Coping and Conformity in World Politics by Hugh C. Dyer

Author:Hugh C. Dyer [Dyer, Hugh C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: International Relations, Public Policy, City Planning & Urban Development, History & Theory, Political Science, General
ISBN: 9781135182298
Google: UC6MAgAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2009-12-16T07:47:07+00:00

Furthermore the particular nature of the illegitimacy (or political distance) is illustrated when they cite Perkins:

where the political scale at which production decisions are made (for example, the nation state) does not correspond to the ecological scale at which impacts of production and waste disposal are felt … there is a disjuncture between the environmental impacts of economic activity and the society’s ability to address them in a satisfactory democratic way.

(Ambus et al. 2001: note 31)

Global governance could be substituted for Perkin’s example of the nation-state, where the same logic would indicate a case of imperialism on political grounds, without even entering into the socio-economic inequality that would amplify the democratic deficit. This has implications for global-local connections in governance, even if the ‘global-local’ raises the issue of power distributions in that relationship. That leads us to consider how imperial dynamics destabilize global politics (and sovereign state governance). To begin with, empire seems to be about imposing order, and displacing alternative orders in the process, and whether this is by intent or folly is perhaps unimportant – except in so far as evidence of motive would also point to a culprit. If there is global environmental imperialism, then one or more alternative existing orders are being displaced by it. It may be that the existing orders are based on development (though this means different things to different peoples) and sovereignty (though this has always been elusive), and there are some who would be happily see the end of some versions of either or both.

Where environmental governance is tethered to broader processes of globalization (perhaps through ‘conditionality’) and its associated forms of global governance (e.g. institutions), which draw our attention away from state-centric concerns, then the issue remains as to whether economic globalization can be good for the environment. If so, the issue remains as to whether it is also good for people. Even if the anti-globalization movement is an obvious case of resistance, this may still be an open question, since the resistance is focused on exploitation and inequality rather than patterns of global cooperation per se.

Globalization itself broke the American deal of increasing the pie for all through free trade. As globalization increases the amount of wealth, but systematically and dramatically leaves some without a share, coping with it implies reaching a domestic agreement and establishing an adequate redistribution of the free trade benefits.

(Molyneux 2001: 269)

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