Parchment, Printing, and Hypermedia: Communication in World Order Transformation

Parchment, Printing, and Hypermedia: Communication in World Order Transformation, by Ronald J. Deibert

8. Conclusion

To understand the larger implications of "epochal" changes as they unfold is notoriously difficult. When bedrock assumptions and the institutions that have reinforced and sustained them dissolve in a maelstrom of change, the very search for a framework or foundation from which to assess such changes becomes inherently problematic. Indeed, if there is one overarching meta-perspective that has informed this analysis it is a view of history as essentially contingent and open-ended, one in which chance rules and unintended consequences loom large. While law-like generalizations that operate beyond the ebb and flow of history run contrary to such a perspective, analytical and theoretical lenses can, and indeed must, be constructed from which to view and interpret current trends. The purpose of this study has been to provide one such analytical and theoretical lens through which to examine the relationship between changes in modes of communication and world order transformation. I have not done so in order to establish that communication technologies are the prime movers of human history--that all other aspects of human existence can be reduced to the unfolding "logic" of successive modes of communication. Rather I hope to fill a remarkable gap in International Relations scholarship at a time when dramatic global changes in communication technologies are occurring, and the only analyses to be found are in popular magazines and the mass media.

Ironically, it was the theory associated with one of the most widely quoted writers of the "information age" literature--Marshall McLuhan--that pro vided the material I have used to construct that analytical lens. While both McLuhan and Innis before him may have been somewhat ambiguous in terms of the weight they attributed to modes of communication in human history, I have attempted in this study to articulate an open-ended, nonreductionist medium theory approach, embedding it in a much wider evolutionary perspective on human existence that I refer to as "ecological holism." Apart from explicitly shedding whatever technological determinist accoutrements may be associated with medium theory, the most significant modification is the elaboration of the two conceptually distinct effects that are related to changes in modes of communication: distributional changes and changes to social epistemology. This elaboration allowed me to delineate more clearly the types of effects that arise in conjunction with large-scale changes in modes of communication.

In part 1 of this study, I examined the relationship between the emergence of printing and the medieval to modern transformation of world order in Europe. Distributional changes associated with printing worked in two directions: undercutting the medieval world order while contributing to the constitution of the modern. With respect to the former, the properties of printing favored the strategic interests of the Protestant Reformation and scientific humanism to the detriment of the papal-monastic network. Both of these particular distributional changes were vital in helping to dissolve the cosmological ties that linked Europe into a single Christian Commonwealth. A third distributional change that was facilitated by printing--the rise of the urban bourgeoisie and contractarian socioeconomic relations--was "transitional" insofar as it had a leveling effect on the personalistic ties of feudal social relations and opened up the possibility of common rule from a single center. Finally, the distributional properties of printing favored the strategic interests of centralizing state monarchs who, in alliance with the urban bourgeoisie, set about creating standardized rational policies, and impersonal bureaucracies to administer them over clearly defined territorial spaces.

While it is always difficult to pin down with certainty "what might have been," the absence of printing would have presented some significant constraints in the face of each of these developments. Certainly the rise and decline of previous heresies to the Protestant Reformation gives us some indication of what might have been the fate of Luther's challenge and the Church's containment strategies had there been no printing press available in Europe in the early sixteenth century. To a somewhat lesser extent, the same might be said of the flourishing of the scientific humanist movement, which without printing would surely have been less swift in its spread and success, if not held in check altogether. Likewise, the frequent fragmentation of centralized forms of state rule in the late Middle Ages suggests what might have been in the absence of the printing environment for modern state bureaucracies. While a form of intergenerational rule from a single center could have been sustained with a reliance solely on the written word, it is unlikely that such systems would have developed as swiftly, as comprehensively, and with such characteristic standardization across the wide spectrum of public policy sectors as they did in the parts of Europe where mass-mechanized printing was available. Moreover, such systems of rule might not have proven to be as functionally superior as were other nonterritorial logics of organization, such as city-leagues and city-states, without the availability of printing. Lastly, given the widespread reliance of the urban bourgeoisie on social abstractions--such as contracts, constitutions, and newspapers--it is probably safe to say that such movements would have at least been tempered significantly without the availability of printing technologies.

