The Social Foundations of Global Conflict and
Cooperation:
Waves of Globalization and Global Elite Integration, 19th to 21st
Century
Thomas E. Reifer and
Christopher Chase-Dunn
Institute for Research
on World-Systems
University of California, Riverside
(Submitted to NSF Sociology Program, August 15, 2003. v.
7-15-03)
Project Summary
This research studies the relationship
between the social foundations of waves of globalization, democratization,
global elite integration and global conflict and cooperation from the
nineteenth to the twenty-first centuries.
The main hypothesis is that the changing social foundations,
contours and strengths of elite integration and related forms of unequal civil,
political and social citizenship, were important contributors to fault lines of
conflict in the previous globalization backlash, and that analyzing these can
help us to predict where conflicts are most likely to emerge today.
The research will analyze and delineate
the social foundations of elites cross-nationally, the largest regional and
international organizations, and the most powerful individuals, families,
firms, states and international organizations for selected countries in the
core focusing on ten targeted years: 1840, 1860, 1880, 1913, 1929, 1950, 1970,
1980, 1995, and 2003. The links among these actors will be examined to
determine the degree of their transnational and international connections, the
nature and strength of these ties, their social foundations, and the network
patterns of connections and empty spaces. This will enable the tracking of
changes in the strength of global organization among the most powerful actors,
and the changing nature and network patterns of these ties. The project will
use structural equations modeling, network analysis and GIS mapping to compare
the patterns of ties in the late nineteenth century with the patterns of
conflict that emerged in the last globalization backlash. This will allow
assessment of the relationship between the social foundations of globalization,
democratization, global elite integration, and global conflict and cooperation.
Three inter-related research designs will
be used. The first focuses on analyzing a subset of elites selected from key
core countries, the second is cross-national and will include all the countries
and colonial regions of the world where comparable data on welfare or
warfare-welfare states, other important aspects of socioeconomic and political
structure, and links can be found, and the third focuses on the largest
regional and global international organizations, including firms, military,
political, governmental and civil society groups.
Intellectual
Merit. Waves of globalization have led to the
formation of transnational ties among elite families, social classes and large firms
and growing movements for democratic citizenship; and to nationalist
resurgence, racialized social imperial expansion, militarized forms of
masculinity and increasing global conflict. An asymmetrical form of British-led
globalization during the nineteenth century led to a massive backlash ushering
in World Wars, Bolshevism, fascism and the Great Depression. After World War II, there was a renewal of
transnational ties among elite families, social classes and large firms, along
with movements for democratic citizenship, with the U.S. as hegemon. Whether
the current wave of globalization will repeat the worst features of the earlier
cycle, replete with resurgent racialized ethno-nationalism and global military
conflict, may well rest on the social foundations of global elite integration
today. A more thoroughly integrated
global elite, based on broader social foundations cutting across lines of race,
class, gender, nationality, and civilizations, may be able to prevent the kind
of chaos that characterized the last wave of globalization. Conversely,
instability and conflict can be expected if elite power rests on increasingly
narrow and militarized social foundations and related forms of exclusivist
identities typical of periods of hegemonic decline and globalization backlash.
The results of this study will have important implications for contending
theories of modern social change, especially the globalization and global
capitalism schools, while also addressing the role of unequal forms of civil,
political and social citizenship - stratified by race, ethnicity, gender and
nationality - in global conflict and cooperation.
Broader Impact. This
research will improve upon the basis for assessing probabilities, causes and
potential terrains of future global cooperation, competition and conflict. The
research databases, animated global maps on the project web site and
publications will provide valuable data for students, scholars, NGOs and public
policy makers. This will help improve
understanding of the social foundations of global conflict, and initiatives to
promote greater equality, democracy, inclusive forms of civil, political and
social citizenship, and global cooperation.
Project
Description
This
study compares waves of globalization, democratization, global elite
integration and related forms of global conflict and cooperation from 1840 to
2003. The research focuses on the social foundations of national and
transnational wealth and power groups, as well as on the national, regional and
international institutions organizing and structuring their activity and
consciousness (see Katzenstein 1996a, b, c; 1997a, b). The project will study the changing social
foundations and degree of global elite integration, including patterns of connections and alliances among the
wealthiest and most powerful people and organizations in the world over the
last 163 years.
Producing
data on the changing social foundations and contours
of global elites and the intensity of their integration over time will allow us
to determine the relationship between global elite integration and global
conflict and cooperation and to estimate future fault lines along which
conflict is likely to develop and their probabilities. Our hypothesis is that the social
foundations of elites, and related waves of globalization and elite integration
are important factors in structuring the patterns of global conflict and
cooperation. Here, we develop a
theoretical model and set of empirically testable propositions about this
relationship between elite social foundations and global conflict and
cooperation.
Background. The British hegemony of the
1800s saw a tsunami of international trade, investment and global
integration that peaked in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
(Bairoch 1996; Haggard 1995; O’Rourke and Williamson 1999). Yet growing inequality, intensified uneven
development, and elite reaction to the growth of democratic movements
heightened global instability and violent conflict (Arrighi 1994; Snyder 1991;
2000: ch. 3; Polanyi, 2001; James 2001).
During this period, the spread of commercialized trade disrupted
economies dependent on domestic production, vastly increasing inequalities
between the rich and the poor, and stimulating movements for self-protection
against such threats to livelihood and security (Polanyi, 2001; van der Pijl,
1984; Arrighi, 1990a, 1994; Silver and Arrighi, 2003). The structural contradictions afflicting
autocratic states with overgrown military-corporate complexes and narrow
domestic economic bases such as Germany made them fertile grounds for
reactionary ideologies such as fascism and highly vulnerable to democratic
disintegration and aggressive war (Arrighi 1990a: 38-45; Neuman, 1966: 201-202;
Elias 1996; Hobsbawm 1987; Semmel 1960; Kehr 1973; 1977; Calleo, 1978;
Rueschemeyer, Stephens and Stephens, 1992; Newton, 1997). A premium was put on war preparedness and
modernization of military-corporate complexes requiring global resources, as
the turbulence of world market and interstate competition worked to the
temporary advantage of those power of elites that wanted to pursue aggressive
foreign policies (Snyder, 1991: ch. 3).
By
the late nineteenth century, racialized social imperialism, along with elite
ideologies and practices of war preparedness and militarized masculinity became
the order of the day (Goldstein 2001;
Theweleit, 1987; Elias, 1996; Pearlman, 1984; see Hutchinson 1996). The resultant world wars and revolutionary
waves were symptomatic of the rising politico-economic and military competition
that contributed to, the breakdown of the world-economy (Polanyi 2001; cf.
