Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Beyond state-building: Global governance and the crisis of the nation-state system in the 21st century

2006; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 27; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/01436590500370095

1360-2241

Mark T. Berger, Heloise Weber,

Global Peace and Security Dynamics

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1 Even if one to were to consider liberal modernisation-based development as good in itself (and not in relation to quality-of-life-based arguments), Thomas Pogge has recently shown how the dominant approach to poverty analysis is seriously flawed. While there are many problems associated with the Millennium Development Goals (mdgs), Pogge has provided an excellent critique of the internal inconsistencies and problems of method relating to the first mdg, which proposed to reduce by half the proportion of people of living in poverty by 2015. He contrasts this with the previous declaration made at the World Food Summit in 1996 to simply reduce the number of people living in poverty. He shows how the calculations of purchasing power parity (ppp) among other things appear inflated in some instances and non-representative of actual life experiences. He also offers a good ethical critique of the perversity of the idea of celebrating a declaration to help only half of those who are suffering. T Pogge, 'The first united Millennium Development Goal: a cause for celebration?', Journal of Human Development, 5(3), 2004, pp 377 – 397. 2 See, for example, C Thomas, In Search of Security: The Third World in International Relations, Brighton: Wheatsheaf/Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1987; and S Halperin, In the Mirror of the Third World: Capitalist Development in Modern Europe, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997. 3 By using the concept of transnational our intention is not to approach analyses of global social and political dynamics from a state-centred perspective and then proceed to make a case about increased inter-dependence, which often remains grounded in a methodological territorialist analytical framework. Rather, we use it to capture global social relations of power and hierarchy, expressed still in part through the formal institutional categories of the inter-national, but extended and experienced beyond and outside its categorical reach and prescriptive framework. 4 For a critical discussion of the wto Doha Development Agenda, see R Higgott & H Weber, 'gats in context: development, an evolving lex mercatoria and the Doha Agenda', Review of International Political Economy, 12(3), 2005, pp 434 – 455. For a critical analysis of efforts to both organise and implement new property rights-oriented initiatives through the poverty reduction and (international) development agenda—in particular through the poverty reduction strategy paper (prsp) initiative—see Heloise Weber, 'Reconstituting the "Third World"? Poverty reduction and territoriality in the global politics of development', Third World Quarterly, 25(1), 2004, pp 187 – 206. 5 See R Devetak, 'Incomplete states: theories and practices of statecraft', in J Macmillan & A Linklater (eds), Boundaries in Question, London: Pinter, 1995, pp 19 – 39. 6 See J Saurin, 'The end of International Relations? The state and international theory in the age of globalisation', in Macmillan & Linklater, Boundaries in Question, pp 244 – 261; M Mazower, Dark Continent: Europe's Twentieth Century, London: Penguin, 1998; and M Mann, The Dark Side of Democracy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. 7 MT Berger & H Weber, Rethinking the Third World: International Development and Global Politics, London: Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming 2007. 8 J Rosenberg, The Empire of Civil Society: A Critique of the Realist Theory of International Relations, London: Verso 1994. 9 B Teschke, The Myth of 1648: Class, Geopolitics and the Making of Modern International Relations, London: Verso, 2003. 10 For example, M Hardt & A Negri, Empire, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000; RK Ashley, 'Untying the sovereign state: a double reading of the anarchy problematique', Millennium, 17(2), 1998, pp 227 – 262; and RBJ Walker, 'International/inequality', International Studies Review, 4(2), 2002, pp 21 – 22. 11 C Thomas, New States, Sovereignty and Intervention, Aldershot: Gower, 1985. 12 See, for example, the social consequences of the politics of micro-credit programmes, advanced as a poverty reduction agenda by development institutions and practitioners, in H Weber, 'The "new" economy and social risk: banking on the poor?', Review of International Political Economy, 11(2), 2004, pp 356 – 386. 13 N Brenner, 'Beyond state-centrism? Space, territoriality, and geographical scale in globalization studies', Theory and Society, 28(2), 1999, pp 39 – 78.