
M.S. Rajan (ed.), International and Area Studies in India (New Delhi:
Lancer, 1997), p. 13.
A.P. Rana, 'Studying IR: The Baroda Perspective' Occasional Review 1,
vol. 1, no. 1, March 1998, pp. 6-7.
J.N. Dixit, 'Inadequacies in the Study of IR and Area Specialisation in
India's Policy and Relations' in M.S. Rajan (ed.), International ad Area
Studies in India, p. 53.
Mahendra Kumar, 'Indian Writings on Foreign Policy: A Trend Report' in
A.P. Rana 'Studying IR: The Baroda Perspective', Occasional Review 3,
vol. III, no. 1, March 1990, p. 211.
A.P. Rana, 'IR: A Trend Report', pp. 13, 48.
A.P. Rana, 'The Study of IR in India: A Western India Perspective' in
'Studying IR: The Baroda Perspective', Occasional Review II, vol. 2, no.
2, March 1989, p. 144.
K. Subrahmanyam, 'Defence Policy and Analysis: A Trend Report' in A.P.
Rana, 'The Baroda Perspective,' Occasional Review III, p. 257.
See Dawa Norbu's contribution in the companion volume International
Relations in India: Theorising the Region and Nation
M.S. Rajan, 'Reforming the Sovereign State System: A Non-Aligned
Perspective' in Kanti P. Bajpai and Harish C. Shukul (eds.), Interpreting
World Politics, p. 210.
Ole Waever, 'The Sociology of A Not So International Discipline' in
Peter J. Katzenstein et al. (ed.), Exploration and Contestation in the
Study of World Politics, p. 83.
Ibid., p. 86.
17

CHAPTER ONE
International Studies in India: Bringing Theory (Back) Home
KANTI BAJPAI
This is an apt moment for systematic and critical reflection on the
state of International Studies in India. As a field of study, it is forty
years old, nearly two generations into its life, and has therefore
achieved a degree of maturity.1 In addition, it confronts a new world.
The Cold War is over, and the dynamics of the post World War II
international system, which animated so many of its theoretical,
empirical, and normative concerns, are in recession, if they are not
altogether a thing of the past.
While International Studies in India has made strides, one is left with
the feeling that it should have done more as a 'policy science', that it
has not made the kind of intellectual contributions to a global
discipline of International Studies (that one might have expected or
hoped for) and, in sum, that it does not have the stature of the other
social sciences in India. This essay is an assessment of International
Studies in India. It is not a survey of writings, a task that has already
been massively done. There is little point in replicating that mammoth
endeavour.2 In addition, a number of critical and useful commentaries
have been published since then. The present essay addresses itself to
the continuing feeling of
18
dissatisfaction which Professor M.S. Rajan articulated in his
invitationary letter, and it should be regarded as a supplement to
earlier attempts at self-reflection.
The state of International Studies in India is puzzling. Its relative
weakness must be measured against conditions which would seem to
be conducive to growth. Since 1947, India has played--or sought to
play--a self-consciously prominent role in international affairs, surely a
fillip to the cause of International Studies. It is the second most
populous country in the world and does not lack talent. Indian higher
education has for years been the envy of the developing countries. The
university system is enormous, in terms of the absolute numbers of
teachers and students. Then there is the example of cognate
disciplines. The social sciences have a respectable record, and in
some areas have produced a corpus of work that has gained world-
wide recognition. Indian economics, anthropology, and history come
particularly to mind.
At the same time, Political Science and International Relations are
widely taught (though admittedly more Political Science than
International Relations). There is therefore a large pool from which to
draw initiates and reproduce the field of study. As a discursive and
pedagogical structure, International Studies itself is growing: more is
published, more courses are taught, and more students are enrolled
than ever before. Government funding of International Studies has not
been niggardly, at least to a half dozen programmes, and more
prominently to the School of International Studies (SIS) at Jawaharlal
Nehru University: the School has over 80 faculty members, making it in
all probability the single largest school of International Studies
anywhere in the world. Finally, with English as the medium of
instruction and as the preferred language of communication among
most scholars of International Studies, access to the
Anglo-American discipline, the largest centre of production of
International Studies, has been easier than in most countries of the
world.
What, then, is the matter? It is difficult to be much more than
suggestive, at least in part because the field has not been
19
particularly self-reflective over the years. I offer this account
tentatively, a relative 'outsider' to SIS and to International Studies in
India. As someone who has taught International Relations in India for
over five years and has been a part of SIS for two years, I inhabit a
liminal zone between outside and inside, prone perhaps to see some
things more sharply and to miss or misinterpret others. This is not an
apology, but it is also no higher claim. From a hybrid place, I present a
point of view, one which I hope will play some part in the process of
critical self-reflection that has been urged upon us.
Defining International Studies
But first, it would be useful to turn to the term 'International Studies',
a nomenclature that is by no means widespread in India or outside it.
International Relations or International Politics-- usually used
interchangeably---are cognate and more common references.
International Studies and International Relations/ Politics, however, are
not necessarily the same thing. The former is the more inclusive term.
While International Relations/Politics refers predominantly to
interstate relations, International Studies is a broader conception. One
recent discussion notes that it is 'the pursuit of almost any subject
that involves (a) a country other than the one in which the study is
being done, and (b) any' activity that crosses a national border'. 4
Just how broad a conception it has become is suggested by a 1991--92
review in the United States which shows that American conceptions of
International Studies vary considerably, at least if one goes by the
disciplines and fields that are listed by U.S. government funding
agencies. The list includes the following: agriculture, anthropology,
area studies, architecture, art and art history, business,
communications, computer science, ecology, economics, education,
engineering, foreign languages and literatures, forestry, gender
studies, geography, history, law, linguistics,. music, natural sciences
(botany, chemistry, physics), philosophy, political science,
20
religion, and sociology.5 This leaves out almost nothing. That
International Studies can 'hardly be called a "discipline" in a
conventional sense' and that it is, pace James Rosenau, 'a
conglomerate of foci, preoccupations, skills, and disciplines' is, on the
example of this list, justified.6
On the other hand, the International Studies Association (ISA), which
is essentially an American organisation, is more restrictive. It lists the
following twelve sections as rubrics under which its annual meetings
are organised: American-Soviet Relations, Comparative
Interdisciplinary Studies, Environmental Studies, Feminist Theory and
Gender Studies, Foreign Policy Analysis, Intelligence Studies,
International Education, International Law, International Organisation,
International Political Economy, International Security Studies, and
Peace Studies. Paper titles reveal that 'area studies' are in addition
heavily represented at the annual meetings. Schneider and Howell
note in their review of the ISA's organisational pattern, 'interest in the
theoretical and methodological is low' and 'International Polities' and
'International Relations Theory' are absent in the sections list.7 Anyone
who has attended ISA meetings with some regularity, though, knows
that interest in the theoretical and methodological is by no means 'low'
and that International Politics and IR Theory are not absent but are
vital presences in the sessions. Moreover, the Association is
dominated by Political Scientists and is the showcase in many ways of
those Political Scientists who specialise in International
Relations/Area Studies.
International Studies in India is clearly closer to the ISA notion of the
field. If SIS is the 'mother' of the Indian branch of the field, then
International Studies in this country is similar in conception to the ISA
version. Of the seven centres in SIS, two are devoted to 'functional'
studies and five to area studies. The 'functional' studies centres are
composites which include Diplomacy, International Law and
Economics, International Organisation, and Disarmament as well as
International Politics and Political Geography. The area studies
centres, which dominate SIS (at least in terms of numbers of faculty
and
21
students), focus on India's relations with various countries and
regions, the foreign and security policies of these countries, and, last
and least, their domestic politics. Thus, International Studies in India
appears as a mixture of interstate relations and area studies animated
substantially by the needs of the country's foreign policy--in short,
'policy studies'. When I refer to International Studies, then, I am not
referring to what its originators may have had in mind, that is, a cross-
disciplinary engagement with how actors and forces inside and outside
national boundaries affect and are affected by each other; I am
referring instead to a rather traditional mix of International Relations
and Area Studies yoked to the concerns of national policy.8 I stress
this because what follows is only comprehensible if it is clear that I
use the term 'International Studies' in a very restricted way--but in a
way justified by the nature of the field in India as it is presently
constituted.
International Studies in India: An Argument
What accounts for the course of International Studies in India? The
first proposition I would advance is that in relation to the other social
sciences, and indeed other branches of Political Science, International
Studies suffered from the fact of colonial rule. By definition, and of
course in practice, Britain regulated India's foreign relations even
more than its internal politics, its economy, and its society. From the
colonial power's viewpoint, the last thing Indians would get was any
sort of control over external policy. London might be willing to share
some degree of responsibility for internal administration, economic
management, and social affairs, but to do so for external matters was
tantamount to granting independence. Thus, while there was an
intellectual, administrative, and political space within which Indians
could ponder internal affairs, there was nothing to match it for
international affairs: that space could only become available with
independence itself. Not surprisingly, few in the nationalist movement
attended to external affairs in the
22
sense of charting a diplomatic and strategic course for the nation that
they were leading to freedom. There were, of course, fine calculations
about the role of the international system in helping or hindering
India's struggle against colonialism, but, as to the actual direction of
external affairs after independence, this was a matter for post-colonial
engagement.
The one person amongst the central leadership of the Congress Party
who thought deeply about India's role in international affairs after
political independence was Jawaharlal Nehru. This brings me to my
second argument, namely, that Nehru's expertise in international
affairs, in the long term, was as much a constraint as an
encouragement in the development of International Studies.
The Congress Party left international relations and foreign policy
thinking to Nehru, and Nehru's assessments were sophisticated and
perspicacious, as were many of his prescriptions. His overall strategic
answer to the Cold War, nonalignment, quibbles aside, reflected the
preferences of the Indian political class and kept India on an even keel
through the rough waters of much of the Cold War years of his time.
Nehru's knowledge and diagnoses of international affairs, the apparent
success of his strategy, and his political dominance in India installed a
wotld view and a foreign policy within moments of Independence. In
the shadow of Nehru what remained for those who were drawn to
international affairs was essentially to justify and operationalise
nonalignment. The primary task was to show how India's foreign policy
was a moral, yet pragmatic, posture, as also how it would be deployed
in specific situations and with what effect. This elaboration of India's
sttategic posture was vital and should. not be gainsaid, but the effect
on International Studies in India was mixed: here was a 'paradigm'
within which a good bit of 'normal' research activity, to use Thomas
Kuhn's idiom, could go forward; but, with time, the imagination became
stilted.
The effect of colonial control and Nehru's dominance in foreign affairs,
while key factors in the trajectory of International Studies, are, in the
nature of things though, of declining
23
importance. Fifty years after Independence and thirty years after
Nehru's death, other factors have supervened. A relatively constant
and debilitating factor has been the positioning of International
Studies to the Indian state.
My third proposition is that in analysing the roads taken and not taken
in International Studies, one must refer to the relationship between the
state and the field of study. The Indian state has the power of the
purse and, to put it more daintily, the power of 'moral suasion', and it
might be expected to exert both levers on the discipline. It is not my
point that the Indian state consciously exerts itself to influence the
course of International Studies. After all, government funding extends
to the academy generally, and administrative authority in higher
education in the end resides with government agencies; yet there has
been considerable autonomy within social science research. The
problem, it would seem, lies elsewhere.
The problem for International Studies in India is that the field of study
is about the state and its relations with other states. Students of
International Studies--like their cousins in Political Science--are
therefore in an uneasy position. Like economists and sociologists, they
are resources for the state: their research and analysis can inform
policy. But the object of their analysis, and potentially of their
criticisms, is the state itself. This is not the case with economists or
sociologists, for whom the primary objects of analysis and criticism--
economy and society--are at one remove from the state and indeed are
the object of state policies.
International Studies scholars face at least three constraints as a
result. First, the object of study is in many ways better known to the
state and its agents than to the academy and academics. Officials and
politicians might admit that they do not sufficiently understand the
economy or even the complexities of their societies; but surely they
can, and usually do, claim to know politics, administration, and policy
better than any outsider. Thus, the policy community has ignored or
disdained the new field of study. This lack of recognition has
undermined confidence in the idea that the field produces specialised
24
knowledge in the service of the public good. Since any discipline or
field of study represents itself as producing such knowledge, the
state's failure to give International Studies intellectual and policy
recognition has produced a rather extended legitimation crisis.
Second, the object of study and criticism is in large part political
authority itself. In a post-colonial period, the state, the apex of political
authority, appears in two guises--on the one hand; as the agent of
Reason, guaranteeing order and freedom from external and internal
oppression, and, on the other, as itself the oppressor, the 'major
perpetrator of injustices'.9 But, in this polarised view of the state, one
pole is dominant, and the state as the agent of Reason is in the end
the prevailing image. Intellectuals in India therefore tend to give the
state 'the benefit of the doubt'. International Studies has, I would
suggest, more than other fields, given the state the benefit of the
doubt, because so much of its subject matter is how the Indian state
deals with other states. In this international sphere, the image of the
state- as-oppressor recedes and of the
state-as-protector supervenes to the detriment of a critical-minded
field of study.
Third, the data of International Studies, more than any other social
science except Political Science, is often not in the public domain. A
good deal of the most vital data is lodged within the state, and the
Indian state, like other states, is stingy in sharing it with outsiders.
When it does make data available, there is implicitly a quid pro quo
attached. Those who are critical of the state and its policies could
well find their access to state-owned information denied. Students of
International Studies are therefore data-dependent on the state in a
way that other social scientists in India are not.
In sum, International Studies is not regarded as offering specialised
knowledge on the order of the other social sciences. Amongst the
social sciences, International Studies is also the most etatiste in its
worldview. The effect of this has been to blunt its critical edge. Finally,
it is more dependent on the agencies of the state than other
disciplines. I would argue that this has also
25
inhibited the development of a self-confident and autonomous field of
study which is willing and able to take on the theoretical and
methodological rigours necessary to produce excellence.
The relationship between the state and the field of study has been a
problematic one, and, it must be admitted, is on the order of a
structural constraint: there is not much prospect of change. However,
probably the most serious inhibiting factor to the development of
International Studies is 'the resistance to theory'. 10
In saying that there has been a resistance to theory I do not mean to
imply that there have been no efforts to think and write theoretically.
Obviously, the efforts of A. Appadorai, J. Bandyopadhyaya, Sisir Gupta,
Rajni Kothari, Mahendra Kumar, K.P. Misra, M.S. Rajan, and A.P. Rana,
among others, are considerable. However, I would offer the judgment
that these are exceptions which prove the rule: the edifice of their
work stands apart from the preoccupations of most scholars in the
field who have not been moved to build on this foundation in any
consistent and self-conscious way.
The resistance to theory--the studied indifference, the turning away
from, and the denigration of theory--has left International Studies in
India without a sense of
self-reflexiveness, that is, systematic and conscious reflection on the
conduct and goals of inquiry. In its absence, dissatisfaction with the
field has tended to be ascribed to 'infrastructure'--the lack of proper
teaching materials or methods, the insufficiency of funds, misguided
educational policies, and so on.11 While these are not inconsiderable
problems, Professor Rajan is correct, I think, in suggesting that the
infrastructural argument is not sufficient.
The resistance to theory in International Studies has several sources.
First of all, theory is constrained, it seems to me, by the formative
period of International Studies in India, that is, the 1950s and 1960s.
Second, theorising has run aground of the insistence that social
science must be 'relevant'. Third, theory is resisted as a
neo-colonial trap.
26
The disciplinary training of the early International Studies scholars
and the nature of theory in vogue in the 1950s and 1960s in
International Relations--which was seen, however grudgingly, as the
core discipline--must have encouraged a turning away from theory. The
first generation of scholars in International Studies in post-colonial
India were trained in law, history, and political philosophy in the style
of British political scientists. Those who went to the United States
often specialised in area studies and returned with knowledge of the
area's languages, history, culture, society, economics, and internal and
international politics. Men and women with these intellectual
backgrounds--law, history, political philosophy, and area studies--were
not likely to be drawn to theoretical activity. Law with its reliance on
the formula of precedent and basic forensic principles, history with its
insistence on the idiographic, political philosophy with its immersion in
the history of ideas, and area studies with its tendency to produce sui
generis studies of individual countries (rather than cross-country
studies), all these were not encouraging of a theoretical sensibility.12
The problem was made worse by the fact that theory in International
Relations (IR) in the 1950s and 1960s was not likely to appeal to Indian
scholars interested in international affairs. To appreciate this, we
should recall that IR theory in those decades comprised the following
major strands: political realism, systems theory, theories of foreign
policy, integration theory, and deterrence theory. From the point of
view of Indian scholarship, these various theoretical areas could easily
appear irrelevant, even pernicious.
A brief discussion will, I think, show why. Systems theory was
troubling because it seemed to privilege the study of the status quo,
whereas for an Indian what was of moment was international change.
In any case, substantively, systems theory seemed to be primarily
about the interactions of the Great Powers and said little about those
outside that ambit, except as the objects of the Great Power system.
The growing interest in comparing foreign policy did not arouse
Indians either: to whom was India to be compared? Comparison with
either Western
27
democracies or Communist dictatorships would have been idle. At the
same time, while India belonged to the Third World, it could hardly be
classified as a typical referent: it was far bigger than most Third World
countries; it was one of the few functioning democracies; and it was
an economic and military power well ahead of the rest. The only Third
World country comparable in scale was China, but China after 1949
was Communist and its historical evolution and geopolitical position
made it unique.
Integration theories--and I refer here primarily to theories of regional
integration--were viewed with doubt, it not suspicion. India had just
become independent and sovereign, and, to the extent that integration
connoted an abridgment of independence and sovereignty, Indians
were sceptical. It did not help that regional integration seemed to be
sponsored by the West in the service of Cold War goals.
Finally, the logic of nuclear deterrence and associatedly the possibility
of the use of force in the nuclear age were far removed from Indian
concerns: India did not possess nuclear weapons, nor was it likely to
in the near future, and the constraints of nuclearisation on the
exercise of force did not therefore apply.
The one strand of theory that had some appeal was political realism. A
theory that presented and justified a world of states, wherein each
was sovereign in pursuing its national interest as conceived of by its
leaders and peoples was attractive, if not without dangers. Its
Kautilyan echoes, its simplicity, its legitimation of a world of sovereign
nation-states, its clear enough solution (the balance of power), and, as
in Hans Morgenthau's famous textbook, its inclusion of amelioratives,
such as international law and organisation (surely of interest for
relatively weak states such as India), all these were attractive.13
Moreover, in its stress on power, realism was universalistic: all states
were bound to pursue power and balances of power. Realism in pure
form did not claim that power was best in the hands of Western
democracies, Communist dictatorships, or one racial group or another.
In a world regulated by power, India,
28
by virtue of its size and economic potential, would constitute one of
the major regulating powers, surely a gratifying possibility. Not
surprisingly, the one theoretical stream that has informed
International Studies is political realism. Every generation of Indian
students can be relied upon to have read, or be conversant with, Hans
Morgenthau's famous text and his formulations!
Disciplinary training continues to be a problem at another level.
Students who join an International Studies programme usually come
from another discipline. In the other social sciences, this switching of
disciplines is limited. Master's level students in Economics, History,
Psychology, and Sociology, not to say Political Science, are more likely
than not to have graduated in the same discipline. For three years, as
undergraduates, they are exposed to the problematics and theory of
one or more of these social sciences. At the post-graduate level, their
teachers can assume a base-line engagement with the subject
consisting of as many as nine or ten courses.
In International Studies, this is not possible. There are no
undergraduate programmes in International Studies. At best, students
coming to these programmes have graduated in Political Science, with
a course or two in International Relations/Area Studies. Worse, they
often come with a rather strong feeling of disdain for the field, a frame
of mind passed on to them by their teachers in the other social
sciences. This is certainly the case among entry-level students in the
M.Phil. programme. What is palpable in students from the other social
sciences is the sense that they are coming to an inferior social
science. Interestingly, when asked why they are switching fields or
what they think is the difference between their original discipline and
International Studies, their response frequently is that the latter has
'no theory' or is 'not theoretical but practical'. Estrangement from the
field, a feeling of disciplinary superiority, and a preference for the
'practical' over the 'theoretical' make the pedagogical tasks of
International Studies programmes more difficult than that of any other
social science.
The resistance to theorv in International Studies is also a
29
function of the cult of 'relevance'. Theoretical questions have been
portrayed as
elitist--something 'armchair intellectuals' do even as they ignore the
tribulations of the country and its people. Theory is represented as a
product the West can afford, but which India, thrown as it was into an
unforgiving and hostile post-colonial world, cannot. Represented in this
way, theory appears as an evasion of social responsibility and to that
extent as 'anti-national'. To be clear: it is not that theoretical activity is
regarded as intrinsically a bad thing; rather, it is that theory is
considered inappropriate for a developing country, a diversion of the
best and brightest from problem-solving into abstruse and speculative
endeavour.
The resistance to theory, finally, arises from a fear of neo-colonialism.
Theory, in this view, is a trap, a legitimating discourse, one that
justifies or rationalises a
Western-world view and Western policies, which are impervious, if not
hostile, to non-Western interests. What should follow from this critical
insight is to engage and expose theory as a legitimating or
exclusionary discourse in the service of the West. Instead,
International Studies in India seems to have chosen to disengage from
theory and, in effect, to have banished it from its intellectual shores.
It may be asked at this point: so what? Why should one do or pay
attention to (Western) theory? I think there are three answers to that
question. First, a tradition of thought stretching far back in time surely
has asked some vital questions and delivered some important
provisional answers. We have an interest in recouping rather than
re-inventing those questions and answers. Secondly, theory as much
makes the world as it reflects or explains it. If so, an understanding of
the world demands that we trace through how theory helped to shape
it. And to do that, a comprehension of theory itself is inescapable.
Thirdly, since theory makes the world, and does so in both good and
bad ways, theory must be engaged to show what is good and what is
bad, how it has wrought the world, and how a better world may be
imagined and constructed.14 In sum, it is self-defeating--worse, it is
dangerous--to ignore or wish theory
30
away. The point, it should be emphasised, is not that we now move
towards 'theory exclusivism'. It is rather that we pay greater attention
to theoretical questions and that we use theory in the service of a
truly 'relevant' International Studies.
Bringing Theory (Back) Home
What, then, is to be done? How can International Studies in India and
an Indian interest in theory be furthered? One push to International
Studies in Britain, out of the shadow of the U.S. discipline, was the
recovery, exegesis, and elaboration of the conception of 'international
society' issuing from classical European diplomatic, legal, and
philosophical thought and practice. Hedley Bull depicts this in terms of
three strands--a Hobbesian, a Grotian, and a Kantian.15 Might
something similar be mounted as a catalyst for International Studies in
India? I think it can, provided that, in addition, our International
Studies moves towards a more self-reflexive programme of study.
An immediate objection is that India does not have a record of political
thinking that self-consciously and explicitly addresses the relations
between states and between states and other 'external' entities.
States being a European invention, how could Indiansi have produced
materials pertaining to 'International Studies ? Posed in this literal and
forensic way, the objection has validity. However, if the problematic of
International Studies is presented differently, then one can read
various strands of Indian thought as relevant to the building of the
contemporary field of study.
The problematic of International Studies is, I would propose, at base
the following: how do and should entities which claim to be
communities and have at their disposal the organised means of
violence, who live in suspicion and competition with each other, but
who are also economically, morally, and otherwise inter-linked,
regulate their mutual relations? If this is the problematic of
International Studies, then, there is a long,
31
recorded, and respectable body of Indian thought which can profitably
be interrogated.
V.R. Mehta's Foundations of Indian Political Thought is a valuable
introductory guide to how such work might be carried forward.16 For
Mehta, the problematic is the relationship between the individual,
community, and the political order or state. The problematic of
International Studies, by contrast, is the relationship between
communities (whether these communities are sub-national, national,
or imperial entities) in the shadow of organised violence, fear,
suspicion, and competition but, also, of economic and moral
integration. Mehta presents different visions of the relationship
between individual, community, and the state, drawing on the thoughts
of Sub-continentals across two millennia--Manu, Valmiki, Vyas, Surya,
Brihaspati, Kautilya, Mahavira, Buddha, Somadeva, Barni, Fazal, Sri
Aurobindo, Sahu, Gandhi, M.N. Roy, Nehru, Lohia and Tagore.
Something analogous, I suggest, needs to be attempted in
International Studies, guided by its problematic and without, it should
be stressed, lapsing into uncritical nativism or seeking some
essentialist 'Indian' vision.
A programme of recovery will be crucial to the development of a self-
conscious, critical, and confident International Studies. Braced by
such a programme, the Indian field will be given a chance to go beyond
the plaint that theory is something that Westerners do. The process of
recovery will energise International Studies in India in two ways. First,
it will provide a series of 'exemplars'--role models, to put it crudely.
This will invigorate the view that Indians have a history of thought
which contemporary students can critically draw on, and that theory is
a vital--i.e. living--component of their intellectual and political
tradition. Second, a recovery of a 'tradition' will help construct a
research programme in which Indians should have a comparative
advantage. Indian scholars will have physical, linguistic, and
philosophical access, particularly to the older materials which
outsiders, in general, will find it hard to match.
A second approach to what might be done is to reconstruct an
'international history' of the subcontinent from the earliest
32
times. The subcontinent has been the site of successive empires
surrounded by regional kingdoms. Over two millennia, from the
Mauryas to the British, these
empire-kingdom systems regulated interactions over the great
landmass. What were their structural features in the sense of a set of
contested, contradictory, but mutually constituted and constitutive
practices (i.e. rules, routines, and symbolic orders)? How were these
practices produced and reproduced across time and space? What
practices carried over from one empire-kingdom formation to another,
and how were these legitimated? What, in the light of these practices,
were the self-understandings of actors and their comprehension of
other self-understandings?17 To use the language of International
Relations, what, in sum, can one say about the 'international society'
of the subcontinent, a set of interests, rules, and institutions deployed
over enormous time-spaces? The agenda here is not to 'discover' some
civilisational essence, a subcontinental 'deep structure' which has
subsisted over two thousand years and continues to reproduce an
unchanging politics within and between the nation-states of South
Asia. Rather, it is to reconstitute an 'international' history for the
subcontinent, a history that affected, and was affected by, other
international histories. It is therefore to reinterpret critically the
international history of the world which appears overwhelmingly as a
Westphalic history, that is, a story leading up to the constitution of the
nation-state system in 1648 and then moving on the incorporation of
everyone else into that system.18
The danger of this agenda is, as noted earlier, that it will fall prey to
nativism--the view that there is pristine, indigenous thought and
practice which is superior to alien counterparts and which more or
less transparently contain answers to contemporary problems. To
negotiate this danger, it is vital that one confronts the question, 'What
is theory', or 'What is it to do theory'? For most practitioners, to do
theory is a positivist enterprise dedicated to producing generalisations
about how the world is, rather than how it ought to be. On the other
hand, there is a growing body of work in
33
International Studies outside this mainstream. There are differences
among these '
post-positivists', but they are agreed that, whereas there is a positive
moment in all social science inquiry, the positivist ideal is
methodologically unattainable and hormatively dangerous.19
Post-positivism in International Studies is by no means a movement in
the sense of a coherent approach. It consists of various approaches,
but their common ground is that they pay much greater attention to
ontology.20 As Robert Cox notes: 'Ontology lies at the beginning of any
enquiry. We cannot define a problem in global politics, without
presupposing a certain basic structure consisting of the significant
kinds of entities involved and the form of significant relationships
among them'.21 Ontology is the shadow 'behind' or 'in' theory: and
theory as much makes as reflects the world. Thus, to quote Cox again:
'Theory follows reality. It also precedes and shapes reality'.22 To do
'theory', then is to clarify and contextualise, criticise and reconstruct,
genealogise and deconstruct ontologies as revealed in the texts and
practices of international relations/ world politics.
What is proposed, in short, is to read sub continental texts and
practices not simply to excavate the discourses (the great thoughts)
and the constitutive practices (the rules, routines, and symbolic
orders) of the peoples who have inhabited this area, but in addition to
bring to bear the tools of critical, post-positivist analysis on the
ontologies of collective life and to ask a series of functionalist
questions. Put crudely, whose interests were served by various
ontologies? What patterns of dominance were produced and
reproduced? What legitimations, complicities, and exertions were
deployed and with what effect? How is power represented and for what
purposes?
The insistence on interrogations of this sort will, it seems to me, help
to invigorate the interest in theory, where theory is not pre-eminently
an inductive-deductive positivist enterprise but a critical programme.
But 'bringing theory back in' and 'bringing it home' in this way rests on
a definition of theory 'as the critical engagement with the foundational
and functional logic of
34
differing linguistic, cultural and historical practices', and if so, theory's
'oppositional aims and possibilities are as radical, and as
circumscribed, as those of other varieties of the "hermeneutics of
suspicion" (Marxism, psychoanalysis, deconstruction, feminism,
various forms of ideology-critique)'. Bringing theory home will require
this version of the theoretical, but it will also require more, because
there will always be the fear that theory of this post-positivist sort is
yet another Western import which will leave Indians a step or two
behind.24
What more can be done then? What can be done is to view the
theoretical, with Suvir Kaul, as 'the self-reflexive,...that brief or
sustained enquiry into the value-laden assumptions-- psychological,
cultural, ideological--that structure and lend coherence to any
academic discipline'. This will entail a 'Theorising [of] "pretheoretical"
claims of the discipline...'25 That is, we will need to explore ways of
answering questions about the provenance of International Studies in
India, why certain paths were taken and others forsaken, as also an
ordered investigation into the historical markings on the theoretical
resources and preferences of the field--and a few gestures have been
made here towards these.26
Conclusion
My attempt in this essay is not to denigrate what has been done so far
in International Studies and to scorn the conduct and corpus of normal
scholarship in the field, though I would agree there is much that can
be done even here in terms of improving the quality of teaching
infrastructure, institutional decision making, class practice and
pedagogy, and research. I have tried instead to offer a parallel,
complementary programme which would gradually, sometimes directly
and sometimes indirectly, infuse a new sensibility. This is not a call to
arms, which would most likely be
self-defeating. It is not an erecting of barricades. It is rather an urging
of sustained and critical thinking--a prolegomena, not a charter.
35
Notes
The field can be dated to 1955 when the Indian School of International
Studies (ISIS) was founded under the leadership of H.N. Kunzru and A.
Appadorai. A precursor was the Indian Council of World Affairs (ICWA)
under which ISIS was launched.
See, for instance, the various essays in Indian Council for Social
Science Research, International Studies, A Survey of Research in
Political Science, volume 5 (New Delhi: Allied Publishers, 1988). also
useful is M.S. Rajan, 'Teaching and Research in International Relations
and Area Studies', International Studies, vol. 18, no. 1, January 1978,
pp. 75-78.
See especially A.P. Rana, Reconstructing International Relations as a
Field of Study in India: A Programme for the Disciplinary Development
of International Relations Studies and The International Relations
Study of the Political Universe: A Note on Supplementary Strategies
for the Exploration of the Political Science-International Relations-
Area Studies Continuum, Studying International Relations: The Baroda
Perspective, Occasional Review-1, vol. 1, no. 1, March 1988,
Department of Political Science, Maharajah Sayajirao University of
Baroda, Baroda; and M.S. Rajan, 'International and Area Studies in
India', International Studies, vol. 31, no. 2, April-June 1994, pp. 207-14.
See also A. Appadorai, 'International and Area Studies in India',
International Studies, vol. 24, no. 2, April-June 1987, pp. 133-43.
Ann L. Schneider and Llewellyn D. Howell, 'The Discipline of
International Studies', International Studies Notes, vol. 16, no. 3 (Fall
1991) and vol. 17, no. 1 (Winter 1992), p. 1.
Schneider and Howell, n. 4, 'The Discipline of International Studies', p.
1. (See note 4.)
The first quote is from Schneider and Howell, 'The Discipline of
International Studies', n. 4, p. 1. Rosenau is quoted in their survey.
(Refer to note 4.)
Schneider and Howell, n. 4, 'The Discipline of International Studies', pp.
1--2.
Rajan, 'International and Area Studies', n. 3, p. 208 notes explicitly that
International Studies in India is 'international affairs' and 'area
studies'. Rajan also reveals that the Ministry of External Affairs has
36
a representative on the Area Studies Committee of the University
Grants Commission (p. 212). 9. Rajeshwari Sunder Rajan, Real and
Imagined Women: Gender, Culture and Postcolonialism (London:
Routledge, 1993), p. 6.
See Suvir Kaul, 'The Indian Academic and Resistance to Theory', in
Rajeshwari Sunder Rajan (ed.) The Lie of the Land: English Literary
Studies in India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 207-228 for a
discussion.
Some useful suggestions about what might be done in these areas are
to be found in Rana, Reconstructing International Relations and Rajan,
'International and Area Studies', n. 3, pp. 212-13.
Both A.K. Damodaran and Sivananda Patnaik were suggestive in
respect of this argument. I thank them for stimulating discussions on
the state of International Relations in India.
Hans Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations (New York: Knopf, 1948).
This was the tenor of Professor John Dunn's comments on the uses of
political theory. He was speaking at a seminar at the Maharaja
Sayajirao University of Baroda in the spring of 1991.
Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1977).
V.R. Mehta, Foundations of Indian Political Thought: An Interpretation
(New Delhi: Manohar, 1992).
Some of these kinds of questions have been asked by Lloyd I. Rudolph
and Susanne Hoeber Rudolph, 'The Subcontinental Empire and the
Regional Kingdom in Indian State Formation', in Paul Wallance (ed.)
Region and Nation in India (New Delhi: Oxford and IBH, 1985), pp. 40-
59. See also Ronald Inden, Imagining India (London: Basil Blackwell,
1986). Ironically, both are Western scholars!
Adam Watson has a chapter on India placed in the context of differing
historical conceptions of international society. See his The Evolution
of International Society: A Comparative Historical Analysis (London:
Routledge, 1992), pp. 77-84. Richard Little, in collaboration with Barry
Buzan, is attempting to write an international history on a global scale
which includes a study of 'India'. Johan Galtung, years ago, raised the
question of what an Indie 'international' system might teach the world.
Interestingly, Galtung began this work at the School of International
Studies at J.N.U. in 1971. See footnote 19 in his 'Peace and the World
as
37
Inter-civilizational Interaction', in Raimo Vayrynen (in collaboration
with Dieter Senghaas and Christian Schmidt) (eds.) The Quest for
Peace; Transcending Collective Violence and War Among Societies,
Cultures and States (London: Sage, 1987), p. 346.
I take the term post-positivism from the set of essays collected under
that title in International Studies Quarterly. See especially Yosef Lapid,
'The Third Debate: On the Prospects of International Theory in a Post-
Positivist Era', International Studies Quarterly, vol. 33, no. 3, 1989, pp.
235-54.
There is already a substantial body of writing here. Representative and
exegetical works include Chris Brown, International Relations Theory:
New Normative Approches (New York: Columbia University Press,
1992). James Der Derian, On Diplomacy: A Genealogy of Western
Estrangement (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987) and Anti-Diplomacy:
Speed, Spies, and Terror in International Relations (Oxford: Basil
Blackwell, 1992), Cynthia Enloe, Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making
Feminist Sense of International Relations (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1989), Jim George and David Campbell, 'Patterns of
Dissent and the Celebration: Critical Social Theory and International
Relations', International Studies Quarterly 34 (September 1990): 269-
93, Rebecca Grant and Kathleen Newland, (eds.) Gender and
International Relations (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1991),
Andrew Linklater, Beyond Realism and Marxism: Critical Theory and
International Relations (London: Macmillan, 1989), V. Spike Peterson,
(eds.) Gendered States (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1992), Pauline
Rosenau, 'Once Again into the Fray: International Relations Confronts
the Humanities', Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 19
(Spring 1990): 83-110, Michael Shapiro and James Der Derian, (eds.)
International/ Intertextual Relations: Post Modern Reading of World
Politics (Lexington, K.Y.: Lexington Books, 1989), and R.B.J. Walker,
Inside/Outside: International Relations as Political Theory (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1993).
Robert Cox, 'Towards a Post-Hegemonic Conceptualization of World
Order: Reflections on the Relevancy of Ibn Khaldun', in James N.
Rosenau and Ernst-Otto Czempiel, (eds.) Governance Without
Government: Order and Change in World Politics (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 132.
Ibid., p. 133.
38
Kaul, 'The Indian Academic and Resistance to Theory', n. 10, p. 221.
Ibid., p. 221.
Ibid., p. 209.
In English Studies, see Sunder Rajan (ed.), The Lie of the Land and
Gauri Vishwanathan, Masks of Conquest: Literary Study and British
Rule in India (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989, copublished,
London: Faber and Faber).
39

CHAPTER TWO
States, Nationalisms and Modernities in Conversation: Problematising
International Relations in India
SlDDHARTH MALLAVARAPU
'A very cold fish' reads the title of a recent review of Jonathan
Hoslam's book-length account of E.H. Carr's intellectual and personal
concerns.1 Carr is a familiar name in International Relations, best
known for his work, The Twenty Years Crisis.2 More specifically, it is
within the lineage of political realism that Carr's claim to fame
resonates in the discipline. Carr's academic project was 'to apply
Machiavelli's political methodology to international relations, that is, to
make the study of this subject a science by eliminating from it all
moralising'.3 However, lesser known perhaps is the more controversial
conclusion that '...hatred of bourgeois culture drove... Carr to
sympathise with Hitler, then Stalin'.4 While historians may continue to
contest these claims, it undoubtedly serves to illustrate that the links
between theory and political choice are not trivial issues but, on the
contrary, are at the crux of our socio-political imagination and
practice.5 These questions have often been neglected by
[Footnote: *The author wishes to express his gratitude to Kanti Bajpai
and Rajeev Bhargava for comments on this paper.]
40
realist scholarship. However, the attempted resolutions of these issues
are of particular significance in the determination of theoretical slants
in scholarship and eventually in the shaping of political preferences. It
is in this context that making explicit latent images of the state,
nationalism and modernity assume a special salience in International
Relations scholarship. A certain view of the state may acquiesce in
specific strands of nationalism and modernity. Thus, there exists a
need for further elaboration.
Given this broad canvas, my task here is limited to exploring the
implicit assumptions at work in academic considerations of security in
South Asia. A survey of basic perceptual divides in representative
writings of scholars with different theoretical and disciplinary
persuasions writing on South Asia provides the basis of the study. The
conflicting images of the state, the implications or 'lessons' derived
from the colonial legacy and current assumptions about nationalism
and modernity are all subject in varying measure to divergent
assessments. An attempt is made to grapple with the tropes of the
state, strands of nationalism, perspectives on modernity and their
implications for the manner in which questions have been cast in
South Asian politics. This study begins with a rendition of some of the
rudimentary trajectories International Relations studies have taken in
India and those that it eschewed.6 I proceed to record post-colonialism
as a common referent invoked in scholarship on South Asia, though it
may be reiterated that the same historical experience has given rise to
a very different set of intellectual responses in India. These faultlines
of perception are discernible in the realm of security and carry
attendant implications for the consideration of refugee, migrant,
ethnic and hydrological questions in South Asia. The specific
manifestations of these concerns in each of these realms need to be
carefully disentangled.
Beginning with a brief foray into the impulse of parochialism in
International Relations, I chronicle elements of this thinking and
resistance to it in the Indian delineation of the 'proper' domain of
inquiry in a sub-field like strategic studies. Further, I pursue these
fissures in the spheres of the state, nationalism and modernity. These
issues are indeed complex and it would be
41
presumptuous to set out with any finality the fluid exchanges between
these variables. This, however, does not preclude an initial statement
of issues in this direction in order to illuminate the contours of the
problematic, if not its core nucleus. I shall argue that one may narrate
two very basic stories, that of state benevolence and of malevolence,
which provide for the normative compass of scholarly response to
international relations in South Asia. These two responses form two
ends of the continuum of imaging the state in scholarship and may
reveal distinct conceptions of nationalism and modernity. Scholars
persuaded by the 'benevolent' state image assume an 'evolutionary'
passage over time (which has in practice been denied due to colonial
intervention) in nation-state consolidation processes.7 They do not
share the extent of skepticism of nationalism and modernity that those
inclined toward the other end of the continuum share. A malevolent
understanding of the state argues that this evolutionary thinking is 'a
blueprint to collective ttagedy' as it carries an 'unsustainable
compact' with certain versions of nationalism and modernity.8 In the
latter part of this paper, I have also sttempted to conceptually
desegregate current academic understandings of the state,
nationalism and modernity and demonstrated the tenuous responses
to these questions. It is prudent at the outset to clarify that despite
apparent convergences in positions on the state, nationalism and
modernity, caveats need to be introduced. Prior to that, I proceed to
investigate ethnocentric proclivities in the Indian variant of the
discipline of International Relations after an outline of similar
tendencies in the Anglo-American disciplinary incarnation.