Skocpol 1979; Shanin 1985; 1986). Such
waves of globalization and global polarization have been closely associated
with the narrowing of the domestic and international social bases of declining
hegemons (Arrighi, 1994; Arrighi, Silver, et al., 1999; see also Phillips,
2002).
A
large body of literature has demonstrated the close relationship between rising
levels of proletarianization, economic development, military conflict and
democratic citizenship rights (Weber, 1961: 240; PS, Winter 1985, Seymour
Martin Lipset, Laurily Epsteinch. 2; Vanhanen, 1997; Marshall, 1973; see
Arrighi, 1990a; 1990b; Klinkner, 1999).
In terms of military participation, ruling elites have found it
necessary to extend citizenship rights to national subjects in exchange for the
latter taking on obligations of military service. This was noted long ago by Max Weber (1961: 240) and systematic
comparative research has borne him out (Andreski, 1968; Giddens, 1987: 233;
Mann, 1986; Dehio, 1962; Downing, 1992; Rueschemeyer, Stephens and Stephens,
1992). In the late nineteenth and early
twentieth century, the growing socialization of war-making and state-making
laid the material basis for the democratization of both citizen-soldiers and
shop-floor citizens whose cooperation became increasingly important for
national elites. The expansion and generalization of civil, social and
political citizenship rights in the core countries, and to a lesser extent in
the non-core was crucial in the reconstruction of the global system on new and
enlarged social foundations under U.S. hegemony. But the forms of democratic
citizenship that emerged were stratified to varying degrees by race/ethnicity,
class, gender and nationality, with profound implications for the form and
trajectory of global elite integration.
What
is important for our purposes is the relationship between these unequal systems
of citizenship, forms of integration, and global conflict and cooperation. Elite social groups with interests in
overseas expansion or activist foreign policies have traditionally had to form
coalitions with other powerful constituencies, including subjects and citizens,
in order to pursue their aims. The
frequently tenuous nature of these political coalitions often helped prompt
aggressive foreign policies, for as many comparative historical studies have
shown, "domestic insecurity of elites is one of the most important causes
of war" (Rosecrance, 1963: 306; see also Levy, 1989; Arrighi, 1990a;
Snyder, 1991; Mayer, 1967; Newton, 1997).
Specifically, the promotion of strategic myths needed to build these
coalitions often increased the power of those groups favoring aggressive
foreign policies. Such
politico-economic dynamics played central roles in both the British and U.S.
cycles of globalization and related forms of militarization (Snyder, 1991: 17;
2003; see Freeland, 1985; Levy, 1989; 1998; 2002: 34-35; 2003; see Davis, 1986;
see Trubowtiz, 1998).
Additionally,
"quasi-states" in the periphery and semiperiphery often lack the
capacity for social inclusion. Political struggles over wealth and power in
non-core countries have thus caused violent conflict within and across often
porous borders, especially if major race/ethnic, class, national or religious
differences can be exploited (Jackson, 1990; Fearon and Laitin, 2003; also
Chau, 2003). Here, poverty and
increasing population growth, rising demand for scarce resources, the legacies
of colonialism, rapid geopolitical change and increasing intranational and
global inequalities have fueled growing conflict within and between states
(Mamdani, 1996; Young, 1994; Calder 1997; Klare, 2001; Arrighi 1990a; 1991;
Murdoch 1980; Waseem, 2000; Woodward 1995).
In an age of declining resources, power elites often resort to narrow
ethno-national/religious identities and definitions of citizens and the nation,
accompanied by scapegoating of internal and/or external enemies, to achieve or
maintain power, thus contributing to increasing instability and conflict (cf.
Snyder, 2000; see Arrighi, 1990b: 34-35; see Manza and Brooks, 1999). Thus, the changing social foundations of
elites in hegemonic cycles plays a major role in global conflict and cooperation.
By
1945, many U.S. and European elites had come to understand that volatile
currency fluctuations and speculative capital flows played an important
contributing role in the breakdown of England’s liberal global economic order,
recurrent depressions, the rise of fascism, world wars and global revolutionary
waves (Gardner 1969: 75-76; Arrighi, 1990a; see Polanyi, 2001). These concerns
led these elites to create a liberal international economic order replete with
governed markets that provided tangible benefits to workers in the core and a modicum
of state-led nationalist development in the Third World. This compact was a fundamental part of the
real but uneven expansion of civil, political and social citizenship rights
across the globe (Arrighi 1990a, b, 1994).
In this vision, that of a “global New Deal,” full citizenship rights
were to be generalized to the core. At
the same time, development was to allow the world's poorer states to catch up
with standards of wealth and the full extension of citizenship rights achieved
for the largely white working classes and middle strata of this zone. However,
the U.S. hegemony's promise of full citizenship and high mass consumption in
the core and self-determination and development in non-core zones had definite
limits.
After
World War II, while many in the U.S. labor movement sought universal social
provisions, the lack of basic citizenship rights for blacks in the South and
people of color more generally posed an insurmountable obstacle to such a
vision (Davis, 1986; see Lichtenstein, 1995; see also Iton, 2000; see also Du
Bois, 1969). Moreover, the fiscal
nationalism of the conservative coalition ruled out Congressional passage of
aid necessary for the continued reconstruction of Europe and Asia after the Marshall
Plan (Borden 1984). Yet by playing upon
military nationalism, U.S. elites were able to convince Congress to vastly
increase military spending during the Korean War, though much of this money was
actually used to buy goods from Western Europe and East Asia. Military spending became a form of welfare
for corporations and upper-class constituents.
At the same time, Cold War military spending provided for the
containment of U.S. enemies and allies, the latter as semi-sovereign states and
regions, while providing the military forces to protect U.S. allies and to
implement a global policy of counterrevolutionary violence to ensure an Open
Door for U.S. and allied transnational capital in the Third World.[1] Military spending was much preferred by U.S.
elites to other forms of social expenditure as it was possible to get it from
Congress, and moreover helped to deflect a vibrant labor movement seeking
universalistic social provisions and greater race, class and gender equality at
home, by allowing for its incorporation instead as a junior partner in the
overseas expansion of U.S. state-corporate power (Lipsitz, 1994; Buhle, 1999;
Rathbun, 1996; see Lichtenstein, 1995; see Steppan-Norris and Zeitlin,
2002).
Instead
of universalistic social provisions, organized workers were forced to negotiate
private welfare provisions tied to firms, propped up by a permanent war economy
(Davis, 1986; see Hacker, 2002; see Minns, 2001). This ensured that U.S. social provision would be uniquely
stratified by race, class, gender (see Campbell, 1997: 107; see Orloff, 1993;
1996; Mettler 1998; Mink 1995; Quadagno 1994; Epsing-Anderson 1990: ch.
