Power Relations in the Global Polity

Abstract

Chapter 5 presented a picture of the institutions of the global governance system, emphasizing mechanisms for coordination and policy guidance. Chapter 7 discussed the global governance system from the perspective of persistence, seeing the growing capacity of mankind to organize life on the planet as an incomplete function of persistence that is globalized unevenly across its modalities. The concern now is the second aspect of the central duality in statehood, namely the state as a materialization of relations of power and the state’s function to reproduce those relations. A succinct statement in general terms of the core of this aspect, as applied to the international context, can be found in Robert Gilpin’s analysis of War and Change in World Politics from 1981: an international system is established for the same reason as any other social or political system is created; actors enter social relations and create social structures in order to advance particular sets of political, economic, or other types of interests. Because the interests of some of the actors may conflict with those of other actors, the particular interests that are most favored by these social arrangements tend to reflect the relative power of the actors involved. That is, although social systems impose restraints on the behavior of all actors, the behaviors rewarded and punished by the system will coincide, at least initially, with the interests of the most powerful members of the social system. (Gilpin 1981, p. 9)