International Relations and Ethnocentrism
A glimpse into the intellectual history of International Relations brings
to the fore the more typical vulnerabilities and propensities of the
discipline. One common manifestation of this has been a tendency to
collapse 'one form of parochialism and
42
ethnocentrism for another.'9 The dominant theoretical sway of realism
has resulted in a frequent. and unproblematised invocation of 'national
interest', 'balance of power', and an emphasis on the 'anarchical'
nature of the international system.10 While this discipline in part owes
this conceptual legacy to its Anglo-American origins, realism has often
served uninhibitedly as an instrument to rationalise state action.11 Carr
is credited with providing the early theoretical underpinnings for
political realism in the more recent discipline of International
Relations. Hans Morgenthau posited the political realm as discrete and
subject to its own logic.12 Kenneth Waltz followed this with a 'harder'
version of structural realism, which further endorsed a special
autonomy to the international structure, often to the detriment of the
domestic linkage in international relations.13
This is not to suggest that realism has remained the sole approach to
the study of International Relations. It has, nevertheless, undoubtedly
enjoyed a near 'hegemonic' status in the mainstream of the field. It has
also presented itself as a universal theory applicable to any 'state' and
has sought to relegate normative concerns as inconsequential.
However, it is important to appreciate that realism itself is a certain
normative constellation with 'Hobbesian' assumptions about human
nature and 'power' and 'interest' in its more classical incarnation as its
core evaluational values. These are variables scholars or practitioners
are frequently persuaded to examine when delving into the discipline.
However, the end of the Cold War, and the inability of this dominant
tradition to come to terms with it, suggests that realism too can no
longer afford to be insulated from a self-conscious moment of
epistemic 'doubt', a corrective to its earlier complacency.
International Relations in India
While addressing himself to the 'tasks before the Indian political
thinker', Angadipuram Appadorai, a pioneer in the development of
International Relations in India affirmed the need to engage
43
with the 'central questions of political theory'.16 These encompassed
among others '...the purposes of political organisation and what the ...
best means of achieving them' were. The incorporation of political
theory concerns into mainstream international relations in our context
is therefore not original or novel. However, several scholars who have
appraised on previous occasions the state of the field have noted in
fact a marked 'theoretical disorientation' in most Indian studies of
International Relations.18 A proclivity to 'an unsubstantiated and
partisan realism' also characterised some of the work in the early
years.19 An interesting observation of the first two decades of
academic reflection on India's role in international relations reveals
that '[t]hroughout the forties and fifties the trend inclined in the
direction of an uncritical acceptance of the official stance.'20 This also
served as the basis early on for a 'tendency to regard official
statements as incontrovertible evidence of reality and to reconstruct
India's foreign policy on that basis.'21 The same scholar also observes
that:
[t]his writing is a species of academic nationalism which was probably
unavoidable since 1947, but is rather inexcusable when it continues for
more than two decades. It is inexcusable because it produces
academically unsound literature, and in the long run, damages the
country.22
The fact that International Relations in India reveals some of these
tendencies is not surprising considering that the study of the
discipline of International Relations itself appears to have unfolded in
a similar fashion elsewhere.23 However, this does not provide the basis
for acquiescing in such a narrow frame of reference. There is an
increasing recognition that theoretical activity is important and not
'innocent' and the very task of defining inclusions and exclusions in
the delineation of the content of a discipline could be informed by
one's implicit or more conscious theoretical preferences.24 For
instance, in the shaping of the syllabi in a sub-field of International
Relations, namely security studies, political choice determines the
scope of the
sub-field. It is not difficult to discern the demands for greater
44
realism in a more narrowly conceived strategic studies syllabi.25
Political realism cannot, however, remain the sole theoretical lens
through which the strategic environment is viewed.
Advocates of a more 'hard' discipline bolster their claims by a
selective rendition of Indian history. For instance, K. Subrahmanyam
argues that:
[o] ur elite who have had a remarkable tradition of continuity have
never exhibited any strong sense of sovereignty. They were prepared to
accept any intruder who rode into the Indo-Gangetic plains at the head
of a few hundred horsemen and subsequently were prepared to serve
faithfully the British Raj. It is this deeply ingrained spirit of
colloborationism which was responsible for the long period of foreign
rule and one must attribute the lack of adequate thought on matters
regarding defence in two decades after our independence to this
burden of history and not to Gandhism and Nehruvian traditions. 26
He further regards Indian elites as deferring to a 'monarchical
tradition'.27 The author notes that '...there was very little Indocentric
thinking on defence policy in this country. This is to be attributed
mainly to a lack of Indo-centrism among our elite and their continued
intellectual dependence on the West. If we are to explore the
possibilities of developing studies in this area, it is necessary to
understand the factors that inhibit as well as encourage such studies
in our environment.'28 He argues that '...it is possible to correlate
security consciousness with sovereignty consciousness...'29 Finally, he
observes that '...security does not appear to be a highly rated value
among our elite.'30
Anybody conversant with the basic contours of discipline formation
knows that such a rendition reveals shades of a familiar
'ethnocentrism'. Historians could surely contest this univocal reading
of Indian history. The relation between 'security consciousness' and
'state sovereignty' is also not as unproblematic as the passage
portends it to be. For a sense of the choices involved, contrast this
with another perspective. It
45
has been observed that a common tendency is to highlight 'the pursuit
of national interest without clarifying the ambiguities that dog the
concept as an analytical tool.'31 The task more importantly ahead is to
ask 'what political possibilities and forms does the South Asian
security narrative privilege but also hide, and how does its
augmentation work to evoke certain possibilities and forms and
revoke, as it were, others?'32 International Relations as a discipline is
sufficiently endowed theoretically to raise questions such as these,
which do not confine themselves to the straitjacket of the
conventional realist cosmology.
These questions are also not specific to South Asia. Arnold Wolfers as
early as December 1952 raised the role of 'national security as an
ambiguous symbol'.33 He observed in this context that:
[n]ations like individuals or other groups may value things not because
they consider them good or less evil than their alternative; they may
value them because they satisfy their pride, heighten their sense of
self-esteem, or reduce their fears. However, no policy, or human act in
general, which calls for sacrifice or other values, as any security policy
is bound to do, can escape being made a subject of moral judgement--
whether by the conscience of the actor himself or by others. Here it
becomes a matter of comparing and weighing values in order to decide
which of them are deemed sufficiently good to justify the evil of
sacrificing others.34
While the issue of pedagogy is complex and deserves further attention,
I shall restrict my attention here to the initial tasks set out which are
to delve into the contending images of the state and variations on
nationalism and modernity. The purpose here is not so much to
suggest the superiority of any single perspective but to suggest that
International Relations scholarship in India like elsewhere has tended
to be skewed in the direction of realist scholarship and this needs to
be redressed. Underlying this approach is '...a plea for an independent
but disciplined catholicity and eclecticism...'35 This brings me to record
another
46
moment of divergence in the manner in which state images are being
conceived of in South Asia.
Images of the State in South Asia
Postcolonialism in South Asia is a common referent for scholars
reflecting on the state in the region. However, the lessons' derived
from this historical experience in terms of a reading of the state in
South Asia have come to be interpreted very differently. I have chosen
two strands of theorising on these lines, one from within the
mainstream of International Relations and the other from a more
eclectic social theory lineage. My choice of these strains of thought is
deliberate. The work of Mohammed Ayoob presents us with the
'benevolent' end of the continuum of imaging the state, while the work
of Ashis Nandy provides us with a representative strain of the
opposite, 'malevolent' image of the state continuum.36 These
corresponding images of state 'benevolence' and 'malevolence' are
representative of the two ends of theorising on a common political
referent, namely, the 'modern-nation state'.
I initially outline the broad contours of the assessments of the state in
South Asia and subsequently engage with closely linked debates in the
domain of the generic state, modernity and more significantly its
competing strains of nationalism. I have on occasion here reproduced
generously the accounts of these authors in order to provide the
reader with a fairly representative cluster of state imageries
clamouring for intellectual attention in South Asia. These two ends of
the continuum do not exhaust the thinking on the state in South Asia.
They, nevertheless, serve as a heuristic device to chronicle the
divergent intellectual choices and orientations which present
themselves to a novice International Relations scholar self-conscious
about the 'theory of the state' which underlies his engagement. 37 While
I do not claim any special capacity to adjudicate these claims, I
recognise the need to re-affirm that there exists a theoretical and
political choice inherent in all scholarship, and it is crucial to be alive
to
47
the range of diverse theoretical possibilities at a particular juncture.
However, no less important is the need to remind us that South Asian
studies in International Relations have also often tended to rest on
some variant of state-centric realism or the other to the neglect of
other approaches, and this bias needs to be rectified.38
Temporal Disjunctures and State Constraints: The Benevolent State
To Mohammed Ayoob, the Third World is a matter of 'perception' not
merely a distinction created on asymmetric economic, political and
social capabilities.39 Ayoob assigns an important role to the colonial
legacy and its impact on state making in the recent history of the
postcolonial states. The distortions emanating from this process have
played themselves out in the delineation of 'boundaries', in the
dispersion of 'structures of authority' and in the creation of 'new ethnic
solidarities'. These assumptions provide anchor to an insightful
account of the 'Third World security predicament.'41 This 'predicament'
comes to be articulated in the following terms:
...a state of affairs whereby the Third World state is faced with an all
pervading security problem that is basically insoluble in the short and
medium term primarily for two reasons: (1) the demands of the state
making process and societal responses that such demands generate
put a tremendous load on the institutional machinery of the state, a
load which the state is unable to handle effectively; and (2) the Third
World state's lack of control over its international environment and,
even more important, its inability to insulate its state making process
from international systemic pressures which usually complicate and
often' exacerbate the problems that accompany state making and
nation building.42
Thus by factoring in state making in the security analysis of the
48
Third World, Ayoob seeks to address the inadequacy of previous
accounts in this sphere.43 Further, Ayoob records that it is the internal
dimensions of the crisis which often constitutes greater state
insecurity than external threats.44 This brings us to the issue of the
political legitimacy of the incumbent regime that Ayoob refers to in
some detail. He writes in this regard:
...it is this dissonance between the loci of authority and of power
which lies at the heart of the Third World state's security problematic,
especially as it relates to the intrastate dimension of this problem.
Such dissonance is most dramatically reflected in the threats of
secession that many Third World states and their rulers face from
ethnically and or/regionally based dissident elements within these
states. Such threats, in many instances translated into overt
insurgencies, form a much larger share of the total calculus of threats
to the security of the Third World states than do threats from outside
of their boundaries.45
Of particular significance for the sustainability of Ayoob's rationale for
the Third World security predicament is the critical variable of 'time' in
nation-state consolidation.46 By operating on the premise that state
building involved similar demands in the European instance (with the
advantage of time) as in the Asian case, Ayoob suggests that:
[w]hat strikes one most when one compares the Third World
experience in state making with its European counterpart is the
dimension of time over which the same process was, or in the case of
the Third World, is expected to be, completed. The time available to
state makers in the Third World to complete the process not only of
state making (in terms of building institutions capable both of
penetrating society and extracting resources from it) but of nation
building as well as (in terms of psychological identification of the
citizenry with the state) is extremely limited when compared to that
available to the early state makers of modern Europe. The two
processes are telescoped together and shortened for centuries
49
in the case of the early modern states to decades in the case of the
Third World.47
This account however tells us little about why some post-colonial
states have fared much better than the others. Moreover, while the
colonial encounter did result in grave damage to the colonised,
postcolonial states cannot situate the entire culpability for current
performance solely on the external variable, a tempting alibi
preventing serious internal introspection. Ayoob further gestures to a
chicken-egg dilemma
vis-a-vis the state and the nation suggesting that history bears
testimony to the former preceding the latter.48 Such a reading, it may
be mentioned endorses the view of the nation as a 'construct' and not
a prior subjectivity.49
The current historical phase of transition in Ayoob's vocabulary is the
'adolescent phase' and the response of the Third World state to its
security predicament must be viewed from this evolutionary
perspective and not as the 'schizophrenia' of the demented.50 In
chronicling Third World elite perceptions Ayoob notes that '...issues of
status and security cannot be treated in mutual isolation'. 51 He adds:
...elite perceptions and, even more, the perceptions of their domestic
constituencies of the way their states relate to the international
system, especially to the major centres of global power, are largely
coloured by the experience of colonialism that these societies have
undergone. Even the second or third generation of leaders of post-
colonial societies, some of them avowedly technocratic, share much of
this historical baggage. Given the prevailing inequality of power, within
the international system that is heavily weighted in favour of Europe
and its cultural and racial offshoots, issues in the status of perception
of Third World elites easily turn into issues of security as a result of
their memories of colonial domination. The perceived security if not
the survival of these states largely hinges upon the terms on which
they interact with the dominant powers of the global North.52
50
Ayoob's theoretical preference for classical realism privileges
consciously a state-centric perspective on security.53 He regards for
instance as a 'complicating' factor the demands for development and
participation in issues of 'national security'.54 This is complicating as
he affirms from the point of view of the state. His unwillingness to
theoretically grapple with any forms of political community is evident
when he notes that:
[t]he critical importance of approximating this [Westphalian] ideal of
the sovereign, territorial state results from the undisputed fact that
there is no alternative form of political organisation on the horizon that
is able or willing to address, taclde and manage the issues of political
order within communities.55
He, therefore, concludes that any dissident claims are veiled demands
for '...own states and not a fundamental restructuring of the system of
states'.56 These claims of the exhaustion of all forms of political
community however have not gone uncontested.57 In the ultimate
analysis, Ayoob is optimistic about the prospect of nation-state
consolidation and maintains that it is fallacious to configure '...the
Third World [a]s doomed to remain perpetually in a state of
contradiction with the established, "civilised" states in the
international system.'58 Implicit in Ayoob's view is that in the long term,
Third World states will also successfully replicate the 'Westphalian
ideal' of political being. It is this 'developmentalism' with Weberiar
overtones reflected in the writings of Ayoob among others that serves
as an intellectual provocation for scholarship located at the
malevolent end of the state continuum.59
Mimic Men:60 The Malevolent State
The work of Ashis Nandy has not been in any direct fashion associated
with the discipline of International Relations as it is conventionally
understood. However, sustained critiques of the Enlightenment project,
the underlying psychological repercussions
51
of colonialism and more pertinently the nature of the modern state
system have all been part of the author's conspectus of concern. 61 My
main focus here remains primarily restricted to the author's
philosophical critique of the modern nation-state and his recourse to
the axis of'culture' as a resource of critique. 2 Academic categories
such as the 'Third World' have a peculiarly pejorative connotation, as it
carries the stain of the colonisers' hierarchising epistemology. 3 The
postcolonial question is cast here in the idiom of modernity and is
focussed on the discontents of the ongoing but 'flawed' Enlightenment
project by the 'modernising elites' of the nation-state. As a
philosophical orientation, Nandy presents a plea for '...scepticism to
be directed at the modern state.'65 He confesses that such an
intellectual orientation 'is easier said than done in post-colonial
societies.'66 Given this backdrop, Nandy launches into an indictment of
those wedded to the belief that replication of the Enlightenment values
will provide us with a 'blueprint' to political 'salvation'.67
He observes in this regard that
[t]he folk-theories of politics popular among the middle classes in
these societies would have us believe that all of the ills of these
societies are due to the inability to produce or sustain a proper nation-
state. Once such nation-states are built, the argument goes, the first
problem of social engineering and collective survival would be solved.
Scepticism towards the nation-state in such an environment looks, at
best, simple-minded; at worst treacherous. Yet, the fact remains that in
most Asian and African societies, the state has increasingly become,
not only the major instrument of corruption, expropriation and violence
towards their own people, but also increasingly ethnocidal. Even if one
does not take an anarchist position on the state in such societies, one
could at least be wary of the idea of the nation-state as an end in itself
and be sceptical of state sponsored anxieties about the national
security, especially when this concept of security is invoked to
demand sacrifices on social sectors least able to make them.68
52
Further, Nandy argues that the story from the inside of modern nation-
states bears testimony to the view that
...the same violent, exploitative, ethnocidal systems which they
confront in the larger world, the same centre and periphery, the same
myth that sacrifices made by people in the short run will lead to
beatitude and development and scientific advancement in the long run,
the same story of ever-consuming elites fattening themselves to early
death at the centre, and starvation, victimhood and slow death at the
periphery plays itself out in a domestic environment.69
Thus a 'non-modern understanding' entails a critical resistance to
modernity and to important aspects of modern theories of oppression.
The resistance entails a denial in particular of the connotative
meanings of concepts such as development, growth, history, science
and technology. These concepts have now become not only new
'reasons of state' but also mystifications for new forms of violence and
injustice.70
Nandy has retrieved thinking within the Indian national movement and
recorded the scepticism expressed amongst others by Gandhi and
Tagore about the 'illegitimacy' of more virulent forms of nationalism. 71
He also notes in this context that it is '[p]erhaps the time... to take
stock of the costs of the nation state system and the nationalism that
sustains it.'72 In another essay, which deals with the reconstruction of
responses to hijacking incidents, Nandy discerns at least 'two
languages' in which the whole episode is cast.73 A counter-narrative
evocatively called the 'vernacular' counterpoises the language of the
modern nation state.74 He contends that this academic project has
been '...to create some space for the latter [the vernacular] in our
contemporary understanding of South Asian politics'.75 This is
premised on 'a semi-articulate public awareness in these societies
which has a place for the vernacular.'76 He also notes '[m]odern
political analysis has already sufficiently discredited it as soft,
effeminate, immature and irrational.'77 This account of the state in
South Asia leaves us with a rather different image of the state
53
and underlines the need here to be attentive also to the discontents of
'old style statism.'78
Neither of these accounts denies the resilience of the contemporary
state system but both accord very different valences to the modern
state. These are different narratives on the South Asian state and
gesture at different vantage points for academic scholarship in the
region. The view from 'inside' about the 'outside' leads us to a
particular explanation of the state as represented in the work of
Ayoob, while the story from 'inside' about the 'insides' in the work of
Nandy presents us with a contrasting understanding of South Asian
realities. While those working in International Relations often tend to
take the 'politically expedient' short view of the state, others working
from a political and social theory location remain committed to
exploring the dynamics of the modern state system itself wrapped in a
certain dressing of modernity and nationalism. Both these
perspectives warrant a further investigation into the links between
nationalism, modernity and the state.
Contesting Nationalism (s)
These resonances of difference are not limited to the rendition of the
state in South Asia, but also extend into the wider ongoing debates
about nationalism, modernity and the evolving architecture of the
future political community. At the outset it may be prudent to observe
the manner in which nationalism has itself come to be conceptualised.
According to one scholar, nationalism is 'a politicised social
consciousness centred upon a common national identity rooted in a
shared tradition, and the ideological belief in the structure of the
modern nation-state as the most efficacious instrument of national
unity, national independence and national interest.'79 Yael Tamir in a
review essay on nationalism carried in the pages of World Politics
defines the nation 'as a community whose members share feelings of
fraternity, substantial distinctiveness, and exclusivity--as well as
beliefs in a common ancestry and continuous genealogy.'80
54
Nationalism is assigned a 'functional role ... in the emergence of the
modern state.'81
While most writings in recent years have focussed on the discontents
of nationalism, Tamir suggests that nationalism can be conceived
'...not [as] the pathology of the modern age but an answer to the
malaise of the neurosis, alienation and meaninglessness characteristic
of modern times.'82 Nationalism from this perspective performs certain
functions. These include the promise of 'individual redemption from
personal oblivion', 'hope of personal renewal through national
integration', 'rescue from alienations, solitude, and anonymity', and the
provision of 'assur[ances] that individual ... qua members, ... enjoy
equal status.'83 The author also distinguishes between diverse strands
of nationalism and is supportive of a 'polycentric' nationalism as
opposed to an 'ethnocentric' nationalism.84 There appears to be a
consensus among most scholars studying nationalism that
'[n]ationalists tend to create their own narratives and interpret
historical events in ways that fit their needs, to renew languages and,
artificially, to mimic other nations, and to appropriate foreign
traditions as their own. Motivated by a desire to connect their nation to
a remote and illustrious past, nationalists do not hesitate, whenever, to
invent such links.'85 This could involve a subversion of 'historical
accuracy' to sustain 'the most compelling identity myth in the modern
world.'86
Nationalism also lends itself as a particularly important phenomenon
to investigate, as 'the manner of [its] institutionalisation and
reproduction makes [it] so commonly immune to critical examination.87
It remains a 'distinct mode of claiming loyalty or allegiance' and has
also come to be considered as the most prominent rhetoric for
constituting or arguing over the "selves" at stake in political self-
determination.'88 However, it is increasingly reaffirmed that it is crucial
for academic scholarship to pay heed to the 'sorts of nationalism'
which currently find their way into the lexicon of modern states. 89
Postcolonial scholarship has focussed in recent years on Third World
nationalisms and has often reminded us that it may not
55
one can surely applaud one's opponents when the stakes are low.'101
Such a view of nationalism sits more comfortably with Ayoob's
benevolent state imaginary.
Discontents of Nationalism
Partha Chatterjee responded in quick succession specifically to this
provocation.102 In his opening remarks Chatterjee rebuts persuasively
Sanjay Subrahmanyam's intervention on nationalism. He suggests that
'[t]he slide from patriotism to nationalism to chauvinism to jingoism is
not easy and often goes unnoticed' and '[i]t is for this reason that
those who are prepared to critically examine commonly held beliefs
are wary of nationalist ideologies.'103 While equally critical of those
who make unsubstantiated claims of 'global cosmopolitanism' he hints
that the answers to questions about nationalism must come from
'searching within the nation-state, and not beyond it.'104 However in his
assessment, it is important to reiterate '...nationalism is above all an
ideology that goes hand in hand with a state building project.'105
Moreover, the question hinging on the evaluation of which version
of'patriotism' is 'nobler' than the 'other' brings to the fore the nature of
the moral predicament surrounding modern political identities.106
Chatterjee also believes that nationalisms domestically are not
uncontested issues and there may be several viewpoints competing for
attention. While nationalisms in the Third World have been regarded as
'bulwarks against Western hegemony', nevertheless, Chatterjee holds
that there are sufficient grounds to be sceptical of the tendency of
nationalism to 'lower its own standards'.107 He also suggests that the
distinction between 'good' and 'bad' nationalisms is fallacious and
makes a case for vigilant scholarship to be alive to '[t]he slide from
nationalism to jingoism [i.e.] often quick and imperceptible.'108 The
article also indicts scholarship better acquainted with the realities,
but 'timidly endorsing the surge of "national unity" or choosing to stay
silent.'109 Although this view converges with Nandy's
56
be treated as 'a unitary phenomenon'.90 Neil Lezarus in a critical
mapping of diverse Third World perspectives notices a marked
tendency of scholarship in this part of the world to focus on the
'chauvinistic' attributes surrounding nationalism.91 However, he
cautions against any 'blanket repudiation of all nationalisms'.92 While
advocating the retention of concepts such as the 'nation', Lezarus
suggests a discriminating attitude to facilitate '...a distinction between
bourgeois, anti-colonialist and socialist or insurgent nationalism'.93
While nationalism may have remained (at least in terms of conscious
articulation) an area of neglect in mainstream International Relations
scholarship, an explicit debate on it has begun to animate public
discourse more recently in South Asia.94 I have in mind the exchanges
on nationalism that were staged in the Times of India.
In Defence of Nationalism
The first essay by Sanjay Subrahmanyam argues that social and
political theorists of nationalism like Benedict Anderson and Partha
Chatterjee '...have made many social scientists profoundly nervous
about nationalism'.96 Subrahmanyam purports a 'weak' argument in
favour of nationalism.97 Cast in this fashion '[t]he real debate is ... and
not about whether or not to be "nationalist", but in what degree, and
how to do so without entering the quicksands of jingoism or violent
chauvinism.'98 While conceding that the 'nation' is a social construct
he goes on to suggest that nationalism is a pragmatic political
necessity.99 Nationalism thus becomes a 'necessary evil' in this
instance. Of particular relevance here is the observation that '[i]n a
world of competing nationalisms, there is, alas, really no such political
programme as "universalism" save as a distant ideal which one can
aspire to. In concrete terms, this means that in situations of conflict
one may have to choose however painful the choices are.'100 He also
notes that '[o]ne does not have to choose all the time of course, and
57
scepticism about nationalism, it must be stated that while Chatterjee's
earlier work emerges from a Gramscian perspective, the latter's
writings are much closer to a postcolonial position.
The Resilience of Nationalism
A final intervention in this regard is an article by Andre Beteille
focussed on 'the relevance of the nation-state.'110 Beteille takes issue
with Chatterjee's claim that nationalism in the West is passe
suggesting on the contrary that 'national sentiment is strong and
healthy, and will outlive changes in intellectual fashions.'111 While
retaining scepticism of 'doctrinaire nationalisms' Beteille concedes
that individuals can '...carry an attachment. to their nation without
being nationalists in the ideological sense of the term.'112 Thus while
recognising the possibility of 'non-doctrinaire' versions of nationalism,
Beteille seeks to be alive to a 'nationalism that can easily run to
excess and acquire a doctrinaire and intransigent form.'113 Moreover,
there also remains an explicit appreciation that 'nationalist ... belief in
a hierarchy of social attachments ... can take an extreme form where
there is real or imaginary threat to the social order.'114
A common convergence in all the three accounts is the need to pay
attention to the more virulent forms of nationalism, which manifest
themselves in subtle and sometimes not so subtle ways. It has also
been observed '...nationalism is always someone's claims that their
cultural, religious or linguistic, or other particularity be given political
expression in the form of a nation-state.'115 International Relations
scholarship has rarely consciously articulated the tacit links between
realist scholarship, statism and certain strands of nationalism that
inform these assessments. The policy-oriented International Relations
scholar may devise the best possible solution 'given' the current
conditions in which he operates in, but nevertheless this 'imperative'
too should not blind the scholar to the broader canvas of implicit
political identities and their contexts of production. These need to be
subject to greater
self-conscious elaboration.
58
Contesting Modernity
International Relations as a discipline has been least self-conscious
about its axiomatic claims to modernity.116 Recent scholarship has
alerted us to the fact that the discipline itself is deeply complicit in
the modernity process.117 The work of R.B.J. Walker is particularly
instructive in this domain as it directly addresses some of the common
silences International Relations effects through its invocation of a
latent modernity.118 Prior to a delineation of Walker's critique of
modernity in International Relations, it is important to conceptualise
modernity itself.
The term modernity as used here refers to the historical legacy of the
Enlightenment age with its corresponding accents on Cartesian
dualisms between subject and object, instrumental rationality and
teleologies of scientific progress and plenitude.119 The classic critique
of modernity may be traced backed to the early Frankfurt School,
namely, The Dialectic of Enlightenment scripted by Max Horkheimer
and Theodor Adorno. It testifies to a watershed philosophical
reassessment of the purported virtues of the Enlightenment. This was
as early as the mid-1940s. Subsequently, while critics of modernity
have been sceptical of the 'promise' of modernity, others have
questioned the wisdom of a wholesale philosophical repudiation of
modernity.120 In a recent contribution in the study of 'alternative
modernities' Charles Taylor makes a plea for a more conditional
critique of modernity. In similar vein, Satya Mohanty outlines the basis
of a 'post-positivist minimal rationality', which he reminds us should
scarcely be mistaken for an acceptance of the whole corpus of
Enlightenment's instrumental rationality.121 This is to suggest that
modernity has not remained insulated from the contestations, which
have informed the imaging of the state and nationalism. Among the
earliest inter-disciplinary Indian critiques of Enlightenment modernity
in India was the work pioneered at the Centre for the Study of
Developing Societies, by Rajani Kothari and developed subsequently by
Ashis Nandy, Dhirubhai Sheth and Shiv Visvanathan, among others. It
comes as no surprise, therefore, that the Centre's intellectual focus
has
59
in certain senses come to be equated to the early Frankfurt School
critiques of Enlightenment.122
Modernity and its Discontents
The most trenchant critique of modernity in the field of International
Relations has been Walker's.123 Modernity in International Relations
enconsces itself in the theory of political realism. As Walker reiterates,
'[i]t is this presumed impossibility of ever conceiving an alternative to
the account of political community that emerged in early modern
Europe that is expressed by most influential forms of international
relations theory under the hyper-elastic label of political realism.' 124 It
is crucial to recognise that '...philosophical, ideological and political
conditions under which a liberal utilitarian account of human action
can aspire to hegemony in a discipline ... continue to raise far more
interesting questions than provide plausible answers.'125 More
importantly, '[a]t best theories of international relations predicated
upon claims to state sovereignty involve an extraordinary degree of
oversimplification and wishful thinking.'126 Modernity remains an
endemic latent concern in International Relations as state sovereignty
and territoriality, political realism's mainstay, are intrinsic attributes in
the articulation of modernity.127 Recent forays in critical geopolitics
reveal further the fluid dynamics involved in the production and
reproduction of state identities through borders; refugee, migrant and
ethnic flows making explicit the actual fuzziness of political realism's
cosmology.128
An integral part of the problem of modernity and theories like political
realism which provide axiomatic responses is that they provide us
little inkling of '...what concepts like political community, obligation,
freedom, autonomy, democracy or security can mean in the context of
contemporary rearticulations of political space and time.129 Thus to
engage in serious reflection about ethics in International Relations
now is necessarily to be suspicious of the modernist categories
through
60
which the interaction between two seemingly autonomous disciplines
has been treated as the highway to a better future.'130 Critics of
political realism have also constantly acknowledged the need to
remain sceptical of'...discourses that invoke an eternally present
political community within and those that project an eternally absent
community between sovereign states.'131 Thus for scholars working
within this normative axis, a key challenge remains '...to specify some
less parochial and hegemonic way of speaking about an alternative or
more inclusive community.'132 A related intellectual plea in the critique
of modernity is an eschewal of'...the uncritical conflation of the
categories of state and nation.'133 The nation-state system is itself a
modern creation. As Stuart Hall observes 'though the state may be an
abstract and general force, its power has to be materialised i.e. it must
acquire its real, concrete social organisational form, with real tasks
using and disposing of real resources, through a set of practices in the
apparatus of the modern state machine.'134 A conceptual distinction
between the state, nation and the context of sovereignty is also in
order here.135 The state has been conceptualised from the perspective
of foreign policy in one account as 'an intellectual construct',
composed of an elite, bureaucratic structure and with vital resources
at its command in order to be capable of formulating and implementing
foreign policy decisions.136 The state comprises the institutions of
governance. Sovereignty has been conceived as the 'supreme power of
the state' and the nation as the locus around which mobilisations are
affected with references to the concept of sovereignty.137 International
Relations scholarship has also come to increasingly acknowledge that
'...there has been a historical tension between state sovereignty,
which stresses the link between sovereign authority and a defined
territory, and national sovereignty, which emphasises the link between
sovereign authority and a defined population. The two types
fundamentally differ in the source of their legitimation as independent
entities, thereby altering the environment through which states relate
to each other.'138 It has been observed in this context '...the general
emphasis of legitimacy oscillates between
61
the state and nation. Stated in dialectical terms, the legitimacy of the
nation-state is a synthesis of statist and nationalist forms of
legitimation. The potential contradictions of these two forms drive a
process in which the content of legitimacy develops in a crisis and
changes to favour one form over the other.'139 It is inadequate and
misplaced to view the 'sovereign state as
' 140 given'.140
The state too is not a 'natural' form of political community but a
'historical' creation.141 While it is conceded among some critics of the
state that as a political community the state is not 'historically
insurmountable', this perspective demands a constant examination
and contextualisation of the debates surrounding the content of what
comes to constitute 'national need' and 'political ideology' and to
whom.142 There are important issues linked to political community in
this context, but while there is an appreciation of the 'current system
as provisionally given', there is also a recognition that states '...unjust
or not are the ships in which we find ourselves and we must try to
make them just and serve our needs.'143
Conclusion
States, as political communities, are peculiarly prone to political
'othering'.144 International Relations, given its primacy to the state-
centric realist inheritance, is also particularly vulnerable to this pitfall.
A key concern now relates to the manner in which '...we conceive of
the other, indeed the Other, outside of our inherited concepts and
beliefs so as not to replicate the patterns of repression and
subjugation we notice in traditional conceptual frameworks?'145 A
useful concept introduced in this context is the notion of 'obscuring'. 146
It entails 'a highly mediated and almost invisible process, implicit in
traditional forms of schooling as well as in less formal practices of
education and socialisation. The institutions of social reproduction and
cultural transmission-- schools, libraries, newspapers, and museums
for instance are oriented to the dominant cultural and social
perspectives. Much
62
of the bias is often invisible because of the relatively benign form in
which the transmission of cultural information takes place; it seems
utterly neutral, part of the scheme of things. In such instances,
cultural assimilation amounts to a repression of alternative sources of
experience and value.'147 It is in this 'scheme of things' in International
Relations that assumptions about sovereignty, the state, nationalism
and modernity are frequently effaced. It is to these that I have sought
to draw attention in this account. While International Relations will
and must continue its policy of relevant engagements, it must also not
'obscure' the broader canvas against which these immediate
contestations are being waged out. A conversation with other strains
of thought may help provide a corrective to the hitherto conventional
reifications of realism.148
Notes
Richard Pipes, 'A very cold fish', Times Literary Supplement, no. 5032,
September 10, 1999, pp. 3-4.
E.H. Carr, The Twenty Years Crisis: 1919--1939: An Introditction to the
Study of International Relations (London: Macmillan, ,1939).
Pipes, TLS, p. 3. For a more open-ended reading of E.H. Carr see a
recent volume which builds on some of Carr's intellectual concerns by
Tim Dunne, Michael Cox and Ken Booth, The Eighty Years Crisis:
International Relations 1919--1999 (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1998).
Pipes, TLS, p. 3. (See note 1.)
See Brian Fay, Social Theory and Political Practice (London: George
Allen and Unwin, 1975).
Kanti Bajpai, 'International Studies and Area Studies in India: Bringing
Theory Back Home' in M.S. Rajan (ed.) International and Area Studies
in India (New Delhi: Lancer, 1997), pp. 31-50.
For a 'benevolent' reading of the 'magnified' difficulties in the state-
building processes of the Third World, I have relied on the writings of
Mohammed Ayoob. See for instance directly connected to this issue,
'The Security Predicament of the Third World: Reflections on State
Making in a Comparative Perspective' in Brian Job (ed.) The Insecurity
Dilemma: National Security of the Third
63
World States, (Boulder and London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1992),
pp. 63-80.
For a sceptical account of the state as a political community, see
Ashis Nandy, 'Cultural Frames for Social Transformation: A Credo',
Alternatives vol. XII, no. 1, January 1987, pp. 113-123.
A.P. Rana, 'Reconstructing International Relations As A Field of Study
in India: A Progtamme for the Disciplinary Development of
International Relations Studies', in Studying International Relations:
The Baroda Perspective, Occasional Review, vol. 1, no. 1, Match 1988,
pp. 1-75, p. 6.
See Richard K. Ashley, 'The Geopolitics of Geopolitical Space: Toward
A Critical Social Theory of International Politics', Alternatives, vol. 12,
no. 4, October 1987, pp. 403-34.
That a similar strain manifested an American variant is evident in the
account of Stanley Hoffman, 'An American Social Science' first
published in Daedalus 106(3) and subsequently reproduced in James
Der Derian (ed.) International Theory: Critical Investigations (New York:
SUNY Press, 1995).
Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations: The Study of Power and
Peace, 6th ed. (New York, Knopf, 1985).
Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politics (New York: Random
House, 1979). For a discussion of this point, see R.B.J. Walker,
'Structuralism and Neorealism' in Inside/Outside: International
Relations as Political Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1993), esp. p. 115. For a distinction between 'classical realism' and
'technical realism' see Richard K. Ashley, 'Political Realism and Human
Interest', International Studies Qtiarterly, vol. 25, no. 2, (1981), pp. 204-
236.
Miles Kahler, 'Inventing International Relations: International Relations
After 1954' in Michael W. Doyle and G. John Ikenberry (ed.) Thinking in
International Relations (Boulder: Westview, 1997), pp. 20-53, p. 35.
See R.B.J. Walker, Inside/Outside, p. 32.
A. Appadorai, 'The Tasks Before Indian Political Thinkers' in Political
Ideas in Modern India: Impact of the West (New Delhi: Academic Books,
1971), pp. 102-111, p. 103. For drawing attention to the pioneers in the
field of International Relations in India, my gratitude extends to Shiv
Vishvanathan.
A Appadorai, 'The Tasks Before Indian Political Thinkers', pp. 102-111.
(See note 16)
64
A.P. Rana in a trend report of International Relations in India in A
Survey of Research in Political Science, 'International Studies', vol. 5,
ICSSR (New Delhi: Allied, 1988), pp. 1-70 (referred to hereafter as 'trend
report').
Ibid., p. 26.
Ibid., p. 23.
Ibid., p. 26. (Refer to Note 18)
For an account of Anglo-American parochialism see A.J.R. Groom who
notes in this context that '...the study of International Relations (IR)
has until now, been limited essentially to the Anglo-American tradition'
in A.J.R. Groom, 'International Relations: Anglo-American Aspects: A
Study in Parochialism' in Kanti Bajpai and Harish Shukul (eds.)
Interpreting World Politics (New Delhi: Sage, 1995), pp. 45-89.
Kami Bajpai, 'Bringing Theory Back Home', pp. 31-50.
See Itty Abraham, 'Towards a Reflexive South Asian Security Studies'
in Marvin G. Weinbaum and Chetan Kumar (eds.) South Asia
Approaches the Millenium: Reexamining National Security (Boulder:
Westview Press, 1995), pp. 17-40.
K. Subiahmanyam, 'Defence Policy and Analysis', A Survey of Research
in Political Science, International Studies, vol. 5, ICSSR (New Delhi:
Allied, 1988), pp. 245-294.
Ibid., p. 248.
Ibid., p. 253.
Ibid., p. 253. (Refer to Note 26)
A.P. Rana, 'Trend Report', pp. 1-70. (See Note 18)
Kami Bajpai, 'Bringing Theory Back Home', pp. 31-50.
Arnold Wolfers, 'National Security as an Ambiguous Symbol', Discord
and Collaboration: Essays on International Politics (Baltimore: The
John Hopkins Press, 1962), pp. 147-165.
Arnold Wolfers, 'National Security as an Ambiguous Symbol', p. 162.
A.P. Rana in 'International Studies', pp. 1--70.
For an account of the work of Mohammed Ayoob inspired by a
postcolonial stance building on Derridean insight, see Sankaran
Krishna's 'The Logic of Deference' in Postcolonial Insecurities: India,
Sri Lanka, and the Question of Nationhood (New Delhi: Oxford
University Press, 1999) esp) pp. 17-21. Nandy himself while
65
supportive of postcolonial critique, however, remains wary of post-
structuralist intent '...to locate the citadels of ... criticism in the West.'
See his responses to an interview by Vinay Lal (ed.) Dissenting
Knowledges, Open Futures: The Multiple Selves and Strange
Destinations of Ashis Nandy (New Delhi: Oxford University Press,
2000), p. 37. The intuitions of Nandy have been employed prior to this
within what has been regarded as the disciplinary mattix of
International Relations conspicuously by Sankaran Krishna himself
and Itty Abraham. Also see Krishna's review essay 'The Importance of
Being Ironic: A Postcolonial View on Critical International Relations
Theory', in Alternatives, vol. 18, no. 3, 1993, pp. 385-417; and
Abraham's, The Making of the Indian Atomic Bomb: Science, Secrecy
and the Postcolonial State (New Delhi: Orient Longman, 1999).
For an account of the 'theory of the state', see Itty Abraham, 'Towards
a Reflexive South Asian Security Studies', pp. 17--40.
I wish to acknowledge my gratitude to Dr B.S. Chimni for preceding
discussions on this aspect.
Mohammed Ayoob, 'The Third World in the System of States: Acute
Schizophrenia or Growing Pains', International Studies Quarterly, vol.
33, no. 1, March 1989, pp. 67-79, p. 72.
Mohammed Ayoob, 'The Security Predicament of the Third World:
Reflections on State Making in a Comparative Perspective' in Brian Job
(ed.) The Insecurity Dilemma: National Security in Third World States,
pp. 63-80.
Ibid., pp. 63-80.
Ibid., p. 65
Ibid., pp. 63-64.
Ibid., p. 66.
Ibid., p. 68.
Ibid., p. 67.
Ibid., p. 68. (Refer to Note 40)
Mohammed Ayoob, 'The Third World in the System of States: Acute
Schizophrenia or Growing Pains', International Studies Quarterly, vol.
33 (1989), pp. 69-79; p. 67. He cautions however, that these
'psychological metaphors ... have been used in a figurative sense and
should not be taken literally', (note 2 on p. 68).
Ibid., p. 77.
66
52. For the classical realism focus see Ayoob's account, 'Subaltern
Realism: International Relations Theory Meets the Third World' in
Stephanie G. Neuman (ed.) International Relations Theory and the
Third World, (London: Macmillan, 1998), pp. 31-54.
53. Ayoob, 'The Security Predicament of the Third World', p. 72. (See
Note 40).
54. Ibid., pp. 72-73.
55. Ayoob, 'Subaltern Realism: International Relations Theory Meets
the Third World', pp. 31-54.