3). Instead of universalistic forms of
social citizenship, military-service related government transfers, notably
veterans’ benefits, the watershed GI Bill of Rights and low-interest loans,
went primarily to white male citizen-soldiers.
Entitlements such as Social Security and unemployment went to shop-floor
citizens, initially largely white males, who also benefited from military-subsidized
private welfare states tied to firms.
Second-class, means-tested benefits, stigmatized as “welfare” went to
the most oppressed—notably women, persons of color, and the white working poor
more generally.[2] These different forms of social provision
and political attitudes towards overseas intervention among national elites and
populations are arguably related. U.S.
specialization in providing core military protection subsidized U.S.’s allies
in Western Europe and Japan, leading them to provide more funds for
universalistic forms of social welfare provision.
The
rise of this U.S. New Deal warfare-welfare state—and its stratification, by
race, class, gender and nationality—has played a key role in shaping elite and
popular attitudes towards military versus social spending, based upon the real
or expected benefits different groups receive from such programs. Not surprisingly, there has long been a race
and gender gap on military versus social provisions as well as questions of
foreign policy and war and peace more generally, with women and persons of
color more supportive of social programs and the peaceful solutions towards
international conflict rather than tradition U.S. policies of postwar
interventionism. According to two
leading political sociologists, though there are gender gaps in policy
preferences among men and women cross-nationally, in terms of extent and
significance, "No similar 'gender gap' has developed in other democratic
polities" (Manza and Brooks, 1999: 128; Norris, 1988; see also Davis,
1986: 284-289).
This
seems in line with the hypothesis as to the interrelation between the social
base of elites, unequal forms of civil, political and social citizenship, and
their relationship to elite integration and related forms of conflict and
cooperation we aim to test as part of our study. US military spending plays an integral role in propping up
racialized and gendered structures of the warfare-welfare state and the
overseas expansion of US state-corporate power at one and the same time. The resulting cleavages on a variety of
social issues and restructuring of the political economy has been integral to
the development of hegemonic social blocs - as with the rise of the New Right,
right turn of the Eastern Establishment in the 1970s and 1980s - that have been
able to continue high levels of military spending and overseas intervention for
domestic and global purposes. Here,
elites saw high military spending as a way to curb greater spending on health,
education and human resources, while maintaining US military predominance and
global hegemony (Reifer 2002).
Thus,
just as the old exclusive White Anglo Saxon Protestant (WASP) Establishment
reaped the fruits of the inflated capital values of a bygone era in the 1920s,
so too did the rise of a broad based U.S. New Right in the 1970s and 1980s, aim
to valorize the accumulated gains of corporate capital and the broad propertied
strata (Davis, 1986: 302, 157-255, 284-289; 2002: ch. 13; see also Jenkins and
Brents, 1989; see also Baltzell, 1987). This new hegemonic social bloc, solidified
by resentments generated in part by the stratification of U.S. social provision
by race and gender, included the more privileged segments of the white ethnic
working classes and middle strata (notably those in the U.S. South), arrayed
against workers of color, labor, the poor and the Third World (Davis, 1986;
2002: ch. 13 Gordon, 1994a, b; see also Manza and Brooks, 1999).
We
expect research on these questions to help address Jack Levy's (1998: 143)
challenge, heretofore unmet in the literature:
"Theories of patriarchy might also help answer the...question of
variations in war and peace, if they identified differences in the patriarchal
structures and gender relations in different historical contexts, and if they
incorporated differences into empirically testable hypotheses about the
outbreak of war." We aim to
compare different forms of racialized and gendered social relations, notably in
unequal welfare and warfare-welfare states, and to relate these to testable
hypothesis about forms of elite integration and global conflict and
cooperation.
Of
course, such a study has to take into account the changing functions and
unintended consequences of elite policies.
Take the following example, crucial to our conceptualization of the
broadening and narrowing of the social foundations of U.S. hegemony. Originally, U.S. military Keynesianism (a
form of welfare for the military-corporate complex and upper class
constituents) provided a stimulus to the U.S. and global economy. Military expenditures provided funding for
advanced technologies (semiconductors and so forth) (see Markusen and Yudken,
1992). Such programs thus propped up
both U.S. corporate profits and the overseas projection of US military power. Yet over time, the growing costs associated
with such policies, in the context of increased global economic competition,
led to a fiscal crisis of the New Deal warfare-welfare state and associated
world order. During World War II and
the early Cold War years, U.S. military spending was based on progressive
taxation of corporations and the rich. This was accompanied by limitations on
pecuniary accumulation, including federal regulation and anti-trust efforts
(see van der Pijl, 1984; see Davis, 1986).
Here was the social basis of the rise of the New Deal world order: reform at home and support for socioeconomic
reconstruction and limited forms of nationalist development abroad. Fixed exchange rates, by limiting large
fluctuations in currency exchange rates and speculative capital movements, had
provided the basis for forms of expansion consonant with the politico-economic
and social objectives of the New Deal (Gardner, 1969; Helliener, 1994; Ingham,
1994; Block, 1977). Yet in the early
1970s the U.S. was forced to scrap the Bretton Woods agreements on pegged
exchange rates that it had created after World War II. Increasingly, the regressive financing of
vastly expanded U.S. military expenditures through borrowing on the global
capital markets, rather than expanding the New Deal world order through
taxation on corporate profits and the rich, led instead to its ongoing demise
(see Arrighi, 1994; Broad 1988; see also Steinherr, 1998; 2000; Davis, 1986;
2002: ch. 13; Eatwell and Taylor, 2000; Eatwell 1993; Blackburn, 2002).[3] This account suggests a reciprocal causality
between changing elite social foundations, including via unequal systems of
citizenship (as in the New Deal warfare-welfare state), and related forms of
globalization, global elite integration and global conflict and cooperation.
Scholars
from the “democratic peace school” argue that interstate conflict among core
powers is a thing of the past (Gissinger and Gleditsch 1999; Oneal, Oneal, Maoz
and Russett 1996; cf. Brown, Lynn-Jones and Miller, 1996; cf. Walt 1999). Recently, however, Jack Snyder (2000) has
argued that weakly embedded forms of democratization, in terms of the norms of
democratic procedures and governed markets, can promote extreme forms of
nationalism and hence intra and interstate conflict, as with the rise of
fascism in Germany and the escalating warfare that has gripped many formerly
Communist states of Europe. This raises
real questions about Russia, China, and the democratic stability in core powers
jettisoning governed markets that helped to embed these states within a thick web
of institutions (Snyder, 2000; UNHDP; 2002a, b; Reddaway and Glinsky 2001).