But distributional changes, which focus only on the relative power of social forces, provide an incomplete picture of world order transformation. The emergence of the printing environment also had important consequences for the social epistemology of the time. Printing provided a communications environment in which modern notions of individual subjectivity and autonomy, and a cognitive bias towards visual, linear, and uniform representations of space, could thrive. Moreover, the standardization of printing provided the means by which both directly and indirectly an imagined community based on shared "national" vernacular languages could take root, forming the embryonic shell of the modern ideology of nationalism. Taken together, these changes in social epistemology formed the "metaphysical underpinnings" for the architecture of modern world order, and thus contributed to the characteristic differentiation of political authority into territorially distinct, sovereign nation states.

Using the same analytical lens as in part 1, I first turned my attention, in part 2, to the distributional changes associated with the emerging hypermedia environment. There I argued that the hypermedia environment favors the complex diffusion of production across territorial/political boundaries by facilitating multilocational flexibility, transnational joint-ventures, and both global localization and "local" globalization--the latter best evidenced by the commercialization of the World Wide Web. I also outlined how global finance "fits" the hypermedia environment, indeed has been qualitatively transformed by it, both in terms of potential velocity and sheer volume of capital flows across borders. I then examined the way the hypermedia environment favors the diffusion of transnational social movements around the globe, leading to what has been referred to as a "global civil society." Finally, I argued that the distributional properties of the hypermedia environment--in particular the high level of transparency in the form of multiple and dispersed centers of surveillance--favor negarchical security arrangements while disadvantaging centralized/hierarchical forms of rule, or real-states.

Turning to social epistemology, I argued that the social constructs, symbolic forms, and cognitive biases loosely orbiting around the current of thought known as "postmodernism" will likely resonate today and in the future as a result of a "fitness" or match between this social epistemology and the hypermedia environment. Postmodern notions of "decentered" selves, pastiche-like, intertextual spatial biases, multiple realities and worlds, and fragmented imagined communities "fit" the hypermedia environment where personal information is dispersed along computer networks and privacy is rapidly dissolving, where disparate media meld together into a digital, intertextual whole, where digital worlds and alternative realities are pervasive, and where narrowcasting and two-way communications are undermining mass "national" audiences and encouraging nonterritorial "niche" communities.

What do these changes portend for the character of political authority at a world level? Do they have implications for the modern system of rule, which has been so resilient in the face of the changes and challenges of the last four centuries? Certainly we must be cautious about making bold projections about the future. But one of the advantages of the theoretical and analytical lens I have put forth in this study is that it does not look to the future, but to the here and now. It examines the existing social forces and ideas that we can identify around us today, and seeks to determine which will likely "fit" the emerging hypermedia environment and which will not. Not only does this help avoid making problematic assertions about futuristic scenarios yet to unfold, but it also gives some indication of the weight of alternative forces and trends. If I am right about the "fitness" of the social forces and ideas I have identified above, then we should expect some sig nificant changes in structures and institutions of political authority at a global level.

Probably the most important characteristic suggested by the trends outlined above is the "decentering" or dispersal of authority to multiple and overlapping sites. One aspect of this dispersal can be traced to the structural power of capital, and to the rise of what Timothy Sinclair has aptly called "private makers of global public policy." While states may have entered into and fully encouraged the transnationalization of production and the freeing up of a variety of controls over flows of capital, the unintended consequence has been that all states--to varying degrees--find themselves subject to the structural power of transnational corporate interests. A corollary of this development--and yet a further dispersal of authority--has emanated from the policy responses to this unleashing of global market forces. As these structural pressures have accumulated, detachment from the global economy has become an increasingly unfeasible and costly option. Instead, in order to coordinate their ever-more integrated economies, states have entered into a complex web of institutional arrangements and regimes at both a regional and a global level. At the same time, the structural power of capital has increased pressures on central state authorities for the devolution of many decisionmaking powers and previously centralized state functions to the local levels and to private authorities. The combined effect of these two processes is a much more complex web of governance structures both "above" and "below" the sovereign state.

Indeed, if there is one clear "winner" in the hypermedia environment, it is the collective interests of transnational capital. The modern subordination of economics to politics has been dramatically reversed by this change such that the core values of most all states are now defined in terms of the interests of capital. As Ohmae put it most starkly, "economic activity is what defines the landscape on which all other institutions, including political institutions, must operate." ₁ The spread of capitalist-consumer values on a global scale has been remarkable, and shows little sign of abatement. While it would be wrong (and conceptually misguided, as I will explain shortly) to describe these changes in terms of the "withering away" of the state, they certainly signal an important change in the values that now animate most states. In a virtual stampede, states around the world have engaged in progressive liberalization measures to meet the disciplinary interests of transnational capital. This "hollowing out" of the state, the shifting orientation of states' core values away from self-sufficiency, autonomy, and survival to the accommo dation of liberal-capitalist interests, and the integration of states both with each other and with regional and international organizations and regimes, signals yet a further dismantling of the architecture of modern world order toward multiple and overlapping layers of authority.