56. Ibid., pp. 31-54.
57. See Stuart Hall, 'The State in Question' in George McLennan, David
Held and Stuart Hall (ed.) The Idea of the Modern State (Philadelphia,
Open University Press, 1984), pp. 1-28.
58. Ayoob, 'The Third World in the System of States', p. 70.
59. I am indebted to Kanti Bajpai for insights into these links. For a
more detailed account on Max Weber, see generally Scott Lash and
Sam Whimster (ed.) Max Weber, Rationality and Modernity, (London:
Allen and Unwin, 1987).
60. V.S. Naipaul authored an early book that goes by the title 'Mimic
Men'. My debt here remains confined to this 'literal' usage. For a
postcolonial reading of 'mimesis' in the context of foreign policies, see
Sankaran Krishna, Postcolonial Insecurities: India, Sri Lanka and the
Question of Nationhood, esp. pp. 3-30.
61. Ashis Nandy, The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self Under
Colonialism (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1983), Traditions, Tyranny
and Utopias: Essays in the Politics of Awareness (Delhi: Oxford
University Press, 1987) and among others an edited volume Science
Hegemony and Violence: A Requiem for Modernity, (Delhi: Oxford
University Press, 1990). An effort at systematically evaluating Nandy's
contribution may be found in Vinay Lal (ed.), Dissenting Knowledges,
Open Futures: The Multiple Selves and Strange Destinations of Ashis
Nandy (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000).
62. Nandy, 'Cultural Frames for Social Transformation', pp. 113-123.
63. Nandy, Traditions, Tyranny and Utopias; Also see Edward Said,
Orientalism (London and Henley: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978).
64. Nandy, 'Cultural Frames for Social Transformation' Also Science,
Hegemony and Violence.
65. Ibid., p. 121.
67
Ibid., p. 121.
Nandy, see in particular, Science, Hegemony and Violence.
Nandy, 'Cultural Frames for Social Transformation', p. 121.
Ibid., p. 122.
Ibid., p. 117.
Nandy, The Illegitimacy of Nationalism: Rabindranath Tagore and the
Politics of Self (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994).
Ibid.
Nandy, 'The Discreet Charms of Indian Terrorism' in The Savage Freud
and Other Essays on Possible and Retrievable Selves (New Delhi:
Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 1-32; p. 23.
Ibid.
For the phrase 'old-style statists' see Nandy, 'Patterns in the Sand:
Rising Hindutva tries to capture the initiative from Hinduism: But Can
it Survive?' Ayaz Memon and Ronjona Banerji, India 50: The Making of a
Nation (Bombay: Book Quest, 1997), pp. 217-218.
Dawa Norbu, 'After Nationalism? Elite Beliefs, State Interests, and
International Politics', International Studies, vol. 35, no. 3, 1998, pp.
295-315.
Yael Tamir reviews the writings of Benedict Anderson, Liah Greenfield
and Anthony D. Smith in 'The Enigma of Nationalism', World Politics, no.
3, April 1995, pp. 418-440; p. 425.
Tamir, 'The Enigma of Nationalism', p. 437.
Ibid., p. 432.
Ibid., pp. 433-38.
Ibid., p. 430.
Ibid., p. 438.
Ibid., pp. 420, 439.
Craig Calhoun, 'Nationalism and Difference: The Politics of Identity
Writ Large', Critical Social Theory: Culture, History and the Challenge
of Difference, (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Basil Blackwell, 1995), pp.
231-282.
Craig Calhoun, 'Nationalism and Difference', see esp. p. 233.
A usage employed by Partha Chatterjee in 'Fragile Distinctions:
Between Good and Bad Nationalism' Times of India, New Delhi, August
20, 1999. For insightful explorations of nationalism in the colonial
world see Chatterjee's Nationalist Thought and the Colonial
68
World: A Derivative Discourse (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1986).
See also by the same author, The Nation and its Fragments Colonial
and Postcolonial Histories (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994).
Neil Lezarus, Nationalism and Cultural Practice in the Postcolonial
World (Massachusetts: Blackwell, 1995).
Ibid., p. 60.
Ibid., p. 77.
Ibid.
I am referring to the period between August and early September 1999.
The three authors whose interventions I have chronicled are Sanjay
Subrahmanyam, Paitha Chatrerjee and Andre Beteille, in the same
sequence.
Sanjay Subrahmanyam, 'Cry the Beloved Country: The Suspect Shades
of Nationalism', Times of India, New Delhi, 12 August 1999.
Ibid.
Partha Chatterjee, 'Fragile Distinctions: Between Good and Bad
Nationalism' Times of India, New Delhi, August 20, 1999.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Andre Beteille, 'Historical Fortunes: The Relevance of the Nation
State', Times of India, New Delhi, September 1, 1999.
Ibid.
Sanjay Seth, 'Rewriting Histories of Nationalism: The Politics of
"Moderate Nationalism" in India', American Historical Review, vol. 104,
no. 1, February 1999, pp. 95-116; p. 95.
69
Walker, Inside/Outside, p. 19.
Ibid., p. 10.
Ibid., p. 100. Also note in this context that '[t]here is certainly a lot
more involved in postulating concepts like interdependence, regimes
or international institutions than the formulation of an empirical
research programme'. See esp. pp. 29--30.
For a classic statement on this issue see Theodor Adorno and Max
Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 4th impression (London: Verso,
1995). Earlier appeared as Dialektik der Aufklarung (New York: Social
Studies Association, 1944).
See for instance, Charles Taylor, 'Two Theories of Modernity' in a
special issue on 'Alternative Modernities' in Public Culture, vol. 11, no.
1, Winter 1999, pp.
153-174.
Satya P. Mohanty, Literary Theory and the Claims of History:
Postmodernism, Objectivity, Multicidtural Politics (New Delhi: Oxford
University Press, 1998). Also cited in Lezarus, Nationalism and Cultural
Practice in the Postcolonial World, p. 116.
Fred Dallmayr, 'Global Development? Alternative Voices From Delhi',
Alternatives, vol. 21, no. 2, April-June 1996, pp. 29-282, p. 276.
See generally, Walker, Inside/outside.
Ibid., p. 17.
Ibid., p. 83.
Ibid., p. 180.
Ibid., pp. 125-129.
This assorted collection itself bears further testimony to these
developments.
Walker, Inside/outside, p. 79.
Ibid., p. 52.
Ibid., p. ix.
Ibid., p. 17.
Ibid., p. 77.
Stuart Hall, 'The State in Question' in George McLennan, David Held
and Stuart Hall (ed.) The Idea of the Modern State (Philadelphia: Open
University Press, 1984), pp. 1-28.
Hall, 'The State in Question', pp. 1-28.
Norbu, 'After Nationalism', p. 314.
Hall, 'The State in Question', pp. 17-18.
Samuel J. Barkin and Bruce J. Cronin, 'The State and the Nation:
Changing Norms and the Rules of Sovereignty in International
70
Relations', International Organization, vol. 48, no. 1, Winter 1994, pp.
107-130; p. 108.
Barkin and Cronin, 'The State and the Nation', p. 115.
Ibid., p. 130.
Hall, 'The State in Question', p. 1.
For a consideration of the 'historical siirmountability' question see
Richard Falk, 'Anarchism and World Order' Excerpt from Nomos, 19
(1978), pp. 63-90. Reproduced in Andrew Levine (ed.) The State and its
Critics (London: Elgar, 1992), p. 76.
David Copp, 'The Idea of a Legitimate State', Philosophy and Public
Affairs, vol. 28, no. 1, pp. 3-45, p. 45.
Walker, Inside/outside, p. 183.
Mohanty, Literaiy Theory and the Claims of History..., p. 237.
Ibid., p. 237.
For an account of 'reification' see Douglas Maynard and Thomas
Wilson, 'On the Reification of Social Structure' in S. McNall and G.
Home (ed.) Current Perspectives in Social Theory, vol. 1 (Greenwich,
CT, 1980), pp. 287-322.
71

CHAPTER THREE
Communicative Discourse and Community in International Relations
Studies in India: A Critique
A.P. RANA AND K.P. MISRA*
A Retrospective and an Overview
This paper is based on a study that was elicited by an invitation
received from Professor William Welsh of the International Studies
Association, to the authors, to participate as India representatives in
an international symposium to be held in Williamsburg, Virginia, USA,
in the summer of 1988 on the
[Footnote: *In collaboration with: Mahenclra Kumar Agarwal (University
of Delhi); Rakhahari Chatterji (University of Calcutta); Rajen Harshe
(University of Hyderabad); A.P. Mavalankar (The M.S. University of
Baroda); Santosh Mchrotra (Jawahailal Nehru Universiry); S. Patnaik
(The M.S. University of Baroda); and Kripa Sridharan (The National
University of Singapore). The authors gratefully acknowledge a
generous grant from The Ford Foundation, New Delhi, India, which
enabled them (together with their collaborators) to travel to
Williamsburg, Virginia, for participation in the international
symposium.
This study is based upon a persual of over 1500 titles of scholarly
literature produced in India roughly in the 1980s. Space pre-empts
extensive citations. However, where the text appears to make more
specific references necessary, the related citations have been made.]
72
theme of 'Research on Continuity and Change in International Studies:
Towards a Transnational Community of Scholars'.
The guidelines provided by Professor Welsh, which were purely
suggestive, emphasised the correlation between the future growth of
International Studies worldwide and the creation of a transnational
community of scholars, engaged in effective communicative discourse
related to the field.
Country representatives, it was felt, might consider offering critical
state-of-the-art appraisals, focussed on a common theme, that of
'continuity and change in international studies', as manifested in the
International Relations (IR) scholarship produced in their respective
countries through the 1980s. Such appraisals, it was believed, could
help in eventually creating a transnational community of scholars,
reduce the salience of producer-consumer asymmetries, and be
productive of effective cross-national research upon which in turn
depended the future, national and
world-wide growth of the field. International Relations, in fact, couldn't
really
'take-off, unless it grew transnationally through communicative
discourse and community-building across the universe of IR Studies.
This seemed to make appreciable sense, and it appeared worthwhile
to organise a state-of-the-art survey of Indian IR scholarship, produced
roughly through the 1980s, focussing to the extent possible on the
theme of 'continuity and change in International Studies'.
Accordingly, the invited representatives, authors of the present study,
called for suitable position papers from Indian scholars in key areas of
Indian IR scholarship, such as theory and methodology, global and
regional conflict, foreign and security policy, interdependence,
dependence and foreign economic trade policy, bilateral, multilateral
relations studies, and comparative and area studies. A notable lacuna
was international legal studies which remains unrepresented here.
In the fully extended version of the study sent to Professor Welsh in
1988, these papers with citations totalling over 1500 titles of scholarly
literature, were re-composed and suitably represented. In the present
version of the study, such expatiation
73
was not possible. What follows, therefore, is largely the critical
commentary written by the authors after a persual of the position
papers, a commentary which was carried by the earlier version of the
study, in a more extended form.
Having taken stock of the literature produced, this paper argues that
the lack of adequate disciplinary and substantive national
communicative discourse in International Relations has been a major
impediment to effective cross-national research in India. Genuine
interdependency in the production of globally applicable knowledge,
and consequent rectification of producer-consumer asymmetries, calls
for the creation of a national community of scholars, based not merely
on common academic pursuits, but on the degree and quality of its
internal dialogue, on its catalytic communicative power. In offering a
diagnostic analysis of the nebulousness of communication, and the
consequent fragility of community among IR scholars in the country,
this paper addresses a central concern of the present volume.
This is a message which, although inscribed more than a decade back,
is as relevant today as then. Despite the increasing, qualitatively
improved offerings in the theory of International Relations in recent
times, which this volume celebrates, the lack of communicative
discourse in IR Studies in this country is as pervasive now as at the
time this paper was first written, in the late 1980s. And this continues
to have seriously regressive effects on the possibility of effective
cross-national research, interdependency in the production of globally
applicable knowledge, and the development of the field in this country.
Further, the authors feel that the present volume might gain in critical
depth if a study on communicative discourse in IR Studies in this
country were to be included in it. The authors also for this reason
believe that there would be no dissonance between what the piece
critiqued way back in the 1980s, and the present state of scholarship;
nor, indeed, between the former and the 'growth' of the theoretical
enterprise over recent years. Hence what follows, and is now being
published, remains essentially what was offered as a critique in the
late 1980s.
74
We pursue these concerns somewhat more specifically in the next
section, attempting to elicit and emphasise some fundamental
debilitating reasons accounting for such malaise as continues to
obtain.
Conceptual and Institutional Inadequacies
A major negative aspect of the intellectual history of IR development
in India has been the excessively scant attention paid to its proper
conceptualisation. The effort has only begun to be made some forty
years after the field was first taught and researched. It would hardly
be possible here, of course, to offer anything more than a brief
analysis. Although IR studies have become part of university curricula,
the area has been weakly conceptualised as a distinct discipline. The
error lay in a facile identification between discipline-oriented IR
Studies (its comprehensive contours, the range of its distinctive
concerns and problematics, its extensive sub-disciplinary growth), and
idiographic foreign area studies--both subsumed under a misleading
rubric 'international studies'. Foreign area studies, under this rubric,
were permitted to subsume IR Studies, thus critically neglecting the
latter's development. Foreign area studies can include research
related to a host of social science disciplines, only one of which might
be IR Studies. Such area studies do not become 'international' merely
by virtue of the area studied being foreign, or by virtue of the fact that
they labour at producing chronologically-oriented relational studies.
Area studies may conceivably become international-relational, so to
speak, when, with whatever interdisciplinarity, they are executed with
the disciplinary/theoretical concerns of IR Studies. But we are in the
presence of disciplinary disaster if IR Studies (meaning IR theoretical
studies in a prior sense) are not instituted at all, or instituted
nominally and shorn of their theoretical component, which is what
happens when they are assumed to be instituted ipso facto with
foreign area studies, and nowhere near being IR-oriented and directed
comparative cross-national studies of
75
foreign areas. But since this conceptual oddity remains unperceived,
no one is particularly perturbed, and conceivably this happy state of
disciplinary haziness may continue over the next forty years!
What began as an 'original sin' continues to be replicated all over the
country. A funding agency has only to institute studies in a particular
foreign area, and that programme of study, or that department or
centre or institute or school will forthrightly appropriate for itself the
title of 'international studies'. If scholars themselves are unaware of
how a pedagogically inappropriate conceptualisation has baited them,
how are funding agencies (which heavily depend upon scholarly
'expertise') to escape being similarly baited? And so the sorry tale of
'international studies' in India has unfolded, producing in the main
neither International Studies
(IR-disciplinary directed cross-national studies of foreign areas), nor IR
Studies (the discipline of IR itself, with all of its manifold sub-fields
infused with IR theoretical concerns), nor valid comparative and area
studies. What, in effect, has been produced, in bales piled on bales of
scholarship, is that typically Indian product, unhappy but hardy
relational studies, without the use, explicit or implicit, of sound
historiographical method.
What sort of discourse is possible about such 'international studies'?
Indeed, some very good IR Studies work has been produced. But if
such work is piecemeal and isolated, neither the product of a
disciplinary tradition nor contributing to it, it is hardly likely to set in
process a cumulative communicative national discourse, substantive
or disciplinary, about a field.
Inadequate concern about the conceptualisation of the field has had
severely regressive effects. Till 1984, only one Department of Political
Science, that at Baroda, was specially funded by the UGC in the thrust
area of IR Studies. The Department studiously and advisedly avoided
the current Indian designation 'international studies'. For close to 37
years, no funding was available to the country at large for IR Studies,
while area study programmes and centres regularly surfaced on the
campuses of Indian universities, and funding bodies believed,
76
as in fact they still do, that 'international studies' were being well
looked after.
Over time, the scope of IR Studies has expanded enormously, while the
academic space available to this area of scholarship, even in major
political science departments, has relatively shrunk--alarmingly so.
Other sub-fields of political science have universally grown as well,
making their own demands and getting away with them, because,
unlike IR Studies, they are theoretically much better developed. In a
reasonably average department, however, the field, relative to its
growth, stands severely marginalised, and in poorer departments,
there is little left of what is recognizable of the bare elements of the
discipline.
Such regression has begun to have cumulatively 'de-exponential'
effects. Scholars and younger teachers are unable to pursue research
in the manifold regional locales of Indian university campuses, even if
they are interested in IR Studies, because of the dearth of primary and
secondary library material. They necessarily have to make expensive
trips to Delhi where research material is concentrated in half a dozen
premier, national or institutional libraries. Many of them consequently
discontinue research in IR Studies.
This has other consequential effects. With just one Department of
International Relations at Jadavpur, and one School of International
Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, there are few
recruits available for even the scarce IR teaching positions available in
departments of political science. Moreover, those trained in the capital
hardly show any inclination to migrate to regional universities,
because, among other reasons, they would be caught in a 'library-trap',
incapable of researching in their area of specialisation. At most, in
important regional departments of political science, there may be one
or two teachers with specialised interests in IR Studies. What
intensive inter-faculty research, dialogue or converse is possible
between them, specially when they are expected to teach courses in
areas other than IR Studies? For a country of India's size, there are
only about two to three related national-level journals to which they
can contribute. And since, in any case,
77
these journals hardly ever attempt to address theoretical,
methodological or epistemological issues and debates, or comment on
recent developments related to disciplinary concerns, more serious
scholars are severely handicapped: however much they may wish to
partake in national communicative discourse, there are no takers
receptive to their inclinations; there is no intellectual milieu to give
them the fillip necessary for the contributions they feel they can make.
The Substance of Research
Theory and Methodology
There is an absence of theoretical endeavour in the field in India.
Scholars with vital enthusiasm for the field, judging by the corpus of
literature produced, face only frustration, because they do not appear
to know how to explain the field's
subject-matter. This is the inevitable consequence of excessively poor
theoretical exposure.
Thus, while the succeeding sub-sections offer an inventory of
substantive research, they cannot offer any inventory of theoretical
research, except by way of treatment of critical gaps in explanatory
knowledge--immanent but unexploited--because of inadequate
conceptualisations of the field.
Since theory, in the main, is so poorly addressed in India, it is difficult
to ascertain and answer questions on 'existing or emergent
theoretical, policy and/or other intellectual issues'. Potentially
significant theoretical issues, more often than not, degenerate into
rhetoric and bluster; policy issues, without any theoretical basis, are
so many ad hoc prescriptions which journalists formulate much more
felicitously; intellectual issues, issues related to prior (even implicit)
attempts to conceptualise the field, or any other such serious
epistemological or methodological issue, do not figure in the literature.
The research effort is happily unselfconscious, unburdened with the
field's concerns. One plunges into research much in the manner of a
boy drawing his dummy sword from its scabbard and
78
brandishing its safely blunt edges, rather than in the manner of a
duelist aware that the duel can have portentous consequences, and
that this must therefore dictate the most careful attention to the
theory and practice of the field, of his art.
In one sense, Indian writing does have a submerged 'theoretical base',
which may be difficult to conceptualise, but needs to be explicitly
explored. At least one important dimension of this 'theoretical base'
has been constituted by intensive but inchoate internationalisation of
the tenets of state-centric realism, in several of its manifold forms.
Such internalisation is probably the result of an amalgam of forces and
circumstances: the study of mainly political history of an over-formal
kind during the long years at school; intensive interest in and reading
of newspapers emblasing national events and journalist material of
like nature; the relatively recent memory of the nationalist struggle for
independence; immediately thereafter the experience of the first
traumas of national security consequent on the partition of the
subcontinent; the later reinforcement of this trauma by that of the
Chinese episode; the early (and, in fact, continuing) ethos of the Third
World's quest to maintain national frontiers and national sovereignties;
the country's active participation in all the on-going political and
diplomatic activities of the Western European Westphalia sovereign
state system, now extended globally, inclusive of vigorous 'sovereign
state' participation in a number of multilateral forums, particularly that
of the United Nations; the early explicit onset of Realism after World
War II (coinciding with India's independence), and the circumstance
that it fitted in admirably with powerful indigenous impulses for the
maintenance of national security, independence and frontiers; our
Realism interpreted as idealism to preserve the nascent nation-state
against that other Realism redolent of the rcalpolitik of the Great
Powers, their power politics, games of balances of power, their
menacing engagement in the Cold War which threatened to swamp the
expression and practice of newly won sovereignties... one could
conceivably compile a long list of the forces and factors that have
indelibly left a Realist mark on the national
79
memory, not only of India, but of the Third World, even while its
academics vigorously attempt to exorcise the ghost of Morgenthau
(their Realism: the Great Powers Realism) from its corridors.
This, then, is one important dimension of the implicit 'theoretical base'
of much of Indian writing in the area of IR studies. Nevertheless,
confront an average scholar, and try and prove, in the most objective
fashion, that much of his writing stems from mainstream Realist
premises, and one will have revolt and revulsion on one's hands! The
internalisation of Realist premises has never been at any time an
explicitly
self-conscious activity; it has been more the result of scholars being
overly impressed and influenced by state practice--that of their own, or
those portions of the political universe they regard as analogous to
their own. Both the Realism of national state practice, and the formal
'revolt' of state practice against 'their Realism', the Great Powers'
Realism, is uncritically internalised, and constitutes the 'theoretical'
bedrock of much of the IR literature produced. It is curious that Indian
scholars can be so astonishingly and quickly critical of internal state
action, and as astonishingly and quickly supportive of external state
action. Here is hardy work for a psychologist!
Literature stemming from such implicit Realist premises, based largely
upon their own state's external behavior, is bound fundamentally to
contribute to continuity rather than change: in essence, of course; not
in postures and rhetoric. The postures are all for 'change'--and there is
not much insincerity or conscious hypocrisy about these postures,
because they are poorly internalised from one form or another of
Wilsonian state-centric, liberal idealism, or more recently, from one or
another version of dependency. The idea of change, of course, echoes
state practice. The state is concerned about what for convenience we
may call Realist expedients to effect change, not for change which
attempts to transcend Realist premises. Thus, while on the surface
Indian scholarship may give the impression of 'radicalism', it is so
securely (because so unconsciously) tied to the stake of Realism, that
all it appears to wish to do (and
80
manages to do) is to purge itself of its state-induced 'radical' zeal,
while 'contributing' to the state-induced practice of mainstream
Realism. Contributing may perhaps be the wrong word to use: the state
is not much in need of such support as is gratuitously given to it by its
scholars. By using this word we mean that Indian scholarship squarely
makes its contribution, in its own inchoate but exponentially effective
way, to powerful tendencies of fundamental continuity in the world
system, rather than to any very organisationally conceived movement
for change.
This may not necessarily be as much of a mistake as it sounds. Neither
continuity nor change can perpetually wear angelic robes. Nor can
they be so easily contradistinguished. The real question is: what sort
of continuity does it contribute to? Is it the sort of continuity that can,
for example, enable great domains of justice, safety, peace, harmony
to be carved out of creatively possible spaces of continuity? This
surely ought to be one important dimension of change. Or is it
continuity that, despite the possibility of achieving such spaces, in any
case, has hardly ever addressed itself to organic forms of change, but
essentially to continuity? It may not be altogether unfair to say that
our scholarship, based upon such implicit theoretical premises,
promises the latter fate for people in the Third World, rather than the
former. Theoretical poverty begets the sort of continuity that
stultifies--a curious position for the offerings of a Third World state.
Again, one speaks generally here. The dark landscape of our
scholarship is here and there lit by bright fires that sustain hope. That
hope perhaps might be better kindled if Indian scholarship can become
theoretically more truly self-aware, and squaring a broad shoulder,
take honest criticism of its productions as the best thing that could
happen to it.
If theoretically the landscape is explicitly barren and implicitly
treacherous, methodologically it is devoid of even this subtlety. We
have shown ourselves to be basically historical chroniclers, with little
regard for historiographical methodologies. And postbehaviouralism,
phenomenology, hermeneutics, and, now, post-modernism and critical
theory have provided the excuses we
81
need to indulge in generalised, normative, value-indulged writing which
however does carry its own 'methodological' logic: it enables the
quickest possible writing on a range of exceedingly complex,
contemporaneous themes. A hypothesis is thrown out, and all evidence
that can be garnered to support it is marshalled; contrary evidence is
not sought and refutations are never conjectured! It would be difficult,
over forty years, to point to a single methodological work of true
distinction and honest purpose. At least in the 1980s more systematic,
seriously conceived work has begun to appear, and, of course,
economic theory and methodology have greatly sustained the offerings
that we have in the area of International Political Economy. But
economic theory has had a respectability and a fairly long history of
growth in this country which IR Studies have deprived themselves of
for forty years. Yet it is never too late to begin.
Global Conflict Study
Global conflict and its regulation in the nuclear age is probably the
field's most prominent area. It has produced a vast body of substantive
and theoretical literature in the present century. From the scholarship
surveyed, it would appear that one albeit important contemporary
dimension of this conflict--North-South global inequality--obtains
primary, virtually exclusive coverage. Further, it is almost
eschatologically, if often implicitly, adduced as the source of such
other conflict as the world suffers from. This is to be expected, and
appreciated, from Third World scholarship. What, however, is to be
equally expected is the extent, depth and quality of coverage of this
aspect of contemporary global conflict. The coverage in India is
unfortunately excessively thin in extent and depth, almost superficial,
and adds neither originality nor dimension to the study of North-South
international asymmetries, and conflicts consequent on their
perpetuation.
As to the complex range of causative, interactive mesh of
'determinants' of global conflict, the field appears to be a tabula rasa.
There appear to be yet no trends in Indian IR studies which
82
attempt to address themselves to the vast complexities of this field, so
central to the study of International Relations. No concepts are
coherently put forward to marshal the bewildering array of dynamic
forces that operate to create contemporary global conflict. The most
cursory attention is paid even to such hoary concepts as those of
national security and the national interest. Peace appears exclusively
equated with the rectification of North-South asymmetries; important
though such a conceptualisation is, the correlation is merely
descriptively and rhetorically posited, ignoring even
structutalistoriented litetature on the subject. The treatment of this
key IR concept/ problematic is therefore most cursorily and
perfunctorily covered in extent and depth.
Concerning the regulation of global conflict, there are stray thoughts
on disarmament, arms control and development. The panoply of
regulatory mechanisms is nowhere sought to be covered even
descriptively quite apart from being treated critically. The
contributions of multilateral diplomacy, in this respect, virtually
overlooks the vast arena of the United Nations system, concentrating
almost exclusively instead on the Nonaligned Movement, treated for
the most part adulatorily, although a handful of critical studies are
beginning to cover this area (in a qualitative sense) somewhat more
purposefully.
The hectoring, prescriptive style of journalese predominates
throughout, even in relation to global restructuring (which however has
begun to attract serious attention), and returns again and again to the
theme of North-South asymmetries; understandably so but without
much cogency or effect, for no extension of and contribution to
knowledge of the field can be offered when scholarship apes politics
instead of attempting to control in it desired human directions.
It does not seem very material to extrapolate trends over time. More
contemporary work follows earlier work, but in a non-cumulative way.
The most noticeable trend is the perception of global conflict in
relation to North-South structures of global inequality treated cursorily
rather than analytically, although with much passion and heat. Global
restructuring is another
83
trend, although curiously it appears to have received more careful
attention in the earlier, rather than in the later, part of this period.
The message of the literature surveyed here is loud and clear: no
subtle interpretations are necessary. Change in global affairs is
indispensable, continuity mortal, for the survival of the species, quite
apart from a host of other desirable, equitous ends. There is much that
is admirable in all this but the transition from the existing status quo
to a more equitous ordering of international relations is expected to be
achieved by an indignant realisation of the injustice of the old order,
and an implicit acceptance of the intrinsic value of the new.
Neither the former, nor the latter, however, receives any very sustained
analytical or theoretical attention. In a sense, Indian scholarship goes
back to those early indignations and enthusiasms that characterised
the onset of Idealism after World War I. The literature of that period, as
the literature here surveyed, was as facilely dismissive to the old
order, and the need for a reformulation of the new--as theoretically,
analytically and critically innocent of what it sought to dismiss out of
hand. The one difference being that while Idealism had faith in the
legal and institutional reordering of international relations, the corpus
of Indian literature here surveyed, appears to possess the same degree
of faith, but in the transforming power of more equitous North-South
relations. Questions are never asked as to how one must move in such
directions: consciousness-raising, indignant denunciation, and what
Martin Wight in another context called, 'the argument from despair',
seem to be enough to effect epic transitions.
Nor are troublesome questions asked about the possible persistence
of the baleful continuities of international relations after equitous
relationships have been successfully set up. The assumption is that
such a new global order would be equitous. The literature, in short, is
commendable for its enthusiasms, but is marked by theoretical
poverty, both 'empirical' and 'normative'. It borrows in the most
random way from idealist premises, dependency theory and schools of
thought on world
84
order. That it is so exposed is necessarily a commendation: that it
chooses to be so poorly exposed is unfortunate. The literature makes
little or no indigenous contribution to such of these universal
theoretical perspectives as it is exposed to. Much of such exposure is
ill-digested, even ill-informed. Contrary theoretical perspectives have
not been wrestled with, but summarily dismissed, as belonging to 'the
old world of power politics and balances of power'. It is difficult at
times to distinguish the rhetoric of scholars from that of their
spokesmen on world affairs. The interplay of contrary IR disciplinary
concerns and problematics is hardly addressed. In fact, scholarship,
sometimes even at its best, shows the poorest of possible exposures
to academic training in the area of IR theory, and a remarkable lack of
self-consciousness about its valuational over-kill.
The communicative power of such scholarship must necessarily be
limited; and its public policy relevance even more so. Yet if Indian
scholarship has somewhat naively and thoughtlessly ventured forth
into shaping global change, it has ventured forth at least in right
directions. It has to catch up on an immense deal of homework before
it can make any impact; yet homework can be done. It is more
important to have intuitively seen the light.
Regional Conflict Studies
Indian literature on regional conflict covers a number of regions,
although the South Asian region obtains maximum attention. A wide
variety of causes internal to the various regions, catalysed by an even
more comprehensive set of forces external to the region, would appear
to be responsible for regional conflicts and cries. Such catalytic action
is strenuously believed in, but only randomly shown to be related. The
coverage of reasons in both cases is wide but in-depth analyses of any
of a wide variety of causative factors is negligible. Only very implicit
treatment of the management of such conflict and crises, and even
then only as evidenced by studies on regional cooperation, is to be
found
85
in India. Description or descriptive analysis of the major political-
diplomatic problems of the region, accompanied at times by rhetorical
prescriptions, implicitly and axiomatically are expected to represent
treatment of management of conflict and crises situations.
From 1979/1980 to the present, the dominant trend of scholarship has
been to describe, or descriptively analyse, the contours of regional
conflict and crises and of regional cooperation. This, of course,
involves impressionistic citations and accounts of factors and forces
responsible for the phenomena treated. The overall trend of proceeding
from information-oriented, diplomatic-political causes of conflict and
crises, as well as depictions of regional cooperative undertakings or
lack of them, continues throughout the period under survey. Towards
its latter part, however, a study or two encouragingly diverts from this
pattern, as for example in attempting 'domestic', ethno-cultural
analyses of conflict in the South Asia region.1 Also, two early,
theoretically oriented studies on regionalism among developing
countries (1979, 1980)2 are attempted to be 'built on' in a later, middle-
period study.3 But there appears to be no subsequent cumulatively-
oriented follow-up.4 Later studies comfortably fit earlier, overall trends.
Very rarely is the literature on regional conflicts selfconsciously aware
of scholarly enterprise as such and the purposes such enterprise must
serve. Epistemological naivete appears to be an original sin.
Theoretical and methodological 'innocence' is a concomitant fall.
Some of the most critical IR issues such as peace, security
development, and so on are pummeled like punching bags only
obligingly to ricochet back for what to all intents and purposes
appears to be more futile pummeling! No attempt is made so as to
address them that they can begin meaningfully to be prised open.
Research is India-centric because it is theoretically barren. Formality
abounds; save for veiy exceptional work, the bulk of the literature is
concerned with political-diplomatic state-centric relationships.
Indubitably, we stand informed of conflict and crises situations, and
cooperative trends, in regional areas,
86
particularly in the South Asia region. The extent and emotional
intensity of interest are promising harbingers of the future. What must,
however, be a beginning and a means to an end, is implicitly offered as
the end itself; some historical concerns may thus be addressed. Yet
the immensely more complex task of how the human mind can steal a
march, so to speak, over the proliferation of conflict and crises
situations, and an absence of meaningful cooperative relationships, so
as to begin to subserve them to empirically well-founded normative
concerns, is nowhere sought to be addressed; it forms no part of the
agenda of research. No general propositions about international
conflict, crises, regional cooperations, drawn from indigenous studies,
but applicable universally to enlarge the global pool of knowledge
concerning important international phenomena, are offered.
This deprives scholarship of significant transnational communicative
cogency. Much of what is produced is received knowledge already.
Advances in international journalism, with its sharply competitive
commercial edge, have assured this. Prestigious reviews of current
affairs like The World Today, Pacific Affairs, Asian Survey and high
quality documentation print-outs, such as Keesing's Contemporary
Archives, only serve to reinforce this fact. Only a nitty-gritty, esoteric
area study specialist on India, sensitive to the subtle attitudinal
attributes which the human mind emits when it composes any study
with some labour, would want to go through a pile of such descriptively
re-worked literature. Perhaps this does serve some purpose: Indian
valuational concerns can be observed. Nevertheless, existing
consumer-producer asymmetries, unfavorable as much to the producer
country, as to consumers of a growing universal pool of knowledge,
would subsist if such trends are not halted and reversed.
Theory and applied research have enormous interactive potential for
the production of durable and applicable knowledge; particularly so
when extant theoretical literature has already made its mark. The
analyses of conflict, its management, control, attempts at its
resolution, is an established area of theoretical activity in IR Studies;
so is that of international integration/
87
disintegration, regional cooperation and communication. Such studies
are explicitly concerned with key IR disciplinary concerns and issues.
If they are parochial and Western-centric, there is an obligation to
cosmopolitanise them, rather than facilely reject them on grounds of
irrelevance. Cosmopolitanisation implicates, in the first place,
familiarity with what is regarded as parochial, not convenient
dismissals of the same through a Third World cognizance of regional
issues and problems, increasingly studied and understood
theoretically, rather than historically or descriptively. More
transnationalist consumer-oriented research, can be produced, and
distinctive contributions made to global theoretical advance in the
appertaining field. Public policy, then, cannot but be influenced,
contrary to prevailing trends.
Foreign Policy and Security Research
Foreign policy analysis, as a field of study, focusses on some of the
most important issues of IR Studies--security, peace and development,
as well as on the uniquely IR oriented (not comparative politics
oriented) interplay between them. Some of the most creative
treatments of this field anywhere will be found to deal with these
problematics within four to five analytical parameters: comparative
foreign policy analysis; theoretically oriented area case studies
producing general explanations of foreign policy behaviour; more
specific, area-wise explanatory understandings of the determinants of
foreign policy decision making; similar explanations of a host of policy
implementing mechanisms; and finally, macro-policy surveys dealing
with bilateral, multilateral relations of the area concerned with the
rest of the world, or politico-geographic parts of the world deemed
significant for concerns relating to the area's security, peace and
development. State of the field surveys, if analytically rigorous, could
be particularly valuable in qualitatively enhancing public policy
studies, and contributing to effective interventions in improving state
practice in international relations.
This, then, constitutes the field and the way in which at present it is
analytically studied. Ideally, also, it represents how
88
IR oriented area studies ought to be conducted in an IR sub-
disciplinary field. It does not exclude what is better understood as
comparative and area studies, provided (and this is a most important
proviso), such comparative and area studies get subsumed to the IR
sub-disciplinary concerns of foreign policy analysis and not
(inchoately) the 'reverse'. The latter, in fact, has ceaselessly been
happening in the area of the Indian study of' international studies'; that
is one reason why we should not really consider such studies as
International or Foreign Policy Studies in a meaningful,
disciplinary/interdisciplinary sense. An excessively nebulous species
of comparative and area studies subsumes, in the most ham-handed
way, all IR sub-disciplinary concerns of foreign policy studies, and
produces in reality literature with fancy international relations/foreign
policy titles. Such literature constitutes neither theoretically salient
comparative and area studies, nor of course IR oriented comparative
and area studies (which an IR field, orchestrating inter disciplinarity,
ought ideally to aim at producing), nor for that matter methodologically
correct international relations historiographies. What is produced is
that poorest of a-disciplinary creatures: either, badly conceived and
shabbily worked at historical chronologies, and/or equally ill-conceived
studies of current international affairs, or relational studies, and/or
prescriptive journalese on the same.
This, then, is the way in which most 'international' area study centres
have for forty long years exercised baleful influences on disciplinary
oriented IR Studies in this country, and more especially vitiated IR
oriented area study of the field of foreign policy analysis. Fortunately,
willy-nilly, some semblance of the field, surprisingly has managed to
survive. It may be a very pale shadow of the real thing, but the
literature would seem to indicate that the field is being gropingly
grasped by Indian scholarship. Qualitatively, of course, none of it has
escaped the a-disciplinary onslaught of what routinely passes for
'international studies' in most of our 'international' area study centres.
Yet, despite this, it says much for the intrinsic and substantive interest
which this country has evinced in IR Studies,
89
that the real contours of the field, at least in foreign policy studies, are
being perceived. But this not a fair enough picture. If the literature can
be said to have moved in directions of attempting to cover the field,
however sparsely, the routine-run-of-the-mill material far outstrips in
quality what has been surveyed.
What, however, of this sparse coverage that has just been alluded to?
Certainly Indian literature has been produced on the security, peace
and development dimensions of this field; that on the security
dimension predominating; that on the development dimension just
beginning to appear. Again these problematics have been addressed
within the field's analytical parameters. Thus, for example, there is the
thinnest of possible streams constituted by comparative foreign policy
analysis studies; a relatively much more vigorous stream on
explanatory studies; an enhanced interest in determinants of foreign
policy-making and implementation while foreign policy and relations
surveys, of course, replicate their bad old ways, apart from rare
exceptions. Again, all this is qualitatively affected by the malaise
created by 'international area studies'; and reckonings of qualitative
coverage are important in assessing the 'extent' of coverage of the
field. To somewhat make up for such qualitative lags, vigorous state of
the field critiques are beginning to appear. How far they will really help
has yet to be seen.
Almost parallel remarks apply to the field of Indian strategic and
defense policy. In fact, here the coverage of the concerned field is
scantier and qualitatively more dubious. Strategic thought,
contributing to a classical tradition, is a non-starter. Contemporary
strategic theories on war and the defence system, on strategy,
revolutionary war, military-sociology, disarmament and arms control,
peace-keeping etc. are not enlarged in their universals by Indian
contributions, while analyses and applications related to them are
mostly unsystematic, ignorant of the theoretical literature on the
subject, full of prescriptive might and fury, poorly policy oriented
because of lack of theoretical exposure, and often degenerate into
freelance journalese on 'India's security concerns'. The security
dimension
90
of course hogs the field, peace being either its almost incidental out-
growth, or a rhetorical proposition, while the developmental dimension
gets meshed in the sort of polemic provided it by diplomats in
disarmament fora. Qualitatively, the coverage is excessively poor, with
ad hoc prescriptions abounding, the field unguided by foreign policy
analysis and by the larger disciplinary concerns of IR Studies; the
latter, of course, do not eschew security, but consider it within the
complex universe of other interacting problematics almost unknown to
the universe of strategic studies in India.
Trends over time are not all that unpromising in the area of Indian
foreign policy studies. The 1980's have seen the production of
literature which is beginning to address the critical issues of security,
peace and development as well as most of the field's analytical
parameters: comparative foreign policy analysis; explanations of
foreign policy behavior; determinants of foreign policy decision-making
and implementation. These are indeed promising trends, given the
dubious quality of research of most 'international' area study centres.
Trends in Indian defence and strategic policy, however, show an
alarming degree of continuity: the 'field' has not as yet been able to
develop any unifying, analytical organising grid, other than the ad hoc
concern for India's defence. The debate on nuclear weapons
acquisition, while extremely important, qualitatively speaking is so
much old hat; theoretical naivete abounds, as of old, with respect to
nuclear deterrence, for example, or with regard to war and the defence
system, etc. However, a few studies have attempted to go beyond the
narrow confines of military defence, and have analysed problems
within the broader context of the international system, of the
variegated concerns of Indian foreign policy and in relation to
domestic socio-economic and political processes. Emergent creative
trends are very restricted. Much of the lack of development of the field
may be due to the tendency to organise strategic and defence studies
in separate departments, centres and institutes. Thus, while there are
five to six such centres already instituted in the country (some of them
producing esoteric Ph.D. theses on the military uniforms of the
91
Shivaji...period/s), India as yet possesses only one school of
international studies and one department of international relations.
How can one expect the strategic studies field to perform better?
