This is a pathbreaking study of the changes in U.S. policy wrought by the “epochal shift” of globalization. The core of the book, which includes case studies of U.S. policy in the Philippines, Chile, Nicaragua and Haiti, shows how the United States has largely abandoned its decades-old policy of supporting Third World dictatorships, and is now promoting polyarchical regimes which are formally democratic but dominated by local elites tied to the global economy. In Latin America, the policy shift to polyarchy took hold in Chile in the mid1980s when the United States abandoned its support for the Pinochet regime. This shift gathered momentum with the 1990 electoral victory of Violeta Chamorro in Nicaragua and culminated in the 1995 U.S. invasion of Haiti that restored the democratically elected Aristide government to power.
In his analysis of polyarchy, Robinson applies the Gramscian concept of hegemony to the international arena. He argues that the core countries, led by the United States, now realize that in order to successfully control the periphery they cannot simply rely on openly coercive policies. Their continued hegemony also depends on their ability to influence and shape civil societies so that control can be internalized and a consensual form of domination can be established. This explains why newly created institutions like the National Endowment for Democracy selectively fund political parties, civic organizations, polling agencies, trade unions and newspapers in other countries. These forms of intervention in civil society are reinforced by the very process of globalization, which imparts a “culture ideology” of consumerism and fosters the development of attitudes and beliefs that facilitate consensual domination.
The ground-breaking ideas put forth in this book are a counterpoint to the world systems school of Immanuel Wallerstein and more classical Marxists and neo-Marxists who argue for the continued primacy of the nation-state. Robinson advances a model that sees the United States as the last national hegemon of the capitalist world system. It will not be replaced by another imperial power bloc like a united Europe or Japan, he argues, but by transnationalized elites and supranational institutions like the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization. According to Robinson, states will continue to exist, but instead of serving the “nation,” they will increasingly serve the interests of transnational capital, particularly financial institutions and multinational corporations.
In the concluding chapter, Robinson argues that there is a basic contradiction between capitalism and democracy, even in its polyarchical form. Global capitalism is polarizing the world’s population between a narrow elite which controls most of the world’s resources-some 400 transnational corporations own two-thirds of the world’s productive assets-and the rest of the population, which is increasingly impoverished.
This polarization will not necessarily lead to a crisis of the new transnational order and the demise of globalization. Like Gramsci, Robinson emphasizes the importance of human agency and does not see any outcome as historically predetermined. One possible scenario he envisions is the continued survival of polyarchical governments at the same time that the bulk of the population becomes increasingly powerless and alienated. Robinson does point out, however, that the very process of globalization also generates new possibilities for progressive politics on a transnational scale, citing examples of labor and cross-border organizing, international environmental movements and the spread of progressive ideologies like feminism.
By laying out such a clear and complex picture of U.S. policy in the context of the global transformations of the late twentieth century, Robinson’s book provides the left with a new framework for understanding international politics, and more importantly, with some useful pointers on how human agency can influence that process.