A
growing number of experts contend that the global system recurrently breaks
down not so much from rising challengers as because declining hegemons resist
adjustment and accommodation to new entrants (Calleo 1987: 142). David Calleo (2003a, b) recently raised
concerns that U.S. unilateralism is putting it on a collision course with
Europe and Asia, in a clash involving disputes about global governance, U.S.
military power and competing models of capitalism and social citizenship
provision (Minns, 2001).
Hegemonic
stability theorists hypothesize that declining hegemons attempt to use their
remaining strengths to pursue more unilateral advantages that have fewer
collective benefits for the rest of the world. This typically exacerbates
rivalry within the core, causing uncertainty, instability, and increasing
competition and conflict in the world economy and the interstate system.[4] This narrowing of the benefits that flow
from the policies of the declining hegemon is arguably what we are seeing in
the U.S. championing of neoliberal policies and military unilateralism which
some fear could spark another round of intra-core conflict and/or global chaos
(see also AJIL, 2002; see Mearshimer 2001).[5] Yet despite these dangers, many theorists
today hypothesize that global elite integration and/or related processes of
globalization represent a fundamental change in the world-system away from
great power conflict (Sklair, 2001;Held, McGrew, Goldblatt and Perraton 1999;
Rosenau 1990).
In
particular, theorists of the globalization and “global capitalism” schools have
noted the qualitative leap in global economic integration and related processes
of global elite formation. This is alleged to be due to enhanced
intercontinental transportation and communications technologies and is
exemplified by the growing share of world production and trade carried out by
transnational corporations, a complimentary global city system, and the
emergence of other supranational organizations in a global civil society. All
this lends support to the notion that major interstate conflict is a thing of
the past (Sklair, 2001; Robinson 1996, 2001; Ross and Trachte 1990; Kowaleski
1997; Hardt and Negri, 2000; cf. Sassen, 2001; cf. Gowan 1999). In contrast, other scholars, including
world-systems analysts, put more emphasis on continued competition among rival
global centers and U.S. power (Gowan 1999, 2000 a,b, 2002 a, b; Carroll and
Carson 2002; Agnew 2001).
Today,
transnational class formation has increasingly become an option for masses and
elites, as evidenced by the annual gathering of global business and political
elites at the World Economic Forum (2000), which stimulated the birth of the
World Social Forum - a global meeting of progressive non-governmental
organizations (NGOs) and political activists - and regional social forums, and
a host of related protests against transnational institutions and core
states. All this suggests the rise of
new forms of global class and identity formation by both elite and subordinate
groups (Bello, 2001; O’Brien, Goetz, Scholte and Williams, 2000; Cohen and Rai,
2000; Lubeck and Reifer, forthcoming).
There
is a growing literature on national and transnational class formation and
related processes of global conflict and cooperation.[6] And yet, there is a serious lacuna in this
literature—the absence of conceptualization and measurement of global class
formation and elite integration, including through military cooperation and unequal
systems of social citizenship.[7]
Here,
the analogies and differences in the construction of elite social bases in the
nineteenth to twentieth centuries have important implications for the likely
trajectory of global cooperation and conflict in the twenty-first. A major structural difference is the much
greater extent to which the U.S. has relied on "defense" as a mean of
generating support from domestic constituencies and regional elites for the national
and global project of U.S. hegemony. By
taking on the role of global policeman the U.S. allowed other core states to
construct political coalitions on social foundations that were substantially
demilitarized, most especially Germany and Japan. The elites in these countries have thus been in a relatively poor
position to bargain, as U.S. elites have become increasingly
unilateralist. This fact, combined with
the still great politico-economic and military power of the U.S., will likely
slow down the emergence of core challengers, as least via the old military
rivalry route. In the nineteenth
century, England had a small military based on a large navy, a small army and
foreign military forces, notably in India, but it never specialized in the
world policeman role to the extent that potential contenders abandoned their
military capability. Thus challengers
quickly turned their rapidly growing politico-economic and military capability
towards a violent confrontation with British global and regional power.
Three
alternative futures seem most likely:
1. A New
Round of U.S. hegemony.
Restoration of U.S. economic hegemony based on new lead industries -
such as information technology and biotechnology - facilitates global
leadership on the basis of a newly widened coalition of elites and workers in
world industries affected by these technologies. The returns from these profitable new industries make possible a
new global New Deal, with the restoration of multilateralism in the core and
developmentalism in the non-core.
2. Renewed
Interimperial Rivalry.
Continued U.S. relative economic decline combined with path dependency
on the military and financial power leads the U.S. to use these to pursue
increasingly narrow unilateralism aims, stimulating competing core and rising
semiperipheral powers to arm to defend their own interests. In all likelihood, this will take quite some
time due to the extent to which other core powers have relied on the U.S. world
policemen role. Eventually, though,
competing core powers such as Germany and Japan (perhaps as part of larger
regional or supranational structures such as the European Union) build up their
military capabilities and a renewed situation of multicentricity emerges in the
core that eventually results in hegemonic rivalry and world war among core
states.
3. Global
elite formation.
A narrow group of elites supports the U.S. in its use of military and
financial power to sustain global dominance against the protests of rival
elites and populations that are increasingly exploited or excluded from the
benefits of an unequal and asymmetrical form of globalization. The U.S., including through U.S.-dominated
supranational institutions, becomes a de factor world state representing
large-scale corporations, a large military and perhaps a civil service
bureaucracy. As the global system
becomes reconstituted on increasingly narrow and militarized social
foundations, transnational social movements rooted in global civil society and
working in conjunction with elite contenders from select states and regions,
challenge top down globalization through a combination of mass protest and the
putting forward of alternative frameworks for global governance based on broad
social foundations, across lines of race, class, gender, nationality and
civilizations.
We will use the results of our research to estimate which of these
future scenarios are more likely to actually occur, specifying what our study
of the changing social foundations of global elites over a long-historical
period has to say about the future trajectory of the global system. The above narrative explains the pressing
need to study the changing social foundation of global elite integration and
its relationship to global conflict and cooperation.
Prior
NSF-supported Research on Globalization
Christopher Chase-Dunn SES-0077975 "Trajectories and Causes of
Structural Globalization: 1800-2000" Amount: $129,898 PERIOD: September 1,
2000 through August 31, 2002.