Perhaps it would have been best to effectuate a cut-off of this critique
at the end of the last paragraph, for the concern to delineate the
extent of coverage of the field in any case necessitated a 'field
critique' basic to its developmental concerns. Further, reference may
be made to a comprehensive critique made in a state-of-the-field-
report, covering the period 1947-1970, much of which is applicable to
the literature produced in the 1980's.6
Nevertheless, one needs to make just two remarks related more
specifically to the concerns of this study. First, the literature produced
in the area of Indian foreign and strategic policy is highly conservative,
despite the noisy overtones related to its very legitimate
preoccupations with racism, superpowers and different forms of
potential and actual tendencies in the international system making for
political, strategic and socio-economic asymmetries. One needs to
note that the sort of literature produced promises to contribute more
to theoretical continuities rather than change. One caveat, however,
needs to be entered. Indian literature, especially serious,
theoretically-oriented literature on Indian nonalignment is beginning to
make an indigenous contribution with universal referents.7 The
credible contours of a foreign policy strategy conceptualisation, of
appreciable empirical and normative systemic value, are beginning to
emerge. Such studies of an 'alternative' foreign policy strategy have
not only highlighted the manner in which weaker states can credibly
generate
traditional-type capabilities, through suitable foreign policy
operationalisations, in order to maintain newly acquired territorial
political and (in the case of larger developing states) even economic
sovereignties, but they have also demonstrated the policy's
contribution to the relatively peaceful and stable extension of the
Western European Westphalia system to the rest of the world, and to
'the greening of the international anarchy'.8 These are impressive
contributions,
92
to substantive forces of 'change' in the international system, even if
they may not represent paradigmatically significant departures.
Serious cognisance of such scholarship has as yet to be taken by
Western scholars; thus the latter's scholarship misses making its own
contribution to the universals of the subject, and fails to help refine
the Third World's own, further contributions. Yet, while we may enter
this caveat about 'change', emotive, uncritical treatments of
nonalignment, even in serious literature on the subject, and the
contemporary 'cognitive dissonance' implicit in the practice of
nonalignment, and its unreflective acceptance by Third World scholars,
have created nonalignment's 'legitimacy crisis'.9 This can be ignored
by the latter only at considerable peril to the foreign policy strategy's
cogency, and whatever contributions it has been able to make to
'change' within the predominantly prevailing state-centric realist
paradigm.
The second analogous remark relates to transnational
communications. The predominant bulk of this literature, especially on
Indian strategic policy, is likely at best to be read only by an official
policy analyst at a foreign office desk, if at all. The producer-consumer
asymmetry is likely to persist as Indian scholarship has as yet to
enlarge, through its indigenous contributions, the scope and quality of
universal referents of the field. What is as distressing is that the
adverse producer-consumer asymmetry has as yet not been put to
productive advantage by Indian scholars, in the process of rectifying
such asymmetries: extensive consumption of literature produced
abroad has not had the degree of catalytic value necessary for such
purposes of rectification. This is predominantly because there is
appreciably poor internalisation of whatever little theoretical literature
as is consumed; and also because there is, generally speaking, a bias
against the perusal of such literature, and a much greater receptivity
to more idiographic foreign and strategic policy studies produced
abroad.
As in virtually all other segments of IR Studies we, who are wedded to
the production of scholarship, are 'betrayed by what is false within': by
a pronounced epistemological, theoretical and
93
methodological anomie, defying even four decades of self consciously
indifferent work in the field.
Interdependency, Dependency and Foreign Economic Trade Policy
Research
Although the disciplines of economics and political science are widely
taught on the campuses of Indian universities, there is a
marginalisation of international economics and of international
relations respectively in the bulk of the average economics and
political science departments across the country. This, together with
the paucity of interdisciplinary research, may account for the relative
poverty of such a rapidly growing and important field of study
(especially in a developing country) as International Political Economy
(IPE).
Thus, in the IPE literature produced not only during the period under
survey, but even earlier, the major macro-parameters of the field
remain uncovered: the theoretical concerns of IPE, in so far as they
relate to the disciplinary orientations and problematics of IR Studies;
the larger interaction between the internal dynamics of the world's
market and such exogenous features of its environment as domestic
and international politics, socio-cultural factors within 'domestic'
societies, international societal mores and practices, world scientific
and technological developments; the political economy of international
finance; and transformative dimensions of the global political
economy. IPE, therefore, as a macro-field of study, either in economics
or political science departments or for that matter, in the excessively
few centres of international studies, has still to emerge as a
specialised area of study.
Some of the areas of IPE which appear to have received scattered,
restricted attention, are: area-based (even then mainly India-oriented),
and largely incidental treatments of the ideological component of the
field (liberal, nationalist, Marxist perspectives), reflections of and
reactions to international debates on international monetary and trade
issues, and problems of the emergent international economic order. In
no sense whatsoever
94
do the nooks and crannies of these areas receive attention; there are
no thorough-going treatments, but as is more usual than not in much of
IR Studies literature, reactive, reflex 'jerks' conditioned by debates and
polemics taking place and aired in multilateral fora--in this case, in the
several fora related to North-South negotiations. The coverage of these
narrow sub-specialisations, therefore, tends to be erratic, almost 'a-
disciplinary': the concerns for the evolution of the discipline and its
subsequent contribution to public policy are not evidenced, as much
as ad hoc reactions to those public policy issues which, from time to
time, capture the international limelight.
This applies as well to foreign economic and trade policy. Much of it is
explicitly India-centric, dealing with the internal debate on economic
liberalisation, the links between foreign investment and development,
and the nature of foreign investments in India and Indian investments
abroad. Comparatively-oriented disciplinary concerns related to
foreign economic and trade policy do not necessarily inform the
literature; although they may condition it, the effort is not in directions
of undertaking a case study so as to make larger contributions to such
disciplinary concerns. Thus, to cite another aspect of the same issue,
there is virtually no interest taken in foreign economic and trade
policies related to other countries, of the South, let us say, or even of
the neighbouring countries of the South Asia region.
Although the literature on dependency and dependency theory, on the
international economic order, the North-South dialogue and the role of
the multinational in international production, is relatively much more
responsible and critically salient than the unstructured, feeble and
evangelical pontifications produced by political scientists writing in
the same area, Indian international political economists have yet to
make a distinctive contribution in this genre, of the sort that has been
made, let us say, by Latin American and even African theorists.
Perhaps the fact that Indian economists more often than not view
Indian development as a case that negates the thesis of dependent
95
development, accounts for the relative restriction of the Indian
contribution, just as it explains the lack of much interest in such areas
as the international debt problem or the problem of primary commodity
producers in international trade. However, considering that the U.S.S.R.
was one of India's two largest trading partners since the early
seventies, the poor coverage of East-South economic relations is
surprising. So is the extremely sparse coverage of South-South
economic relations, in which interest appears to have been evinced
only very recently.
Trends over time have steadily indicated little movement away from
literature reactive to India-centric issues and problems of the global
political economy, to international debates mainly in multilateral
North-South fora, and partially, erratically and restrictively to
international scholarly debates. Indiacentricism is not a bad thing,
ipso facto; the real issue relates to the question: what sort of
'Indiacentricism', how disciplinary-salient?
Given all such drawbacks as are attendant upon limited coverage of an
expanding and important field, the quality of such literature as has
been produced by economists, as compared to that produced by
political scientists related to the global political economy/world order,
etc., has been of a fairly high order. Some of it can compare with the
best produced anywhere else.10 Economists also appear to have done
more of their theoretical disciplinary homework than political
scientists have: for even the best, among the latter, show scant
acquaintance with wide-ranging developments in international
relations theory, allow value judgements free rein, are indifferent to
methodological considerations, while sporting epistemological labels
of respectability drawn from the modes and moods of post
behavioralism. Economists thus appear to have made qualitatively far
superior scholarly contributions to the phenomenon of dependency, to
dependency theory and to a host of areas related to the North-South
relationship, and the political economy underpinnings of such
relationships, than have political scientists.
Under the circumstances, the consumer-producer asymmetry is
perhaps less marked with respect to this aspect of IR Studies
96
scholarship than with respect to any other. Especially if IPE oriented
studies by economists are institutionally encouraged to grow and
flourish on Indian campuses and in institutes of higher research in the
country, the prospect of cross-national research can be very promising
in this field. However, a caveat needs to be stated.
Probably the qualitatively superior work executed by economists is the
consequence of the sounder grounding economists have in economic
theory, than political scientists have in IR theory. The latters' is a
negligible interest because IR Studies (IR theory in particular), in this
country is, relative to its global growth and importance, a severely
marginalised study. The formers' interest in and induction into
economic theory is considerably more pronounced, if perhaps not as
pronounced in international economic theory as such.
Would this mean that the development of the field of international
political economy is best left to economists? That would be a great
mistake. Economists may be well grounded in economic (even in
international, economic) theory, but they scarcely have cognizance of
the array of problematics, and their complex interaction, in IR Studies.
The IPE field, if it has to grow in this country, and make its own
contribution to the global pool of knowledge in this important area of
IR Studies, cannot afford to be, so to speak, international economics-
oriented. IPE, of course, if left only to the present structure and
organisation of political and international studies in this country,
offers little hope of development. However, if left only to economists,
the dangers, over the long run, are of qualitative retardation of another
sort. Ideally, economists and political scientists need to come together
in at least a few, advanced centres of international studies, which do
not, and cannot display the abysmally low exposure to IR theory that
has characterised the study of the field in India. Yet, forty years after
independence, it would be honest to confess that this country,
producing one of the largest bodies of literature in International
Studies in the world today, (therefore interest in the field
97
couldn't conceivably be wanting), does not possess a single such truly
advanced centre to date.
The development of the 1PE field is of considerable significance to the
more particular concerns of a developing country, and the larger
concerns of global development and change. Cross-national research
in this area, therefore, is of particular importance. Yet an agenda for
such research between Indian scholars (particularly IR-oriented ones)
and those of other countries with more advanced training would be
difficult to draw up, if only because this country has invested, both
quantitatively and qualitatively, so marginally in IR Studies.
Bilateral, Multilateral and International Relations Studies
Can we speak of a 'field' of relational studies? Perhaps only if
relational studies are worked out explicitly, or even implicitly, within
comparative and area studies frameworks, or constitute genuine
histories. The peculiarity of most Indian IR relational studies however
is that they are marvelously free-floating: not the outcome of any
internalised disciplinary concerns, either of IR Studies, or of IR-
oriented comparative or historical studies. When and if such concerns
vaguely intrude, they are tossed oyer the shoulder, much in the manner
in which one would an empty cigarette pack.
If, then, it is difficult to conceive of such relational studies in India (or
for that matter abroad) as constituting a field, where then is the
question of assessing the extent of its coverage by the scholarship
concerned? The sky (or the world) is the limit. One could endlessly,
and perhaps agreeably, engage oneself in tracing relations between
countries over differing time-spans; especially now that there are 150-
odd states geographically spanning the globe, instead of the handful
that existed in previous centuries. If, for example, Almagroo's relations
with Timbuctoo have not been treated over a particular period, would it
have to be duly recorded that some part of the 'field' remained
uncovered? A report on such 'findings' would be even more voluminous,
and tedious, than much of the extant scholarship, given the
98
mobilisation of courage required to compile such a document. Yet
history is one of the great laboratories for the study of international
relations. It would be much too facile to dismiss this genre of
scholarship out of hand. One ought, instead, to insist on impeccable
historical studies of international relationships, and not information-
based, scatter-brained chronologies, and so much poor journalese,
being passed off as international studies. Qualitatively speaking,
therefore, there is some point in surveying the existing literature and
confessing that the field remains, for the most part, dreadfully
uncovered. The information based chronologies ought to have
remained as rough sketches of work in a scholar's notebook. On the
basis of refinement of such work, and immersion in the scholarly and
methodological concerns of historiography (not to say of IR Studies),
historically-oriented IR scholars ought to have produced qualitatively
superior histories of international relationships. Indian scholarship
surveyed here, in remarkable departures from the depressing norm,
have displayed the ability to make worthwhile contributions.11 But
these are oases in a huge, and growing desert of scholarship, the
pages of which metaphorically will remain uncut, unlikely to be made
use of save for idle, general knowledge reading. The field then, almost
entirely, save for admirable exceptions, remains tragically uncovered,
hopelessly barren.
The trend of scholarship is beginning to show, here and there in the
1980s, that histories of international relationships ought to be taken
with considerably greater seriousness than they have been in this
country for almost four decades.12 For the most part, however, the early
atrophied nature of the scholarship continues: international relations
gone relational with a vengeance, with more of the same type of
studies spread over larger geographical, physical spaces of the world.
A critique of sorts was unavoidable while dealing with the rather vexed
problems, particular to this area of Indian scholarship, of the extent of
coverage of the field and trends over time. However, the latter did not
permit a more comprehensive
99
critique necessary to move Indian scholarship out of the rut it has got
into since the inception of IR Studies in this country.
As earlier alluded to in this segment, what we have chosen to call
relational studies is ubiquitously pervasive in one form or another, in
much of the scholarship examined in this article. It may not be
blatantly, that is, explicitly relational, and may be fancifully titled; but
the peculiarly banal contours of relational studies affect all other
areas of scholarly endeavor in IR Studies when, ideally, it ought to be
the conceptual and theoretical endeavour which should be pervasive,
and shape even histories of international relationships. It becomes
compulsive, therefore, to prevent relational studies from playing the
adversely catalytic role they have so far played. Should this be
possible, its transnational communicative ability, as well as its
cogency to analyse continuity and effectively project change, would be
appreciably enhanced.
For years to come, scholars in India will continue to be interested in
writing histories of international relationships. This is no bad thing in
itself. But a much greater disciplinary, theoretical and methodological
sophistication must inform their scholarly output. International
relations journalese in serious IR literature (particularly in its sub-
areas of foreign policy and strategic studies) must be left to
journalists and to
day-to-day prescriptive analysts and commentators. Not that the
latters' contributions, wherever important, do not need to be taken
cognizance of; but it must not be allowed to substitute for the real
thing.
The real thing, in the first place, involves immersion in the sound
methods of historiographical research. A course of research
methodology in IR Studies ought not to overlook this critical input. Our
IR scholars must acquire the tools of the trade of the serious historian,
initially at least of the classical diplomatic historian. It is better for IR
Studies to be sound histories of international relations than to be
neither such histories nor IR Studies. Today, it is no longer a curiosity
that to move effectively from history to the more explicitly social
scientific concerns of IR Studies (or any of the social sciences for
100
that matter), one cannot but be well-grounded in history, substantively
and methodologically.
Naturally this is not all. The ability to create concepts, the immersion
in the theoretical and methodological (including epistemological)
enterprise in the social sciences in general, and in IR Studies in
particular, constitutes an indispensable input in the training of any
scholar who would wish, for the rest of his career, to concentrate on
the production of histories of international relationships.
Unfortunately, and ironically, it has been the overly sharp reaction
against history on the part of those who hoped, in the early days of the
development of the social scientific study of International Relations, to
work at something more 'useful' than history, that has diminished the
stature of International Relations as a social science discipline--
certainly so in India, but probably in many other nations of the world.
For in such nations, the sort of history-of-international relations-by-
other-means type of literature that has been produced ('relational
studies' as we have called it) has been mortal to the global growth of
the discipline--to its transnational communicative cogency.
International History today is hardly accepted as an important sub-
field of IR Studies. This will continue to have damaging implications for
the proper study and development of IR Studies on the campuses of
most developing countries. One must not be misunderstood here. The
argument is not in favour of any kind of international historical
reductionism of IR Studies. Quite the contrary. The argument is for the
reinstatement and place of serious international relations history as a
handmaiden for a more adequate study of International Relations. Any
other interpretation would prove equally damaging for the discipline.
These critical inputs are virtually absent in even the best of our
institutions (however few they may be) importing IR Studies training.
Thus, there is not a single department or centre of international
relations history or of international relations theory in a school or
department of International Studies or Political Science. Knowledge of
historical production is deemed to be
101
axiomatic for IR Studies scholars, with the result that most of them
invariably end up by producing journalese and current transcripts (all
carefully footnoted and dressed up in scholarly format) related to
international affairs, with many an ad-hoc, valuationally self-absorbed
prescription and admonishment. As for IR Theory, one or two papers
more often than not called 'international politics', and a general paper
on research methodology (formally conceived and taught), are
considered sufficient for the education of a scholar in IR Studies. After
forty years, there is not as yet, even in a premier school of
international studies, a centre for IR theory (permeating studies in all
other centres), while separate centres covering all sub-fields of IR
Studies (and of course area studies) proliferate. The Indian version of
IR Studies, that is, of course, 'relational studies', is the concomitant
result.
Departments or centres of international relations history in schools of
international studies would, however, themselves need to be catalysed
by advanced theoretical studies in international relations. The
conventional sort of teaching of state to state diplomatic history,
although important, ought hardly to predominate, as it might in a
somewhat outdated department of international history in a history
school. International relationships history would be something
different from international history. Increasingly catalysed by
advances in IR Theory, it would become aware of the growing saliency
of factors other than the political, and actors other than the state.
If, then, the sort of relational studies that have been surveyed here
(honorable exceptions apart) have to be replaced by IR-oriented
research in international relations history, so as to produce
international relations historians of note and ability, our notion of
historical and theoretical research, and the structuring of our
institutes, schools, centres and departments of higher learning in IR
Studies would have to change appreciably. Perhaps this is germane
not only to India, but also to many other developing countries where IR
Studies have been introduced, and which, in the bulk, produce what we
have termed here for convenience as 'relational studies'. This may be
an important
102
point to make in a report of this nature. For more often than not, it is
the production of such literature in large parts of the global universe of
IR Studies that is responsible for such stark producer-consumer
asymmetries, which impede the development of a global science of
international relations, make cross-national research meaningless as
much as studies on continuity and change in global affairs, and
frustrate the building of a transnational community of scholars in an
area of scholarship which can hardly move in directions of its
fundamental disciplinary concerns without it.
This critical overview cannot and should not end without pointing to a
somewhat perniciously growing tendency towards the production of
edited books. The Barkers, Oakeshotts, Rosenau's of IR Studies are yet
to stand revealed in this part of the world. The usual practice is to hold
seminars, obtain papers from participants, get them presented and
obtain desultory comments, ask for their subsequent revision,
approach a publisher, write what is nothing more than a foreword, get
one's name printed on the spine of the book, while adding a spine-
author title to one's curriculum vitae. This is terribly bad for advances
in scholarship. Some of our best scholars are increasingly inducted
into this practice--perhaps with the well-intentioned hope that the fine
minds gathered at a seminar, hosted by them, are bound to produce
illuminating knowledge which, without such a forum and editorial help,
would be lost to the world. Alas this is not so. Our finer minds are
much too busy producing their best at seminars. Nor is editing a
function of mere postal communication. Indeed, editing a sound
volume, which can make a real contribution to knowledge, is perhaps
more difficult than one's own single authorship of it. In the genre of
relational studies, banal edited volumes are increasingly in vogue,
adding to the confused disparateness, and ad hoc non-cumulativeness
of scholarship. Cross-national research of the future would need to
obviate the innateness of such tendencies. Collaboration should
create; not produce literature which has the ephemerality of moths on
rainy days.
103
Comparative and Area Studies
As in the case of relational studies, the issue of coverage confronts a
conceptual problem: the lack of awareness of the existence of a field.
At the inception of international studies in India, soon after
independence, no attempt was made to grapple with this problem.
What is as remarkable, however, is the absence of any such sustained
endeavor over the forty odd years that have followed. There is perhaps
not a single publication of note that addresses itself to so integral an
issue. No debate has raged earlier, nor is one imminent: neither
debates regarding substantive Indian contributions to area studies, nor
pedagogical debates attempting to query the parameters, nature and
identification of the field in this country; or for that matter its
developments abroad. A high level Committee of the University Grants
Commission (UGC) has been set up, and has been in operation for
several years now, to service area study centres financially. Before
any such servicing could begin, the committee sorely needed extant
delineations identifying the field. In their absence, it could have
commissioned a suitable status report on the state of the art. To the
best of one's knowledge, neither the UGC nor the ICSSR, nor in fact
any of the number of area study centre set up in the country over the
last four decades, have produced a major document, or initiated a
significant debate in the country, about the conceptual parameters
and identity of the field. Now with the ICSSR publishing its Area
Studies report on scholarly research in this area executed between
1947--1970 (written in the seventies), some kind of debate may be
initiated.13 There is, on the other hand, every possibility that the report
will be duly filed. To date hundreds of millions of rupees have been
spent to fund foreign area studies departments, institutes, schools,
and centres without either the funding agencies being quite aware,
academically speaking, of what they are funding, or the beneficiaries
any clearer in their minds as to what they wish to do with the funds,
except of course to spend them: where, for example, would they ideally
wish to take the India study of area studies, and how do they propose
to get
104
there? A vigorously argued case, on the vaguest of academic grounds,
related to foreign/strategic policy, or to economic/trade policy, or to
the beneficial spin-offs to the country accruing from the study of, let
us say, regional cooperation, or Indians settled abroad, or from the
exploration of some dark area not yet funded, is made out with the
greatest facility, but quite often, in the absence of anyone in the
country bothering to ask fundamental questions and attempting to
answer them. Therefore, the supposed 'academic' justification can be
reduced to just a single formula: the national interest. IR disciplinary
oriented studies have not been able anywhere to compete, even when
armed with the magic of the same formula, with the area studies
lobby. This is a curious position. For, after all, if the prosecution of area
studies (granted that only this formula would work with funding
agencies) is to deliver the formula-infused goods, they would require to
be significantly informed by the disciplinary concerns and
problematics of IR Studies. Surely so. Yet the master discipline, so to
speak, was and has been, treated financially like a chattel. In fact, the
'original sin' in the establishment of international studies in this
country lay precisely in this academically unviable inversion of
entitlements: instead of soundly conceiving and establishing, in the
first place, an ongoing programme of IR disciplinary and theoretically
oriented studies as a foundational prerequisitc for international area
studies programmes, the latter were first funded and implicitly and
incidentally expected to cater to the purely academic' concerns of the
former--if at all! This unwholesome trend of inversion of priorities has
continued over the last four decades with an acute impoverishment of
both.
What ought, in the most basic sense, to be the identity of the field?
Comparative and area studies relate to all social science disciplines,
and to several falling within the domain of the humanities, the
sciences, the arts and so on. Comparative and area studies are after
all another, more interdisciplinary means of acquiring specific and
intensive knowledge within more universal referents. Comparative and
area studies may mean many significant things to many people in
diverse fields of scholarly
105
enquiry. Yet they will degenerate into mere collations of information if
they are not provided with a disciplinary focus. Interdisciplinarity
ought never to connote the jettisoning of disciplinarity.-Such
comparative and area studies do not produce the sort of advanced
knowledge they are expected to; indeed they only vulgarise it. In short,
if comparative and area studies are not infused with the over-arching
disciplinary concerns, related to a subject of enquiry (in this case,
international relations), they do not constitute an academic field of
enquiry at all. Unfortunately this has been the fate of such studies in
India in the area of international studies. Curiously, a scholar in an
international area study centre may know more of the
disciplinary/theoretical concerns of political science, economics,
sociology, etc., than of International Relations.
Given that it is the universe of the latter that we wish to explore, it
becomes axiomatic that we attempt to obtain a heightened awareness
of it by focussing our attention on the concerned area(s) through the
disciplinary search-lights and problematics of IR Studies. Ipso facto,
therefore, comparative and area studies cannot be pursued without a
thorough grounding in IR Theory as it permeates all of its extensive
sub-fields. Admittedly, such IR Theory-directed knowledge of an area
is, in turn, indispensable for the greater, more refined and
sophisticated development of IR Theory itself, and for a heightened
awareness of the universe of international relations. Thus knowledge
exponentially grows; otherwise it regresses. The collection of data
about an area is meaningless without the disciplinary orchestration of
inter disciplinarity; such orchestrated direction is indispensable for the
creation of what we may designate with some appropriateness as the
international relations studies field of comparative and area studies.
To date such an international relations studies field of comparative
and area studies has not emerged in India, despite the occurrence of
some really promising (if marginally prevalent) work in the eighties.
The latter in the first place, does not
self-consciously address itself to such conceptual field concerns.
Secondly, it is still the thinnest of streams, and makes isolated
106
substantive contributions. It is difficult on this basis to identify even
the broad contours of an Indian international studies field of
comparative and area studies. Much of even the best literature
therefore borrows heavily on developments of the field abroad. Thus,
while most of the routine Indian 'contributions' have no intellectual
market abroad (except that sounder publications may be referred to for
their information value), the more distinctively comparative-oriented
work in different areas seem much too imitative, even dated, to excite
sustained interest, or to stimulate studies abroad which build on our
contributions.
An Indian field, therefore, does not as yet exist, as indeed it ought to
after forty years of work. What instead do we have? A great deal of
literature of the information purveying sort. Our area study centres are
better described as India's unofficial information agencies, without
necessarily possessing BBC standards of
'information-rectitude'. One could interchangeably accommodate much
of the relational studies material of the last section of this paper with
the present, and much of the latter with the former. Neither relational
studies, nor comparative and area studies, have contributed to the sort
of enhanced knowledge of the universe of international relations, to
the growth of its theoretical parameters, to the development and
clarification of its disciplinary concerns and problematics, as ideally
they ought to have done after four decades of scholarly endeavor. One
speaks here, of course, of overall developments; yet one ought not to
forget that it is remarkable, indeed, that within this pervasive
intellectual climate, studies have appeared, bearing significant
international, transnational and global orientations, which bypass
much of the banality of traditional relational studies material. If the
criticism seems harsh, it is hopefully intended to stimulate the former
trends of scholarship and move away scrupulously from the latter.
What, then, can one say about the extent of coverage of the field?
Setting it against its developments abroad makes little meaning;
setting it against lack of 'developments' here is equally meaningless.
In a literal sense of course there is something to say. Large areas of
the world, except perhaps Latin America, have
107
received attention. However, even information-wise, the literature does
not densely cover these areas; no systematic, cumulatively-oriented
programme of
information-gathering appears to be the hallmark of any centre of area
studies. Each scholar, in each centre appears happily to go his own
way without much central coordination; at least no marked, explicit
programme, even of an
information-gathering sort, appears to engage the energies of any of
the centres. Each of the latter researches a particular regional area;
what is to be researched in and how is left to the individual scholar:
maximum academic autonomy will, sooner or later, lay the golden egg;
the goose for the time being, and conceivably for all time, is
scot-free!
Comparative area studies with international relations pay-offs (except
for a couple of studies on the Third World) is still an unexplored field of
inquiry. Comparative IR Studies should buttress area studies in
producing superior IR knowledge, and appreciably help in indigenous
contributions to IR Theory, particularly in the area of foreign policy
analysis; this necessarily implies contributions which carry meaningful
universal referents. No such developments appear to be imminent.
Comparative area studies of a more literal nature appear here and
there, make a solitary mark or two, but otherwise dole out their
apathetic, tedious contributions.
Quantitatively, the bulk of the literature shows few departures from
the mainstream Indian genre of relational studies. In this sense, there
are no striking trends over time to report. Qualitatively, however, two
to three trends need to be carefully noticed and encouraged. Even
qualitatively, relational studies are now carried out more
systematically, and with somewhat greater, but still inchoate,
awareness of and exposure to the disciplinary concerns of IR Studies.
Again, even if the literature cannot escape the pulls of relational
studies, the international dimension is not treated as literally bi-(or
multi-) national; 'international' has come to signify international
concerns, not information gathering concerns about
international/past/current affairs: further, transnational/global
orientations, with shifts, for example, from predominantly states-as-
actors type of political/
108
diplomatic analysis, etc., are beginning to make an appearance.
Finally, the 1980s have, perhaps for the first time in decades, produced
scholarship which, in howsoever a fragmented, ad hoc way, attempts
to move in directions of an international relations studies field of
comparative and area studies. Such trends are promising, and may
augur well for the future--at last!
The 1980s have indeed produced some notable work particularly
related to the conceptual clarification of concepts of imperialism and
neo-colonialism in Africa, South of the Sahara.14 In the area of
comparative studies, the analysis of developments in the domestic
politics and foreign policy of China has been significant for its
theoretical salience; and again in the same area, a relatively
innovative path has been explored in examining the comparative
dimensions of the foreign policies of major socialist states like China
and Russia towards African states.15 Promising extended comparative
and IR-oriented studies on the Third World (as a socio-economic and
political entity, if not exactly as a conventional regional area) may
prove to be exciting harbingers of the future.16 Systematic studies of
inter-state disputes plaguing the third world, of the process of state-
formation there, and the thematic appraisal of
politjco-diplomatic and strategic inter-state politics and history related
to West Asian states, Japan and the Indian Ocean, represent refreshing
departures from the predominant trend of relational studies, even if
they cannot escape it altogether.17 Research projects are beginning to
be launched by thematically directed organisation of facts; innovative
methods and critical perspectives are made to bear on the diagnoses
of social realities; and factual evidence is related to existing IR
Studies concepts and theories. These are encouraging features,
particularly striking, because the landscape against which they stand
out is so arid.
Such aridity, however, does not augur well for the redressal of existing
producer-consumer asymmetries, or promise a bright future for
transnational communication in this vital area of potential cross-
national research. If this trend continues, Indian scholarship can only
make a contribution to 'regressive continuity'. The existing
asymmetries, loaded against transnational
109
consumption of indigenous scholarly work, can at best lead to a
continuation of unproductive forms of dependence on scholarship
produced abroad: except for rare, notable work, imitative and poorly
internalised amalgam of western studies are 'replicated', whenever
indigenous work attempts to be analytical or theoretical. If
dependence of this sort continues, it is difficult to glimpse common
ground on the basis of which cross-national research can be
conducted, on the great issues and problematics of IR Studies, without
'subjection' to other, perhaps more subtle forms of dependence; which
may serve neither the purposes of indigenous nor creative
transnational scholarship on global affairs.
Clearly we have first to set our house in order. This appears to be a
more than ordinarily difficult task. Existing centres of area studies
have by now acquired their own formidable momentum, and are rapidly
moving away from any semblance of the sort of knowledge that is
required to constitute a real Indian international relations studies field
of comparative and area studies. To complicate matters, the plea of
'intellectual decolonisation' has been adroitly exploited to dodge
difficult exposures to truly advanced developments of the field abroad,
theoretically and methodologically; instead, 'indigenousness' consists
in the production of commonplace studies, based on glib notions of
dependency eschewing cognisance of complex critical debates, and
the considerable refinements of analogous conceptualisations abroad.
The result of such evasion of western and other scholarship (difficult
to internalise), on excuses of spurning 'intellectual colonialism', is that
much of the best literature produced abroad does not act as an
indispensable catalyst for the enhancement of the quality of our
productions. We are either adversely dependent or produce in sterile
independence.
Therefore, our funding agencies must be able to persuade our area
study centres to sit up and face the realities on the ground, to
reformulate and plan their programmes on the basis of
epistemologically sound production of knowledge, germane to the
concerns of building the field in India, so as to effect the beginning of
a turnabout. In fact, not a single further area study
110
centre should be funded unless a major national debate, based upon
careful stocktaking of area studies literature, is initiated by such of
our funding bodies as the UGC and the ICSSR. That may perhaps be
easy: further proliferation, except in right directions, may be avoidable.
What might prove to be much more intractable is to alter the track of
scholarship in existing institutions: to halt the qualitative momentum
acquired by area studies all over the country of producing a species of
literature which does not know what to do with itself, wither it tends,
what purpose it serves, even unaware that it undergoes the tragic
throes of dying almost before it is yet born.
One indispensable aspect of institutional reconstruction will involve
setting up IR disciplinary and theoretically oriented studies on
commanding heights in existing (and future) area studies centres. This
doesn't merely mean setting up an IR Studies department in each
centre somewhat in the nature of an artificial appendage. Locating
such a department or master cell in area studies centres involves the
organic infusion of theoretically oriented IR Studies into the research
programmes and virtually into all the intellectual activities of the
centres. This will by no means be an easy task. Where are such IR-ists
to be had? The predominant bulk of funding for 'international studies'
has been devoted to setting up area studies centres. After four
decades there is but one part-school and one university department (in
a country larger than Western Europe) which are devoted to the more
intensive study of international relations. In political science
departments across the country, IR Studies are marginalised; even if in
the rare cases where they are encouraged, they have hardly any
academic breathing space to genuinely develop and grow. Since our
priorities in funding for 'international studies' have been so a-
disciplinary, the task of putting right the consequent damage that has
set in is not going to be easy. If, even now, the nation can learn from its
mistakes, and shows the will to change, and to change structurally, the
future is not too dismal. For, despite the lack of felicity with which
'international studies' have been conceived, planned, funded and
operationalised in this country, despite the excessive relative poverty
of genuine centres
111
of such study, the country has interest in the subject (however
inchoately perceived it may be at present) to produce probably the
third largest quantum of literature in the field in the world today.
National and Transnational Discourse in International Studies
Productive cross-national research necessitates a well-knit national
community engaged in effective internal communion. Does such a
community exist in India? IR scholars of course interact appreciably
with each other, but there is little evidence to show that they have so
far tried cumulatively to build a coherent edifice of work in well
defined areas, related to key IR disciplinary concerns and problems in
some kind of dialectical correlation. Indian scholars do not get
particularly excited about each others' work, either favourably, or, for
that matter, unfavourably. They do not meet in intensive sessions for
the explicit purpose of exchanging notes, for example. They would
prefer not to praise too much nor to criticise. Seminars and colloquia
are held on discrete themes selected at the whim and convenience of
the organising person, association, or body. Comparison of findings of
such seminars are hardly possible. Well planned and programmed
collaborative work on significant themes, even within a department, is
rare. This is understandable in the case of university departments
because almost all 150 of them are political science departments
catering only marginally to IR Studies. But it is rare even in the one or
two larger centres specialising more extensively in the field. Each area
study centre goes its own way, and each scholar within a centre
follows his own subject or theme of research. IR
sub-field areas also do pretty much what they like without much
interaction or programming inter se; again each member of each such
sub-field area chooses to work on a theme or subject of his choice.
And, of course, there is little or no interaction between sub-field areas
and area study centres.
112
This does not mean that Indian scholars do not refer to each others'
works. They may do so intensively, judging by footnote citations and
bibliographical references. But they do so, not to create organically
related areas of scholarship, as much as to justify this or that
'hypothesis', or argument, or position related to the discrete concerns
of their own study. They are neither aware nor bothered about the
shaping of the identity of a field, or of heightening its overall
composite explanatory power. Much of all this relates once again to
the excessively poor interest taken in theory, both in itself as a macro-
field, and as it affects and determines the contours and the evolution
of all of sub-fields. Indifference to theory robs scholarship of much of
its collaborative enthusiasms and excitements. Thus one cannot, for
example, point to schools of thought/research on either global conflict
and order, or on regional conflict and collaboration, or on foreign policy
and strategic studies, or in the field of international political economy
or law. No one in particular, for example, may be interested in picking
up an interesting framework of analysis related to the explanation of
India's foreign policy, in order to refine it, build on it, even to try and
supersede it altogether so as to construct a more viable one. Hardly
any issue of a journal is devoted to intellectual debates about evolving
Indian schools of thought and research in different sub-field areas, or
in comparative and area studies. And one could conceivably go down
the list…
The lack of such discourse and communication between the physical
community of scholars, imparts a somewhat inchoate and amorphous
identity to the nature of the field as it has evolved so far. Naturally, of
course, the community itself is very small, in view of the paucity of 1R
Studies centres and departments, and in the absence of any
specialised professional organisation which can encourage a more
substantively meaningful sense of community by enhancing the quality
of professional communication between its members. Thus, as we have
said earlier, the field's inchoateness impedes cross-national research.
What, however, of the existing nature, patterns and forms of
113
transnational, or simply international communication between Indian
and foreign scholars? The most striking feature appears to be the
producer-consumer asymmetry, with Indian scholars consuming much
of the literature produced abroad, while only a trickle of literature
produced in India is read abroad, even when it may lie on the shelves
of the libraries of foreign universities. One speaks of course in a
relative sense. An Indian scholar's study may be strewn with foreign
books; a foreign scholar's rarely is with Indian books--exceptions
apart. This is evidenced also by the number of references in Indian
books to foreign publications, and the relative absence of mention of
Indian books in foreign publications, except of course when foreign
scholars' writings pertain to specific foreign area studies.
The specifically Indian contribution to the enlargement of the
universal referents of the field does not as yet appear to be
sufficiently interesting or valuable. Repeatedly, we have traced this
unhappy position to the striking lack of theoretical orientation in
India's scholarship, to its indifference about conceptualising a field, to
its epistemological naivete and its methodological innocence, to its
penchant for chronologically oriented compilation of relational
studies, to the valuationally impregnated rhetoric which attempts to
pass for normative thought, and to its ad hoc prescriptive banality
which is no substitute for policy analysis, based on sound theoretical
foundations.
Indian scholarship may have gained in terms of exposure to universal
referents from its openness to the literature produced abroad. What
will, however, further impede cross-national research, and retard its
rate of growth is the indifferent national communication patterns, the
relative poverty of national discourse in IR Studies; the consequent
inchoateness of the field which may need to be theoretically
processed (or reprocessed) before cross-national research begins to
mean much more than formal cross-national research. At present, of
course, even the latter, in the form of bi-national teams of Indian and
American or Indian and British (the two metropolitan areas which most
influence Indian writing) scholars, are nowhere being organised in joint
or parallel projects to constitute regular channels for
114
communication. When, and if they are, both Indian and foreign
counterparts would have to attempt to forge a national community, to
open up vistas of communication, to set right many fuzzy conceptions,
to re-learn the meaning and significance of epistemology and
methodology, to do rigorous homework on critical inventories, to
stimulate debates and critiques where virtually none prevailed before,
to induce conceptualisations of the field where few earlier existed, to
plan and programme scholarly work when this was not the done thing,
to look closely at funding patterns, and the entire organisational
infrastructure of research--in short, to open up to interdependency in
creative thought and the production of genuine knowledge.
Some Pedagogical, Professional and Public Policy Issues Related to
Cross-National Research
At a UNESCO-ICSSR Conference on 'Curriculum Development in
International Relations Studies in India', convened by the UGC Special
Assistance Centre in IR Studies of the Department of Political Science
at the M.S. University of Baroda, Vadodara, a number of useful
suggestions were mooted which, if implemented, could go some way in
redressing the poverty of communicative discourse.18 Space permits a
reference to only one such suggestion: the setting up of a National
Centre for Information and Training in IR Studies--of course, anywhere
except in the capital! The function of this centre would consist in
coordinating all manner of activities, throughout the country, for the
improvement of IR Studies: such activities, as for example, the suitable
training of teachers, the production of text books on focussed syllabi,
the provision of a range of information about advances in the field
wherever they may have occurred, about books and journals,
bibliographical abstract, documentary and data sources, the projection
of research agendas based upon available information about the
research interests of IR-ists all over the country, the compilation of a
115
resource persons list, and the coordination of all other such sustained
centralised activities as could exponentially speed up the momentum
of advance in IR Studies.
Such a national information and training centre may not, of course, be
productive of advanced IR research of any note, but it can provide it
the much needed sustaining infrastructure, and boost the sagging
morale of the serious student of the field. As importantly, it can foster
and encourage national communicative discourse, and forge a more
vital community of scholars than exists at present. Naturally of course
were such a centre to be set up, it could prove invaluable in facilitating
cross-national research, and do its bit to promote a transnational
community of scholars in IR Studies.
Perhaps several of these significant purposes could be well-served by
an all-India professional association which hopefully, over time, could
undertake the sort of worthwhile projecrs analogous to that of the
International Studies Association. If the Indian association could run
on healthy, academic lines, it would command respect as an influential
lobby with official funding agencies, such as the UGC and the ICSSR,
and with the industrial and financial institutions interested in the
promotion of IR Studies in India. It could also then play an important
role in facilitating
cross-national research, and, of course, it would greatly boost the
morale and supplement the energies of those IR-ists struggling at
present to keep the subject buoyant in this country. However, a
professional association, if it was formed, would have carefully to
ensure right from the start, that its primary objective was to advance
the state of the field and professional to look after those who labored
in it.
Finally, the cultivation of the public policy dimensions of IR Studies
would have appreciable bearing in enhancing national communicative
discourse, a sense of community not only among scholars but among
scholars and intelligent public policy formulators, both in the
government and private sectors, and between them on the one hand
and teams of foreign scholars participating in cross-national research.
116
The UNESCO-ICSSR Conference at Baroda addressed itself to issues
and problems of policy relevance and policy orientation in IR Studies.
The deliberations on this issue are more than pertinent to the
concerns of this segment, and are quoted in summary form, from the
Report on the Conference: 'In response to the leading inquiry put
forward by the Chair--how do we influence policy?--the discussion
followed three tracks: the possibility of academics directly influencing
and participating in the foreign policy process; the more long-range
academic influence on foreign policy formulation and decision-making;
and contributions which social scientists were particularly
well-suited to make to the field of public policy because of its intrinsic
inter disciplinarity.
'There appeared to be a number of reasons why the possibility of
academics directly influencing foreign policy decision-making seemed
remote in the Indian context. The foreign policy 'community' was
extremely restricted. Academics had not as yet grasped the
elementary equation of any policy-making: the marriage of
opportunities and resources for the attainment of specific objectives.
