The End of History and the Last Man

Este articulo es, a dia de hoy, una de las piezas clasicas y fundamentales para la posibilidad de estudiar las relaciones globales de poder a partir de las herramientas conceptuales desarrolladas por Gramsci a lo largo de su obra. Cox, contribuye de esta forma a las corrientes criticas de las Relaciones Internacionales al discutir varios conceptos gramscianos y cuales serian las implicaciones para estudiar las relaciones internacionales en distintos periodos de hegemonia y contrahegemonia. De igual forma, el autor planteo la cuestion –en su momento novedosa– de la relevancia de tomar en cuenta los procesos internos de construccion de bloques historicos contrahegemonicos como aquellos que podrian tener un efecto revolucionario en las estructuras y organizaciones internacionales, asi como ruptura con la hegemonia plasmada como una clase perteneciente a un orden economico universal transnacional.  This article is a classic and fundamental for approaching global power relations with the conceptual tools developed by Gramsci. Cox contributes to critical thought in International Relations by discussing various gramscian concepts and what their implications are for the study of different historical forms of hegemony and counter-hegemony. Also, the author draws our attention –novel at the time of its publicaction– to the relevance of taking into account the construction of domestic counter-hegemonic historic blocs. He suggests that these could have a revolutionary effect on international structures and organizations, as well as rupture with the hegemony performed by the transnational economic order.

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Gramsci, hegemonía y relaciones internacionales: Un ensayo sobre el método | Gramsci, Hegemony and International Relations: An Essay in Method

Why do sovereign governments make international legal commitments, and what effect does international law have on state behavior? Very little empirical research tries to answer these questions in a systematic way. This article examines patterns of commitment to and compliance with international monetary law. I consider the signal governments try to send by committing themselves through international legal commitments, and I argue that reputational concerns explain patterns of compliance. One of the most important findings is that governments commit to and comply with legal obligations if other countries in their region do so. Competitive market forces, rather than overt policy pressure from the International Monetary Fund, are the most likely “enforcement” mechanism. Legal commitment has an extremely positive effect on governments that have recently removed restrictive policies, which indicates a desire to reestablish a reputation for compliance.

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International Law and State Behavior: Commitment and Compliance in International Monetary Affairs

Preface to the first edition Preface to the second edition Personal, Political and Intellectual Influences PART I: SOCIAL AND INTERNATIONAL THEORY Epistemology, Ontology and the Critique of Political Economy Transnational Historical Materialism and World Order Hegemony, Culture and Imperialism PART II: THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF WORLD ORDER US Hegemony in the 1980s: Limits and Prospects The Power of Capital: Direct and Structural Globalization, Market Civilization and Disciplinary Neo-Liberalism The Geopolitics of the Asian Crisis Law, Justice and New Constitutionalism PART III: GLOBAL TRANSFORMATION AND POLITICAL AGENCY Globalizing Elites in the Emerging World Order Surveillance Power in Global Capitalism The Post-modern Prince Alternatives, Real and Imagined

Power and Resistance in the New World Order

Among the many things which distinguish man from the lower animals and perhaps in a more spectacular but less extensive way distinguish man at an advanced level of culture from primitive man is the capacity to use the recorded experience of the past. This can help determine his actions in the present and thus determine in part what kind of future the world will see. The codification of knowledge of the past and its interpretation constitute the material of history. Doctrines and beliefs, various schools, and ideological sets about history determine each period's interpretation of what has gone on in the past. For instance, how may one reconcile the doctrinal myth of progress with the fix that the world is in now? In the light of contemporary ideas about causation, determinism, accident, objectivity, and the function and role, if any, of the individual person in history, ideas thin out. Professor

What is History

The geography of money

The work of the Italian Marxist theorist Antonio Gramsci has had a significant impact upon the study of International Relations (IR) over the past fifteen years. Despite the emergence of a distinct 'Italian School' in IR, however, there have been few assessments of the utility of Gramsci's concepts in this area. Our purpose here is to engage with the work of the new Gramscians. We begin by specifying the theoretical attractions of using Gramsci in IR, and then subject the key foundational claims of the new Gramscians to critical analysis. Our principal conclusions are that the Italian school's appropriation of Gramsci is far more conceptually problematic than they acknowledge, and that their use of his framework is difficult to sustain with respect to the scholarship devoted to his ideas. If Gramsci is to be used effectively within IR, closer attention must be paid both to the historical meaning of his work and to the problems raised by it. In short, Gramsci and his ideas must be more thoroughly historicized if his work is to be used to comprehend the multiple dynamics of world order today.