This proposed study builds
upon our earlier research on the trends and trajectories of global integration
at the Institute for Research on World-Systems (IROWS) at the University of
California-Riverside. This earlier project studied the trajectories of economic
and political integration in the whole world-system since 1800. The research
proposed here expands upon this work by studying transnational and
international relations and by examining the changing contours of ties as well
as trends in their overall density. Our research on the trajectories of trade
and investment globalization has found strong empirical support for the
contention that globalization occurred in waves that have been interrupted by
periods of deglobalization (Chase-Dunn, Kawano and Brewer 2000; also Doyle
2003).
Research Plan
This
project will conceptualize, operationalize and measure global elite formation
and its changing social foundations over the last 163 years, analyzing changes
in the extent and spatial distribution of economic and political/military power
among families, firms, and national states, as well as among supra-national and
truly global proto-state organizations (the Concert of Europe, League of
Nations, U.N., World Bank, IMF, OECD, Organization of American States, NATO,
NAFTA, European Community, European Union, ASEAN, APEC, Group of 8, Warsaw
Treaty Organization, World Trade Organization and so forth). We will study the geographical dimensions of
these structural changes, including links and divides occurring along
core/semiperiphery/periphery, regions, and across civilizational, race/ethnic,
class and gender lines. We will also
draw on comparative typologies of welfare and warfare-welfare states,
stratified by race, ethnicity, class, gender and nationality, and examine what
relationship if any, they have to political dynamics related to global conflict
and cooperation (see Epsing-Anderson, 1990; see Minns, 2001; see Williams,
1995; Blackburn, 2002).
The
main theoretical approach that motivates this research proposal is the
world-systems perspective, an institutional materialist and historically
informed structural approach. The
world-systems perspective supplies an alternative approach to the globalization
and global capitalism schools on the origin and character of the global wealth
and power elite (Wallerstein 1979; 1991; Arrighi 1994; Chase-Dunn and Hall
1997; Chase-Dunn 1998). In this view,
the modern world has been integrated by a set of international and
transnational institutions and relations for centuries, not mere decades. National development and national class
formation have occurred within a larger arena of global geopolitical and
geoeconomic competition, in which transnational elite alliances have been
crucial. Moreover, inequalities of
race/ethnicity, class, gender, nationality and related forms of citizenship
have been central to global dynamics, as world-system analysts and a host of
scholars from a variety of differing theoretical perspectives have long argued.[8] There has been something akin to a global
capitalist class and class structure, albeit one rooted in national locales and
often exclusivist identities of race/ethnicity, gender, civilizational beliefs
and practices, for centuries in the an sich (objective) sense. This global capitalist class is undoubtedly
more integrated now than it has ever been during previous phases of
globalization, but the question remains:
how much more is the global wealth and power elite integrated today than
in times past? Moreover, is the
transnational capital class integrated enough and are its social foundation
broad enough (including along the crucial regional, civilizational axes, as
well as divides of race/ethnicity, class, gender and nationality) to prevent
growing global instability and conflict? This project addresses these questions
by studying the degree and trajectory of global elite integration.
Both
a comparative historical and formal quantitative approach to the problem of
global elite formation and its changing social foundations over the centuries
will be used. Our close study of the
top elites in the core will allow us to use the methods of quantitative social
network analysis for those elites that we study and their ties elsewhere. We will also read the socioeconomic and
political histories of these countries so as to place our findings on ties in a
relevant comparative historical framework.
We
will analyze all three networks—elite, cross-national and
international—separately and compare the results, examining how closely the
structure of elite links reproduces or deviates from the structure of
cross-national links. And we will also
compare the network of international organizations and their ties with the
cross-national and elite networks to locate convergences and divergences.
This
project will also determine whether a principal claim among many theorists of
globalization—i.e., that a bona fide global wealth and power elite
did not really take shape until sometime in the last half-century—has merit on
its own terms. The world-systems
perspective does not deny that the recent wave of transnational integration (and
global elite and class formation) has likely attained a greater level than
earlier waves. But the question of the
slope of the upward trend is an important one, as is the issue of whether or
not the level of integration attained will be great enough to prevent the
escalating chaos that has been a recurrent feature of global backlashes
(Boswell and Chase-Dunn 2000).[9]
Here,
we need to add a complicating factor—the distinction between symmetrical
(equal) and asymmetrical (unequal) ties.
The hypothesis about the pacifying effects of elite ties is really
about symmetrical ties of interdependence. Power-dependence relations may not
have the same kinds of pacific effects, and indeed sometimes they may
exacerbate conflict. So we need to
distinguish in our study of transnational ties between those that are
horizontal and those that are hierarchical.
We
hypothesize that symmetrical forms of international economic integration based
on broad social foundations and relative equality and interdependence within
and across nations lowers the probability of conflict. It is analytically
and empirically possible to distinguish transnational linkages of elite
individuals and international economic ties among states. International economic integration refers to
the density of international trade and investment relative to the overall size
of the world economy. This is the world-system level variable that has been the
main focus of the NSF-sponsored project that we are now just completing (See
Prior NSF-Sponsored Research above). A more integrated and interdependent
international system based on broad social foundations, creates a peace
interest when the integration is symmetrical and crosscuts potential axes of
conflict. We will be able to determine
the degree of consonance between the social foundations of elites, the
structure of elite transnational ties and the structure of international ties,
and if the latter two are somewhat different we may be able to see how they
separately are related to the patterns of international and intranational
conflict.
International
political integration refers to the density of international (regional and
global) political and organizational ties among national societies. When such
ties crosscut international axes of political and economic conflict they reduce
the probability of conflict. The destructiveness of military technology creates
incentives for peace between powers in the core, other things being equal.
The
factors that are hypothesized to increase the probability of conflict work
through the intervening variable of economic instability and increasing
inequality, which we posit are related to the changing social foundations of
world hegemonies and related forms of unequal forms of citizenship and elite
competition (O’Rourke and Williamson 2000; Davis 2001; Klare 2001).
Our
research plan is to examine the cross-temporal relationships among world-system
indicators at each of our targeted time points, and to study the relationships
between the patterns of global elite integration, their social foundations, and
the conflicts that emerged during periods of globalization backlash. Thus we
need to measure both world-level and national level indicators. Though our main research effort will focus
on delineation of top actors, the measurement of transnational and
international ties and their relationship to elite social foundations,
including unequal forms of citizenship, we will operationalize other factors
hypothesized to cause conflict or cooperation, as testing our hypothesis
requires that we control for changes in these variables.