Instead academic writing on policy matters implicitly posited a
liberally open-ended world in which ideal scenarios could be enacted
through maximisation of supposedly unlimited opportunities. The
complexities of real-life situations were often ignored in all their
systemic
inter-relatedness. On the other hand, academics were captivated by
the 'charisma' of foreign policy, and appeared to 'worship' its existing
stances, rather than critiquing them, or offering credible alternatives.
There was also a certain 'classroom determinism' infusing their
oudook on policy matters, if and when they had the opportunity to
make contributions in this regard. Such difficulties were compounded
by the narrow decision-making base of foreign policy-making in India,
by the secrecy which surrounded it, and by its adhocism. It would be
probably truer to say that economists, scientists and technologists
had relatively greater influence on foreign policy-making than IR-ists or
political scientists--or for that matter the world of the public media and
of communications.
'Discussion, related to the more long-range academic
117
influence on policy formulation and decision-making, appeared
generally to strike a more consistently optimistic note. If teaching
(through adequately framed syllabi) and research were to be made
more specifically policy-oriented, it could help create, over time, a
pervasive and persuasive intellectual climate, informed by hard facts
and cogently derived alternative scenarios. There was, under such
circumstances, no possibility of policy-oriented study self-defeating
itself by trivialising the serious academic study of policy. If alternative
scenarios did not represent random guesses, but were derived from
creative analytical frameworks, and theoretical/explanatory
treatments of policy performance, then the mere descriptive/historical
academic studies of policy would be supplanted by analytic policy-
oriented studies, with great benefit to the quality of public policy.
However, it was the purpose of any academic study of policy to be
innately cogent, without bothering too much about its immediate
effects on current policy. Academics ought to go about doing their task
as rigorously as possible, certainly keeping influence on policy in
mind, but not concerned too much about direct correlations between
their studies and immediate policy outcomes. If their work was
valuable, in a truly academic sense, the 'praxis' associated with sound
theoretical work 'would out', so to speak, in the long. It is in this sense
that the academic study of policy should support foreign policy
formulation and
decision making. Of course, wherever possible, students could be
inducted into the actual working of foreign ministries or defence
establishments, and the government ought to provide leave, and other
financial facilities, to enable its policy formulators, decision-makers
and diplomats to interact, for sustained periods, on academic
campuses which had made their mark in the serious study of policy.'19
The present concluding part of this study has attempted to indicate
the sort of prepatory groundwork that needs to be done in this country,
before it can legitimately, productively and safely participate in cross-
national research, in a truly interdependent endeavour (not under
conditions of adverse
118
intellectual dependence) to contribute to the global growth and
enhancement of IR Studies; also of course to forge a genuine
transnational community of scholars engaged in the catalytic and
symmetric give and take of scholarship across national frontiers.
In sum, the issue of effective future Indian participation in cross-
national research in IR Studies rests on 'theoretical cognivity'.
'Theoretical cognivity' implicates a host of activities related to
increasing exposure to the intrinsic value, indeed indispensability, of
the IR theoretical enterprise, in all its analytic, normative,
epistemological and methodological dimensions; in fostering adequate
conceptualisations of the field; in clarifying its disciplinary concerns;
in elucidating its key problematics and the uniquely complex interplay
between them; in restoring classic conceptions of theory and practice,
in underlining the theoretical foundations of effective public policy; in
emphasising the IR disciplinary direction of inter-disciplinary research;
in exposing historical and contemporary research, to the disciplinary
concerns and problematics of IR Studies; in basing them on the sound
foundations of historiographical method, and in nudging them in
directions of IR normative and philosophical thought; in undertaking
more explicit delineations of such thought characterised by complex,
systematic and rigorous expositions far removed from the synthetic
product which passes at present for the real thing; in cultivating the
wisdom of a Solomon, the charity and compassion of a Christ, and the
empathy for all mankind of a Mahatma. The penetration of the
theoretical enterprise in IR Studies plumbs untold depths. If it is as
severely marginalised as it is in India, nothing short of a globally
conceived salvage operation to enable this country (and, conceivably,
most of Third World countries) to find their theoretical bearings, and
later to enlarge the theoretical universe of IR Studies through their
genuine, indigenous contributions, can help cross-national research to
effect civilising interventions, in a social activity upon which the
elemental fate of humans and their cosmos has come to rest.
119
Notes
Urmila Phadnis, S.D. Muni and K. Bahadur, (eds.), Domestic Conflicts in
South Asia, Vols. I and II (New Delhi: South Asian Publishers, 1986).
A.P. Rana, 'Regionalism as an Approach to International Order: A
Conceptual Overview', International Studies, October-December 1979;
A.P. Rana, Sushil Kumar, Shanti Swarup, and S.D. Muni, 'Cooperation
Among Non-Aligned Countries: Evolution, Principles, Forms and
Outcomes', Foreign Affairs Reports, April-May 1980.
S.D. Muni and Anurudha Muni, Regional Cooperation in South Asia
(Delhi: National, 1984).
The present study surveys scholarship produced mainly in the 1980s.
However, a valuable study, in this area, which appeared later needs
inclusion here: Urmila Phadnis, Ethnicity and Nation-Building in South
Asia (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1990).
A.P. Rana, 'International Relations: A Trend Report, 1947-1970', in Indian
Council of Social Science Research, A Survey of Research in Political
Science, Volume V, International Studies (New Delhi: Allied Publishers,
1989), pp. 1-70. See other contributions in this study as well, and A.P.
Rana, Theoretical Dimensions in the Study of International Relations in
India (New Delhi: ICSSR, forthcoming). See also K.P. Misra and R.C.
Beal (eds.), International Relations Theory: Western and Non-Western
Perspectives (New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House, 1980).
A.P. Rana, 'International Relations: A Trend Report, 1947-1970', op. cit.,
note 6.
See A.P. Rana, The Imperatives of Nonalignment: A Conceptual Study
of India's Foreign Policy Strategy in the Nehru Period (New Delhi:
Macmillan, 1976; 1979); Shashi Tharoor, Reasons of State: Political
Development and India's Foreign Policy Under Indira Gandhi 1966-1977
(New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House, 1982); J. Bandyopadhyaya, The
Making of India's Foreign Policy: Determinants, Institutions, Processes
and Personalities, 2nd ed. (New Delhi: Allied Publishers, 1980); Surjit
Mansingh, India's Search for Power: Indira Gandhi's Foreign Policy,
1966-1982 (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1984); A. Appadorai,
Domestic Roots of India's Foreign Policy, 1947-1972 (Delhi: Oxford
University Press, 1981); C.P.
120
Bhambhri, The Foreign Policy of India (New Delhi: Sterling Publishers,
1987).
A.P. Rana, 'Nehru, the Eastern Westphalia, and the Greening of the
International Anarchy', NAM Summits: From New Delhi to Harare, (ed.)
V.D. Chopra (New Delhi: Patriot Publishers, 1986). See also, a later
study, A.P. Rana, 'The Non-Hegemonial Imperative: The Nonaligned
Regulation of India's National Security Problematic and the
Universalisation of International Society', Indian Journal of Social
Science, January-March, 1991.
A.P. Rana, 'The Legitimacy Crisis of Contemporary Nonalignment: A
Paradigmatic Enquiry and Research Proposal', Paradigms: The Kent
Journal of International Relations, (December, 1987).
S. Lall, Developing Countries as Exporters of Technology (London:
Macmillan, 1982); Ashok Desai, 'Achievements and Limitations of
India's Technological Capability', Technological Capability in the Third
World, Martin Fransman and Kenneth King, (ed.) (London: Macmillan,
1984); Rajiv B. Lall, Multinationals from the Third World: Indian Firms
Investing Abroad (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1986); Amiya K.
Baghchi, The Political Economy of Underdevelopment (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1982); Ranjit Sau, Unequal Exchange,
Imperialism and Underdevelopment: An Essay on the Political
Economy of World Capitalism (New Delhi: Oxford University Press,
1978); Ranjit Sau, Trade, Capital and Underdevelopment: Towards a
Marxist Theory (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1982); Gautam K.
Sarkar, Commodities and the Third World (New Delhi: Oxford University
Press, 1983); Suresh Kumar, (ed.), Indo-CMEA Economic Relations (New
Delhi: Indian Council for Research on International Economic
Relations, 1987); R. Gidadhubi, Indo-Soviet Trade (New Delhi: 1982).
Such as, for example, C.H. Heimsath and Surjit Mansingh, A Diplomatic
History of Modern India, (New Delhi: Allied Publishers, 1971, with
editions published in the 1980s).
Such as for example, A. Appadorai and M.S. Rajan, India's Foreign
Policy and Relations (New Delhi: South Asian Publishers, 1985); Satish
Kumar (ed.), The Year Book on India's Foreign Policy (New Delhi: Sage,
Tata McGraw Hill, annual publications).
Bimal Prasad and Urmila Phadnis, 'Area Studies in India: A Trend
Report', in Indian Council of Social Science Research, Survey of
121
Research in Political Science, Volume V, International Studies (New
Delhi: Allied Publishers, 1989), pp. 71-202.
Rajen Harshe, Pervasive Entente: France and Ivory Coast in African
Affairs (New Jersey and New Delhi: Arnold Heineman and Humanities
Press, 1984); Rajen Harshe, 'French
Neo-Colonialism in Sub-Saharan Africa', India Quarterly (April-June
1980); Rajen Harshe, 'France, Francophone African States and South
Africa: Complex Triangle and Apartheid', Alternatives (March 1983);
Anirudha Gupta, 'Nonaligned Africa and the External Powers', The
Nonaligned World (April-June, 1983); R.R. Ramchandani, 'Rationalising
India-Africa Economic Relations', India Quarterly
(July-September, 1986).
Manoranjan Mohanty, 'Dynamics of the International External Forces in
the Revolutionary Environment: Some Comparative Notes', China
Report (April-June, 1987); G.P. Deshpande and H.K. Gupta, United Front
Against Imperialism: China's Foreign Policy in Africa (Bombay: Somaiya
Publications, 1986).
Satish Kumar, CIA and the Third World: A Study in Crypto-Diplomacy
(New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House, 1986).
Mohammed Ayub, 'The Iran-Iraq War and Regional Security in the
Persian Gulf, Alternatives (October-December, 1985); A.H.H. Abidi, 'Gulf
States and Revolutionary Iran: A Study of Mutual Perceptions', Foreign
Affairs Reports (March, 1980); K.R. Singh, Iran: Quest for Security (New
Delhi: Vikas Publishing House, 1980); P.A. Narasimha Murthy, 'Japan
and the Indian Ocean Basin', India Quarterly (May-June, 1984).
A.P. Rana, 'The UNESCO-ICSSR National Conference on Curriculum
Development in International Relations in India: A Report', Studying
International Relations: The Baroda Perspective (Baroda: Department
of Political Science, The M.S. University of Baroda, 1988).
Ibid. See also A.P. Rana, 'Reconstructing International Relations as a
Field of Study in India: A Programme for the Disciplinary Development
of International Relations Studies', Studying International Relations:
The Baroda Perspective (Baroda: Department of Political Science, The
M.S. University of Baroda, 1988). A.P. Rana, 'The Theoretical Concern in
the Study of International Relations: The Evaded Dimension in Social
Science Research in India', Indian journal of Social Science (January-
March, 1988); A.P. Rana, 'A National Programme for Curriculum
Development in
122
International Relations Studies in India', Studying International
Relations: The Baroda Perspective (Baroda: Department of Political
Science, The M.S. University of Baroda, 1990). Extracted largely from
A.P. Rana, UGC Report of the Curriculum Development Centre in
Political Science (1990).
123

CHAPTER FOUR
Marxism and International Law: A Contemporary Analysis
B.S. CHIMNI
Introduction
International law is today playing an unprecedented role in creating
and congealing inequities in the international system. The period after
World War II has witnessed the exponential growth of international
law.1 No longer confined to questions of war and peace or diplomacy,
international law has, on the one hand, come to govern the use of
oceans and outer space, and on the other, regulated core aspects of
national economic, social, and cultural life. Recent years in particular
have seen the adoption of a network of laws which seek to establish
the legal and institutional frameworks favourable to the accumulation
of capital in the era of globalisation.
Generally speaking, three overlapping features can be said to mark the
growth of international law in the last two decades. First, it is the
principal instrument through which the rule of private property is being
extended in the world economy. Second, it is the means through which
the rights of transnational capital are being safe-guarded, among other
things, by prescribing uniform global standards--ignoring the
phenomenon of uneven development--in key areas such as technology
and foreign
124
investment. Third, it guarantees the observance of these standards
through endowing international institutions with the means to enforce
them.
But despite the critical role international law has come to play in
building and sustaining the contemporary international system
Marxists have entirely neglected its study.2 While an attempt was
made in the former Soviet Union to articulate a Marxist approach to
international law, its content was dictated less by Marxism-Leninism
than by the need to rationalise Soviet foreign policy.3 The principal
task of Soviet international lawyers was seen in providing post facto
justifications for the acts of omission and commission of the state in
its external relations. No serious effort was made to engage with
bourgeois international legal scholarship in order to highlight the
distinctive nature of the Marxist approach. Consequently, the field of
international law still represents a wasteland in so far as Marxism is
concerned. In this essay we make a preliminary attempt to fill the gap
in the literature by reflecting on the condition of international law and
institutions at the end of the twentieth century. However, the paper
opens with a few theoretical considerations on the subject of
historical materialism and international law.
Historical Materialism and International Law
The statement of a Marxist approach in any area of social science
usually involves reference to, and exposition of, the relevant texts of
Marx, Engels and Lenin. In the case of international law this is ruled
out for the simple reason that they never directly addressed the
subject. Instead, what follows is an attempt to apply the insights of
Marxist methodology and sociology to the field of international law and
institutions.
Four interrelated features may be said to characterise bourgeois
international law writings. First, they offer a formal and technical
definition of international law as comprising norms which govern the
relations between states. Bourgeois
125
writings tend to study the phenomenon of international law in
abstraction from international society, ignoring its specific features in
various phases of history, its social content, and its corresponding
forms. Second, bourgeois writers proceed on the assumption that the
state stands above particular groups, interests and classes within a
nation state. A key role of the state is said to be to regulate the
conflicts between them in order to realise 'national interests' (Miliband
1977, 66). Together, these two assumptions facilitate the portrayal of
international law as a neutral device which stands above states and
classes, a depiction clearly belied by the history of international law
and institutions. Albeit, the class content of modern international law
has undergone transformation over the last three centuries of its
existence. Third, bourgeois scholarship, like the dominant realist
tradition in international relations, 'is premised on the recognition of a
fundamental disjuncture between internal political life which is carried
on under the coordinating and pacifying sovereignty of the state, and
external politics, which is governed by the irresistible logic of
anarchy'.5 This makes it ignore the links between the internal
organisation of a state and its external policies which it hopes to write
into international law. Fourth, bourgeois writings fail to recognise the
supranational character of capitalism and conceive the interstate
system as a relationship between states which is independent of the
functioning of the capitalist world economy.
In contrast to the approach of bourgeois scholarship, four general
overlapping propositions constitute the matrix within which a Marxist
approach to international law is to be articulated. First, a Marxist
approach to international law is inextricably related to its theory of
international relations whose essence is in the final analysis
determined by the manner in which states are internally organised. In
the words of Marx and Engels (1976, 38), 'the relations of different
nations among themselves depend upon the extent to which each has
developed its productive forces, the division of labour and internal
intercourse'. Second, it follows, the foreign policy of a state is
integrally linked to its domestic policy and is articulated and
126
executed in the matrix of a specific socio-economic formation based
on a definite and dominant mode of production. Of course in turn, as
Gramsci noted (1971, 182), 'international relations intertwine with
these internal relations of nation-states, creating new, unique and
historically concrete combinations'. Third, it rejects the abstract and
vacuous concept of 'national interest' and contends that the state in
its external relations does not seek to realise 'national interests' but
rather the interests of particular groups and classes. Fourth, it does
not view the contemporary international system as a mere sum of its
parts but as possessing a distinct identity created by the
supranational character of capitalism which is rooted in a world
market and an international division of labour which together
constitute the world economy. Together, these propositions point
towards a perception of international law and institutions as a device
which serves sectional global interests. The history of international
law bears out this understanding.
The evolution and growth of modern international law is bound with
the different phases of global capitalism. It is thus no accident that
the different phases in the historical evolution of international law
match the evolution of the world economy. In lieu of the fact that
'capitalism from the very beginning has been imperialist' (Patnaik
1997, 183), the history of the world economy may be divided into the
following phases:
1600-1760 Old colonialism
1760-1875 New colonialism
1875-1945 Imperialism
1945-Neo-colonialism
It is interesting that scholars of international law have arrived at the
same break-up from a study of international legal sources. For
example, Ian Brownlie (1984, 357-70) of Oxford University mentions the
following phases: 1648-1750, 1750-1850, 1850-1950, and 1950-.
The different phases of the world economy yield appropriate
international legal superstructures which can be classified thus:
127
1.1600--1760: Old colonialism--Transition from feudal to bourgeois
international law.
2.1760-1875: New colonialism--Bourgeois (colonial) inter national law.
1875-1945: Imperialism--Bourgeois (imperialist) international law.
1945--: Neo-colonialism--Bourgeois democratic international law.7
Two clarifications are in order here. First, each of the phases of
international law which have been identified is not an undifferentiated
whole. For example, the
neo-colonial period, dating from 1945, has seen both a progressive
phase--a period which saw the decolonisation process unfold and the
adoption of texts such as the Programme and Declaration of Action on
the New International Economic Order (NIEO) and the Charter of
Economic Rights and Duties of States (CERDS)--and a regressive phase
dating from 1975. It is fascinating that the conclusions from a review
of legal materials again coincide with that of dependency scholars like
Samir Amin (1994, 106) who also identifies 1975 as the turning point in
that the third world returned to playing a comprador role abandoning
bourgeois nationalist projects.8 The year also saw the defeat of the
upward trend in resistance in the advanced capitalist world which
started in France in 1968 (Callinicos, 1996, PE-11). Likewise, beginning
with the subversion of the Allende regime in Chile, repressive states in
the third world, with the backing of imperialism, launched a fierce
attack against working class movements (for a detailed review see
Petras and Vieux 1994, 1--34). It is this setback that facilitated the
move from nationalism to pragmatism. The regressive phase has itself
seen, since the early 1980s, the restructuring of international law and
institutions to facilitate the globalisation process.
Second, in stating that the different phases of the world economy have
yielded corresponding superstructures of international law, the idea is
not to offer a deterministic and unidirectional interpretation of the
evolution and growth of
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international law. While it does suggest that international economic
relations have in crucial ways shaped the international legal system it
does not contend either that the particular content and form it
assumes is directly determined by it or that it does not in turn
influence processes and events in international affairs. The Marxist
categories of base and superstructure do not allow this complex
reality to be captured. Three points may be made in relation to the
contemporary international legal system.
First, productive relations regulated by law are in part meaningful only
in terms of their definition in law. Marx himself stressed the fact that
the property relation stands in such close contact with the existing
relations of production that it 'is but a legal expression for the same
thing' (Pashukanis 1978, 91). In the case of international law the
regulation of productive relations is, it is true, mediated by internal
law. But it would be a mistake for this reason to represent all
international law as ideology for it can directly control the content of
internal law.10
Second, the international legal system possesses its own internal
structure and dynamics which shapes its content and discourse.11 It
develops, for example, only through certain recognised 'sources of
international law'.12 The particular form international law thus assumes
defines its boundaries; anything falling outside it is designated as non-
law. Its distinctive nature has served to sustain the status quo and
prevent the substantive transformation of the content of international
law in favour of third world states.13 For example, it has allowed near
unanimous resolutions repeatedly passed by the UN General Assembly
on restructuring international economic relations to be designated as
'soft law' since resolutions of international institutions are, among
other things, not listed as a source of international law (Bedjaoui
1979). Thus, as Bedjaoui (1979, 99) has noted, 'only the form of a legal
concept is considered, while its content--the social reality it is
supposed to express--is lost sight of.14 The specific characteristics of
its form also give it the appearance of neutrality. For instance, treaties
are in the contemporary international system arrived at between
parties who, wide the principle of state sovereignty, are equal in the
eyes of
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international law. This principle of formal equality tends to
automatically inject an international agreement with the elements of
fairness and equity. Whereas, in reality the substantive inequality of
parties almost always shapes the content of the agreement.15
Third, once international legal rules are adopted they possess a
degree of autonomy from the states which have agreed upon them.
While power plays a crucial role in shaping the content of the law, it
imposes serious constraints on the behaviour of states once it comes
into existence. A whole range of international (and national)
mechanisms are in place to compel compliance with international
obligations. The task of international institutions set up to ensure
observance of rules is not the defence of the interests of individual
powerful states but rather to safeguard the interests of a coalition of
dominant global social forces and states. Thus, even the most
powerful actor in the international system has to justify its actions
with reference to international law. The fear of undermining the
legitimacy of the international legal system by suggesting at all times
that there is one law for the powerful and another for the weak also
refrains dominant states from openly flouting the authority of
international law and institutions. While such a dual structure
characterised colonial and imperialist international law its open
assertion is no longer acceptable. To put it differently, the idea of rule
of law is not a vacuous one in the contemporary international system.
It is not merely an ideological device which is manipulated by powerful
states to their advantage. It has real significance. In this regard it is
often forgotten that the idea of rule of law has come to be embedded
in the international system through the historic struggles of colonial
peoples for independence as also democratic forces within the former
metropolitan countries. To dismiss the idea of rule of law then is to
belittle these struggles and fail to understand that it was far from
being the reality for centuries in the sphere of international relations.
Of course, it would be equally mistaken to forget that international law
and institutions serve the interests of the dominant social classes and
states in the international system.
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Formal equality in it goes hand in hand with material inequality, and
democratic principles and norms with neo-colonialism. In this essay it
is this latter dimension of international law which is elaborated. In the
sections to follow we review, at both the economic and political levels,
the recent developments in international law and institutions which
manifest the policies of neo-colonialism in the era of globalisation.
However, for a correct portrayal of international law, and in order to
avoid legal nihilism, both aspects need to be borne in mind.
Globalisation and International Law-I
International law and institutions are today being transformed to
facilitate the process of globalisation. Globalisation may be said to
refer 'to the shift of the principal venue of capital accumulation from
the nation-state to the global arena' (Teeple 1997, 15).16 There is, as
Teeple points out, 'an historical parallel to the present shift':
The development of national forms of capital in the 18th and 19th
centuries required the destruction of local and regional jurisdictions.
Numerous differences in laws, standards, currencies, weights and
measures, taxes, customs duties, political and religious rights and
privileges made trade and commerce over a large geographic area
extremely difficult. Just as these barriers to the expansion of capital
had to be overcome to make the modern nation-state, so today the
systems of governance in the nation-state have to be dismantled in
order to remove the barriers to accumulation for global corporations. It
follows that laws, regulations, standards, and governing agencies
since World War II have been and continue to be reconstituted at the
global level (Teeple 1997, 16).
Since the early 1980s, the advanced capitalist world has, under the
guidance of the hegemonic transnationalised fractions of its national
bourgeoisies, and with the assistance of the
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transnationalised fractions of national capital in the Third World,
pushed through a series of changes in international economic law
which lay the legal foundation for capital accumulation in the era of
globalisation (Robinson 1996, 13--31). These changes appear to have
two principal objectives: (i) to extend and deepen worldwide the rule of
capital through the removal of 'local' impediments; and (ii) to dismantle
international laws of distribution which are based on the principle of
market intervention. We identify below the different measures which
have been taken in the world of international law to translate these
objectives into reality.
Extending and Deepening the Reign of Capital
A series of developments in the past two decades have sought to
deepen and extend the reign of capital.
First, reference may be made to the privatisation of the public sector
in the third world. This objective is being achieved through the
instrument of international monetary law which legitimises and
enforces conditionalities imposed by international financial
institutions.17 As has been pointed out, 'forced privatisation was the
standard feature of all structural adjustment programmes' (Hoogvelt
1997, 138, 172). By 1992 more than 80 countries around the world had
privatised some 6,800 previously state-owned enterprises, mostly
monopoly suppliers of essential public services like water, electricity,
or telephones (Hoogvelt 1997, 138).18
Second, a growing network of international laws seeks to free
transnational capital of all spatial and temporal constraints. The trend
towards strengthening the rights of foreign capital, initiated in the mid-
1970s (the move from nationalism to pragmatism), continues unabated.
The concerns of transnational capital have been met through the
establishment of a Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA)19
and through concluding bilateral investment protection treaties (BITS)
between the industrialised and the third world countries.20 By 1996
more than 1,000 BITS had been concluded, mostly
132
between the industrialised world and the third world countries
(Schrijver 1997, 191). More recently, there have been the agreement on
Trade Related Investment Measures (TRIMs) and the General
Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) adopted as a part of the GATT
Final Act of the Uruguay Round of Trade Negotiations (hereafter the
'Final Act'). If these texts are examined in conjunction with the World
Bank Guidelines on Foreign Investment (1992)21 and the proposed
OECD multilateral agreement on investment (MAI), the basis on which
a global MAI is to be negotiated in the World Trade Organisation
(WTO),22 it becomes clear that the trend is towards removing all fetters
on the entry, establishment and operations of capital. This is
confirmed further by the September 1997 statement of the IMF Interim
Committee--issued at the behest of what Bhagwati has called the
'Treasury-Wall Street-IMF Complex'--endorsing a move towards capital
account convertibility despite all evidence showing the grave
consequences for the economies embracing it (ibid.). This is in
contrast with original obligations contained in the 1944 Articles of
Agreement which called for the 'avoidance of restrictions on payments
for current transactions' (Bhagwati 1998, 7--12). What is of significance
is that while the noted texts confer or hope to bestow a number of
rights on transnational capital they impose no corresponding duties on
them. Indeed, the Draft Code of Conduct on Transnational Corporations
which imposed certain duties-- respect for host country goals,
transparency, respect for environment, etc.--has yet to be adopted.
Finally, the UN Centre for Transnational Corporations which was
bringing some transparency to the functioning of TNCs was shut down
in 1993.
Third, the global technology regime has been privatised.23 The adoption
of Agreement on Trade related Intellectual Property Rights (hereafter
the TRIPs Text) as a part of the GATT Final Act has been a crucial step
in this regard with its preamble baldly stating that 'intellectual
property rights are private rights'. There is little justification for such a
pronouncement. Indeed, a review of the literature on intellectual
133
property right (IPRs) reveals that such a view is difficult to sustain
(Chimni 1994, 315-33). As one noted expert has put it,
the language of property is ill considered here... Knowledge is not a
scarce resource. It is infinite in time and space. It can be used by all
without depleting its value. In fact, the more it is used, the more
valuable knowledge often is. Allocating property rights in knowledge
makes ideas artificially scarce and their use less frequent--and from a
social viewpoint, less valuable (Waver 1994, 259).
The history of the negotiation of the international patent regime in
particular is extremely interesting. Between 1980 and 1985 four
international conferences were called under the auspices of WIPO to
negotiate changes to the Paris Convention on Industrial Property,
1883. The Paris Convention, which can be termed an empowering
document when compared to the TRIPs Text--it leaves it to individual
member states to define the subject matter of patentability, the
duration for which a patent is to be granted and the scope of rights of
patent holders--was sought to be revised in order to take into account
the concerns of third world countries. But a year later, in 1986, the
GATT Uruguay Round of Trade Negotiations was inaugurated in which
the Paris Convention was revised in the reverse direction of
strengthening the hands of patent holders vis-a-vis states in the poor
world. The TRIPS Text gives more rights to patent holders, mostly
transnational corporations (TNCs); disregarding the fact that it will
have grave consequences for the health of the poor in the
underdeveloped world through sharply raising the prices of drugs,
including essential life saving drugs, that are already beyond the
pocket of the poor (Chimni 1993; 1994). The absurdity of the TRIPs Text
is revealed by the mere fact that it requires countries ranging from
Rwanda and Nepal to the US and the UK to legislate the same patent
regime. Thus, a principal objection of the Third World countries to the
TRIPs Text was that a global uniform patent regime did not allow
individual countries the freedom--a privilege exercised by the
industrialised countries to advance
134
their own technological development--to adopt patent regimes in
accordance with the development interests of the individual countries
(Ricupero 1990, 198-99). They of course also questioned individual
provisions whose substance is to subvert the goal of technological
self-reliance that countries like India and Brazil are pursuing (Chimni
1994; Bifani 1990; UNCTAD 1991; Patel 1989; Nair and Kumar 1994).
The response to the resistance offered was the invocation of the US
Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act, 1988 under which sanctions
were threatened against countries unwilling to bring their IPR regime
in line with its demands. Finally, like in the instance of transnational
capital few duties are imposed on the technology or patent holder in
the TRIPs Text. The only text to do so, viz., the Draft Code of Conduct
on the Transfer of Technology has yet to be adopted despite being a
subject of negotiations for more than two decades.
Fourth, the global commons have been subjected to the process of
privatisation. Consider the developments in the Law of the Sea which
regulates the use of the oceans. In 1982, after a decade of
negotiations, the Third United Nations Conference adopted the Law of
the Sea Convention. It was widely welcomed by the international
community--despite the scepticism of some of us--as a legal regime
which was fair to all the participants. Under the convention the
principle of common heritage of (hu)mankind applies to the non-living
resources of the ocean floor and its subsoil beyond the limits of the
Exclusive Economic Zone (extending to 200 miles) and the Continental
Shelf. It is to be operationalised through a parallel regime which
requires (vide Article 153) every exploitable site to be divided into two
parts, one for the mining company that has made a claim, and the
other for UN's Enterprise, the operational arm of the International Sea-
Bed Authority established by the convention. Writing in 1982 we had
contended that the revolutionary concept of common heritage of
mankind harboured reactionary content as it essentially envisaged the
private exploitation of the resources of the seabed beyond national
jurisdiction (Chimni 1982, 407-12). But such criticism was rejected as
the parallel
135
regime envisaged the transfer of technology from private mining
consortiums to the enterprise. In 1994, through a subsequent
agreement, the obligations relating to the transfer of technology were
however dropped (Schrijver 1997, 191). What is more the operations of
the Enterprise have been constrained in other ways.24 Thus, as one
observer puts it, 'the ... international law with respect to the global
commons remains dominated by the rights of corporate property'
(Teeple 1997, 32).
Fifth, the idea of the 'global commons' is sought to be extended by the
industrialised world to the environment, including resources (e.g.
forests) which are located within the territory of third world countries
(Imber 1994, 58ff). In addressing the issue inter temporal
considerations are not given due weight implying a change in the
distribution of property rights to the detriment of the Third World
countries. For 'as industrial countries developed, global private rights
were granted to polluters; now, developing countries are asked to
agree to a redistribution of those property rights without
compensation for already depleted resources' (Uimonen and Whalley
1997, 66). This 'redistribution' of course goes hand in hand with an IPR
regime which makes environment friendly technology costly to access.
On the other hand, there is a push to universalise northern regulatory
norms since they promote the interests of transnational capital: the
leading 50 environmental corporations in the world are located in the
advanced capitalist countries (for details see Pratt and Montgomery
1997, 75--96).
Sixth, there have been established alternative dispute settlement
mechanisms which seek to eliminate the role of national courts in
resolving disputes between TNCs and the state. Today, international
commercial arbitration is the preferred mode of settling disputes for
TNCs. Since the late 1970s there has been a tremendous growth in the
number of arbitration centres, arbitrators and arbitrations (Dezelay and
Garth 1996). 'By the mid-1980s', according to a close observer, 'it had
become recognised that arbitration was the normal way of settlement
of international commercial disputes' (Lalive 1995, 2). International
commercial arbitration, it needs to be
136
underlined, is essentially a private interests regime in which parties
have 'autonomy' in terms of the selection of the arbitrators, the
substantial law to be applied, and the place of arbitration. Support for
it rests on a certain assumption of the proper sphere of state
activities. In fact it reproduces the public/private divide in
international law. Community policy comes into play only at the time of
enforcement of an award and that too in the exceptional circumstance
that the 'public policy' of a state has been violated, a concept
increasingly narrowly interpreted. While, without doubt, international
commercial arbitration has a significant role to play in routine cases
involving international business transactions, it is not a suitable
method for resolving disputes in core areas of national economic life
like, for example, the exploration and exploitation of natural resources
(Sornarajah 1991, 79). Third World countries were therefore for long
suspicious of international commercial arbitration (ibid). For despite
claims to the 'autonomy' of parties only a select and elite group of
individuals serve as international arbitrators and the law applied is
invariably traditional (colonial and imperialist) international law with is
clear bias in favour of capital (ibid). But institutions pursuing the
interests of capital (the World Bank and the International Chamber of
Commerce, for example) have relentlessly promoted international
commercial arbitration. The increasing competition in recent years
between third world countries to promote foreign direct investment
has helped this effort as it has pressurised them to accept the
preferences of TNCs in dispute resolution.
Remaking the International Laws of Distribution
Accompanying the network of laws which extend and deepen the reign
of capital have been attacks on principles and agreements which
attempted to inject, as a part of the effort to usher in a NIEO, the
traditional international law of distribution with elements of equity and
justice. Two examples would suffice. First is the rejection of the
special and differential treatment
137
(SDT) principle which calls for preferential treatment to be given to
third world countries. Beginning with the late 1950s, the industrialised
world had, under pressure from the newly independent countries--its
institutional expression being UNCTAD and the Group of 77--grudgingly
accepted the SDT principle. For example, in 1966 GATT was amended
to include Part IV of the agreement (entitled 'Trade and Development')
which sought to give expression to the SDT principle. While it did not
place hard legal obligations on the industrialised states they were
compelled to accept a formal commitment to the SDT principle.
Pursuant to it a voluntary Generalised System of Preferences (GSP)
scheme was launched in 1970. It was introduced under the auspices of
UNCTAD for the industrialised countries strongly resisted 'giving the
GSP the form of an amendment to Article 1 of the General Agreement
(the MNF clause) and thus ensured the maintenance of the juridical
status quo' (Berthoud 1985, 78). The GSP scheme brought little benefit
to third world countries (Nicolaides 1995, 309). Beginning with the late
1970s the principle itself came under attack and attempts began to
dilute even the soft law commitments. In the GATT Tokyo Round of
Trade Negotiations which concluded in 1979, the industrialised world
pushed through, despite the opposition of the poor world, a decision
which introduced the notorious graduation clause into the SDT
principle (GATT 1980, 203-05). A few months before the conclusion of
the Tokyo Round the Group of 77 had issued a declaration in UNCTAD
in which they expressed their 'rejection of the concept of
"graduation" ... which would allow developed countries to discriminate
among developing countries in a unilateral and arbitrary manner'
(Berthoud 1985, 83). It however failed to persuade the industrialised
countries. The biggest blow came in the Final Act of the Uruguay
Round when a number of agreements and understanding adopted
drastically curtailed the grant of SDT. In the balanced language of
Trebilcock and Howse, while the Final act 'reflect(s) developing
country concerns in a number of areas, the tendency has not been to
grant developing countries broad exceptions to
138
compliance with GATT rules. In some instances developing countries
may be given a somewhat longer period of time to phase in domestic
compliance with the new rules, but the Uruguay Round result reflects
in large measure, a rejection of the view that developing countries
should not be required to make reciprocal commitments to trade
liberalisation' (Trebilcock and Howse 1995, 324). The new texts
adopted on key provisions like Article 18-B, the safeguard clause and
subsidies represent a clear set back for the SDT principle.26 Its dilution
has been justified in the name of deepening the integration of the Third
World countries in the world economy and on the belief that 'the
insistence of on S and D and the refusal to engage in reciprocal
negotiations meant that the benefits of GATT membership was
substantially reduced' (Hoekman and Kostecki 1995, 244). In actuality,
the denial seeks to squeeze the space for independent self-reliant
development of third world countries.
Second, dating from the arrival of the Reagan and Thatcher
administrations in the US and UK respectively, an all out attack was
launched on international commodity agreements (ICAs) whose
primary aim is to stabilise the prices of primary commodities by
intervening in the world market through the use of export quotas
and/or buffer stock mechanisms (Chimni 1987: ch. 3). It may be
recalled that the NIEO programme of action had recommended the
'expeditious formulation of commodity agreements' and CERDS had
stated that 'it is the duty of states to contribute to the development of
international trade in goods' through concluding ICAs (ibid., 3-4). These
instruments were however represented by the Reagan and Thatcher
administrations as distorting free markets. The timing of the offensive
was impeccable. It came at a point when primary commodity prices
were at the lowest since the great depression.27 The unfortunate
collapse of the Fifth International Tin Agreement in 1985 was used to
completely discredit the instrument of ICAs disregarding their role in
ensuring a more equal distribution of gains from the sale of raw
materials, as also the fact that the idea of free market was a myth
(ibid., 197-212).
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What the industrialised world wanted to ensure was that prices of
primary commodities remained low through staving off intervention in
markets through ICAs. It both increased the profits of capital as also
allowed the industrialised world to taclde the problem of inflation at
home. While in the beginning of the 1980s there were five ICAs in
operation (covering cocoa, coffee, natural rubber, sugar and tin), at the
end of the decade only one was in existence. On the other hand, by the
early 1990s the average level of non-oil commodity prices was 'the
lowest for over a century' (Maizeis 1994, 54). By 1991 'the total terms
of trade loss on all non-oil commodity exports from developing
countries amounted to about $ 60 billion...' (ibid.). Over the period
1980-91 'the cumulative loss totalled some $ 290 billion' (ibid., 56).
Yet the hostility to ICAs did not cease. Rather, the end of the Cold War
eliminated the strategic considerations for supporting ICAs. The US
had started supporting ICAs in the early 1960s only in the wake of the
Cuban revolution. The Latin American Task Force set up by president
Kennedy, concerned at the spread of 'Castroism', had inter alia
recommended that the US co-operate in establishing co-operative
arrangements in order to reduce the potential political consequences
of violent fluctuations in the prices of Latin America's exports (Fisher
1972, 27). In March 1961, in his famous Alliance for Progress Speech,
President Kennedy stated that the US was ready to 'co-operate with
the Latin American and other producer country governments in a
serious
caste-by-case examination of the major commodities and to lend its
support to practical efforts to reduce extreme price fluctuations' (ibid.,
28). Thus, the collapse of 'actually existing socialism' has taken away
the principal reason for the support of ICAs by the US.
Globalisation and International Law-II
The changes which have been introduced in international economic
law have been accompanied by an emerging
140
international 'political' law which inter alia seeks (i) to legitimise a
system of global apartheid in a bid to preserve unbelievable privileges
for a section of citizens in the advanced capitalist countries. In this
regard international law rules have been rewritten to limit voluntary
and forced migration to the west (Richmond 1994); and (ii) to promote
'low intensity democracies' in the third world to sustain favourable
conditions for foreign investment. New international law norms are
being established to promote 'democratisation' and 'good governance'
in order to confer legitimacy on collaborating regimes at a historical
juncture when authoritarian regimes to longer need to be supported,
as in the past, to fight communism. These two developments are
analysed in some detail below.
Towards an International Law of Exclusion: Asylum under Threat
While capital and services have become increasingly mobile in the era
of globalisation, labour has been spatially confined despite the urgings
of consistent free trade economists (Bhagwati 1989, 243-44). But what
is even more disturbing are recent developments in the advanced
capitalist world in relation to the institution of asylum (Chimni 1994,
1995a). For here we are talking of the forced migration of people, i.e.,
of individuals and groups fleeing untold misery and suffering. Since the
early 1980s there has been a concerted attempt by the western
countries to dismantle the liberal international refugee regime which
was established after the second world war. In particular, the post
Cold War era has seen a whole host of restrictive practices being put
in place to prevent refugees fleeing the under-developed countries
from arriving in the west.
The international refugee regime was from the beginning a product of
the Cold War. It was seen as an instrument with which to embarass the
former Soviet Union and its allies. 'The refugee definition was carefully
phrased to include only persons who have been disfranchised by their
state on the basis of race, religion, nationality, membership of a
particular social group, or
141
political opinion, matter in regards to which East bloc practice ha(d)
been historically been problematic' (Hathaway 1991, 8). The import of
the definition becomes clear from, among other things, the fact that
nearly 95 per cent of refugees given asylum in the US in this period
came from the former communist bloc countries (Robinson and Frelick
1990, 298). The end of the Cold War meant that the refugee lost both
ideological and geopolitical value. Identified below, albeit in a
summary fashion, are a few of the legal measures and interpretations
which have been mobilised for the containment of refugees in the last
two decades.28 They violate either in letter or in spirit the UN
Convention on the Status of Refugees, 1951 to which all the western
states are parties.
First, there are the restrictive visa policies and carrier sanctions; the
latter making airline carriers liable to fines for carrying passengers
without proper papers. Second, 'international zones' have been
demarcated in airports where physical presence does not amount to
legal presence and from where summary and arbitrary removal is
permissible. Third, safety zones have been created inside countries--as
in northern Iraq and former Yugoslavia--to stop asylum seekers moving
out and seeking refuge. As it turned out, these safe zones were the
most unsafe you could imagine (Chimni 1995b, 823--54). Fourth, the
fundamental principle of non-refoulement, enshrined in Article 33 of
the 1951 UN Convention, has been given an extremely narrow
interpretation. According to the principle of non-refoulement 'no
refugee should be returned to any country where he or she is likely to
face persecution or torture' (Goodwin-Gill 1996, 117). An example of an
extremely retrogressive interpretation is the decision of the US
Supreme Court in Sale v. Haitian Centres Council (113 S Ct 2549
(1993)). In it the US Supreme Court decided that the act of interdicting
Haitian refugees on the high seas and returning them to their country
of origin irrespective of the claims to having a well founded fear of
persecution was not violative of Article 33 of the 1951 Convention.