Adding yet another element to this dispersal of political authority is the density and complexity of transnational social movements, many of whom now operate primarily through the nonterritorial spaces of computer networks. To be sure, these movements vary considerably in the extent to which their actions are both effective and/or considered legitimate. Certainly, the influence of Amnesty International or Greenpeace has more weight in various arenas and jurisdictions than does "The Christian Holocaust" or "STRAIGHT" (the latter being marginalized transnational hate groups). But relative weight notwithstanding, it is surely significant that in the last quarter century tens of thousands of these interest groups have sprouted, in purpose and values united only to the extent that they see politics across borders as no longer the sole domain of the representatives of sovereign states. For these groups, politics is not a process channeled into mutually exclusive, territorially distinct state structures. It is not something that can be tidily boxed and separated into sovereign jurisdictions defined by elites. It is, rather, an open-ended borderless process. Collectively, these social movements add yet more webs of governance into the multiple and overlapping layers of authority and further undermine the organization and differentiation of modern political rule into territorially distinct units.

What makes these trends even more compelling is the way they are complemented by some of the core elements of postmodern social epistemology, in particular the embrace of heterogeneity and pastiche-like, intertextual spaces. It is worth recalling at this point Wittgenstein's remark cited in chapter 7 that, while used by Lyotard as an illustration of postmodern spatial biases, seems especially apropos as a description of postmodern world order: "Our language can be seen as an ancient city: a maze of little streets and squares, of old and new houses, and of houses with additions from various periods; and this surrounded by a multitude of new boroughs with straight regular streets and uniform houses." ₂ At a time when "it is becoming increasingly difficult," according to Spiro, "to use the use the word 'we' in the context of international affairs," ₃ what could be more "fitting" than the postmodern sense of multiple identities, decentered selves, and fragmented imagined communities? If I am correct in arguing that postmodern social epistemology will only deepen and expand in the hypermedia environment, then we should expect the trend away from rigid, linear spatial boundaries, and toward multiple and overlapping forms of political authority to continue.

In the much longer term, however, one significant trend suggested by these changes is the way the entire planet has become a focus of constant surveillance. While the participants in the planetary surveillance process range from national and regional military organizations with more narrowly defined security interests, to commercial organizations that sell high-resolution images to anyone on the earth, to environmental organizations monitoring the earth's biosphere, the collective effect of all of these groups taken together is that there are now thousands of "eyes" watching all parts of the planet simultaneously. Of these various "eyes," probably the most significant are the multinational environmental satellite surveillance systems. These long-term cooperative efforts to monitor and model the earth's biosphere will likely remain permanent features of the human-technological interface for the foreseeable future. Although they are designed to address the many interrelated facets of ecological management, their most important effect may lie in the unanticipated consequences of their continuous watch over the planet. With the emergence of the hypermedia environment no matter how the dynamics of world order unfold, they will do so under the total gaze of constantly orbiting surveillance cameras. When coupled with the prevalence of "earth images" and "global symbolism" outlined in chapter 7, these changes suggest the distant possibility of a global imagined community. However, the heterogeneous nature of postmodern social epistemology, and the overlapping layers of political authority, not to mention the dispersed centers of surveillance themselves, would all act as strong constraints against the emergence of a single mass identity. It is more likely that this sense of a global imagined community would coexist in a complex montage of overlapping and fluid multiple identities. For the foreseeable future, pastiche-like "niche" communities will likely dominate the postmodern landscape.