Engaging Gramsci: international relations theory and the new Gramscians

In this book, Randall Germain explores the international organization of credit in a changing world economy. At the centre of his analysis is the construction of successive international organisations of credit, built around principal financial centres (PFCs) and constituted by overlapping networks of credit institutions, mainly investment, commercial, and central banks. A critical historical approach to international political economy (IPE) allows Germain to stress both the multiple roles of finance within the world economy, and the centrality of financial practices and networks for the construction of monetary order. He argues that the private global credit system which replaced Bretton Woods is anchored unevenly across the world's three principal financial centres: New York, London, and Tokyo. This balance of power is irrevocably fragmented with respect to relations between states, and highly ambiguous in terms of how power is exercised between public authorities and private financial institutions.

The International Organization of Credit: States and Global Finance in the World-Economy

The Asian financial crises of 1997-1998 set in motion a long-overdue reform of the formal decisionmaking mechanisms of global financial governance. (1) By "global financial governance" I mean the broad fabric of rules and procedures by which internationally active financial institutions are governed, while the architectural element of governance I understand to be the public mechanisms by which authoritative decisions about these rules and procedures are made. From this perspective, the post-Asia reform efforts center on the creation of two new forums: a technical committee known as the Financial Stability Forum (or FSF) and a new political grouping of countries known as the Group of 20 (or G-20). My purpose in this article is to draw attention to the way in which the creation of the G-20 and the FSF constitutes a potentially progressive development for global financial governance because they include emerging market economies in its decisionmaking mechanisms for the very first time. I proceed in three steps. First, I provide a framework for thinking about the problem of inclusion in terms of the international financial architecture. Here the focus is on the reciprocal relationship between inclusion and ownership as key prerequisites for an effective international financial architecture. Second, I explore how the post-Asia reform effort has addressed the "inclusion deficit" within the international financial architecture. The focus in this section is on the novelty of recent developments when compared with previous mechanisms of international decisionmaking. Finally, I assess these efforts within the context of what some skeptics consider to be fundamental governance problems within the global financial system. Here I stress that although a new departure has been made regarding the inclusion of emerging market economies within the broader structure of global financial governance, much remains to be done, including strengthening the workings of inclusion at the national level. Broadly, my analysis suggests that the results of the reform effort to date at least offer the possibility that in the medium term global finance will become subject to an increasingly legitimate governance structure. But this newfound legitimacy in turn rests upon explicitly recognizing the political significance of the principle of inclusion as a parallel dynamic driving the reform effort (alongside the more technical issues that are often associated with it, such as timely data dissemination, transparency, private sector involvement, prudential regulation, capital account liberalization, and moral hazard). In making this argument I am traversing a large and growing literature on the regulatory problems facing financial systems at both the national and international level. (2) My intention, however, is to evaluate systematically neither the causes of Asia's financial turmoil nor the many policy proposals arising out of this debate. Rather, I focus on the formal decisionmaking mechanisms that produce and leg itimate these policy decisions, in order to ask how far they advance or retard the prospect of achieving a more effective and legitimate international financial architecture. The underlying argument here is that resolving the technical aspects of global financial governance will not by itself be sufficient to establish an effective international financial architecture until the political aspects are sorted out, and embracing the politics of inclusion constitutes a necessary first step in this process. Inclusion, Participation, and Ownership: Underpinning an Effective International Financial Architecture On the occasion of his first major speech outlining the work of the G-20, Paul Martin--Canada's minister of finance and the first chair of the new group--made a remarkable admission. He declared that the international community had finally learned a fundamental truth about policies to promote development: "They will work only if the developing countries and emerging markets help to shape them, because inclusiveness lies at the heart of legitimacy and effectiveness. …

https://www.jstor.org/stable/info/27800314

Global Financial Governance and the Problem of Inclusion

As a field of study, international political economy suffers from a significant historical deficit. Where this deficit is recognized, it is most commonly addressed by adding 'historical context' to the inquiry, as in the injunction to place globalization into its proper historical context. While this is a useful and necessary first step, it does not adequately address the problem of 'historicizing' IPE. In order to genuinely historicize IPE, we must first acknowledge the element of reflection which infuses each level of social inquiry, from how the object of investigation is framed and explored to how agency is considered in relation to particular issues. This means going beyond context and actors to ask what constitutes the form of knowledge appropriate to uncovering and remaking the social world. Historicizing IPE, in other words, demands that we interrogate our aims and purposes as openly as we explore the subject under study.

Randall Germain

Papers

The geography of money

Engaging Gramsci: international relations theory and the new Gramscians

The International Organization of Credit: States and Global Finance in the World-Economy

Global Financial Governance and the Problem of Inclusion

Paths to a historicized international political economy