This decision met with near universal disapproval and has been
described by the high
142
commissioner for refugees as 'a setback to modern international
refugee law'. Fifth, most countries in Europe, and the US since April 1,
1997, are implementing the 'safe third country' concept whereby an
asylum seeker is denied access to a comprehensive asylum
determination procedure because they could apparently have sought
protection in countries they passed through to reach their ultimate
destination. The concept has grave consequences for the asylum
seeker as it has led to chain deportations, often back to the country
from which the refugee fled. In an unfortunate decision the German
Federal Constitutional Court in May 1996 upheld the German safe third
country law legitimising its practice in other countries as well. A
recent report of the United States Committee on Refugees (USCR)--a
privately funded public information programme of Immigration and
Refugee Services of America--has however recommended that 'the use
of national safe third country national laws and practices should be
discontinued immediately' (US Committee for Refugees 1997, 32).
Sixth, still on the same theme, mention may be made of attempts to
harmonise internal procedures in Europe which has led to the adoption
of two conventions known as the Dublin and Schengen Conventions
which have recently come into force. The USCR has also
recommended the scrapping of these conventions insofar as the
criteria used for determining claims of asylum seekers is concerned. It
recommends that 'the country where the asylum, rather than the
country of first arrival, should normally assume responsibility for
adjudicating the asylum claim' (ibid). Seventh, asylum seekers have
been held in offshore camps which have been effectively declared
rights free zones. For example, when the US started holding Haitian
and Cuban refugees at Guantanamo Bay, a territory leased out from
Cuba, a US Court of Appeals ruled in Cuban American Bar Association
(CABA) v. Christopher (143 F 3d 1412 (11th Cir 1995)) that refugees in
'safe haven' camps outside the US did not have constitutional rights of
due process or equal protection, and were not protected against
forced return. This is, according to BIl Frelick of the USCR, 'an open -
invitation for abusive and arbitrary conduct'. Eighth, where an
143
asylum seeker manages to cross these hurdles, a very restrictive
interpretation is given to the definition of 'refugee' contained in the
1951 Convention. For example, asylum seekers fleeing former
Yugoslavia, most of whom met the 1951 Convention definition, have
been denied refugee status. Some countries (Canada, for example)
have also invoked the internal flight alternative (IFA) test to deny
refugee status. Together, these interpretations and measures manifest
a language of rejection which threatens the very institution of asylum.
They epitomise the international law of exclusion.
Polyarchy, Intervention and International Human Rights Law
It has however not prevented the advanced capitalist world from
mobilising international human rights law to support global economic
expansion without committing itself to the pursuit of equity in its
international economic relations.
First, a particular perspective on international human rights law has
been advanced to support the idea of 'low intensity democracy' or
'polyarchy' with the idea of legitimising internal orders which favour
foreign investment and provide stable social and political conditions
for its operation (Evans 1997, 99). Polyarchy refers 'to a system in
which a small group actually rules and mass participation in
decision-making is confined to leadership choice in elections carefully
managed by competing elites' (Robinson 1996, 49, 57). Under it 'a
system can acquire a democratic form without a democratic content'
(Ibid.; see also Evans 1997, 98-99). International law experts like
Franck claim that there is an emergent right to democratic governance
linking the legitimacy of governments with 'free and fair' electoral
processes (Franck 1992, AG; Fox 1992, 539; Teson 1995, 91-92). This
limited concept of legitimacy suits the interests of transnational
capital which is keen to see the rule of law prevail without it
translating into the participatory rights of people.29 It is therefore no
accident that despite accepting at a formal level the fact that
economic and social rights have the same significance as political and
civil rights the industrialised world
144
has done little to put this view into practice on the international plane.
For example, the right to development was declared by the UN General
Assembly in 1986 as 'an inalienable human right'.30 But little has been
done to give substance to the right. If anything attempts have been
made to empty it of content. The SDT principle is said to be 'central to
a new international development law' and 'at the heart of a new legal
method' to inject an element of equity in international economic
relations (Carry 1993, 88). But the SDT principle, as we saw, has been
given short shrift in the GATT/WTO regime. Further, the advanced
capitalist world has authored the structural adjustment policies being
implemented by the international financial institutions which have led
to the massive violation of the economic and social rights of the
working peoples of the under-developed world (Bello 1994; Cornea
1992; Development Gap 1993; Ghai 1991; Cornea, Jolly and Stewart
1987).
Second, in the matrix of international human rights law, a right to
humanitarian intervention has been shaped which legitimises
intrusions in the sovereign political space of Third World countries. To
put it differently, where 'low intensity democracies' collapse ('failed
states') the industrialised world has given to itself the right to
intervene (often through the UN) to restore 'polyarchy'. As Orford has
noted, in this view 'collective humanitarian intervention is legitimate if
it ensures that the criteria of formal procedural democracy are met
even in sharply polarised societies where large groups are excluded
from decision-making power' (Oxford 1997, 461). Powerful northern
states also use the language of human rights for the moral
condemnation of states which are not low intensity democracies
('rogue states') to take punitive action against them. In the Nicaragua
case, the International Court of Justice held that it 'cannot
contemplate the creation of a new rule opening up a right to
intervention by one State against another on the ground that the latter
has opted for some particular ideology or political system'. ('Case
Concerning Military and Parliamentary Activities in and Against
Nicaragua', Nicaragua v United States of America, ICJ Reports, 1986,
para 283.) However, in recent years, precisely
145
such a right of intervention is being shaped in the matrix of human
rights law (for justification see Teson 1988).
Globalisation and International Institutions
In the corpus of literature which constitutes international legal studies
there is little reflection on the role of international institutions in
sustaining a particular vision of world order. While international law
experts have concerned themselves with international institutions, the
discussion has largely been confined to the rules of law which govern
their legal status, structure and functioning, with matters of power and
influence left to political scientists.31 This is in contrast to the
significance of 'international state apparatuses' (ISAs) in any national
context. The ISAs serve, as Fine and Harris have pointed out, several
functions. First, they help mitigate
inter-imperialist rivalries. This does not mean international institutions
remain neutral to these rivalries. Rather 'they will be constructed and
forced to promote the internationalisation of capital according to the
relative strengths of different blocs of capital in competition...' (Fine
and Harris 1979, 154). Second, they help implement imperialist
domination through the international control of finance, tariffs, etc.
Third, 'the working classes of all national states can be disciplined and
moderated in class struggle by the economic control exercised by
these bodies, a control that is remote from the struggles at the point
of production' (ibid., 153). In other words, according to Fine and Harris,
...there exists a complex structure of national and international
capitalist state apparatuses, some of which are more distanced from
the site of class struggles (the national social formation) than others.
Those which are more distanced are more freely able to pursue the
class interest and class positions of the dominant bourgeois fractions
than is the national state. Because they have mechanisms (laws,
treaties, agreements) for enforcing policies onto their constituent
national states this structure of international institutions is
146
able to exert what appears as an outside pressure on national states in
favour of the interests of internationalised capital (ibid., 160).
The Fine and Harris conclusions were perhaps not entirely appropriate
for the time they were writing. In the 1970s international institutions
still played a relatively peripheral role within the international system
(Kirdar 1977, 24-25). This was a time in which the third world countries
were still avoiding going to the IMF as it imposed onerous
conditionalities on the state, and the GATT was a long distance away
from being transformed into the WTO, an octopus-like organisation
regulating critical areas of national economic life. But today, as one
observer notes, 'the "commanding heights" of state decision-making
are shifting to supra-national institutions' (Robinson 1996, 18).
The nature and character of these international institutions cannot be
understood from within a bourgeois legal framework with its emphasis
on formalism. In order to make sense of the functioning of
international institutions we need to locate them within the larger
social order, in particular the historical and political contexts in which
they originate and function. Such an approach contends that only
when a coalition of powerful social forces is persuaded that an
international institution is the appropriate form in which to defend
their interests is it brought into existence, albeit through state action,
and it survives only if it continues to serve these interests (Murphy
1994, 25, 44; Cox 1996). The class which exercises the most influence
in these institutions today is the transnationalised fractions of national
bourgeoisies with the now ascendant transnationalised fractions in the
third world playing the role of junior partners. These fractions do not
seek in these institutions to actualise 'national interests' but rather
act as 'transmission belts and filtering devices for the imposition of
the transnational agenda' (Robinson 1996L 19).32
Three principal features characterise contemporary developments
relating to international institutions. The first
147
feature is the transfer of sovereign economic decision-making from
nation-states to international economic institutions. Second, is the
resistance to putting in place a decision-making process which is
transparent and democratic. Third, is the gearing of the UN system
towards promoting the interests of transnational capital, including
increasing the role that the corporate sector can play within the
organisation. Together, these features limit the possibilities to genuine
democratisation of both inter- and intra-state relations. But a contrary
impression is sought to be created through steering the knowledge
production and dissemination functions of international institutions; an
ocean of literature is produced to justify their transformed role.
Expanding Role of 'International State Apparatuses'
The GATT/WTO regime best exemplifies the shift in power to
'international state apparatuses'. The GATT/WTO regime now regulates
not merely trade in manufactured goods but also trade in agricultural
commodities, 'trade related' foreign investment, intellectual property
rights and trade in services. Negotiations are to begin under the
auspices of the WTO on other areas like the social clause, the trade-
environment interface, and multilateral agreement on investment.
Guaranteeing the observance of the rules in these diverse areas is the
WTO dispute settlement system (DSS) backed by a system of
sanctions. The usual lament that international law is not law as it
lacks enforcement mechanisms does not apply at least in the instance
of the WTO.
In key areas of national economic life it will be the decisions of the
DSS which will be final rather than, as in the past, the decisions of the
highest court within a nation-state. The DSS has been considerably
strengthened under the WTO through the inclusion of several new
features not present in the GATT system. The essence of these new
features is to have disputes settled within a short time framework and
to ensure that the impugned state abides by decisions delivered by the
DSS.33 A complex system of sanctions (including a system of
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cross-retaliation across sectors) has been put in place to make a
recalcitrant state agree to obey the decisions of the DSS.34
It is true that the DSS has moved from a power oriented system under
GATT to a rule oriented system in the WTO.35 As Trebilcock and Howse
note: '.. .the history of GATT dispute resolution has evinced a tendency
towards greater reliance on a rule-oriented regime in resolving
disputes' (Trebilcock and Howse: 383). They correctly point out that
'the Uruguay Round Understanding on Dispute Resolution seeks to
advance substantially the legal orders conception of the GATT' (ibid.,
397). To the extent that the new DSS reduces the role of power in
arriving at solutions to international trade disputes it is certainly
welcome. Surely, in a battle of briefs the less powerful countries have
a better chance to have their views accepted than in negotiations
which are openly visited by power.
However, the move to a rule of law model is placed in perspective if,
first, the DSS is evaluated in conjunction with the substantive
agreements which constitute the Final Act. Since the rules they codify
protect the interests of the industrialised states, in particular
transnational capital, a rule-oriented dispute settlement system only
goes to enhance the inequities which they sanction. Second, the fact
that unilateral sanctions continue to form a part of the system, as is
reflected, for example, in the continuing use of super and special
provisions of the 1988 Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act by the
US, reveals that power continues to play a role in dispute settlement.3"
Third, were there is the possibility of the DSS seriously hurting the
industrialised world, attempts have been made to curb the move
towards a rule-oriented system. For example, special rules of
interpretation have been included in the context of challenges to the
imposition of anti-dumping duties (essentially used as a protectionist
device by the industrialised states).37
The relocation of sovereignty that the DSS involves has been achieved
without making the WTO in any way accountable to the peoples who
inhabit the states whose actions it proposes to surveille and
supervise. There is the absence of democratic participation in the law-
making and dispute settlement process.
149
Important elements of civil society--interest groups, civic organisation,
and legislatures--are denied any role in it. The WTO DSS does not allow
non-state involvement and is secretive in hearings and documentation.
Thus, the WTO clearly needs to be opened up to wider participation;
the executive arm of the state alone should not be allowed to
represent the state (Kingsbury 1994, 8-9, 14-17, 34). The democracy
deficit the WTO suffers from is a big blow to the attempts of Third
World peoples to inject greater democracy in the functioning of the
international system.
Resistance to Democratic Decision-Making: The Case of the IMF
The absence of democratic functioning also characterises the
international financial institutions which have come to exercise
unprecedented influence on the lives of ordinary people in the Third
World. The anti-democratic nature of its functioning is more primitive
as here the problem is of allowing different groups of states equitable
representation in the decision-making process of the organisation. To
take the case of the IMF, the decision-making process in it is based on
a system of weighted voting which excludes its principal users, the
poor world, from a say in the policy-making.38 The Third World voice is
not heard even as the policies of the Fund inflict enormous pain and
death on the people who inhabit it (Bello 1994; Cornea 1992;
Development Gap 1993; Ghai 1991; Cornea, Jolly and Stewart 1987).
In 1993, the IMF bosted of a membership of 175 countries. Of these 23
were developed countries, 17 were east European countries including
eight states of the former Soviet Union, and the remaining 135
countries were Third World countries, including six central Asian
countries of the former Soviet Union. Nearly 4.4 billion people or 78 per
cent of the world's 1990 population live in the Third World (Gerster
1993, 121). Despite constituting an overwhelming majority of the
membership the Third World countries as a whole had a voting share of
34 per
150
cent in the IMF.39 Without the OPEC countries (who act as creditor
states in the institution) this share is reduced to 24 per cent. 40
Since the 1960s the Third World countries have been concerned with
their lack of effective participation in the decision-making process in
the Fund.41 In the beginning their concern was essentially with the
usurpation of the Funds' decision-making by the industrialised
countries rather than the internal decision-making authority (ibid., 87).
But since the early 1970s a systematic challenge was launched to
seek changes in the structure of Fund decision-making.42 CERDS
stressed the need for full and effective participation in the decision-
making process of international economic and financial institutions.
From the outset the Third World countries were ready to concede that
a one state-one vote formula was unrealistic in so far as the Fund was
concerned. Besides the question of power politics, the need to
safeguard the revolving nature of the Fund, and the viability of allowing
borrower countries to have a majority in an international lending
institution, an important constraint was the non-usability for the most
part of currency resources of the developing countries (Fergusan 1988,
100--02). In other words, an increase in their quotas could mean a
diminution in the lending capacity of the institution (ibid., 101).
The Third World countries are therefore willing to give a functional
interpretation to the principle of equality. Instead of insisting on
equality of voting between states they emphasise on the relative
equality among groups of states.44 In other words, they wanted the
Third World countries as a whole to have an effective voice in the
decision-making process (Fergusan 1988, 91--94).45 This could be done
by expansion of basic voting power and/or by establishing different
criteria for establishing voting power other than the one used to
determine quotas. For instance, by taking population into account.46
There are many examples of using the concept of group as the basis
for giving content to the principle of participatory equality of states
(ibid., 104-06). If accepted it would enhance the possibilities of
effective participation of concerned states and increase the
151
transparency of decisions, without taking away the dominant voice of
the lender developed countries. However, instead of looking to the
long-term interests of the world economy in terms of the interests of
the overwhelming population of the globe, the weak situation of the
Third World is being used by dominant states to impose conditions
which extend and deepen the role of private property and lead to the
worsening of the conditions of the people. It is then understandable
that the imperialist world resists the transformation of the decision-
making process in a democratic direction.
The Privatisation of the UN System
In the present period all international institutions are being mobilised
in favour of promoting the interests of transnational capital. Mention
needs to be made of the important role that the UN system is coming
to play in the global privatisation process as also the moves to
'privatise' the United Nations system itself. The UN
secretary-general has gone so far as to suggest that 'the very concept
of inter governmentalism as we know it is being altered as a result of
the redefinition of the role of government...' (Annan 1997, 68). In his
speech to the World Economic Forum in February 1997 Annan
announced that 'strengthening the partnership between the United
Nations and the private sector will be one of the priorities of my term
as secretary-general'.47 This vision is built on the 'new universal
understanding that market forces are essential for sustainable
development (sic)' (ibid., 1). These pronouncements need to be read in
the background of the shutting down of the Centre for Transnational
Corporations, the fact that the UNCTAD has 'repositioned itself (Annan
1997, 20), and the marginalisation of development issues in the UN
system (South Centre 1996). It becomes clear then that the agenda of
the UN is being transformed from one supportive of restructuring
extant international economic relations to one which is in the business
of strengthening it. While it still continues to pay lip service to the
global poor, its principal goal has come to be to promote
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the interests of private capital, both domestic and transnational, and
make appeals to it to serve the cause of international
justice.48
The promotion of the corporate sector is taking place even within the
UN system. While there has never been any doubt about the policy tilt
of the international financial institutions, private interests have come
to influence a larger segment of the UN system. Lee, Humphreys and
Pugh have, on the basis of the analysis of three UN organisation (viz.,
International Telecommunication Union, International Maritime
Organisation and International Tropical Timber Organisation), drawn
attention to the fact that 'private companies are increasingly
influencing decisions and activities that are nominally the prerogative
of governments' (Lee, Humphreys and Pugh 1997, 339). Further, under
discussion are terms of reference for business sector participation in
the policy setting process of the UN, as also partnering in the use of
UN development assistance funds and in the pursuit of the goal of
sustainable development (Korten 1997). These developments may
eventually transform the character of the UN from a public to a private
organisation.
Legitimation Functions of International Institutions
A key omission of international legal studies has been the failure to
study the ideological role of international institutions. The ideological
or what may be termed the legitimation functions of international
institutions assumes many forms. First, the organisation represents its
institutional field and concerns to the outside world. Second, it
actively promotes norms of international behaviour which facilitate the
realisation of its objectives. Third, it frames issues for collective
debate and proposes specific policy responses. Fourth, it identifies key
points for negotiation in order to fill gaps in the normative framework
and to adjust to changes in the external environment. Finally, it
evaluates the policies of member states from the standpoint of their
mandate and concerns. The knowledge production and
153
dissemination functions of international institutions are steered by the
dominant coalition of social forces and states to legitimise their vision
of world order.50 Only an oppositional coalition can evolve counter-
discourses which deconstruct and challenge the hegemonic vision.
This has been done in the past. For example, the entire debate on a
NIEO was generated by the Third World countries, with the support of
the former Soviet Union, through either establishing institutions in
which it exercised a dominant voice (like UNCTAD) or through a global
coalitional politics which compelled the dominant states to listen to
their voice in other institutions. The collapse of 'actually existing
socialism', the crisis which has gripped third word economies in the
past two decades, and the withering away of the Group of 77 has
translated into the universal language of privatisation and markets.
The forced consensus on this language needs to be urgently
challenged.
International Law, Hegemony, and the Use of Force
The dominance of powerful states in the international system is thus
sustained not through the use of force but through having a certain
conception of world order accepted as a natural order by the ruling
classes and peoples of states over which dominance is exercised.
However, when necessary, threats to the system are countered
through the use of force. This force is invariably sought to be
legitimised through the language of international law. While the threat
or use of force is outlawed by the UN Charter (Article 2 para 4), it
permits its use in self-defence (Article 51). There are also questions
relating to the meaning of aggression, the use of force, and self-
defence which create space for dubious interpretations. Since there is
no compulsory third party settlement of international disputes in
international relations there is no forum in which the interpretations
advanced by dominant powers to justify the use of force can be
challenged. Where it has been possible, as was the case when
Nicaragua took the US to the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the
US
154
refused to comply with the decision. In fact in the Nicaragua case the
US refused to participate further in the proceedings of the case as
soon as the ICJ, overriding US objections, accepted to exercise
jurisdiction. Indeed, piqued by its decision the US terminated its
acceptance of the compulsory jurisdiction of the court (for a
discussion see Chimni 1986; 960-70). However, the ICJ went ahead and
found the US 'in breach of its obligation under customary international
law not to intervene in the affairs of another state' and 'not to use
force against another state' (ICJ Reports, 1986, para 292). It was also
found guilty of violating the sovereignty of another state (ibid.). The
US, of course, refused to abide by the decision of the World Court.
Nevertheless, it underlined the fact that the idea of a rule of law in
international affairs is not an empty one. It cannot be dismissed as a
mere ideological device used by dominant states to maintain order in
the international system. This is not to deny the originary violence
which marks the present international legal system or the periodic
violence unleashed on states and peoples which seek to challenge the
prevailing consensus but to avoid falling into the trap of legal nihilism
through a general condemnation of law and legal institutions.
The Gulf war, on the other hand, is perhaps the best demonstration of
the thesis that the hegemonic powers will not shy away from the use
of force when serious challenges are mounted to the system. In this
case demonstrative force was used to defend the neo-colonial
character of the existing international system.51 As Said has observed
with respect to the Gulf war: 'The entire premise was colonial: that a
small Third "World dictatorship, nurtured and supported by the west,
did not have the right to challenge America, which was white and
superior. Britain bombed Iraqi troops in the 1920s for daring to resist
colonial rule; 70 years later the United States did it but with a more
moralistic tone, which did little to conceal the thesis that Middle East
oil reserves were an American trust' (Said 1993, 295, emphasis in
original). During the course of the war the UN Security Council was
treated as an extension of the US state department and the legal
framework for Security Council actions
155
shown scant respect (Anand 1994, 5-17; Schacter 1991, 455; Weston
1991, 522). In fact the UN Security Council abdicated its responsibility
in as much as it had no control over what were ostensibly UN
operations (ibid.).
The force used was clearly disproportionate, and eventually directed
at the fleeing enemy. International humanitarian laws were thrown to
the wind (ibid., 46ff). Iraqi civilians were consciously made to suffer for
reasons unrelated to the defeat, surrender, or weakening of the Iraqi
military (Normand and Jochnik 1994, 410). The barbarian/civilised
dichotomy which characterised imperialist international law came into
play. Said has noted how the western media suggested that 'Arabs
only understand force; brutality and violence are part of Arab
civilisation...' (Said 1993, 295). It suggested that the western powers
'could go ahead and kill, bomb, and destroy, since what would be being
attacked was really negligible, brittle with no relationship to books,
ideas, cultures, and no relation either...to real people' (ibid., 298). 52
What is equally significant is what got left out: 'What got left out was
enormous. Little was reported on oil company profits, or how the surge
in oil prices had little to do with supply; continued to be overproduced'
(ibid., 296; see also Frank 1992, 3--22). In brief, the conclusion
suggests itself that like in the colonial period, the laws of war are seen
as imposing few constraints where the non-European world is
concerned. As Bauman puts it, 'since they are by definition violent,
barbarians are legitimate objects of violence. Civility is for civil,
barbarity for the barbaric' (Bauman 1995, 143). It is hardly surprising
therefore that the US has recently voted against the establishment of
the international criminal court {The Guardian Weekly 1998, 3).
Conclusion
The aim of this chapter was to draw attention to the crucial role
international law and institutions have come to play in the
contemporary international system. With capitalism entering the
156
phase of globalisation, international law is playing a role akin to the
one which internal law performed in the early stages of capitaism in
removing local impediments to the process of accumi lation. The
international legal process is being used to control the content of
national laws in crucial areas of economic, political, and social life, as
also to relocate powers from sovereign states to international
institutions in order to facilitate their surveillance and enforcement.
These developments have considerably eroded the capacity of Third
World states to carry out independent and self-reliant development.
For a period of time in the 1970s there was optimisism that
international laws could be transformed by a global coalition of Third
World countries to meet their particular concerns. An equitable
international law of distribution was sought to be shaped through the
adoption of the SDT principle and by promoting ICAs to realise just
prices. Negotiations were also initiated to draft codes of conduct to
regulate TNCs and the transfer of technology, and to revise the Paris
convention on industrial property. Radical concepts such as the
'common heritage of mankind' were advanced in the process of
arriving at rules to govern the use of the oceans. Attempts were made
to democratise the decision-making process in the IMF and the World
Bank. But these initiatives floundered on the rock of neo-colonialism.
From the beginning of the 1980s, an increasingly hostile international
economic environment saw the Third World countries abandon the
strategy of global coalition, hoping to separately encash their
dependent status.
Meanwhile capitalism entered the phase of globalisation. It was now
the turn of the advanced capitalist countries to seek changes in the
body of international law. These changes involved, first, the rejection
of the proposal which had emerged in the 1970s in the form of a
programme and declaration of action on NIEO and CERDS. Second, it
called for the adoption of legal instruments to free transnational
capital of spatial and temporal constraints. Third, an international law
of distribution based on market ethics was given shape, eliminating all
chances of injecting equity into international economic relations.
Fourth,
157
changes were initiated in the relevant international legal regime to
enable the strict control of voluntary and forced migration. Fifth,
international state apparatuses' were sought to be established to
ensure the effective implementation of the rules which facilitate and
promote accumulation in the era of globalisation.
These changes in the body of international law reflect the domination
of the transnationalised fractions of the bourgeousie in the advanced
capitalist countries. They have in this regard the active consent of
their counterparts in the Third World. The latter not only faithfully act
as transmission belts for the ideas emerging from the advanced
capitalist world but vigorously support it in a bid to profit from
becoming junior partners in the global domination project. At the
receiving end are the working classes and disadvantaged groups in the
first and the Third Worlds. Their condition has seriously worsened in
the last two decades.53 On the other hand, as a result of the relocation
of powers from nation-states to international institutions, the capacity
of the left and democratic movements to resist developments which
adversely affect their interests has declined (Robinson 1996, 27). If the
global progressive forces hope to interrupt and thwart the
reproduction of the relations of transnational domination then they
must, among other things, think of ways and means to enhance their
own role in the international law-making and law enforcement process.
This calls for much greater attention to be paid to international legal
developments than is being done at present. The international legal
strategy must in turn form an integral part of a transnational counter-
hegemonic project which, even as it continues to have its principal
base in national struggles, comes to form transnational alliances in
order to resist the vision of globalised capitalism.
Notes
1. 'Perhaps the most important of the revolutions in the dimension of
158
modern international law lies in its expanding scope, in the addition of
new subjects to the field of international law' (Friedmann 1968).
Seven decades ago, in his preface to the second Russian edition of his
book on law and Marxism, Pashukanis (1978, 38) wrote that '...the
Marxist critique has not even touched on such fields as that of
international law yet'. The situation is no different today.
For a critique of the Soviet International Law approach as articulated
by its chief spokesman G.I. Tunkin in the period after the second world
war see Chimni (1993: chapter V).
Oppenheim, for example, defines international law as 'the body of rules
which are legally binding on states in their intercourse with each
other' (Jennings 1992, 4). Modern textbook writers often extend the
definition to include the relations between states and organisations
and non-state entities, and in some respect individuals. For instance,
Starke (1989, 3) defines international law 'as that body of law which is
composed for its greater part of principles and rules of conduct which
states feel themselves bound to observe, and therefore, do commonly
observe in their relations with each other, and which includes also: (a)
the rule of law relating to the functioning of international institutions
or organisations, their relations with each other, and their relations
with states and individuals; and (b) certain rules of law relating to
individuals and non-state entities so far as the rights and duties of
such individuals and non-state entities are the concern of the
international community'. However, Starke (1989, 4) hatens to add that
'from a practical point of view, it is well to remember that international
law is primarily a system regulating the rights and duties of states
inter se.' But even the broader definition is a formal and technical
definition. The general point was made long ago by Pashukanis (Bierne
and Sharlet 1980, 169).
Indeed, 'exploring this logic of anarchy is held to be the distinctive
task of IR theory--a task which must be kept separate from the study
of domestic politics which is governed by fundamentally different
principles' (Rosenberg 1994, 4).
It, of course, raises the complex question as to whether the world
economy is the basis of international law in the same way as the
internal economic structure can be said to be the basis of internal law.
A central feature of bourgeois democratic international law is the
159
universalisation of the principle of sovereign equality of states. For a
detailed account of these phases see Chimni (1993, 224-36).
The irony was not lost on Amin: 'the 1975 turning point seemed striking
to me because of the non-aligned movement and the Group of 77
proposal for a New International Economic Order'.
After all, it was the struggles of the working class and other
marginalised peoples that pushed Third World elites to support radical
moves on the international scene.
Post-structuralist scholars tend to fall into this trap. For example,
David Kennedy of Harvard Law School writes: 'Rather than a stable
domain which relates in some complicated way to society or political
economy or class structure, law is simply the practice and argument
about the relationship between something posited as law and
something posited as society' (Kennedy 1988, 8).
In other words, in so far as international law is an ideological
construct and possesses a distinct form, it also has an independent
history. As Engels pointed out, 'every ideology...once it has arisen,
develops in connection with the given concept material further,
otherwise it would not be an ideology, that is, occupation with
thoughts as with independent entities, developing independently and
subject only to their own laws' (Engels nd: 372).
The sources of international law are seem as being articulated in
Article 38 para (1) of the Statute of the International Court of Justice
(ICJ). It reads:
The court, whose function is to decide in accordance with
international law such disputes as are submitted to it, shall apply:
international convention, whether general or particular...;
international custom, as evidence of a general practice accepted a
law;
the general principles of law recognised by civilised nations; and
...judicial decisions and the teachings of most highly qualified
publicists of the various nations, as subsidiary means for the
determination of rules of law.
13. As the present president of the ICJ has put it (Bedjaoui 1979, 128),
international law must 'accept the challenge being made to it both by
the structural disorder of the world economy and by the deeply felt
desire of all peoples for a new international economic order. However,
it is perfectly clear that to satisfy such hopes and to meet the needs of
the international community seeking for this new order, international
law cannot properly and effectively undertake its own
160
transformation if it confines to its traditional sources alone, i.e.,
custom, treaties and general legal principles. The inadequacy of
traditional ways of forming the rules of international law is very
sharply felt at the present time. What is to be done if not to make use
of other sources?'
Koskenniemi (1990, 27) puts it this way: 'the idea of an international
Rule of Law has been a credible one because to strive for it implies no
commitment regarding the content of the norms thereby established or
the character of society advanced'.
It is true that the distinctive nature of the international legal process
in which sovereign states negotiate ensures that even a group of
powerful states cannot translate their economic interests directly into
law. Other states have to agree to undertake certain obligations and
even puppet states posses a degree of independence in shaping their
external relations. International economic relations, in other words, is
not passively mediated by particular national economies. However, this
does not on the other hand mean that power does not write its
interests into law. It merely defines the limits of its role in the
international legal process.
We recognise that 'globalisation' is an essentially contested concept
(Hirst and Thompson 1995; Hoogvelt 1997). What we adopt here is a
working definition which highlights its general feature.
It is often forgotten that the IMF/WB combine achieve their goals
through imposing legal obligations on states. International Monetary
Law has evolved through, among other things, the interpretation of the
Articles of Agreement of the IMF. According to Dam (1982, 117) 'the
history of interpretation of the Fund's Articles of Agreement is nothing
more, and nothing less, than the record of the rules of the Fund'. He
then goes on to point out that 'perhaps the most interesting evolution
has occurred with respect to those rules dealing with access to Fund
resources and, in particular, what has come to be known in Fund
parlance as "conditionality". That term refers to the conditions that
the Fund may impose on access to its resources and on their
subsequent use by member countries.' See also Gold (1984). At a later
point in this article we discuss the anti-democratic nature of the
decision-making process in the IMF.
Hoogvelt (1997, 172) cites one senior World Bank manager who
resigned after 12 years as stating: 'Everything we did from 1983
onwards was based on our new sense of mission to have the south
161
"privatised" or die; towards this end we ignominiously created
economic bedlam in Latin America and Africa'.
MIGA insures foreign direct investments against non-commercial risks.
For a summary see Petersmann (1988, 50-62).
BITS represent a clear retreat from CERDS; the latter laid down a
restrictive basis for the payment of compensation for expropriated or
national property.
The Guidelines recommend a 'general approach of free admission'. It
then calls for fair and equitable treatment of foreign investment. For
the text of the World Bank Guidelines on the Treatment of Foreign
Direct Investment see UN (1996, 247-55).
On the MAI see Dhar and Chaturvedi (1998, 837-50) and The Guardian
Weekly 1998.
This is in contrast to the view that 'technology is the archetypal
common heritage of mankind since it is the expression of man's spirit,
his boldness and his conquests, of the advance of science and human
knowledge over the centuries and beyond state boundaries' (Bedjaoui
1979, 231).
'During the period 1990-94, 15 meerings were convened which resulted
in a Draft Agreement Relating to the Implementation of Part XI of the
UN Convention on the Law of the Sea of December 10, 1982. On July
28, 1994, the General Assembly adopted the Agreement by 121 votes to
none, with seven abstentions. The Agreement substantially
accommodates the US and other western nations' objections to the
deep sea-bed mining regime... It eliminates major stumbling blocks,
such as a production limitation in favour of land-based producers of
minerals, and mandatory transfer of technology and significantly
restrains the role of envisaged supranational mining company, the UN
Enterprise' (Scrijver 1997, 217-18).
In 1965 the International Centre for the Settlement of Investment
Disputes (ICSID) was established under the auspices of the World
Bank. Those states which become members of ICSID agreed to have a
dispute with a private entity settled before it.
For example, Article 18-B allowed developing countries to impose
quantitative restrictions to safeguard an adverse balance of payments
situation. This has now become difficult as the new understanding on
Article 18-B tightens the rules governing its invocation. See Dubey
(1996, 85ff).
'...the general level of real commodity prices had fallen by 1986 to
162
below the nadir reached in 1932 during the Great Depression of the
inter-war era' (Maizels 1994, 53).
This section borrows heavily from my article 'The Law and Politics of
Regional Solution of the Refugee Problem: The Case of South Asia',
RCSS Policy Studies 4, Regional Centre for Strategic Studies, Colombo,
July 1998.
It has also been its experience during the Cold War era that support for
authoritarian regimes has inevitably led to a backlash which threatens
foreign investment and property.
GA Res 41/128. The declaration was adopted by a recorded vote: 146-1
(US)-8.
Schermers and Blokker (1995, 4) in their well known work on
international institutional law write that 'the institutional law of
international organisations comprises those rules of law which govern
their legal status, structure and functioning'. Schermers and Blokker
go on to observe: 'While, in the land of legal science, there is no
strongly established tradition of developing theories of international
organisations, this is different for the neighbouring discipline of
political science... These studies, of course, approach international
organisations from a different perspective; they pose different
questions and use different methodology. They are more interested in
matters of power and influence, while legal studies depart from rules'.
(pp. 8-9).
This agenda is resisted by what may be called the non-
transnationalised fractions under the banner of 'nationalism'. Its
critique of these institutions often coincides with that offered by left
parties without, of course, partaking in the vision of establishing
democratic socialism.
This is done through incorporating the negative consensus system.
Article 16.4 of the 'Understanding on Rules and procedures governing
the Settlement of disputes' (DSU) states that a Panel Report would be
adopted within 60 days unless one of the parties appeals the report or
'the DBS (Disputes Settlement Body) decides by consensus not to
adopted the report'. It means that even if a single state votes in favour
of the adoption of the report submitted under the DSS it will be binding
on the parties to the dispute.
See Article 22 of the DSU for the provisions on cross-retaliation.
For a discussion on the two alternative paradigms see Jackson (1989,
85-88).
Even before the conclusion of the Uruguay Round of Trade
Negotiations and the establishment of the new DSS, Bhagwati
163
(1988, 93, 105) had pointed out that the 1988 legislation represented
'pernicious bilateralism' and that Super 30 is 'like Judge Dee of
mediaeval China becoming the plaintiff, judge and jury'. Since the time
this article was written the WTO Appellate Body has denied that (after
the Clinton administration gave on undertaking to his effect) the US
permitting unilateral determination should not be involved in relation
to WTO members.
'AD is simply a packaging of protectionism to make it look something
different... AD is a major loophole in the GATT, used strategically by
firms' (Hoekmann and Kostecki 1995, 177-78). Further, by allowing a
unilateral national response
(anti-dumping duties or countervailing duties) the more economically
powerful nations can have a considerable impact on smaller trading
nations, while the reverse may not be true (ibid., 243). Article 17.6(ii) of
'Agreement on Implementation of Article VI' (the Anti-dumping Code)
states that where 'a relevant provision of the Agreement admits of
more than one permissible interpretation, the panel shall find the
authorities measure to be in conformity with the Agreement if it rests
upon one of those permissible interpretations'. As noted by Palmeter
(1995), 'a major goal of US user industries in the Uruguay round was to
limit the ability of GATT panels to overturn domestic decisions. The
standard of review embodied in the Agreement reflects the power of
the industries supporting AD. The lobby was strong enough to make
this specific issue a deal-breaker for the United States, and it obtained
most of what it sought'.
'The extent to which developing countries rather than industrialised
countries are dependent upon the financial assistance from the IMF is
illustrated by the fact that the last time IMF loans were drawn by any
of the industrialised countries was in 1979, namely, by Australia and
New Zealand' (Gerster 1993).
Despite the fact that the developing country membership has
increased from 93 in 1970 to 135 in 1993 the voting power has
decreased from 37 per cent in 1970 to 34 per cent in 1993 (Gerster
1993, 122). The reason for this state of affairs is to be traced to the
method of determining voting power. By becoming a member each
state acquires a basic voting power consisting of 250 votes. The
rationale for distribution of basic votes was, other than playing
homage to the principle of sovereign equality of states, the need to
prevent, in however small a way, control of the institution by a few
countries, an objective at that point articulated and shared by the
164
US. This role of basic votes has substantially eroded in the last five
decades. While the membership of the organisation has increased from
44 in 1947 to 175 in 1993 the proportion of basic votes to total votes
has decreased from 12.5 per cent in 1947 to 3 per cent in 1993 (Ibid.,
123). In addition to basic votes each state receives a further vote for
every 1,00,000 SDRs of its IMF quota; quotas are determined (at least
in theory) in accordance with the importance a particular country has
in the world economy, and thus its capacity to contribute to the
convertible financial resources of the Fund. The weight of subscription-
based voting power, as would be evident, has increased from 87.5 per
cent in 1947 to 97 per cent in 1993. It only needs to be added that
decision concerning stabilisation and adjustment programmes merely
require an unqualified majority of 50 per cent.
This fact is of importance because countries like Saudi Arabia have
most often the same interests as other creditor developed countries
(Fergusan 1988, 219).
The relative lack of concern in the period prior to that can be traced
inter alia to the fact that the IMF 'was peripheral to the broad
operationalisation of international economic relations' (Fergusan 1988,
84).
This was particularly after the unilateral decision of the US on August
15, 1971 regarding the convertibility of its currency and its negative
impact on the Third World countries (ibid. 88 and 107).
Article 10 of the Charter stated: 'All states are juridically equal and, as
equal members of the international community, have the right to
participate fully and effectively in the international decision-making in
the solution of world economic, financial and monetary problems, inter
alia, through the appropriate international organisations in accordance
with their existing and evolving rules, and to share equitably in the
benefits resulting therefrom'.
On the notion of relative inequality see Zamora (1980, 603) and Chimni
(1987, 95-98).
As Fergusan (1988, 91) has noted, 'In the Fund itself, by the end of the
1970s, they were arguing for a specific quantitative limit to the
quantum of quotas they should be allotted, as a group. They pressed
for 45 per cent of Fund quotas'.
In these regards see Gerster (1993, 126-27). As Fergusan (1988, 99) has
noted: 'There are three ways, theoretically, to effect adjustments in
voting power in the IMF. The first way is by changing the quantum of
basic votes granted by each member--an approach that
165
necessitates an amendment of the Articles. The second way is to
obtain changes in the criteria that are used for the allocation of
quotas... And, finally, an improvement in the relative economic
performance of countries has traditionally been rewarded by increased
quotas in the Fund'.
UN Newsletter, vol. 52, no. 6, February 8, 1997, p. 2. See for a list of
'achievements' 'The UN and Business: A Global Partnership', UN
Newsletter, New Delhi, vol. 53, no. 28, July 11, 1998, p. 8.
Indeed, transnational capital is able to influence the agenda-setting as
was 'evident at the UNCED in June 1992'. According to Thomas,
'transnational played a formative role in shaping the Rio agenda, aided
by their financial support for the conference, and the high-profile role
and the access given to the Business Council for Sustainable
Development by conference chairman Maurice Strong. At the behest of
the US all references to transnational corporations were removed from
Agenda 21' (Thomas: 12).
According to Cox (1993, 62), among the features of international
institutions which express their 'hegemonic' role are the following: (1)
they embody the rules which facilitate the expansion of hegemonic
world orders; (2) they are themselves the product of the hegemonic
world order; (3) they ideologically legitimate the norms of the world
order; (4) they co-opt the elite from peripheral countries; and (5) they
absorb counter-hegemonic ideas.
For an application of this understanding to the Office of the United
Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) see Chimni 1998,
365-368.