The
very different social base of U.S. hegemony and related forms of integration
leads us to expect continued sustained conflict between semiperipheral,
peripheral and core states and related supranational institutions such as the
IMF implementing austerity programs, with the U.S. playing a leading role,
including through military support for local elites. The crucial elite linkages to scrutinize are between
transnational and local capital and related networks of elites between the
core, semiperiphery and periphery (Evans 1979; 1995). Given the combination of growing inequality and the related
path-dependent centrality of post World War II U.S. military expenditures in
the changing domestic and global foundations of its hegemony, high levels of
global instability and conflict will likely continue. Asymmetrical integration is likely to result in continued high
level of rebellion and social conflict in dependent states in the periphery and
semiperiphery, due to the negative effects of politico-economic and military
dependency in terms of equality/inequality, democracy, state capacity and
highly unequal class structures, though increased inequality in the core is
likely to generate increased conflict as well (Boswell and Dixon, 1990; see
also Rueschemeyer, Stephens and Stephens, 1992; Arrighi 1990a).
Our
model also makes sense of the observed decline in overseas intervention by the
rest of the core powers over time and continued high levels for the U.S. We hypothesize there will be growing
non-military conflict in the core over unilateralism in military, financial and
trade matters, as U.S. leadership is transformed into a more exploitative form
of domination (see Minns 2001; Silver and Arrighi 2003; Blackburn 2002). In
terms of elite ties, we expect to see extensive business ties between core
multinationals, and those in the periphery and semiperiphery, along with close
military and related elite ties, with periodic core interventions to stop
nationalist, leftist or extremist political movements seeking greater control
over resources (Klare, 2001; Nitzan and Bichler, 1995; Bichler and Nitzan,
1996; Borden 1984). Generally speaking,
in areas that have high levels of foreign direct investment and trade, crucial
resources, and/or those areas integral to the U.S. program of rebuilding
regional cores and ensuring an Open Door for their peripheral and
semiperipheral areas) should see high levels of internal conflict and
core-semiperipheral conflict (Borden, 1984; see also Bornschier and Chase-Dunn,
1985).
Conceptualization and Measurement of Global Elite
Integration
For
reasons of feasibility we will propose three inter-related research designs.
The first focuses on a subset of elites despite our wish to study the whole
world. Realistically, we cannot complete an in-depth study of the elites of
every country of the world in a two-year project. So we have selected key
countries, though our unit of analysis remains the whole world-system. The
second research design is cross-national and includes all the countries and
colonial regions where there are comparable data on welfare or warfare-welfare
states, as well as other important aspects of socioeconomic and political
structure, and links (see Epsing-Anderson, 1990; see Minns, 2001). Because of the long tradition of
cross-national research and efforts to create comparable indicators, the study
of the attributes of and links between national societies will not be as
difficult as is the study of individual elite persons. Our third research design analyzes the largest
regional and global international organizations, including firms, military,
political, governmental and civil organizations.
There
are many difficult conceptual and theoretical problems that are raised by the
analysis of the global class structure: the definition of transnational
relationships, the meanings of class when the analysis is focused on the
world-system as a whole rather than on national societies, the relationships
between class structure and consciousness as they intersect and interweave with
ethnicity, religion, civilizational cultures and the core/periphery hierarchy;
the question of class formation, and the issue of the boundaries between
different classes. For now this proposal develops a frankly empiricist and
theoretically eclectic approach that will allow research on global elite
integration to proceed. But we intend to confront and address these conceptual
issues as we digest the results of our research.
As
with other efforts to measure globalization (e.g. Chase-Dunn, Kawano, and Brewer
2000), the estimation of a global characteristic needs to take into account the
changing size of the whole system. There are more transnational interactions
now than in the nineteenth century. There are also more within-nation
interactions because the world population and the world economy have become
larger. It is the relationships between
types of interaction and the size of the whole system that must be studied.
The
boundaries between classes are usually fuzzy and so an effort to study the
whole global capitalist class would quickly encounter the sticky problem of
where to draw the line between the capitalist class and other classes. We will avoid this conundrum by focusing on
only a stratified sample of the very top segment of the global elite and the
most powerful organizations in the system.
Delineating Top Actors
The project will study individuals, families and organizations
(including firms, states and international organizations) in the core societies
of the world-system. Ideally we would like to study the whole world-system
because that is the theoretical framework of our analysis. But for reasons of
feasibility will need to restrict our study of elite ties to selected
countries. We will sample both individuals and firms in the core, while looking
at a larger share in the two hegemonic powers during the relevant periods. This
is necessary, because we want to capture the most powerful and wealthy persons
and institutions in the hegemonic core states (U.K. and U.S.), whose trajectory
conditions much of the evolution of the global system, while capturing other
relevant actors and institutions in the rest of the core. We will study both the wealthiest and most
powerful individuals as determined by the modified reputational method (see
below). This is because it is often the case that individuals such as attorneys
play crucial roles despite that they may not occupy formal positions in firms
or states. Studying international organizations is particular critical for
looking at the evolution of forms of global integration in the world-system,
their relationship with elites at the national and regional level and their
impact on broad patterns of conflict and cooperation.
Hence, we will study the transnational
linkages of the top 20 a) wealthiest individuals or families, b) most powerful
private individuals, c) public organizations, and d) private organizations and
firms for the hegemons (Britain from 1840 to 1945, the U.S. from 1880 to the
present). For the rest of selected core we will examine—France, Germany (later
the European Union), Italy and Japan—we will study the top ten of these same
groups in each country. Then we will
study how transnationally linked these actors were with one another and
with elites in all other countries in ten targeted years: 1840, 1860, 1880,
1913, 1929, 1950, 1970, 1980, 1995, and 2003 and the top ten international
organizations during these periods.
We
would like to also closely study elites in the noncore because challengers to
the power of core states frequently come from the semiperiphery and alliances
with semiperipheral elites are important components of cooperation and
competition within the core. For reasons of feasibility limitations we will not
be able to target the most powerful individuals and organizations within
non-core societies. But we will study the links between core elites with
individuals and organizations in the non-core and those features of national
social structure plausibility related to conflict. We will thus include all the
transnational ties of the elite individuals and organizations that we target
within the core countries we are studying regardless of where in the
world-system these ties lead. In that way we will include ties to the
semiperiphery and periphery without examining directly the most powerful and
wealthy individuals in each non-core country.
We will be able to ascertain the most important alliances and enmities
that structure emerging global conflicts by focusing on the core societies. We will begin our investigation in 1840 because
we need a base line from which to appreciate the rise of transnational linkages
during the nineteenth century. It would be desirable to start earlier, but
again the limits of feasibility impinge.
Determining
the identities of the wealthiest persons is not a simple process. Forbes
magazine lists the world’s billionaires yearly since 1985. The methodology employed by Forbes
for valuing the assets of people is as follows: for billionaires with publicly traded fortunes, net worth is
calculated using share prices and exchange rates; for privately held fortunes
they estimate what companies would be worth if they were public. They also
include, when possible, the value of art collections and real estate. Fortunes are measured in U.S. dollars. For earlier periods, we will gather data
from a variety of primary and secondary sources. Once a plausibly complete list of the wealthiest individuals has
been assembled, the task of studying transnational and international
connections can begin.