If the trends identified above do indeed become a more prominent feature of the world political landscape, then several general consequences for the practice and theory of world politics follow. We should expect that the faultlines of future conflicts will increasingly be within and across states, rather than between them. This would appear to hold as much for the states of the post-industrialized North as it would for those of the South. While the lack of state legitimacy and centralized authority in places like Rwanda, Somalia, and in states of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe is obviously more severe than it is in places such as France, Canada, or the United States, similar types of fragmentative forces can be identified among the latter as well. This suggests that the neat divisions between the two worlds of the "post-historical" "strong" states of the "tame" North, and the zones of lawlessness and disorder of the historical "wild" South, may be misplaced. ₄ If anything, such divisions between "tame" and "wild" cut across and transcend all geographic regions, applying perhaps more accurately to nonterritorial spheres than to hemispheric or territorially based divisions on a map. In the future, in other words, "quasi-states" may not be a classification pertaining solely to the states of the Third World. ₅

Of course, not all of the forces generating these cross-cutting divisions are fragmentative. Multinational and transnational corporations, global financial interests, and the thousands of Internet-based niche social movements and virtual communities are threading new integrative seams of regional and global authority within and across states. Indeed, one of the more potentially interesting political divisions of postmodern politics will be the interactions between what Robert Cox calls the hegemonic nebuluese of global market forces and the counter-hegemonic movements of global civil society. ₆ The most significant rivalries will not be between states per se, but between the deepening and expansion of a global capitalist "business civilization" and the increasingly legitimate authority and influence of groups found on such networks as EcoNet, Envirolink, WomensNet, LaborNet, and MuslimsNet; between groups like the Trilateral Commission, the G7, and the Bank for International Settlements on the one hand, and groups such as Greenpeace, Amnesty International, Femmes Libres, and Anjuman Serfroshan-e-Islam, on the other. As it stands, the former have much greater structural power and influence over the shape of world politics than the latter do. And the mesh between postmodern attractions and the escapist worlds of consumer culture, found in video games, virtual realities, large-screen televisions, and giant cathedral-like theaters, greatly favors the continued subsistence and vitality of the global capitalist system. But relative power notwithstanding, the most important dynamic shaping the contours of global governance in years to come will less likely be rival states than it will be the interplay between these two rival hegemonic and counter-hegemonic social forces.

All of the above suggests that the theoretical tools and concepts Interna tional Relations theorists have inherited and employed for centuries to study world politics will be in need of revision. Such tools and concepts have rested on assumptions about the unity of authority, fixed territorial rule, and sharp divisions between "inside" and "outside," or "domestic" and "international" spheres. ₇ They have formed the presuppositions and assumptions that have gone into such notions as unitary-rational actors, balances and system polarities among states, and the rise and fall of great powers. For theorists and foreign policy practitioners alike, these tools and concepts have provided a kind of conceptual lens or ordering device--a "way-of-seeing" the world--in which boundaries of responsibility are drawn, issues framed, and problems and their solutions visualized. Yet if the characteristics outlined above are accurate, such a paradigm will more likely produce dissonance and confusion, than insight and understanding.

Of course one important caveat is that the transformations described above are all seen from the perspective of changing communication technologies. Throughout this study I have gone to great lengths to argue against monocausal reductionism, and while communication technologies are important insofar as they are implicated in most all spheres of life, they should not be seen as "master variables." In step with this caveat, then, it is instructive to consider briefly some observations made by theorists working in other areas that reinforce the claims made above. For example, in Beyond Sovereignty David Elkins has described the "unbundling" of modern territorial politics--a process in which a wide variety of forces are helping to decouple many of the functions and instruments of governance from their territorial roots. ₈ Likewise, Philip Cerny has described an emerging "plurilateral" world order, characterized by "cross-cutting ties" and "overlapping memberships"--a system that is neither hierarchic nor anarchic, but "polyarchical." ₉ Ken Booth has argued that "Identity patterns are becoming more complex," and "The traditional distinction between 'foreign' and 'domestic' policy is less tenable than ever." ₁₀ Also significant are Ronnie Lipschutz's observations on the "fading away" of anarchy, its replacement by a "global capitalist consumer culture," and the rise of a non-territorially-based "global civil society." ₁₁ Similarly, James Rosenau has written of an emerging "multi-centric world" in which states exist alongside a variety of "sovereignty-free actors" shaping the contours of world politics. ₁₂

Perhaps most compelling of all, however, are John Ruggie's many observations of contemporary world order transformation. In ways similar to this study, Ruggie has commented on the emergence of "multiperspectival institutional forms" and "non-territorial regions" driven by changes in production, finances, ecology, and security. ₁₃ What is most significant, however, is the way in which Ruggie points to a connection between these "multiperspectival" forms and broader changes in mentalités collectives. For Ruggie, there is more than a passing coincidence between postmodern social epistemology and new forms of political authority. Given the affinity between this study and Ruggie's, it is worth quoting him at some length:

What is intriguing about this debate are some of the terms used to convey the essential features of postmodernity: detotalized, decentered, and fragmented discourses and practices; multiple and field-dependent referents in place of single-point fixed referents; flow-defined spaces and the simultaneity of temporal experiences as opposed to placed-defined spaces and sequential temporal experiences; the erosion of sovereign or macro powers over society coupled with the diffusion of disciplinary or micro powers within society. To the student of international political economy these terms sound a great deal like descriptions of certain recently emerged global systems of economic transaction: the global markets in currencies, for example, or in credit and even equities; to a somewhat lesser but still considerable extent global production; and in several of the institutional arrangements that have emerged in the global commons ₁₄

These converging observations made by theorists working along different lines reinforce the conclusions made in this study from the perspective of changing communication technologies.

As might be expected, however, universal consensus on the question of world order transformation has not been reached. Generally speaking, arguments skeptical of the analysis I have set forth are likely to take one of two forms, each of which can already be found in the existing literature. The first argument, forcefully presented by Stephen Krasner, is that the very idea that we could be living through a fundamental transformation of world order is misguided from the start because there has never been a stable basepoint--a Westphalian system--from which a transformation could unfold. ₁₅ According to Krasner, "The assertion that the contemporary system represents a basic transformation because sovereignty seems to be so much at risk is not well-founded: it ignores the fact that violations of the principles of territoriality and autonomy have been an enduring characteristic of the international system both before and after the Peace of Westphalia." ₁₆ Leaving aside Krasner's anachronistic allusion to there being an "international" system prior to there being "nations" at all, his basic point is an important one that should be addressed. The essence of Krasner's critique is that the changes going on today are nothing extraordinary, but are rather par for the course. To back up his argument, Krasner provides several illustrations of violations of state autonomy and sovereignty over the last three or four centuries.

While Krasner's argument is provoking, I see several reasons why it is not convincing. First, by setting up a very rigid notion of a "Westphalian System" as his counterpoint, Krasner may be overstating the extent to which others (and I suppose he would include myself in this category) see that system as something more than a paradigm or organizing template of political authority. Doing so allows Krasner to point to instances where the system was violated as evidence that this system was not constraining at all. However, simply because a norm was violated in several instances does not mean that the norm itself did not exist at all, that it did not shape and constrain the vast majority of peoples' conceptual horizons of the limits to political authority. Indeed, Krasner comes close to suggesting that the institutions of sovereignty, diplomacy, and public and private property that most everyone agree define the modern period of rule are simple fictions that can be explained away as random interactions among normless, power-seeking actors--a position that contradicts his earlier views on the institutional depth of the sovereign state. ₁₇ Second, and relatedly, while Krasner can certainly identify isolated instances where the sovereignty paradigm was violated, he could not identify a period, such as the present, when so many violations are occurring simultaneously and at so many different levels from a variety of different directions. It is the cumulative impact of all of these together that suggest not just isolated violations of a norm, but a fundamental challenge to the norm itself.

A second argument, more common than the former, runs along the line that the "state" still exists and performs certain essential functions--that it still enforces regulations and contracts, ₁₈ that it monopolizes coercive powers, ₁₉ and that no viable institutional alternatives to it have emerged as challengers. ₂₀ In short, the state has not disappeared or withered away, nor has it been replaced by some alternative institution. These objections certainly clarify an important misconception among liberal interdependence theorists of the 1960s and 1970s, who typically framed the rise of transnational corporations as an explicit challenge to the "state." And no doubt this misconception still animates many popular accounts of flows of information and commerce. But as an objection to the conclusions of this study, they are less convincing, primarily because political authority is the focus of my analysis, and not the state per se. While political authority was once centered in the hands of sovereign states, and while the arguments I have presented suggest it is now dispersing to multiple domains, I have not argued that as a consequence of this dispersal the state has disappeared or withered away. Quite the contrary. States still perform essential functions. I do not expect them to disappear any time soon. But while a state may still exist and perform crucial functions, it may not necessarily be the locus of political authority. A pen is vital to the signing of a law, but the political authority is wielded by the executive who does the signing, and not by the pen itself.

At the heart of these objections, however, may lie an even deeper set of questions not about transformation per se but about the discipline itself and its ability to conceptualize change at all. One gets the sense from these reservations that something is wrong with the way the very problem itself is being posed. Waiting for the state to "disappear" before entertaining the possibility of fundamental transformation is analogous to a seventeenth-century observer pointing to the town cathedral and waiting for it to disappear before accepting the demise of the medieval world order. Under those conditions, we would still be living in the Middle Ages!