This statement should not in any way be read to imply a defence of the
actions of the Iraqi regime which clearly violated the norms of
international law in invading Kuwait. Nor should it in any way be seen
as excusing its terrible human rights record.
Said here makes reference to Fouad Ajami's article. 'The Summer of
Arab Discontent', Foreign Affairs, vol. 65, Winter 1990-91. See also
(Aksoy and Robins 1992, 202--13;. As they put it: 'The war in the
Persian Gulf was cast as a global confrontation between humanity and
bestiality, a battle between civilisation and barbarism. This was a war
to defend the principles of modernity of reason against the forces of
darkness. It was in this cause that the smart weapons of the west
meted out what was projected as a moral kind of violence. In this
cause, the angels became exterminators' (p. 202).
See the annual Human Development Reports in this regard.
166
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Scrijver, Nico, Sovereignty over Natural Resources: Balancing Rights
and
Duties (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).
Sornarajah, M., 'The Climate of International Arbitration', Journal of
International Arbitration, 1991, vol. 8, no. 2, pp. 47-86.
South Centre, For a Strong and Democratic United Nations: A South
Perspective on UN Reform, Geneva, 1996. Starke, J.G., Introduction to
International Law, Butterworths, Kent, 1989,
10th edition.
Teeple, Gaiy, 'Globalisation as the Triumph of Capitalism: Private
Property, Economic Justice and the New World Order' in Ted
Schrecker (ed.), Surviving Globalism: The Social and Environmental
Challenges (Wiltshire: Macmillan Press, 1997), pp. 15-38.
Teson, R. Fernando, Humanitarian Intervention: An Inquiry into Law
and
Morality (Ardsley-on-Hudson: Transnational Publishers, 1998).
--, 'The Rawlsian Theory of International Law', Ethics and International
Affairs, 1995, vol. 9, pp. 79-101. Thomas, M. Franck, 'The Right to
Political Participation in International
Law', Yale Journal of International Law, 1992, vol. 86.
Trebilcocok, M.J. and R. Howse, The Regulation of International Trade
(London: Routledge, 1995).
Uimonen, P. and J. Whalley, Environmental Issues in the New Trading
System (London: Macmillan Press, 1997).
UNCTAD, Trade and Development Report, 1991.
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United Nations, International Investment Instrumens: A Compendium,
vol. 1, (New York: UN, 1996).
US Committee for Refugees, At Fortress Europe's Moat: The 'Safe Third
Country' Concept, Washington DC, 1997 July.
Waver, David, 'Some Agnostic Observations on Intellectual Property' in
K.R.G. Nair and Ashok Kumar (eds.), Intellectual Property Rights (New
Delhi: Allied Publishers, 1994), pp. 238-62.
Weston, Burns H., 'Security Council Resolution' 678 and Persian-Gulf
Decision-making', American Journal of International Law, 1991,
vol. 85, p. 522.
Zamora, Stephen, 'Voting in International Economic Organisations',
American Journal of International Law, 1980, vol. 74.
173

CHAPTER FIVE
Gramscian Hegemony and the Legitimation of Imperialism
RAJEN HARSHE
Understanding imperialism, with its varying dimensions, can become
an intellectually thrilling endeavour if the quest to explore the
relationship between imperialism and hegemony is constantly kept
alive. The term hegemony is often employed in the discourses of
International Relations (IR) Studies to describe the dominance of one
state over another state or a group of states. Obviously, the dominant
state or the hegemon has the necessary authority and power to lay
down the norms and rules of governance wherever its hegemony
prevails.1 Practically all non-Marxist scholars from diverse schools of
thought in IR Studies use the term hegemony to describe dominant-
dependent ties between the hegemon and the states that fall under its
hegemony.
Within the Marxian tradition of scholarship, however, the term
hegemony is increasingly being deployed in the Gramscian sense
where the dominance of the hegemon is not perceived as a one-sided
relationship. In fact, the complex ensemble of dominance that
envelops dependent states/religions and their societies on one hand
and the hegemon on the other is premised on the reciprocity of
interaction involving elements of coercion as well as consent.
Obviously, whenever hegemonic forces
174
operate an hegemonic order it is the combination of coercion and
consent that provides legitimacy to such exercise of power.
To put it tersely, the Gramscian notion of hegemony is elastic as well
as complex. It is elastic because of its wider applicability across time
and space. For instance, the concept of hegemony can be deployed in
the domestic socio-political context of any state as well as in the
context of any dominant mode of production such as capitalism that
cuts across the boundaries of states, nations and regions. For, the
concept of hegemony has an inherent capacity to unveil how the
dominant class along with its ruling coalition of class forces, national
as well as transnational, organises its dominance over
society/societies within and across states.
Apart from its elasticity, the intrinsic complexity of the concept of
hegemony has two interrelated and dialectically interactive
dimensions. The first dimension involves the material base that
sustains any hegemony while the second dimension involves the
superstructure that provides the space to legitimise the hegemony.
The material base subsumes forces and instruments of production
whereas social relations of production are part of the superstructure.
Thus, the superstructure includes ideological, ethical, religious and
cultural spheres of activities. In the process of legitimising their
hegemony the coalition of the ruling class penetrates the
superstructure with hegemonising ideas as well as ideologies that
justify their rule.2 Subsequently, legitimacy is sought by invoking
mechanisms of consent, cooptation and coercion. In a word,
hegemony, in the Gramscian sense, could be conceived as well as
understood, in a given context, by acquiring a grasp over the
dialectical interaction between the material base and the
superstructure of any social formation under review.
Keeping the above explanation of Gramsci's concept of hegemony in
mind, this chapter ventures to explore the relationship between
imperialism and hegemony. This analysis begins by making some
preliminary observations regarding the main object, method,
objectives and scope of Gramsci's search. Subsequently, it reflects on
the genesis and nature of some
175
important Gramscian concepts in order to place the concept of
hegemony in proper perspective. On the basis of this exercise a few
pertinent questions concerning the applicability of hegemony in IR
Studies are raised. While handling such questions a critical
perspective on select studies that have applied the concept of
hegemony is attempted.
Antonio Gramsci: A Few Preliminary Observations
Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937) has, undoubtedly, enjoyed a unique place
among the Marxist scholars of this century owing to his relentless
effort in exploring the significance of the superstructure in any social
formation.3 In fact, the penetrating insights that Gramsci offered on
the nature of interactions between the base and superstructure
appeared quite unconventional in the context of the then dominant
trend in Marxian analysis.
Prior to Gramsci, Marxist writings were replete with the analysis of the
material base of any social formation. More often, orthodox Marxist
writers wrote with a conviction that it was the material base that
determined and even conditioned the social relations of production
and hence the superstructure. However valid this schematic
formulation appeared, it virtually suspended intellectual curiosity
about the gravity, magnitude and the dimensions of the role of
superstructure vis-a-vis the material base. For instance, explaining the
influence and role of religion or nationalism solely with reference to
the material base of a given social formation was not merely
deterministic but manifestly inadequate. However, orthodox Marxist
perspectives were prone to such deterministic or reductionist
interpretations because studies concerning the superstructure were
still not developed within the Marxian tradition of scholarship.
Gramsci essentially ventured to surmount this limitation in Marxist
perspectives by turning the movements in superstructures into the
main objects of his study. He treated the domain of superstructure
with a measure of autonomy and brought into focus the dialectical
manner in which the base and
176
the superstructure continuously interacted with each other. Gramsci
applied his mind to the domain of culture, in is broad sense, to come to
terms with social and cultural movements that formed consciousness.
While underlining the social significance of culture, Gramsci wrote:
Culture is something quite different. It is organisation, discipline of
one's inner self, a coming to terms with one's own personality; it is the
attainment of higher awareness, with the aid of which one succeeds in
understanding one's own historical value, one's own function in life,
one's own rights and obligations.5
Gramsci gave a good deal of attention to understanding culture and
cultural politics in theory as well as in practice. He consistently
grappled to figure out social meaning and the implications of cultural
activities initiated at the intellectual and popular levels. Consequently,
he was well-versed with the main currents in the poetry, literature and
theatre of his times. He realised the powerful social influence of
literature and theatre. Particularly, in view of the potential impact of
theatre, he perceived that the writings of Ibsen and Pirandello were
rich in revolutionary potential. In addition to his preoccupation with
the artistic and cultural activities of intellectuals, Gramsci studied the
social impact of the popular literature and folklore in his times.
Gramsci's critical as well as sensitive appraisal of diverse cultural
trends, through his writings, can form a separate theme of inquiry.
However, it would be apt to underline two interrelated concerns that
inspired Gramsci's cultural writings. First, Gramsci wanted to find out
how the ideological structure of the dominant class was actually
organised. This certainly involved an understanding of journalistic,
intellectual, cultural and scientific activities through diverse organised
forms. Indeed, all these activities under organised forms constituted
an integral part of material organisation that aimed at maintaining,
defending and developing the theoretical and ideological front of the
dominant class.7 He also continuously harped on the creation of
proletarian civilisation and culture.8 Apart from
177
capturing economic and political power, Gramsci thought that the
proletariat must face the problem of capturing intellectual power. To
put it simply, his notion of proletarian revolution subsumed the
replacement of bourgeois cultural consciousness by proletarian
cultural consciousness. Having spelt out these two interrelated
concerns, we can briefly discuss Gramsci's method of analysis.
Any meaningful exercise in understanding the Gramscian method of
analysis can begin with a statement on his understanding of positivism
that was the dominant trend in social scientific inquiry. What is more,
Soviet Marxist theorists such as Bukharin were also well disposed
towards positivism. Positivist thinkers like August Comte and Herbert
Spencer, during the nineteenth century, had initiated the positivist
movement in social science. They believed in the unity of knowledge
and methodological unity. Hence, the positivist school in social
science, since its inception, has attempted to adapt methods,
techniques and procedures prevalent in the inquires of natural science
to social science. Positivist philosophy considerably influenced the
discipline of sociology. Sociology, influenced by positivist thought, in
Gramsci's view was founded on empirically based statistical laws and
it was useful in identifying quantifiable social realities. However,
Gramsci thought that if such laws were relied on beyond limits they
would entail catastrophic results9 because interpreting qualitative
changes was beyond the statistical laws that were empirically
founded. For instance, certain realities like profound changes in mass
consciousness could elude the grasp of such laws. Gramsci thought
that the insensitive materialism of the positivist could, at the most,
offer a mechanistic view of society.
Likewise, Gramsci differed with Bukharin, especially with his analysis
of Marxism in the study called 'Theory of Historical Materialism'.
Bukharin's work, as its subtitle suggested, was a popular manual of
Marxist sociology.10 Gramsci differed with Bukharin on three counts.
First, he objected to Bukharin's distinction between history and
sociology and the latter's insistence that Marxism was a sociological
rather than a historical
178
theory.11 Second, since Bukharin was influenced by nineteenth century
positivists he insisted that all the forms of intellectual activities
should conform to the pattern set by natural science. As we have
noted, Gramsci differed with this position. And finally, as James Joll
has put it, 'Gramsci disliked Bukharin's attempt to reduce the dialectic
to any mechanical principle of the equilibrium of forces'. 12 It would be
possible to get the feel of the Gramscian method if we keep his
critique of positivism as a backdrop.
In fact, Gramsci relied on Marxism as a method of analysis. He proved
remarkably sensitive towards Marxism's capacity to unite human
experience from various aspects of life and thought. This obviously
prompted Gramsci to weave concerns from a diverse range of
disciplines such as history, philosophy, ethics, sociology, politics and
natural science into a single system while using Marxism as a method
of inquiry and analysis. Gramsci viewed Marxism as a philosophy in
need of elaboration.13
Being a Marxist, the dialectic continued to be central to Gramsci's
method. Gramsci used the term 'dialectic' in three ways. First, at the
rudimentary level, he used it to describe any reciprocal interaction,
e.g., party leaders and the masses. Second, while analysing any
historical development he used it in the Hegelian and Marxian senses.
Thus, Hegelian 'negation of negation' or the Marxian notion of the
essentially contradictory nature of all social formations that triggered
off the march of history were employed by Gramsci to interpret history.
Finally, Gramsci also used the term 'dialectic' to unravel the infinitely
complex relationship between the base and superstructure.
Particularly, while interpreting change from quantity to quality,
Gramsci heavily drew from Hegel and Marx to portray the precise
nature of dialectical interaction between the base and superstructure.
It must also be noted that Gramsci sincerely believed that the
fundamental function and significance of dialectic could only be
grasped if the philosophy of praxis was conceived as an integral and
original philosophy. In his view the philosophy of praxis opened up a
new phase of history and a new phase in the
179
development of world thought.14 As a social theorist and political
activist Gramsci found in the dialectic an opportunity to open up a new
phase in human history that could emancipate people. He conceived
the project of emancipation through a praxiological commitment to the
proletarian revolution--and with this he aimed at building a new moral
and spiritual order. That is why he developed a passion for an incisive
analysis of the politics of revolutionary change.
The incisiveness in Gramsci's analysis was evident when he
interpreted the Bolshevik revolution in Russia as 'The Revolution
Against "Capital".'15 Indeed, a pre-capitalist country like Russia had
revolted against the Capital of Marx which anticipated the proletarian
revolutions in the advanced capitalist countries. However, despite this
apparent revolt against Capital, Gramsci recognised the significance
of revolutionary change in Russia. He hastened to add that the
Bolsheviks may have rejected certain statements in Capital but not its
invigorating and immanent thought.16 In fact, the revolutionaries were
a living embodiment of that thought. While explaining the process of
revolution in Russia, Gramsci stated that the conditions of World War I
enabled the peasant in Russia to defend the Russian Fatherland. The
conglomeration of peasant soldiers forced a bond of solidarity. Thus
war could achieve what fifty to sixty years of intermittent mass
struggles generally achieved! As a result the peasant soldiers,
conscious of their solidarity and interests, followed the Bolsheviks and
turned their guns on the Czars to bring about a revolutionary change. 17
In short, Gramsci's interpretation of the revolution in Russia
highlighted his abilities to offer sophisticated and imaginative insights
on the ties between the base and the superstructure thereby enriching
Marxism as a method of analysis. Having discussed the Gramscian
method, a few words on the context of his writings will complete these
preliminary observations.
An overwhelming proportion of Gramsci's writings use Italy as the
main reference point. Indeed, his writings have been rooted in the
main reference of the intellectual, social, political and cultural history
of Italy. Although Gramsci primarily
180
concentrated his attention on understanding the dialectical interaction
between state and civil society in Italy, he also placed such
interaction in a comparative perspective by intensely reflecting on
state-civil society ties in other countries. This allowed him to evolve a
package of concepts to analyse state-civil society ties in diverse
historical conditions. Gramsci's concepts were stuffed full of
enormous explanatory potential. As will be discussed at a later stage,
they had a wider applicability across time and pace. Since the entire
range of Gramscian concepts is interwoven with his all-pervasive and
overarching construct of hegemony, it is essential to discuss
Gramsci's concept of hegemony.
Hegemony: Origins and Nature
Gramsci deployed the term 'hegemony' to understand the everchanging
ties between state and civil society. Broadly speaking, the primary
domain of the state's activities is political, while social, cultural,
educational and religious institutions that function outside political
society form a part of civil society.18 However, thanks to his concept of
hegemony, Gramsci refrained from restricting the definition of state to
the executive, administrative and coercive apparatus of government.
Since government was more often constrained by the hegemony of the
leading class of the entire social formation, Gramsci insisted that the
notion of state had to include the underpinnings of the political
structure in civil society.19 Thus the Gramscian notion of state, at one
level, included political and civil society because of the pervasive
presence of the state in civil society. While analysing the complexities
of interaction between the state and civil society in different
circumstances, Gramsci sometimes wrote about balance between the
state and civil society and stressed that the distinction between state
and civil society was artificial because they were in reality one and
the same.20 In a way, Gramsci's ceaseless search to identify structures
of hegemony hindered his search for a satisfactory conception of both
the state and civil society.
181
Gramsci's concept of hegemony was shaped by a number of
interrelated concerns that had immediate and long-term relevance. For
instance, understanding the course of the Bolshevik revolution under
Lenin or promoting the functioning of the Third International were a
part of his immediate interest while his long-term concerns subsumed
a whole-hearted commitment to the philosophy of praxis and the
indisputable passion for the Italian past. That is why Gramsci's
hegemony included Leninist' and Machiavellian strands.21
Gramsci tried to analyse, critically, the experiment of building the
dictatorship of the proletariat in the Soviet Union under Lenin's
stewardship. Lenin had conceived the proletariat as the dominant and
directing class. Dominance implied dictatorship and directing implied
the consent of the allied classes, notably the peasantry. Gramsci was
particularly fascinated by the notion of consent in organising the
proletarian hegemony. Besides this, he also shared Lenin's fascination
for Jacobinism.22 The Jacobins, during the course of the French
Revolution, had displayed an admirable capacity to steer mass political
action. And, like Lenin, Gramsci was sensitive to the struggle of mass
political action in bringing about a revolutionary social change.
In fact, Gramsci aspired to promote the process of revolutionary
change in the context of Italy. While serving this objective, his deep
and insightful understanding of Italian history as also his reflections
and ponderings over Machiavelli's celebrated work, The Prince, came
in handy. After all, initiating any revolutionary change in the concrete
circumstances of Italy warranted an in-depth understanding of the
Italian ethos. Gramsci's penchant for understanding the past virtually
compelled him to peep into the intricacies of the civilisational and
societal past of Italy. His extensive notes on Italian history offered
evidence of the depth and range of his concerns.23 Moreover, by
offering an innovative interpretation of Machiavelli's The Prince,
Gramsci was able to virtually recast the potentially revolutionary ideas
of the former in the light of this century. Hence, Gramsci's brief notes
on Machiavelli presented
182
in his prison notebook The Modern Prince need elaborate treatment.24
Gramsci offered an original, thought-provoking and praxiologically
stimulating interpretation of Machiavelli's (1971) The Prince because
the entire exercise in this book had a two-fold impact on Gramsci.
First, Gramsci was fascinated by the methodology of Machiavelli that
helped the latter investigate a political phenomenon in a scientific
manner. Indeed, Machiavelli, according to Gramsci, had developed and
theorised central arguments in The Prince with rigorous logic and
scientific detachment. Second, Gramsci was also inspired by
Machiavelli's presentation of a Utopia offering visions on state-society
ties. In his perception, The Prince was a splendid effort to synthesise
political science and political ideology into a live and dramatic myth.25
While building this myth, Gramsci thought that Machiavelli placed the
prince on a pedestal to lead people and found a new state.
On the basis of his understanding of Machiavelli's work, Gramsci drew
certain important insights to translate his praxiological commitment
into a revolutionary process of change in Italy. Gramsci's reading of
The Prince prompted him to conclude that like a precocious Jacobin,
Machiavelli's prince merges with people, feels their consciousness and
becomes an expression of such consciousness. For Gramsci, the
logical argument worked out in The Prince appeared like an auto-
reflection on the part of people. It represented an inner reasoning
worked out in popular consciousness to press the need for urgency of
action. In substance, by talking about action or condensed popular
consciousness epitomised in The Prince, Gramsci could underline the
primacy of politics that aimed at bringing about change through
popular consciousness. And since such consciousness flowed from
intrinstic torments of thought within people it also represented a kind
of political manifesto.26 In Gramsci's words, 'The modern prince, the
myth prince cannot be a real person, a concrete individual. It can only
be an organism, a complex element of society in which collective will,
183
which has recognised and has to some extent asserted itself in action,
begins to take concrete form'.27
In Gramsci's view, during modern times, history had provided this
organism in the form of the political party. Indeed, the political party
was the first cell that could bind together the germs of collective will
to become total and universal. Hence, the political party could be an
important agency to perform the functions of 'The Modern Prince'.
According to Gramsci, 'The Modern Prince must be and cannot but be
the proclaimer and organiser of intellectual and moral reform, which
also means creating the terrain for a subsequent development of
national-popular collective will towards the realisation of a superior,
total form of modern civilisation'.28
It is plausible to discern certain odd similarities in the political agenda
of Machiavelli and Gramsci even though they encountered two
different phases of Italian history during the fifteenth and twentieth
centuries respectively. While the former was looking for the Prince to
find a supportive social base to build unified Italy in the fifteenth
century, the latter, during this century, was in search of an alternative
to fascism. The project of unified Italy formed an area of common
concern between Machiavelli and Gramsci. While Machiavelli could not
conceive of a unified Italian state without the Italian nation, Gramsci
could not visualise an alternative to fascism without organising
national-popular collective consciousness through a vanguard
revolutionary party. Both seemed deeply concerned about the destiny
of the Italian nation and their writings were also rooted in the ethos of
Italy.
Perhaps it was some measure of similarity in their concerns as also
orientation towards Italy's history that prompted Gramsci to borrow
Machiavelli's image of the centaur, half man half beast, to further
evolve his concept of hegemony. Gramsci was particularly concerned
about the combination of consent and coercion while evoking the
centaur to understand and develop his ideas on hegemony. Gramsci
gave a special emphasis to the element of consent while constructing
his notion of hegemony. In his view, whenever the consensual aspect
is in the foreground,
184
hegemony prevails, albeit there are possibilities of latent coercion.
But, more often, coercion is used in marginal and deviant cases. 29 In
contrast, any blatant and sustained use of coercion implies loss of
hegemony as also weakness of the state.
It is quite evident from Gramsci's writings that he aspired to witness
the advent of a consensual regime with popular support while waging
war on the fascist regime in Italy. His fascination for consensual
regimes prompted him to explore and spell out the mechanisms that
lead to consensus, especially in the liberal democratic societies of the
US, UK and France. For, on the basis of consensus, the ruling classes
of these societies were able to establish their hegemony over civil
society. As the imperative of understanding the interrelationship
between state and civil society persuaded Gramsci to test his concept
of hegemony in the context of capitalism, it gave a brilliant
methodological turn to the Marxist method of analysing capitalism.
By making a comparative analysis of state-civil society ties in diverse
spatiotemporal contexts, Gramsci could imaginatively explore the
dimensions of hegemony in advanced capitalist countries. To drive
home the varying permutations and combinations of state-civil society
ties Gramsci offered two typological contrasts. The first typology,
represented by Czarist Russia, had a fairly strong state with well-
developed coercive apparatuses like the army, police and secret
police. But it had a weak civil society because Czarist rule was not
legitimised among the mass of people through diverse institutions of
civil society. To put it tersely, the values that the Czarist state wanted
to propound were neither legitimised nor rooted in their social context.
Thus, the resulting disjuncture between state and civil society
harboured an in-built tension. Evidently, the Soviets found a vast
terrain in civil society to legitimise their ideology and used their
support base to replace the Czarist state which eventually crumbled
due to the frontal attack from the Bolshevik revolutionaries.30
In contrast to the societies of Eastern Europe, the second typology
primarily represented by West European states witnessed harmonious
rapports between state and civil society.
185
The coercive power in such states was capable of containing the
revolt against the status quo. Obviously, different organs of the civil
societies of the West European states had legitimised capitalist
ideology. There was a harmonious relationship between state and civil
society. Hence, according to Gramsci, as 'the state trembled a sturdy
structure of civil society was at once revealed. The state was only an
outer ditch, behind these stood a powerful system or fortresses and
earthworks; more or less numerous from one state to the next, it goes
without saying but this precisely necessitated an accurate
reconnaissance of each individual country'.31
By comparing and contrasting state-civil society ties with reference to
the development of capitalism Gramsci was able to evolve and enrich
his concept of hegemony. Indeed, there was a direct correlation
between hegemony in state-civil society rapports and the
establishment of hegemony. Hence, in the countries of Northern and
Western Europe the capitalist classes enjoyed a hegemonic position
over state and civil society. The alliance between the ruling classes
and auxiliary and subsidiary classes had facilitated the establishment
of such hegemony. In a word, as the ruling classes carved out a
hegemonic position for themselves they had to offer concessions to
subordinate classes to get acquiescence to bourgeois leadership, in
the bargain. In the context of the Western liberal democracies this also
meant acceptance of some form of social democracy on the part of
bourgeois leadership.32 Moreover, if capitalist values were entrenched
in civil society, the bourgeoisie, necessarily did not have to run the
state.33
Briefly, Gramsci's concept of hegemony enlarged the definition of the
state by exploring the strength of political structures within civil
society. Gramsci underscored the point that diverse kinds of state
apparatuses could themselves be controlled and directed by the well-
entrenched political structures within civil society. In concrete
historical terms, the church, the educational system, the press and all
such institutions that shape the modes of behaviour of people are
integral to the hegemonic social order. Indeed, Gramsci's concept of
hegemony
186
bridged a gap between the state and civil society to a point where
treating them as separate entities could practically serve no analytical
purpose.34 Having explained the concept of hegemony we can turn our
attention towards the organisation and operation of hegemony.
Organisation and Operation of Hegemony
The dominant class organises its hegemony, according to Gramsci, by
gaining the support of intellectuals.35 As an autonomous groups the
intellectuals perform mediating functions in the struggle of class
forces. In every social formation the dominant social group that
represents a specific mode of production creates its own social group
of intellectuals. Gramsci has called this group 'organic intellectuals'. 36
For instance, under capitalism, the capitalist entrepreneur creates
alongside himself the industrial technician, the specialist in political
economy, the organisers of a new culture or a new legal system, etc.37
Moreover, the entrepreneur, in Gramsci's view, himself represents a
higher level of social elaboration, already characterised by directive
and technical (intellectual) capacity.38 His intellectual or technical
capacities are certainly not confined to the economic sphere of
production because he has to be an organiser of masses of men in
order to build the confidence of investors in his business. The
capitalist entrepreneur along with the organic intellectuals of
capitalist society functions in the economic as well as social and
political fields.
Apart from the organic intellectuals there is also a category of
traditional intellectuals. These intellectuals represent an essential
social group from the preceding economic structure and give historical
continuity to the intellectuals as a social group.39 In the Italian
context, the most typical of the traditional intellectuals have been the
ecclesiasts who performed important services in the domain of
religion or moral sphere. Organically, they were bound to the landed
aristocracy and they could use state privileges connected with the
landed aristocracy.
187
More often, the ruling classes organise their hegemony by gaining
support from both categories of intellectuals. As the process of
organising hegemony unfolds itself, the dominant fundamental group is
conceived and presented as the motor force of expansion of the
development of national energies.40 Such projection becomes possible
because the dominant group continues to coordinate the interests of
subordinate groups.41 In the ultimate analysis, the formation of stable
equilibrium between class forces determines the life of the state that
is hegemonised by the dominant group.
The Historic Bloc
When the equilibrium of class forces puts hegemony in action the
'historic bloc' gets constituted. Gramsci has conceived the concept of
a historic bloc as a dialectical construct emanating from diverse
interacting elements that spread across state and civil society. These
interacting elements could be subjective as well as objective. They
could be located in the structure (base) as well as superstructure. In
essence they create a larger unity. Thus, the concept of a historical
bloc binds structure and superstructure. According to Gramsci,
'structures and superstructures form an historic bloc. That is to say,
the complex contradictory and discordant ensemble of the
superstructure is the reflection of the ensemble of the social relations
of production'.42
Thus, when hegemony is operative the diverse spheres such as the
political, social, ethical, ideological, legal and economic interact with
each other m harmony. The interactive rapports between the base and
superstructure forbid the risk of reductionist interpretations of any
social reality. For, historical materialism has been receptive to the
reciprocity of ties between ideas and material forces. It does not
reduce one to the other. In fact the material forces include social
relations of production as well as physical means of production.
Furthermore, the superstructure of ideology and political organisation
are not merely shaped by the material forces of production; they, in
turn, also shape the latter.
188
43
Building Counter-hegemony: War of Position and War of Movement
Since the very being of the notion of historic bloc is dialectical in its
content, every historic bloc leaves room for the development of a
counter-hegemonic project that stakes its claim for hegemony in any
social formation. Thus, in the context of capitalist hegemony, the
discordant elements within the subaltern or subordinate classes rise
up to organise their counter-hegemonic project. Subsequently, an
avant-garde party gives expression to their class interests as well as
world-view. The party becomes a forum for intensive debate in the
process of building a counter-hegemonic project.
The counter-hegemonic project can be executed with reference to the
specificities of state-civil society ties in a given social formation.
While elaborating the mechanisms of building such a project Gramsci
drew two concepts from military science, applicable in fundamentally
two different conditions. The first set of conditions, by and large, was
ever present in the advanced industrialised societies of Western
Europe which witnessed the evolution of hegemonic states-civil
societies. Gramsci believed that the vanguard parties could challenge
hegemony in such states through a war of position. The war of position
implied that the counter-hegemonic project had to commence within
civil society. It was feasible to control the state by first bringing the
institutions of civil society under control. The second set of conditions
was present in Czarist Russia where civil society was primordial and
gelatinous while the state was everything. Under the circumstances,
the vanguard party had to launch a war of movement to make a frontal
assault on the state to seize state power. In essence, the war of
position involved a long-term revolutionary challenge in terms of
building alternative modes of thinking and values. In contrast, the war
of movement could be launched, successfully, through a short-range
revolutionary strategy. The notions of war of position and war of
movement have been flexible and Gramsci used them while
understanding
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the Gandhian project of emancipation against British imperial
hegemony.44
The organisation and operation of hegemony under a historic bloc
simultaneously stimulates hegemonic and counter-hegemonic
tendencies. However, there is a grey area of non-hegemonic state-civil
society between these two tendencies which Gramsci has explored
through the concepts of passive revolution and transformismo.
Passive Revolution and Transformismo
Gramsci was quite receptive to the processes of social change in
different societies. He perceived that social change that brought about
new modes of production and social relations was internalised in
advanced capitalist societies. The internalisation of social change, in
its turn, led to the establishment of a new social order. However, there
were also societies which either imported or thrust upon themselves
aspects of a new social order which appeared alien in their social
context. Thus, at the surface level they embraced a new order by
keeping the content of the old order intact. In this process, such
societies were blocked because two antagonistic forces were pulling
them in opposite directions. Since the introduction of the new order
did not involve any arousal of popular forces, the forces representing
the new order were devoid of a strong social base. Obviously, the
forces of the old order had the capacity to arrest the advance of the
forces of the new order. This created a stalemate which Gramsci
described as passive revolution. In the context of European history,
Caesarism had proved to be an effective device to end the stalemate
between two equal and opposing forces. Caesarism simply signified an
intervention of a strong man to end the stalemate. Depending upon the
circumstances, Caesarism could be viewed as a progressive as well as
reactionary force. For instance, when it presided over the orderly
development of a new state it was progressive, but if it stabilised the
existing power relations it was reactionary.46 Having
190
explained the notions of passive revolution it is essential to note how
Gramsci conceived the intrinsically reactionary character of the
fascist regime under Mussolini as a part of the continuation of passive
revolution.
In fact, Gramsci was keenly interested in understanding the passive
revolution under Fascist Italy. In his perception, the origins of passive
revolution in Italy could be located in the unification of Italy which was
achieved without any sustained popular movement. The new state in
Italy was controlled by an alliance of the industrial bourgeois class
from the north and land-owning classes from the south. The petty
bourgeois classes which staffed the bureaucracies of the new state
and political parties played an intermediary role between the various
population groups and the state. After World War I the workers and the
peasants, through their occupations of factories and land, were also
emerging as powerful social groups. But they did not have sufficient
strength to overthrow the existing state. Under these conditions, the
political process in Italy witnessed what Gramsci called 'displacement
of the basis of state' towards the petty bourgeoisie. The petty
bourgeois class operated on a nation-wide scale and acted as a
cornerstone of the fascist regime in preserving the status quo. In the
absence of the support of the subaltern groups of workers and
peasants, fascism sustained the position of the old dominant classes
and thereby continued the passive revolution. In Italy, fascist rule
relied on transformismo.47 Transformismo was a mechanism to
co-opt the radical opponents of the subaltern social groups within the
establishment. By assimilating such groups and mitigating the
militancy in their ideas transformismo could prevent the emergence of
class-based opposition to existing social and political order.48 In
substance, the concept of passive revolution has been a counterpart of
the concept of hegemony where no dominant class is able to establish
its hegemony in the Gramscian sense.
It is feasible to draw three significant inferences about Gramscian
hegemony from our discussion in the preceding pages. First, the
overarching and pervasive construct of
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hegemony has been central to any explanatory exercise on state-civil
society ties. Second, while explicating varying and complex
dimensions of hegemony in diverse historical circumstances, Gramsci
has employed several allied concepts like organic and traditional
intellectuals, historic bloc, war of movement and war of position,
passive revolution and transformismo. This has essentially served the
purpose of further illuminating hegemonic, counter-hegemonic and
non-hegemonic state-civil society rapports on the basis of empirical
evidence presented in a comparative perspective. Finally, and as a
corollary, the resulting elasticity as also the complexity have endowed
the construct of hegemony with enormous explanatory potential. In
view of this, the forthcoming part of this chapter will go into the
possibilities of applying Gramsci's concept of hegemony to the study
of international relations, in general, and imperialism in particular. In
this context, it would be appropriate to ask the following pertinent
questions. Can the scope of hegemony be extended by applying it to
the context of international society? Is it possible to understand the
organisation and operation of hegemony in an international society
dominated by the sovereign state system? How have certain specific
studies on US hegemony contributed towards the understanding of
imperialism? We can begin our analysis by underlining the growing
significance of international society with reference to diverse schools
of thought in IR Studies.
The Significance of International Society
Contemporary international relations have been characterised by a
phenomenal growth of inter-state and inter-societal ties. Apart from
the politico-diplomatic ties between states there is a vast terrain that
brings diverse societies together through bilateral as well as
multilateral transactions in a wide variety of economic, cultural,
scientific and technological activities. Also the rapid developments in
information and communication technologies have reduced the
distance between people. While living as a citizen of one state it is
possible to feel and act as a part of
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international society. Obviously, as a field of inquiry, IR Studies, over
the years, has virtually been compelled to come to terms with the
evolution as well as growing significance of international society. And
while taking cognizance of the increasing relevance of international
society practically all the important schools of thought within IR
Studies have ventured to accommodate and interpret the new realities
that emerged within the widening radius of the activities of
international society. In fact, the Gramscian perspective has offered
insights on the state and international society. In order to develop a
critical understanding of Gramscian insights it is necessary to place
them in a broad spectrum of contending perceptions and insights from
diverse schools in IR Studies. A brief sketch on how the contending
schools have grappled to capture the essence of international society
can be drawn in the following manner. First of all, it must be noted that
despite the gradual emergence of international society, the study of
international relations has primarily revolved round the interactions
between sovereign independent states. For, as juridical entities,
sovereign states have provided the formal basis of interactions
between states. The state has continued to be an important agency in
working out inter-societal arrangements. Thanks to the overriding
significance of inter-state ties, inter-societal ties have, more often,
occupied a secondary place in IR Studies. Nevertheless, it would be
useful to look at the state as also the notion of international society
through the perceptions of contending schools to locate the changing
directions in theorising state-society ties in IR Studies. In this context,
we shall offer a brief overview of the realist, the transnationalist, the
neo-Kantian and the Marxist perspectives.
Contending Perspectives on International Society
The Realist Perspective
The realist school in IR Studies has two dominant strands. The first
one includes American scholars such as Hans Morganthau,
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George Kennan and Henry Kissinger.49 Some of the prominent scholars
of neo-realist persuasion like Kenneth Waltz who ventured to recast
realist theory in changing international circumstances also form an
integral part of the first strand.50 The second strand within realism
includes British scholars such as Hedley Bull, Martin Wight and James
Mayall.51
In general, most of the studies within the first strand represent an
extreme end of the spectrum on state-society ties. In fact, the scholars
led by Morganthau offered a powerful, albeit oversimplified explanation
of international relations. They reduced international relations to the
struggle for power between competing nation states that aggressively
pursue national interests under any conditions. Thus, the international
arena which provides sites to promote national interests resembles a
Hobbesian state of nature. The neo-realists like Waltz modified this
orthodox view by conceiving international relations as a study of
autonomous interacting units within the structure of the inter-state
system. Besides being aware of the conflicts of interests among
interacting units, some neo-realists were also receptive to the areas of
interdependence between states. Nevertheless, both the realists and
the neo-realists believed that if there is an international society/order
then the defining characteristic of such a society is anarchy. Anarchy
implied the absence of a cohering principle and central authority.
Obviously, the anarchic order induced states to pursue their interests
rather aggressively. What is more, scholars like Barry Buzan have gone
to the extent of differentiating between immature and mature anarchy.
2
Conditions under immature anarchy are an international
approximation of the Hobbesian state of nature. In contrast, various
sets of international norms and rules are respected and observed by
all states under mature anarchy.
Unlike the first strand, the second strand of the realist school,
primarily represented by the English scholars, have developed the
notion of international society. In their perspective, 'international
society' refers to a relationship between states based on shared norms
and understandings.53 Such a society is an outcome of the
globalisation of Westphalia, in that it has
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stimulated the processes of forming nation states the world over. And
the emergence of the nation state on a world scale has concretised
the notion of a society of states. According to Hedley Bull:
A society of states (or international society) exists when a group of
states, conscious of certain common interests and common values,
forms a society in the sense they conceive themselves to be bound by
a common set of rules in their relation with one another, and share in
the working of common institutions.54
The English school's emphasis on identifying international society as a
society of states brought the notion of international society within the
realm of the IR Studies.
The Transnationalist Perspective
The transnationalist school made pioneer efforts to understand the
emergence of
non-state links between individuals, firms, interest associations and
social groups across state boundaries. The initial studies conducted
by Robert O. Keohane and Joseph Nye (1977) on complex
interdependence, inter-state as well as inter-societal, brought home
the significance of international society in IR Studies. Their writings
were influenced by behaviourism and the liberal internationalist
approach. Thus, they interpreted the actual processes that influence
and shape complex interdependencies within a liberal framework.
Subsequently, the sociological literature on globalisation further
enriched the transnational school. The writings of Michael
Featherstone, Ronald Roberston, Leslie Sklair and John Urry further
highlighted the significance of transnational linkages in diverse
spheres across state frontiers.55
The Neo-Kantian Perspective
Unlike the realist and the transnationalist, the neo-Kantian and the
Marxist perspectives constructed a Utopia for mankind. Instead of
feeling at ease with sovereign states, such Utopias
195
looked forward to build a stateless world to achieve emancipation for
mankind.
Immanuel Kant conceived the system of sovereign states as a barrier
in the path of enlightenment. By transcending the divide that
sovereignty imposed, Kant chose to think for the community of
mankind. One of the examples of the neo-Kantian perspective in
contemporary IR Studies has been the world order studies that are
well-thought-out and ably presented by Richard Falk.56 Falk has tried to
unveil the incipient movement away from the state-centric Westphalian
paradigm which has dominated the interactions between peoples
during the past three and half centuries. While drawing attention to
certain global problems such as threat of nuclear destruction, poverty,
underemployment, environmental degradation and the population
explosion, Falk has also underlined the limitations of resolving such
problems within the framework of the sovereign state system. Falk
foresees a new world order, involving central guidance and non-
territorial actors in which the statist level of international society will
weaken as the global and local levels strengthen.5''
There is some similarity between Falk's concerns over global problems
outside state barriers and Ronnie D. Lipschutz's (1992) recent effort to
reconstruct world polities. Such reconstruction is being done on the
basis of the emergence of global civil society. Lipschutz has tried to
look beyond the central but limiting concerns of 'structure' and
'process' that have dominated the IR Studies, to offer his account. In
his view, the notion of global civil society needs deeper investigation
for two reasons. First, there are many heteronomous transnational
political networks being established by and among actors within civil
society who themselves are, in a sense, imagined communities and
who are challenging, from below, the nation state system.58 Second,
the growth of global civil society represents an ongoing project of civil
society to reconstruct, re-imagine, or re-map world politics.59 As this
project proceeds, civil society is becoming global and hence a force to
be reckoned with. Certain important developments such as the growth
of
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global capitalist consumer culture and the efforts to globalise
concerns such as human rights and environment have already
strengthened bonds between people at the global level. Furthermore,
the rapidly growing network in global civil society of groups of
indigenous people, i.e., tribes, clans, societies and cultures that
predate the arrival of colonialism is also giving a different flavour to
global civil society. As a result of all these developments, the nation
state is witnessing existential strain but in Lipschutz's view it is going
to be around for sometime to come. That is to suggest, if the nation
state gradually loses its centrality, the entire set of configurations in
world politics might require a reconstruction with reference to the
emergence of global civil society.60
The Marxist Perspectives
Finally, the Marxist perspective's also offered a Utopia in the form of
the withering away of the state. Irrespective of the diverse strands
within Marxism, all the Marxist schools have had certain basic
agreements about the institution of the state. They have invariably
emphasised the class specific nature of the state. Accordingly, the
dominant classes use the state as an instrument of coercion to
maintain order in society. Evidently, particularistic or class-specific
values that the state upholds are treated as universal values.