We
will employ a variant of Floyd Hunter’s (1980) reputational technique to help
us delineate both the most powerful and the wealthiest individuals. We will
utilize specialized Internet list-serves to identify prominent historians for
particular periods and regions, and these we will ask to designate and rank the
ten most powerful individuals and the ten wealthiest individuals in the state
we are studying. When there are disagreements we will revisit our informants
and reread the relevant specialized historical literature to resolve the
inconsistencies.
We
will examine the most powerful individuals. This will include private
individuals deemed by historical specialists to have wielded great power and
also those who hold top authoritative positions in each of three kinds of
organizations:
§
Firms (public and private, industrial and
financial) and private organizations (think-tanks, foundations);
§
National states; and
§
International organizations (all kinds,
regional and global).
Because
power is more difficult to measure than wealth our decisions about which
institutions (and individuals) to include will necessarily be less reliable
than designating top-wealth actors (above). The project will study four groups
in the core and semiperiphery (possibly with overlaps), respectively
§
The 20
(hegemon) and 10 (other core) wealthiest;
§
The 20 and 10
most powerful private individuals as judged by historical specialists;
§
The 20 and 10
in top positions in the world’s largest firms and private organizations;
§
The 20 and 10
in top positions in the most powerful states;
§
The 20 and 10
in top positions in the most powerful public organizations.
Determining
which organizations to include will be a matter of combining different
indicators of financial, political, military and reputational power. Indicators
for firms will include number of employees, yearly gross revenues and other
indicators of financial size. To determine the top firms in the global economy
in the most recent decades, we will employ Fortune
magazine’s annually published data on the size (determined by revenues),
industry, and headquarter country of the 500 largest global corporations. Recently, researchers have employed these
lists as sources for studying changes in the distribution of economic sectors
across countries (Bergesen and Sonnett 2001). These data were first made
available from Fortune magazine in
the mid 1950’s. For periods prior to
this we will utilize other sources of information on large corporations such as
the Moody’s directories and Dun and Bradstreet.
For
states we will include all sovereign states and colonial regions for which we
can find relevant information, coding the firms and states according to their
place in the hierarchy of the world-system (Kentor, 2000a, b). The long
tradition of cross-national comparison means that we need not be so concerned
about feasibility when we turn to the study of national societies and their
states. We will utilize available datasets that indicate demographic, political
and economic importance such as total population, level of urbanization, total
government revenues and budgeted expenditures, sovereign territorial size, size
of armed forces, total military expenditures, total GDP and GDP per capita
(Banks 1997; Maddison 1995; 2001). Due to the comparability of its indicators
Mitchell’s International Historical
Statistics 1750-1988 will be a valuable source for data from 1840 to 1988.
For international organizations indicators of importance will include number of
employees, size of armed forces, total military expenditures, yearly gross
revenues, total budgeted expenditures, other indicators of financial size and
estimations of their broad impact in the global system (Murphy 1994).
We
will geocode all the actors that we study so that we can use methods of
spatiotemporal analysis that explicitly take account of spatial distances among
actors. We will also produce Geographical Information System (GIS) global maps
based on our linkage and conflict data, and will utilize interoperable TimeMap®
software (Johnson, 2000)[10]
to produce animated maps that show changes over time. These will be published
on a project web site and made available to the entire world, and will be
incorporated into other web-accessible digital libraries such as the Alexandria
Digital Library and the Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative.
Delineating Transnational and
International Ties
Having delimited our targeted elite and organizational actors as
indicated above, the project will study the transnational
and within-nation linkages among these actors and their other international
links. Transnational linkages of
individuals include family ties such as international marriages, educational
ties such as studying abroad by individuals or their immediate families,
business ties such as investments abroad, political ties such as memberships in
international organizations.
Intermarriage between groups is an important form of intergroup
integration in nearly all world-systems (Chase-Dunn and Hall 1997: 135). In kin-based systems kin groups create
political and economic alliances primarily by means of intermarriage. In modern
complex systems family structures complement other institutional arrangements,
but they still remain an important aspect of the informal linkages that create
trust among both elites and masses (Zeitlin and Ratcliff 1988). And we may find interesting differences in
the forms of linkages that are related to civilizational, linguistic and racial
differences among elites. The institutions of informal association have long
been examined as an important aspect of national class formation (e.g. Domhoff
1998; Baltzell 1979, 1987), but this kind of analysis is also important to the
examination of transnational class linkages. For example we hypothesize that
trans-civilizational and trans-racial alliances are primarily bureaucratic
rather than kin-based.
For
firms, transnational connections will be ascertained by studying the number and
location of foreign and domestic subsidiaries, the nationality of members of
control boards, international joint ventures or strategic alliances, and
international mergers. Dun and
Bradstreet’s Who Owns Whom and
Moody’s annual corporate directories will provide the necessary information to
determine these transnational connections. Carroll and Fennema (2002) study
interlocking directorates of global firms and Carroll and Carson (2002) study
their connections with global policy groups. We will study interlocking
directorates of the world’s largest firms using the techniques of quantitative
network analysis. For states and international
organizations, transnational linkages will be ascertained by studying the value
and distribution of investments abroad, the amount of imports and exports, as
well as centrality and density in international transportation and
communications networks. Information on international trade links will be
provided by the European Historical
Statistics 1750-1970, by the Foreign
Commerce Yearbook for 1930-1950, and by the World Bank’s World Tables for 1970-1990. The IMF’s Balance of Payments and International Financial Statistics are
two additional sources that will be used for studying international financial
links during the post WWII era. For the
targeted years between Word Wars I-II, the League of Nations’ annual
statistical publications will be useful. For international organizations the
relative strength of transnational connections will be indicated by the scope
and distribution of operations (regional or global) and by the extent of
membership.
As
mentioned above, we need to make the distinction between symmetrical and
asymmetrical transnational ties and related forms of integration, as these are
likely to have profound impacts on patterns of elite conflict and cooperation
(Simmel 1950, 1955; Coser 1956; Levy, 1989).
Our study of the behavior, cultural milieu, policy currents, social
foundations and trajectories of elites in comparative historical perspective
will complement the structural and quantitative aspects of our research.