Part of the problem may not be empirical at all, but conceptual. In other words, the real stumbling block may lie with the discipline's predominant "way-of-seeing" the world. A number of theorists are beginning to recognize the deep pervasiveness of a "state-centric/billiard ball" bias--a kind of ontological blinder that colors our preconceptions about the world around us. Consider in this respect Ruggie's admonition that the two dominant "schools" in the field, realism and liberalism, offer pictures that seem "equally misplaced"--that most theorists "lack even an adequate vocabulary; and what we cannot describe, we cannot explain." ₂₁ Ruggie's critique is mirrored to some extent by Robert Walker's, who believes that our attempts at understanding or questioning transformation "remain caught within the discursive horizons that express the spatiotemporal configurations of another era." ₂₂ Interestingly, this was a point made earlier by Edward Morse, who argued that "the whole terminology of international affairs is still permeated by past ideas and especially by the political and legal concepts of the Westphalia system." ₂₃ In yet more stark terms, Rosenau has described these ontological blinders as "conceptual jails." ₂₄

But if the answer is not an empirical one, how do we go about making, in Rosenau's words, a conceptual "jailbreak"? While there are probably many different answers to this question, recent developments in the philosophy and history of science associated with figures such as Thomas Kuhn, Quentin Skinner, Mary Hesse, and Richard Rorty suggest that conceptual revolutions in the sciences are more appropriately described as "metaphoric redescriptions" of nature rather than more accurate representations of nature itself. ₂₅ In other words, revolutionary achievements and paradigmatic revolutions occur when the old, familiar vocabulary becomes stale, rigid, and dogmatic and is replaced by new metaphors and new ways of looking at the world that dispense with the old vocabulary. The important point is that the creation of a new vocabulary or paradigm cannot be reached by following a set of a priori axioms formulated in the old vocabulary, nor can it be seen as finally hitting upon the one correct representation of "reality." Rather it occurs in a much less "rational," more poetic way, through the creative use of metaphors and analogies that help us see the world around us in a new and interesting light. This preanalytic exercise is what Rorty refers to as "therapeutic redescription"--that is, the use of novel metaphors to redescribe the present in order to shake us free of our current conceptual blinders, which are holding us captive and getting in the way.

How might Rorty's "therapeutic redescription" be applied to International Relations theory? While virtually any theme could suffice, one that seems to be gaining momentum in the field is "neomedievalism." Probably the first to articulate this analogy was Hedley Bull, who considered the possibility that the demise of the Westphalian states system could evolve into something resembling in form the architecture of medieval western Europe:

All authority in mediaeval Christendom was thought to derive ultimately from God and the political system was basically theocratic. It might therefore seem fanciful to imagine that there might develop a modern and secular counterpart of it that embodies its central characteristic: a system of overlapping authority and multiple loyalty. ₂₆

Following Bull's lead, others have latched on to the analogy, typically focusing on the surface similarity between the two eras in terms of crosscutting and overlapping layers of authority. ₂₇ Some have used the analogy to highlight different surface similarities. For example, Ronnie Lipschutz believes that today's liberal-capitalist order "has come to fill a role similar to the systems of rules and rule promulgated by the Church prior to Westphalia." ₂₈ To date, however, most of these analogies have remained parenthetical and tentative. A neomedieval therapeutic redescription, on the other hand, would in effect "run" with these analogies not because there is some fundamental essence, nature, or dynamic underlying the medieval and the postmodern periods that somehow unites them, but rather purely for strategic reasons: that is, to redescribe the present in novel terms in order to shake us free of our current conceptual blinders that are holding us captive and getting in the way, as clearly appears to be the case with the "state-centric" paradigm.

For example, considerable mileage might be gained out of Lipschutz's brief analogy between the global-liberal capitalist paradigm and the transnational authority of the Roman Catholic Church--what Lipschutz refers to as "operating systems." For most people, consumer culture and the liberal-capitalist paradigm are the height of secularity. A redescription of such a system using religious metaphors might help "denaturalize" this paradigm by revealing it as more of a human artiface, one that in its structuring of basic cosmological principles of "natural" behavior--that satisfaction of material well-being through the consumption of goods and services--has significant religious connotations. Such a therapeutic redescription--in drawing attention to the way global-liberal capitalism resembles the transnational authority of the medieval Church--might also help invert the taken-for-granted binary opposition between the so-called "high" politics of military-security affairs and the "low" politics of economics. It might help relieve the problem to which Ruggie refers--the mind-set that sees challenges to the system of states only in terms of entities that are institutionally substitutable for the state--by referring to them as the postmodern equivalents of medieval kings: powerful, yes, but subordinate within the imperatives of the Great Chain of Being. This might help us conceptualize fundamental transformation not in terms of the disppearance of the state and its replacement by a world state or no-state, but in terms of the significance and purposes of states today--the way states are increasingly animated by the need to accom modate global market forces rather than to balance the military power of other states, in the same way that medieval kings and princes might have been ultimately animated less with material well-being than with their own salvation.