In addition to their basic agreements on state-society ties, the
Marxists also agree on how and what binds societies together. In their
view, more than shared norms, values or political institutions, it is the
role performed by the economy that acts as the fundamental binding
factor between societies. In other words, inter-state relations may
constitute an international society. But such a society is not built on
shared norms and values. In fact, the group of states that constitute
international society function together because some powerful states
coerce others with a wide variety of ideological and military
instruments. Thus, in order to impose a set of values, schools, media,
families, universities, churches, and other institutions of
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civil society are pressed into service apart from keeping the threat of
military coercion alive. To put it tersely, the mechanisms identified by
Gramsci's concept of hegemony to obtain legitimacy through a
combination of consent and coercion can be extended to the
international arena.
A few inferences can be drawn in the light of this overview of the
contending perspectives on state and international society. First, the
issues surrounding the existence of the nation state--its presence,
diminishing significance, and likely disappearance-- continue to enjoy
centrality in all the major schools of thought in IR Studies. Second,
there are differences among all the schools about the notion of
international society. Such differences range from the realists who
perceive international relations as an outcome of immature or mature
conditions of anarchy to the idealists or neo-Kantians who are on the
verge of reconstructing world politics on the basis of the emergence of
global civil society. In fact, the realist and the
neo-Kantian perspectives represent two diametrically opposite and
extreme ends of the spectrum, whereas the English school which
premised its understanding of IR Studies on the notion of a system of
states or varieties of Marxist schools that fundamentally attribute the
capacity of binding different societies to the functioning of a given
mode of production can be placed in the middle of the spectrum.
However, the former school believes that the system of states
functions on the basis of shared understandings, norms, values and
political institutions. Implicit in such perspective is the belief in the
equality of states in the formal sense. In contrast to the English school
of realism, the Marxists, especially those with a Gramscian framework,
emphasise the capabilities of powerful states to hegemonise and
maintain the system of states in international society by combining
elements of consent and coercion. Hegemony has an ethical dimension
which gets served while organising consent, but the hegemonic order
implies coercion, implicit as well as explicit. Finally, and as a corollary,
among all the contending perspectives on state and international
society, the Gramscian concept of hegemony is most relevant in our
quest to understand imperialism. Its relevance can be further
198
underscored by spelling out the applicability of the concept of
hegemony in concrete circumstances.
The Gramscian Framework and International Relations
Although Gramsci had very little to say about international relations,
he did ponder over the linkages between fundamental social relations
and international relations.61 Since he was convinced that
international relations follow fundamental social relations, he wrote,
'Any organic innovation in the social structure, through its technical-
military expressions, modifies organically absolute and relative
relations in the international field too'.62 He used the term organic to
describe structural or long term changes as against short term or
conjunctural changes. His revealing clue to trace structural changes in
the military-strategic or geo-political balance to fundamental changes
in social relations may stimulate fresh thinking on the logic of
international relations, in general, and imperialism in particular.
However, such fresh thinking would warrant an imaginative
understanding of international society.
In the above stated context, Fred Halliday's innovative treatment of
international society is worth considering.63 His understanding of
international society is built upon an interstate and inter-societal
homology. Such an homology is perceptible in the domestic values and
organisation within states as well as the manner in which societies
are organised. That is why Halliday has treated international society
as homogeneity and attempted to interpret international relations
through the concept of homogeneity. The implications of this approach
are obvious. First, it is possible to investigate how international
pressures increasingly compel states to conform to each other in their
internal arrangements. In other words, the concept of homogeneity
can serve a useful purpose in finding out what is happening within
states and societies to ascertain the interaction between international
activity and domestic legitimacy or stability.65 Thus unlike the English
school of realism, Halliday's
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construct leaves us space to understand societies without losing sight
of the state or inter-state ties. Second, unlike the transnationalists,
the, concept of homogeneity accords considerable importance to the
concept of state. In fact, it sees comparative state formation as an
important part of the process of understanding international society. 66
Hence, it treats competition between states as a factor as formative in
the growth of more harmonious inter-societal, transnational links. And
finally, the homogeneous concept of society includes some of the main
concerns of the English realist school, such as organisation of political
systems or of the transnational school, such as transnational links.
However, it is primarily interested in working out how needs of
societies and policies, even if they remain distinct, tend to conform to
internationally defined models. To be precise, homogeneity is a
concept that pertains equally to internal development and
international relations.67
Concepts like homogeneity that appraise and link up internal
developments and international relations can go a long way in making
the package of Gramscian concepts relevant to IR Studies, because
through such concepts a link could be established between
fundamental social relations and international relations. Making this a
starting point, an attempt can be made to provide a rationale for the
application of Gramscian hegemony in IR Studies in the following
manner.
Gramsci's valuable package of concepts that basically emanated from
his understanding of state-civil society relations need not be confined
to the boundaries of the sovereign state. Such a position can be totally
anti-Marxist. For, the Marxists have always been principally interested
in studying diverse modes of production. And modes of production,
especially the capitalist mode, can seldom be restricted by the
boundaries of ethnicity, religion, nation and state. The capitalist mode
of production in this century, due to its global expanse, has bound
states and societies on a world scale. Evidently, the scope of the
activities of the state, under capitalism, inevitably gets extended
beyond its frontiers.
It is certainly not easy to explain the relationship between the
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modern state and capitalism. The modern state in Europe after the
seventeenth century provided a cradle for capitalism to grow. In the
process, the ruling classes under capitalism, at its monopoly stage,
used the state to embark on their imperial ventures.
Imperialism/capitalism outlived colonialism. Therefore, advanced
capitalist/imperialist states worked out mechanisms to control
formally sovereign states. These developments in the relationship
between the state and capitalism could be interrogated within a
Gramscian framework by raising the following relevant questions, i.e.,
how can the link between internal developments within a state and its
external expansion be established? How did the fundamental social
relations within the imperialist country stimulate imperialist control
over the colonies or the
post-colonial states? Did imperialist control involve an exercise of
hegemony in the Gramscian sense? These questions can be
researched within a Gramscian framework.
In fact, over the years, some important developments in the world
capitalist economy have been compelling enough to take resort to
Gramscian concepts in the process of offering satisfactory
explanations of such developments. For instance, during this century,
and especially after World War II, transnational capital has abundantly
demonstrated its capacity to be mobile. The mobility of capital, in its
turn, has led to greater internationalisation of production, distribution
and consumption, and closer integration of capital markets. To put it
simply, capitalism, in its impulse for internationalisation of production
has bound several geographical regions. This important historical
development can raise several important questions. For instance, what
will be the sociological impact of this major historical change? Can the
mobility of transnational capital be sustained without conceiving of
the existence of transnational social classes? Can transnational social
classes form a historic bloc with the goal of defending the hegemony
of transnational capital?
Indeed, some of these questions were raised by the dependency
theorists, albeit with a different emphasis and focus. The dependency
perspectives gave primacy to exchange relations
201
in their conceptualisation of world capitalism. Hence, such
perspectives were premised on the argument that price structures
favourable to the core states were being imposed on the peripheral
states. To execute the uneven price structures the bourgeoisie and the
managers of the core states ventured to incorporate the elites from
the semi-peripheral and peripheral areas of the world economy. Such
interpretations suffered from economic determinism because by
elevating the economic and technological factors they tended to
overlook the strength of political and social forces that brought about
historical change. Briefly, in view of the limitations of existing
perspectives within the Marxian tradition, it is all the more essential to
explore the explanatory potential of Gramscian concepts. We shall
undertake this exercise by offering a brief overview of one general as
well as a few specific studies that have viewed international social
realities from a Gramscian perspective.
General Guidelines to Apply Gramscian Concepts
Robert Cox's seminal essay, 'Gramsci, Hegemony and International
Relations' (1993) continues to be relevant as a general guideline to
apply Gramscian concepts in international relations. The main
strength of this essay lies in its conceptual clarity while simplifying
the complex implications of Gramsci's concepts. Owing to this clarity
certain fundamental links between Gramscian concepts and
international relations can be easily perceived as well as visualised.
In Gramscian analysis as well as in international relations, the state
has continued to be the basic entity. According to Gramsci the
hegemonies of social classes are built only after seizing control of the
state. The state, in other words, provides a site for struggle among the
conflicting classes, on the one hand; it also can be an instrument to
implement the hegemonic project of the dominant class. But the
organisation and implementation of any hegemonic project is not
possible without legitimising it in a given national ethos and culture.
That is why in the
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hegemonies of social classes, the particular characteristics of the
nation often get enmeshed in unique ways. Thus, even if the working
class is supposed to be international, in an abstract sense, it
nationalises itself in the process of building its hegemony. This, as a
rule, also applies to other social classes that aspire to build hegemony
through seizing control of the state. However, the Gramscian
perspective has added a different nuance to the role of the state. In
Cox's view, 'the state, which remains the primary focus of social
struggle and the basic entity of international relations, is the enlarged
state which includes its own social basis'.68 Indeed, the state cannot
be simply reduced to foreign policy or the state's military capabilities
if it has to be viewed in a Gramscian sense.
Cox has also underlined how Gramsci was sensitive to the ties
between powerful and weak states. The former states had relative
freedom, unlike the latter states, to shape their external policies in
response to domestic interests. Hence the economic life of weaker
powers or subordinate nations was intertwined with that of powerful
nations.69 With a deeper probing into the capacities of powerful states,
it could as well be argued that powerful states invariably happen to be
those that have undergone profound social and economic revolution.
They also have mostly worked out the consequences of such
revolutions in the form of state and social relations.70 To put it simply,
the fundamental social relations within these states stimulate their
expansive impulses across states and societies. Plausibly, the
expansive nature of the US and the USSR could be interpreted in this
framework.
To understand the expansive or imperial states, Cox has provided clues
to appraise hegemonic world orders. It is difficult to delineate,
precisely, when the hegemonic period begins and ends. Keeping this
limitation in mind Cox has explained the nature of British hegemony
between 1845 and 1875. Such hegemony was built round economic
doctrines consistent with British supremacy but universal in form. The
economic doctrine was backed by free trade, the gold standard and
comparative advantage.71 British hegemony spread gradually because
apart from adopting the policy of balance of power in Europe, Britain
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had developed coercive capabilities to sustain its hegemonic order.
Like Cox, Arrighi in his study on three hegemonies of historical
capitalism has maintained that British hegemony could claim
credibility because the expansion of the power of the United Kingdom
did not merely serve its national interest but a 'universal interest' as
well.72
US policy between 1945 and 1965, according to Cox, offered yet
another instance of hegemonic order that was protected by its
universal conception. The states on whom the hegemony was
exercised found hegemony compatible with their interests. Also, the
hegemonic order could not be confined to only inter-state ties. It
offered ample opportunities for forces in civil society to operate within
the entire orbit of hegemony. In fact, the hegemonic concept of world
order was not only founded upon the regulation of inter-state conflicts
but also upon globally conceived civil society. Under the hegemonic
order established by the US, the capitalist mode of production which
almost operated on a world scale carried the strength to bring about
links among social classes from all the countries which were a part of
the hegemonic order.
Under the hegemonic order the developed and developing states
generally display two distinct tendencies. First, on the basis of
historical evidence it can be argued that hegemony has always been
built by powerful states which have undergone social and economic
revolutions. Such revolutions modify the internal economic and
political structures of the state and build their capacities to expand
outwards. In other words, hegemony across the state could also be
construed as the drive towards outward expansion of internal
(national) hegemony established by a dominant social class.73 The
pattern of hegemony, established through economic, social and
cultural institutions, in the developed states is often emulated by other
states. Second, the expansive hegemony of the developed states
impinges on more peripheral countries in the form of passive
revolution. Unlike the developed states, the peripheral countries have
not undergone social and economic revolution. Since the peripheral
countries are ill equipped to adopt political models of the hegemonic
core,
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they tend to adopt its economic and cultural aspects without
disturbing old power structures. Generally, in the world hegemonic
model, hegemony is more intense and consistent at the core and more
laden with contradictions at the periphery.74 Cox has also brought into
focus how international organisations of diverse kinds serve as
mechanisms through which the universal norms of world hegemony are
expressed. In this context, Cox has identified the following important
functions which international organisations perform: (a) they embody
the rules which facilitate the expansion of world orders;
they ideologically legitimate the norms of world order;
they co-opt the elites from peripheral countries in the manner of
transformismo and in the process absorb counter-hegemonic ideas.75
To sum up, Cox's essay certainly explored the elasticity of Gramscian
concepts and effectively demonstrated how they can be applied in
diverse as well as changing circumstances and organisations. Almost
eight years after his seminal essay, Cox made another succinct
statement on the nature and operation of hegemony in international
relations which is stated below:
Hegemony is a structure of values and understanding about the nature
of order that permeates a whole system of states and non-state
entities. In a hegemonic order these values and understandings are
relatively stable and unquestioned. They appear to most actors as a
natural order. Such a structure of meanings is underpinned by a
structure of power, in which one state is dominant but that state's
dominance is not sufficient to create hegemony. Hegemony derives
from the dominant social strata of the dominant states in so far as
these ways of doing and thinking have acquired the acquiescence of
the dominant social strata of other states.76
The above statement has identified and spelt out most of the salient
features of a hegemonic order in international relations. By keeping
these salient features in the background we can review three case
studies concerning US hegemony in contemporary international
relations. A brief description of the
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content of these studies might be helpful in stating our rationale in
choosing them. Out of these case studies, Stephen Gill's work entitled
American Hegemony and the Trilateral Commission represents a
pioneer effort to magnify and apply Gramsci's concepts to the context
of world capitalist economy led by the US. His treatment of the subject
in terms of ideas and data is quite elaborate. Hence a detailed account
of Gill's work would be useful in throwing light on the relationship
between imperialism and hegemony. The second case study,
conducted by Enrico Augelli and Craig N. Murphy, has dealt with US
policy towards the Third World. Basically it is a restatement of their
earlier study on the same theme.77 And, finally, the third study edited
by Henk Over beek entitled 'Restructuring Hegemony in the Global
Political Economy' is important due to its analysis of the operation of
transnational neo-liberal ideology.78 Since the last two case studies
have a specific focus we propose to present the essential arguments
in these studies in condensed form. Thus, on the basis of Gill's
principal case study, supported by the other two case studies with
complementary concerns, it may be feasible to construct a composite
picture of US hegemony.
Understanding US Hegemony through Gramscian Perspectives
The phenomenon of US imperialism or hegemony has certainly
dominated contemporary international relations. In general, there is no
dearth of studies that analyse the economic and politico-military
power of the US. However, studies that pierce through the ideological
underpinnings of US hegemony are still quite uncommon. Stephen
Gill's work has attempted to fill this void through his path-finding
attempt to understand post-War capitalism as it operates under the
shadow of liberal ideology. Evidently, as the leading liberal capitalist
state the US has been mainly responsible for promoting capitalism as
well as liberal ideology across the world. Gill has underlined his
understanding
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of ideology, in general, and liberal ideology and its impact, in
particular, in the contemporary world as follows.
After acknowledging the analytical distinctness of ideology, Gill (1990)
has maintained that ideology is rarely independent of other social
forces. Since ideology dialectically interacts with other forces it
carries within itself a potential to become an expression of the world-
view of a class or even a fraction of a class. Liberalism as an ideology,
according to Gill, has consistently represented the world-view of
bourgeois classes. Evidently, liberal ideologies have relentlessly
harped on the necessity of economic openness, limitations of the
scope of state intervention in the economy and given prime emphasis
to private initiative as well as the private sector in the economy. The
protagonists of liberalism conceive of private initiative as a mode of
enhancing global economic efficiency although they are aware of the
fact that the global product is likely to be distributed unequally. In the
political domain, liberalism promotes and embraces electoral
democracy. It also lays a special emphasis on civil and political rights.
Liberalism has been instrumental in the growth of capitalism. The
expanse of capitalism across national frontiers, in its turn, has
contributed towards the growth of transnational liberalism. And. it is
the contention of Gill that transnational liberalism as economic
doctrine and a political ideology is primarily serving the interests of
transnationally mobile capital. Obviously, the transnational class or a
fraction of that class is in the process of organising its hegemony in
the world capitalist economy. Gill's work is an attempt to delineate the
emerging contours of transnational capital to understand the radius of
its operations. It postulates some form of international civil society
that has offered a breeding ground for the emergence of transnational
social classes to organise the hegemony of transnationally mobile
capital.
In the light of the emergence of transnationally mobile capital, Gill's
study has tried to figure out the prospects for the US-centred
hegemony round trilaterialism. The trilateral core of the world
economy is represented by the US, Japan and the West
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European states. Irrespective of the setback which the US imperial
states received in the seventies and eighties, Gill has argued with
conviction that the US has the potential to be the epicentre of ideas,
institutions and the material base of production to organise its
hegemony within the core of the capitalist world.
In Gill's perception, the 'core' economies have witnessed rapid
changes, especially after the seventies. First, the transnational
companies (TNCs) have acquired a prominent place in the core
economies. Hence, overseas production has grown faster than world
trade. Consequently, the growth of transnational investments has been
faster than the growth of the global product.79
Second, the TNCs have widened the geographical spread of their
activities. Such firms have also been able to establish inextricable
links among themselves by entering into cooperative ventures or
forming consortia. This has led towards cumulative
transnationalisation of the world economy in which transnational firms
and institutions have emerged as dominant actors.80
Gill has built the above arguments on the basis of valuable empirical
research conducted by John Dunning and Ankine Hoogvelt on the role
of the TNCs.81 The growth of such companies could be attributed to
multiple causes operating in combinations depending upon the
specificities. For instance, factors like competition among states to
attract foreign capital, provision of stable infrastructure, low and
stable inflation rates and the weakening power of organised labour
spurred the expanse of the TNCs. Also through mechanisms like
transfer pricing and intra-firm trade the TNCs began to minimise tax
liabilities and maximise global profits. According to Ankine Hoogvelt,
by the late eighties almost 40 per cent of world trade was in the form
of the intra-firm trade of the TNCs and 30 per cent of it was based in
the US. Moreover, the productive capital of the TNCs was linked with
money capital. This paved the way for the internationalisation of US
banks and the development of
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innovations in financial services designed to circumvent the national
banking regulatory system.
Despite the decline in US hegemony during the eighties, Gill has made
a fervent plea to pay attention to certain basic structural continuities
in the American neo-imperial state. Gill has driven home this point
through Susan Strange's findings that have revealed the predominance
of US-based TNCs in four basic structures of the world economy. These
four structures have been security, production, monetary and
knowledge structures.82 Each of these structures is interdependent
and collectively represents the US colossus on the world stage.
Having underscored the centrality of the US in the global political
economy, Gill has attempted to figure out how the core capitalist
countries are organising the world capitalist economy in the light of
the relative decline of US hegemony. Indeed, the decline of US
hegemony relative to other centres of world capitalism has opened up
the possibilities of conflict of interests between the US, on the one
hand, and Japan and the West European states, on the other hand. But
such apparent areas of conflict are being resolved in the long-term
interest of protecting world capitalism as a system.
As a system, capitalism is being defended by the social forces that
represent transnationally mobile capital.83 Such forces enjoy
omnipresence in the core capitalist world through the networks of the
TNCs. What is more, international lending institutions like the
International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank also represent
the interests of such forces.
The power of transnational capital, according to Gill, has structural
and behavioural dimensions.84 The structural power of transnational
capital has increased enormously after World War II. By now, it has
evolved a capacity to influence the regulation of market forces, control
diverse national governments and their resources as well as labour
organisations. The constraining influence of transnational capital is
indicative of the growth in the structural power of capital. And the
cumulative impact of the spread of transnational capital across states,
nations and governments certainly has its social consequences.
Among
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these social consequences, the emergence of transnational civil
society is the most dominant consequence. In Gill's view, transnational
civil society is characterised by the formation of transnational social
classes that are primarily interested in guarding the interest of
transnational capital.85 Such classes represented the sociological
dimension of capital and they defend transnationally mobile capital in
behavioural terms. The emergence of transnational civil society has
also led to the internationalisation of the state. And the transnational
social classes have aspired to use the agency of state to promote the
interest of transnational capital. In this process, state policies and
institutional arrangements are conditioned or changed by the power
and mobility of the transnational fractions of capital. What is more, the
transnational social classes also control the functioning of
organisations like the IMF and the World Bank because powerful
capitalist countries like the US, which are dominated by these classes,
enjoy a pre-eminent place in such organisations.
Gill has endeavoured to substantiate, empirically, some of the
arguments stated earlier in his case study of the Trilateral Commission
that bound the US, West Europe and Japan. The Commission came into
being to build up a strategic consensus between the US and its allies
to ensure the growth of transnational capital and organise its
hegemony. In a way, it was an informal extension of the Atlantic
system led by the US which also incorporated Japan in the project of
shaping the contours of the world capitalist economy. The dominant
core countries found in the Commission a forum to iron out their
conflicting interests and harmonise their domestic and international
policies.
To harmonise the ties between the core countries several active steps
were taken at the level of the organisation of the Commission as well
as within international civil society. For instance, the Trilateral
Commission continuously tried to involve diverse types of politicians,
diplomats, corporate and banking chiefs and academics from
prestigious universities and think tanks. Also, two-thirds of the world's
largest hundred public companies were affiliated through individuals
with Commission
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membership. Eventually a wide variety of transnational elite groups
from diverse countries such as the US, Canada, Britain, (West)
Germany, France, Italy, Holland, Belgium, Spain, Portugal, Ireland,
Switzerland, Austria, Denmark and Turkey were interwoven by the
activities of the Commission.86
The effort of the core countries to harmonise their ties at the level of
the Trilateral Commission was also extended to international civil
society. This was possible because the material base of production
had tied up the societies of the core countries with the evolution of
post-war capitalism. In fact, corporate liberalism that characterised
post-war capitalism was expansive and internationalist in its goal. It
was based on Fordism with mass production, mass consumption and a
growth oriented regime of accumulation as its principal features. 87 The
Fordist pattern of accumulation also used Taylorist scientific
management and culture and economy of mass consumption to
subordinate labour.88 However, the factors such as growing
internationalisation of production, trade and finance, with the rapid
growth of the transnational firms and banks, steadily brought about a
change in the following of capitalism.
The change in the modus operandi of capitalism became quite
conspicuous through the emergence of the transnational historic bloc.
This bloc was dominated by the interests of transnationally mobile
capital. In the process of gaining legitimacy, it incorporated a range of
class interests which sustained not only the modernisation of the
mixed economies under social democracies, but also the liberal
international economic order. The bloc's foundations were forged in
the balance between the material forces of national and international
capital, organised labour and the state. Evidently, since 30 per cent or
90 million manufacturing workers were employed by transnational
companies located in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and
Development (OECD) countries, the new historic bloc had to co-opt the
elements among the working classes.
With the constitution of the historic bloc the services of the large
number of organic intellectuals were sought to build the
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hegemony of the classes representing the fraction of transnationally
mobile capital. In order to achieve this task the Trilateral Commission
worked through fraternal organisations like the Council of Foreign
Relations, the Committee on Economic Development and the Ford
Foundation. Gill has made particular reference to the Commission's
capacities to seek the cooperation of towering Western intellectuals
such as Richard Falk, Samuel Huntington and Noam Chomsky, on the
one hand, and emphasised how the Commission can co-opt
intellectuals from prestigious institutions like the Ivy League
Universities, London School of Economics and Oxford University, on
the other.89 As the geographically dispersed and diversified elites
became a part of policy planning groups in the US they began to
perform the functions of organic intellectuals. In a word, these groups
endeavoured to build consensus among corporate, financial, university,
civic, intellectual and government circles around major policy
directions.
The centrality of the Commission in consensus building within the US
provides a link between the US and global political economy. While
explaining the functioning of the US economy, Gill has also thrown
light on the network of kinship and interlocking membership in the
Fortune 500 list of the largest industrial corporations. Such analysis
has driven home the point that certain individuals from prominent
families like Rockefeller hold strategic positions in different
companies by owning only a small percentage of the voting shares.
To sum up, Gill's painstaking study has used Gramscian perspectives
to analyse the interrelationship between the changes in material
structures of the global political economy and the changes in class
formations and state structures. He has tried to demonstrate how
under a new historic bloc, formed by changing material and class
forces, the prevailing ideas and values in the political economy are
changed to suit the new hegemonic order. The US has always been at
the centre of such a hegemonic order and it has sought the support of
organic intellectuals in policy planning towards the legitimation of the
hegemony of the
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class/class fraction representing transnationally mobile capital in
international civil society.90
In addition to Gill, Enrico Augelli and Craig N. Murphy as well as the
collection of essays edited by Henk Overbeek have thrown light on the
phenomenon of US hegemony under the Reagan administration (1980-
88). Augelli and Murphy in their first work on the US and the Third
World had argued that the dominant classes within the US were able to
form a coherent international historic bloc (Augelli and Murphy, 1993).
The centre stage of the hegemonic alliance within this bloc was
constituted by the dominant classes of the US, West Europe, Japan and
some elements of labour of the OECD countries as well as the popular
masses in much of the dependent Third World. To a greater or lesser
extent each of these elements was being used by the US to serve its
economic interests. In their restatement on the reconstruction of
American world supremacy the authors argued that the hegemonic
element in supremacy was replaced by domination through fraud and
force.91 The Third World states were victims of such domination due to
their unsound economic position. In this connection, the authors have
made a mention of how the counter-hegemonic project of the
Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) or the demand
for the New International Economic Order (NIEO) could not be
sustained due to disunity among the Third World states. Also, Reagan's
monetarist policies had an adverse impact on the economies of the
Third World states which failed to cope with the problems of lower
export earning and higher interest rates. With the monetarist recession
in the industrialised countries the cash-short oil producing nations
increased the oil supply and thereby lost the bargaining leverage
earned through OPEC to press for the NIEO.92 What is more, US
manipulated international institutions like the IMF, the World Bank, the
UN and inter-government organisations to establish its domination.
Thus, the West in general, and the US in particular, worked through
international civil society to remake the Third World economies in the
laissez-faire image by offering foreign aid to developing countries. 93
The authors have also mentioned that
213
during the Gulf War the US made a fresh effort to reconstruct its
supermacy in the Third World.
Finally, Henk Overbeek's edited volume has analysed the advent of the
transnational neo-liberal counter-revolution in the eighties. The
genesis of this revolution has been traced to the crisis of world
capitalism during the seventies which necessitated a
far-reaching restructuring of the economic, social and political
conditions of capital accumulation. The essays in this collection argue
that neo-liberalism was a hegemonic project that guided this
restructuring and shaped its trajectory. Reaganism and Thatcherism
were archetypical examples of neo-liberalism. Furthermore, the
neo-liberal counter-revolution was a transnational phenomenon that
not merely eclipsed the heartland of world capitalism but also its
outposts including Chile and Australia.94 It would be inappropriate to
identify this phenomenon with the conservative government of Britain
because countries ruled by Christian and Social Democrats such as
Spain were also swept by this counter-revolution. Despite the
differences among scholars in emphasis and opinions, all the
contributors share a theoretical view that class formation and class
conflict are structured by comprehensive concepts of control. In fact,
the notion of comprehensive concepts of control has thematically tied
this collection of essays. According to Over beek and Kees van der Pijl,
'Comprehensive concepts of control are expressions of bourgeois
hegemony in historically specific hierarchy of classes and class
fractions. They express the ideological and in Gramsci's sense
hegemonic structure of particular configurations of capital'. 95
Despite their shared theoretical understanding there is no unanimity of
views among the contributors over the notion and content of neo-
liberalsm. The term neo-liberalism is used by them to describe the
phenomenon known as 'the New Right',
neo-conservatism, or Thatcherism. This phenomenon was
characterised by a rather uneasy and contradictory fusion of liberal
and conservative elements. In its liberal guise,
neo-liberalism signified the politics constructed from individual
freedom of choice, market society, laissez-faire and minimal
214
government, whereas its neo-conservative component built on strong
government, social authoritarianism, disciplined society, hierarchy and
subordination, and the nation.96 The essays have viewed neo-liberalism
as the fundamental expression of the outlook of transnational
circulating capital.
In the process of constructing its hegemonic project the neo-liberal
counter-revolution had to rely on the politics of support as well as
politics of power. Neo-conservatism provided the neo-liberal
bourgeoisie with an effective 'politics of support'. Thus, moral
conservatism, xenophobia, law and order, and the family were the
themes that provided the basis for stable electoral coalitions. Of
course, the nature of conservative politics and the combination of
elements that sustained it varied from country to country. And, the
politics of power in a neo-liberal hegemonic order subsumed
disciplining of labour through new core-periphery structures of labour
relations, subordinating the global productive grid to profit criteria
established by money capital, and confronting the Third World and the
Soviet bloc in the new cold war.97
Briefly, our discussion of the three case studies, in the preceding
pages, has thrown fresh light on the varying dimensions of hegemony.
The latter two studies have complemented Gill's effort by highlighting
the US quest for supremacy in the Third World and the role of neo-
liberalism in helping the US to reassert its dominance. Having
presented the essence of these studies we shall attempt to offer a
critique of Gramscian perspectives, in general, and these case studies
on hegemony in particular.
Gramscian Framework, Hegemony and International Relations: A
Critical Appraisal
The Gramscian framework has undoubtedly opened up fresh
possibilities to understand realities in international relations. This can
be explained by the fact that Gramscian analysis is built on exploring
the fundamental social relations within the nation
215
state and their external dimensions. Also, the state in this perspective
is an enlarged entity with its powerful presence in civil society.
Likewise civil society can also influence the functioning of the state.
In fact, it is the dialectical interactions between the state and civil
society that get an outward projection in the international arena--
which is at once constituted by the society of states and international
society. The arena of international society is helpful in unpacking the
state, especially with its judicial boundaries, to perceive the role of
transnational classes that operate within international society to
defend different kinds of interests. Naturally, this leaves enough room
for understanding transnational cultural and social movements that
legitimise diverse ideologies at the level of the superstructure. It must
also be noted that by enlarging the notion of hegemony the
phenomenon of imperialism can be seen in a new light.
However, despite these apparent strengths, it would be imprudent to
overlook certain limitations of the Gramscian framework. First, under
this framework an attempt has to be constantly made to relate the
material base to the superstructure under a given social formation.
However, it is not easy to identify the changes in values, norms,
attitudes and behavioural patterns that take place through the
superstructure. This means that while understanding the legitimation
of an ideology the full implications of the qualitative changes that
occur in the form of consciousness are likely to elude the grasp of
such analysis. Second, since such studies have to deal with the mind
or ranges of collective consciousness it will often be difficult to
measure or gauge precisely the nature of social processes that form
collective consciousness.
In the light of these two extremely general and yet critical limitations
of the Gramscian framework, we would offer a critique of all three
case studies that have helped us in portraying a composite picture of
hegemony. Arguably, all these case studies differ in depth and
treatment of the subject but their shared theoretical understanding is
informed by the Gramscian framework. And since they are bound by a
common framework
216
all three case studies could simultaneously be picked up while offering
a critique.
To begin with, all these studies have viewed social realities solely from
the point of bourgeois (Christian?) capitalist countries. Thus, the
analysis of the neo-liberal hegemonic project or even transnational
liberalism has put the Western world at the centre. Since the Western
world dominates the economies of the Third World, the ascendancy as
also the legitimising capabilities of liberalism have been placed in
somewhat schematic formulations. None of these studies show much
concern for how the ideology of liberalism that operated in advanced
countries would hegemonise traditional countries in the Third World.
Indeed, it is certainly not easy to understand the impact of Western
values and ideologies in the complex civilisational ethos of the diverse
parts of the Third World. These case studies are not sufficiently
sensitive to the cultural pluralism in the Third World. They also tend to
use the term Third World in an undifferentiated manner.
Second, all these studies have certainly shown the changing
tendencies of US hegemony/supermacy. However, to substantiate such
trends would warrant scores of empirical studies. At the moment, the
generalisations in these studies are backed by relatively scanty
evidence. Especially, while going through Gill's study, it appears as if
he is more concerned with justifying the relevance of Gramsci's
concepts and the Marxian tradition rather than presenting hard
empirical data.
Third, the role of transnationally circulating capital has been over-
emphasised in these studies. It would be worth investigating whether
there is any dichotomy between transnational and national capital.
Since Gill's study is premised on the ascendency of transnational
capital, he seems to be in a hurry to locate and assign transnational
social classes the historic role of safeguarding the interests of
transnational capital in international civil society. As for now, such
statements sound like strait-jacket formulations. For, as long as the
nation state exists, it will continue to influence so-called transnational
social forces in the economic, political and socio-cultural domains.
217
Nation states have and are likely to influence the dominant trends
towards globalisation and regionalisation in the world economy. For
instance, in the age of transnationalisation of the state, the Third
World states would continue to aspire to use their sovereign right to
regulate the role of foreign capital in their economies.98 What is more,
the neo-liberal ideology did not forbid the recession ridden
industrialised countries from following protectionist policies. How can
this development be interpreted? Do industrial economies want open
economies elsewhere while following protectionist policies at home?
Is it also the style of transnational capital to serve national as well as
its own interests? More often, the centrality of national interests
cannot be overlooked in a world dominated by sovereign states.
In fact, the national interests of all the countries get eloquently
articulated in all the major world trade forums or international
organisations. Obviously, the complex domain of ties between what
can be termed as national or international is characterised by a fusion
of cooperative and conflicting tendencies. Under the circumstances, to
over-emphasise either national or international components of such
ties would appear futile in view of the vibrant and ongoing reciprocity
of interaction between the two components. In a word, without
reducing one component for the other, the complexities of their ties in
diverse fields and in changing spatiotemporal contexts, have to be
constantly worked out to draw a proper portrait of international
relations.
Finally, these studies are sensitive to the implications of passive
revolution and transformismo as the hegemonic projects get off the
ground. However, a complete understanding of hegemony through
Gramscian logic cannot emerge without taking note of the counter-
hegemonic projects which are inherent in the functioning of any
hegemonic order. These studies have not paid adequate attention to
the counter-hegemonic projects in the First and the Third Worlds.
Hence, in such studies hegemony either gets blandly established or is
established through domination. A study of forces like the Non-Aligned
Movement (NAM) or the 'ex'-Soviet Union that
218
ventured to resist neo-liberal hegemony could have enriched these
portrayals of American hegemony.
Conclusion
Gramsci's intensive reflections on state-civil society ties in
comparative perspective have generated a web of conceptual tools
and categories to appraise the phenomenon of hegemony in intra- and
inter-state relations. By analysing hegemonic, non-hegemonic or
counter-hegemonic tendencies it is possible to throw light,
simultaneously, on inter-state and inter-societal ties through the
Gramscian perspective. In fact, hegemony, especially its consensual
aspect, has been an unexplored dimension of imperialism. Indeed,
imperialism can rarely operate without some form of legitimation.
Hence, the manner in which imperialism deploys subtle methods to
legitimise itself in the realm of superstructure certainly warrants a
deeper examination. The Gramscian perspective will precisely
facilitate this endeavour.
Notes.
The term hegemony implies some form of world governance in the
traditional literature on international politics. See Hettne, Bjorn,
'European Integration and World Development', The European journal
of Development Research, vol. 12, no. 2, December 1990, pp. 186-199.
A useful definition of ideology has been provided by Lerche and Said,
'An ideology may simply be defined as a self-contained and self-
justifying belief system that incorporates an overall world view and
provides a basis for explaining all of reality'. Lerche, Charles and Abdul
Said, Concepts of International Politics (Englewood Cliff, N.J. Prentice
Hall, 1978).
Davidson, Alistait, Antonio Gramsci towards an intellectual biography,
(London, Martin Press, 1982).
One of the crudest interpretations of base-superstructure ties was
offered by Stalin and Stalinists. See Stalin, Joseph, 'Base and
219
Superstructure', in Thorton Anderson (ed.), Masters of Russian
Marxism (New York, Appleton, Century-Crofts, 1963), pp. 236-37.
Gramsci, Antonio, Selections from Prison Writings 1910--1920, Selected
and edited by John Mathews (London, Lawrence and Wischart, 1985).
See Gramsci's critique of Ibsen and Pirandello (1985), pp. 70-85.
Ibid., p. 79.
Joll, James, Gramsci (Glasgow, Fontana Paperbacks, 1977).
Quoted in James Joll, Gramsci (Glasgow: Fontana Paperbacks, 1977),
p. 79.
See Nikolai Bukharin, Historical Materialism: System of Sociology (Ann
Arbor: Michigan University Press, 1978).
Joll, Gramsci, 1977, p. 77.
Ibid., p. 78.
See Thomas Nemeth, Gramsci's Philosophy, A Critical Study (Sussex:
The Harvester Press, 1980).
See Gramsci, Selections from Prison Notebooks (London: Lawrence
and Wishart, 1991), pp. 123-47.
See Gramsci, Selections from Political Writings, 1910-1920, pp. 34-37.
Ibid.
Ibid., pp. 83-87.
Civil society is an ensemble of organisms that are commonly called
'private' while political society includes the activities of state. See
Gramsci, Selections from Prison Notebooks, p. 12.
Ibid, pp. 206-8.
Ibid.
See Cox, 1993, p. 50.
See Gramsci, Selections from Prison Notebooks, p. 124.
Ibid., notes on Italian history, pp. 44-118.
Ibid., pp. 123-47.
Ibid., p. 125.
Ibid., pp. 123-36.
Ibid., p. 129.
Ibid., pp. 132-33.
Hegemony is essentially ethical and differs from domination which
only rests on force.
See Gramsci, Selection from Prison Notebooks, pp. 229-39.
Ibid., 238.
220
Cox, 'Gramsci, Hegemony and International Relations', p. 51.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 52.
See Gramsci, Selections from Prison Notebooks, pp. 5-23.
Ibid., p. 5.
Ibid.
Ibid., pp. 6-7.
Ibid., pp. 182-83.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 366.
For war of position and war of movements as well as nature of state-
civil society ties in the East and the West, see Ibid., pp. 229-39.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 219.
Ibid., pp. 219-20.
See Cox, 'Gramsci, Hegemony and International Relations', pp. 54-55.
Ibid.
See Hans Morganthau, Politics Among Nations (New York: Knopf, 1978).
See Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Addison-Wesley,
Reading, Mass., 1979).
See Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society: A Society for Order in World
Politics (London: Macmillan, 1977).
See Barry Buzan, Peoples, States and Fear (Boulder Colorado: Lynne
Rienner, 1991).
Bull, The Anarchical Society.
Ibid., p. 13.
See Fred Halliday, 1992, p. 435 and Shaw, 1992, pp. 421-34.
See Richard Falk, 1971 and 1975.
See a critique of Falk's perspective in Jackson, 1990, pp. 175--76.
The term 'heteronomous' implies that these networks are
differentiated from each other in terms of specialisation. See Ronnie D.
Lipschutz, 'Reconstructing World Politics: The Emergence of Global
Civil Society', Millennium, vol. 21, no. 3, 1992, pp. 389-420.
Ibid.
Ibid. At least this is how we have interpreted Lipschutz's perspective.
221
Gramsci, Selections from Prison Notebooks, p. 240.
Quoted in Cox, Gramsci, Hegemony, and International Relations, 1993,
p. 58.
See Fred Halliday, 'International Society as Homogeneity: Burke, Marx,
Fukuyama', Millennium, vol. 21, no. 3, 1992, pp. 435-61.
Ibid., p. 435.
Ibid., p. 435-36.
Ibid.
Cox, 'Gramsci, Hegemony and International Relations'.
Ibid., pp. 58-59.
Ibid., p. 59.
Ibid., p. 60.
Arrighi, 1993, p. 174.
Cox, 'Gramsci, Hegemony and International Relations', 1993, pp. 58-65.
Ibid., p. 61.
Ibid., p. 62.
Quoted in Stephen Gill, 1993, and Robert Cox, Power, Production and
World Order (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987).
See Enrico Augelli and Craig N. Murphy, America's Quest for
Supremacy and the Third World: A Gramscian Analysis (London: Pinter,
1988).
See Henk Overbeek and Kees Van der Pijl, 'Restructuring Capital and
Restructuring Hegemony, Neo-Liberalism and the Unmaking of the
post-War Order' in Henk Overbeek (ed.), Structuring Hegemony in the
Global Political Economy: The Rise of Transnational Neoliberalism in
the 1980s (London, New York: Routledge, 1993).
Stephen Gill, American Hegemony and the Trilateral Commission (New
York: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
Ibid., pp. 90-92.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 87.
Ibid., p. 37.
Ibid., p. 112. For a more elaborate statement on the structural power of
capital, see Gill and Law, 1993.
This argument recurs throughout his study on US hegemony.
Stephen Gill, American Hegemony and the Trilateral Commission, pp.
112-80.
Ibid., pp. 49 and 97.
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Ibid., p. 49.
Ibid., pp. 162-65.
See Stephen Gill, 'Reflections on Global Order and Socio-Historical
Time'.
Ibid., p. 133.
Ibid., pp. 134-35.
Ibid.
See Overbeek and Pijl, Restructuring Capital, pp. 1-27
Ibid., p. 3.
Ibid., p. 15.
Ibid.
In the light of the success stories of East Asian countries, the
developing states are less inclined to intervene to regulate the flow of
international capital. For details see Millennium, vol. 20, no. 2, Summer
1991, pp. 189-287. Also see Dunning, 1981, to understand the
functioning of the MNCs.
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