We
will also study the structure of interstate and colonial linkages among the
core and non-core regions using data on exchanges of diplomats, material on
signatories and participants in international treaties and related regimes,
imports and exports, international investments, and memberships in
international regional and global organizations. Here we also need to be cognizant of the possibility that some
ties may be hierarchical rather than interdependent. The Treaty of Versailles
is a classic example of an asymmetrical relationship among core states (see
Newton 1997). Any tie that follows a
conflict in which one side defeated another should be scrutinized for elements
of hierarchy.
Research Questions
and Analyses
The first kind of analysis will involve the study of changes over time
in the social foundations and strength
of transnational ties between and among members and blocs of the global wealth
and power elite. A central question to
address is whether these ties of integration between and among the global elite
exhibit waves of connectivity similar to the waves of economic globalization
found in our parallel studies (which track pulsations of transnational trade
and investment over time). This will require the construction of comparable
estimates of the degree of elite integration for each of our targeted time points
and the analysis of change over time for the whole system. Answers to
these questions will have implications for the probabilities of future
political tensions and military conflict.
The
second analysis will examine changes in the strength of different kinds of
ties. For example, is intermarriage a
more important mechanism of global elite integration in the nineteenth century
than in the twentieth? What are the
temporal trajectories of different means of global class formation such as
intermarriage, educational links, transnational investment partnerships,
interlocking directorates, and so on?
Our data sets will enable us to track the temporal trends of different
kinds of links. And we will be able to see if linguistic, racial and
civilizational differences between elite individuals are related to the types
of links and the structural holes in which elite links do not occur.
A
third kind of data analysis will compare the different groups of actors to see
if there are differences in their trajectories of transnationalization. For example, do wealthy individuals and
families, the leaders of big private firms, and the heads of powerful political
organizations display synchronous trajectories of global integration, or are
there leads, lags or counter cycles?
For
each individual (in our four classifications), firm, or national state and
international organization, we will devise scores registering the strength of
their global connectivity. This will
make it possible to study the causes of variation in the strength of
transnational ties using characteristics of individuals and the larger entities
with which they are linked. This will
allow us to explore questions such as, do wealthier individuals have more or fewer
transnational ties, and does this relationship change over time? How are transnational ties related to
varying firm size and business sectors?
How is core/semiperipheral status (wealth and military power of states)
related to transnational integration?
Not
only will the project examine the intensity
of transnational ties between the units of analysis included in our study, but
also it will crucially examine changing network
patterns (i.e., spatial contours)
of individuals, economic and political organizations. Waves of integration are not likely to be homogenous across
regions. Analysis of the directionality
of transnational ties will enable us to probe questions such as, along which
geographical axes do the stronger ties prevail? Where do the families, firms, and states of core regions have
more exclusive ties and where are there significant overlaps in the ties of
core countries with semiperipheral regions?
What about the configuration of connections between the leading families
and firms of the core and the territorial jurisdictions of the core countries
themselves? Critically, our project will ascertain the changing terrain of bloc
formation among the world’s wealthiest and most powerful individuals, firms and
political units.
The
project will also study the changes in the network patterns linking our several
targeted groups of actors to one another. What are the relationships among the
largest firms and states and how does this change over time? Is there a shift of centralized power and
wealth away from Europe to the Americas and to Asia over the last 160
years? Does this shift work the same
way for the wealthy and powerful individuals, firms and states, or are there
important exceptions among these? Do
these changes indicate that the basic nature of the world-system is undergoing fundamental
change or are these changes just another phase of the modern world-system? What has been and will be the impact of
global elite formation and integration on regions, nations and world-system
zones? We will employ our geocoded data
to produce GIS global maps for each targeted time point, and link these using
interoperable TimeMap® standards (Johnson 2000) for web presentation
of animated maps, showing changing transnational and international links and
conflicts over time.
The
final part of the analysis will examine the hypothesis that changing social
foundations of elites and related forms of global elite integration affect
conflict and cooperation. We will do this by examining the relationship between
the densities and patterning of elite ties with the outbreaks of interstate
conflict and by examining the relationships over time between changes in the
overall intensity of elite integration and the level of global conflict. Do the
patterns of transnational and international linkages formed during the great
wave of nineteenth century globalization predict the topography of interstate
and intrastate conflict that emerged during the globalization backlash? To
determine this we will utilize our network datasets to construct rectangular
data matrices using national societies as the unit of analysis. Then we will
employ structural equations modeling to test the hypothesis that transnational
and international ties are related to patterns of conflict.
Our
geocoded network patterns of transnational and international ties will enable
us to control for distance in examining the relationships between elite ties
and emergent conflict. Arguably individuals and countries close to one another
are both more likely to develop ties and to come into conflict because of
border disputes. By taking into account the actual geographical locations of
individuals, organizational headquarters and countries we can see how
propinquity alters (or does not alter) the relationships between networks and
conflict and inferences about causal relationships among these.
Our
hypothesis that the social foundations, contours and strengths of elite ties
was an important contributor to conflict in the previous globalization backlash
will be evaluated by examining the degrees of fit and taking into account other
alleged causes of conflict. If the elite ties hypothesis is borne out we will
use the contours of contemporary national and transnational elite connections
to suggest where conflicts are most likely to emerge during the backlash against
globalization.
As
noted above, we hypothesize that there has been a major transformation in the
structure of militarism and patriarchal relations in the transition from
British to U.S. hegemony. In the nineteenth century all the contending core
elites and their social bases were organized as military powers. In the late
twentieth and early twenty-first centuries this role has been taken up
increasingly exclusively by the U.S.
Many other core powers have become organized around economic competition
in the absence of strong military structures and concomitant gender ideologies,
though this could change. The U.S.,
with its very different trajectory, is likely to continue to employ its
comparative military advantage in the global system. A violent reaction to this within contending core powers will be
delayed by the fact that some core powers have to varying degrees
institutionalized relatively anti-military political cultures (notably Germany
and Japan). Yet over time, upwardly mobile semiperipheral powers such as China
or core rivals threatened by U.S. unilateralism may emerge as politico-military
and socioeconomic rivals (Calleo, 2003b).
Such a possibility will be examined based on our collected data and
assessment of the likely future alternatives for the trajectory of the global
system. The datasets we construct for
this project will be widely disseminated for use by other scholars through the
Institute for Research on World-Systems (IROWS) project website and the
Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR).
Network Link Datasets
The
project will construct datasets for each targeted year on five groups of
individuals in the core and semiperiphery, respectively.
1)
The 20 (hegemons) and 10 (other core)
wealthiest individuals and/or families
2)
The 20 and 10 most powerful private
individuals as determined by historical specialists;
3)
The CEO’s of the top 20 and 10 private
firms or organizations
4)
The heads of states in the core
5)
The directors of 10 most powerful
international organizations