Examples of this type of therapeutic redescription do exist, but not surprisingly they are found outside of the International Relations field. One illustration is an article written by the editor of Harper's magazine, Lewis Lapham, who saw in neomedievalism "a way to think about phenomena as distant from one another as MTV, the Uruguay round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, the transport of nuclear weapons by oxcart through the Caucasus Mountains, the apparition of H. Ross Perot, and the sales receipts of Women Who Run with the Wolves." ₂₉ In a novel redescription, Lapham notes how the "consanguine hierarchies of international capitalism imitate the old feudal arrangements under which an Italian noble might swear fealty to a German prince or a Norman duke declare himself the subject of an English king." Lapham describes how today's "lords and barons of the smaller fiefs" owe their allegiance not to the United States or Britain, but to "Citibank or Bettelsmann or Matsushita." In extending the metaphor of global consumer culture as the New Church, Lapham describes how:

The hegemony of wealth assumes the ecumenical place once occupied by the medieval church, and within this favoured estate everybody observes the same rituals and pays homage to the same princes. The yachts moored off Cannes or the Costa Brava sail under the flags of the same admiralty that posts squadrons off Miami and Newport Beach, and the American plutocrat travelling between the Ritz Hotel in Paris and Claridge's Hotel in London crosses not into another country but into another province of what has become the latter-day Christendom. ₃₀

To reiterate, Lapham's therapeutic redescription is not an attempt to uncover a common, fundamental essence of the medieval and the postmodern periods--to get at the "reality" underneath the layers of "false consciousness." It is rather an attempt to "denaturalize" the present, free us of our conceptual blinders by offering a new and interesting "way to think about" the world around us. If such a redescription has its intended effect, if it helps orient us to the world in a different way, then it will have achieved its purpose.

Of course the need for therapeutic redescription is a problem internal to the workings of the discipline, and is only a method to help theorists see the changing world around them in a more productive light. If the conclusions reached in this study are correct, then that world is indeed changing in dramatic and fundamental ways. Whether these changes should be applauded, lamented, or encouraged in certain directions over others are questions that wait another study. Certainly we would expect that not all of the changes will be uniformly "good." The fluidity and increasing porousness of borders will likely bring new forms of instability and tension, while the instantaneous transmission of televised images around the planet will no doubt encourage more acts of random terror. The relativist inclinations of postmodern social epistemology have already fed a rampant hyperlocalism and tribalism that some have described as a kind of "new barbarianism." ₃₁ And the utter banality of the O.J. Simpson spectacle and others like it reveals the depths to which a commercially driven media and a consumer-culture ethos can sink. But not all of the changes will be uniformly "bad" either. With means of two-way communications and the breakdown of mass broadcasting, new forms of democratic participation and acts of creativity become feasible. A growing global civil society concerned with issues of ecology and human rights may eventually meliorate the worst excesses of the global market system. And the postmodern recognition of "difference," coupled with the move away from Cartesian universalism and totalizing metanarratives, may be just the type of weltenschaung necessary for the multiple and dispersed authorities of an emerging planetary polity.

Note 1: Kenichi Ohmae, "Putting Global Logic First," Harvard Business Review (January-February 1995): 119. As Robert Cox aptly put it, "States willynilly became more effectively accountable to a nebuleuse personified as the global economy " Robert W. Cox, "Global Restructuring: Making Sense of the Changing International Political Economy," in Richard Stubbs and Geoffrey R. D. Underhill, eds., Political Economy and the Changing Global Order (Toronto: McLelland and Stewart, 1994), p. 46. Back.

Note 2: As cited in Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition, p. 40. Back.

Note 3: Spiro, "New Global Communities," p. 45. Back.

Note 4: For suggestions of such divisions, see Fukuyama, The End of History, p. 276; Max Singer and Aaron Wildavsky, The Real World Order--Zones of Peace, Zones of Conflict. (New Jersey: Chatam House Publishers, 1993); and James M. Goldgeier and Michael McFaul, "A Tale of Two Worlds: Core and Periphery in the PostCold War Era," International Organization 46 (2), 1992, pp. 467-491. Back.

Note 5: Cf., Jackson, QuasiStates. Back.

Note 6: Cox, "Global Restructuring," p. 49. Back.

Note 7: Walker, Inside/Outside. Back.

Note 8: See Elkins, Beyond Sovereignty. Back.

Note 9: Philip G. Cerny, "Plurilaterialism: Structural Differentiation and Functional Conflict in the PostCold War World," Millennium: Journal of International Studies 22, no. 1 (1993): 27-51. Back.

Note 10: Ken Booth, "Security in Anarchy: Utopian Realism in Theory and Practice," International Affairs 67, no. 3, July (1991): 542. Back.

Note 11: Lipschutz, "Reconstructing World Politics." Back.

Note 12: Rosenau, Turbulence in World Politics. Back.

Note 13: See Ruggie, "Territoriality." Back.

Note 14: Ruggie, "International Structure and International Transformation," p. 30. Back.

Note 15: Krasner, "Compromising Westphalia." Back.

Note 16: Ibid., p. 123. Back.

Note 17: Krasner, "Sovereignty: An Institutional Perspective." In that article, Krasner argued (p. 67) that an institutional perspective is necessary to study sovereignty because, "An institutionalist perspective regards enduring institutional structures as the building blocks of social and political life. The preferences, capabilities, and basic selfidentities of individuals are conditioned by these institutional structures. Historical developments are path dependent; once certain choices are made, they constrain future possibilities." [my emphasis added]. Reading the two articles backtoback can only be described in terms of cognitive dissonance. Back.

Note 18: This is Ethan Kapstein's argument in "We are US: The Myth of the Multinational," The National Interest (Winter 1991/1992), pp. 56-62; and Governing the Global Economy: International Finance and the State (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994). Back.

Note 19: This is Janice Thomson's argument in the conclusion to Mercanaries, Pirates, and Sovereigns; and in "State Sovereignty in International Relations." Back.

Note 20: This is Hendrick Spruyt's argument in the conclusion to "Institutional Selection" and The Sovereign State and Its Competitors. Back.

Note 21: Ruggie, "Territoriality," pp. 142-144. Back.

Note 22: Walker, Inside/Outside, p. x. Back.

Note 23: Edward Morse, Modernization and the Transformation of International Relations (London: Collier Macmillan, 1976), p. 152. Back.

Note 24: Rosenau, Turbulence in World Politics, ch. 2. Back.

Note 25: See Thomas Kuhn, "The Natural and the Human Sciences," in David R. Hiely, James F. Bohman, and Richard Shusterman, eds., The Interpretive Turn: Philosophy, Science, Culture (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), pp. 17-24; Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, [2nd ed.] (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970); Quentin Skinner, "Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas," History and Theory 8 (1969): 3-53; and Mary Hesse, Revolutions and Reconstructions in the Philosophy of Science (Sussex: The Harvester Press, 1980). Back.

Note 26: Bull, The Anarchical Society, p. 254. Back.

Note 27: See, for example, Cox, "Global Restructuring," p. 53; and Der Derian, On Diplomacy. See also Bruce Cronin and Joseph Lepgold, "A New Medievalism? Conflicting International Authorities and Competing Loyalties in the TwentyFirst Century." (Prepared for Delivery at the Conference on "The Changing Nature of Sovereignty in the New World Order," Center for International Affairs, Harvard University, April 22-23, 1995). Back.

Note 28: Lipschutz, "Reconstructing World Politics," p. 407. Back.

Note 29: Lewis H. Lapham, "Dungeons and Dragons," Harper's (February 1994), pp. 9-11; For another neomedieval therapeutic redescription outside of the International Relations field, see Eco, Travels in Hyper Reality. Back.

Note 30: Ibid., p. 11. Back.

Note 31: A pessimistic view along these lines is sketched out in stark terms by Stjepan Mestrovic in The Balkanization of the West: The Confluence of Postmodernism and Postcommunism (New York: Routledge, 1994); and The Barbarian Sentiment: Toward a Postmodern Critical Theory (New York: Routledge Press, 1993). Back.

Parchment, Printing, and Hypermedia: Communication in World Order Transformation