Boris Mezhuev
Mischa Gabowitsch
Boris Mezhuev, Neprikosnovennij Zapas
Eurozine
Neprikosnovennij Zapas (NZ)
Neprikosnovennij Zapas 39 1/2005 (Russian version)
2005-06-01
Transnationalization's dead ends
Does Leggewie's idea of "sectoral political legitimation" imply that ordinary users of public services have no say in the form these take? Is transnationalism premised on the politically correct precepts of western European liberalism? And might transnational NGOs become a means of laundering corporate cultural and political capital? Mezhuev argues that national democracies act as a brake on a system in which large corporations are able to buy political influence, if not entire states.
The publication of Claus Leggewie's article in Russian provides a good occasion for starting a debate about the transnationalization of politics and about choosing the best track for that transnationalization. Leggewie exposes the main reasons why that process is necessary, and also clearly points out the difficulties inherent in combining transnationalization -- in particular in the pan-European version that is becoming a reality before our eyes -- with the principles of democracy.
Let me say right away that I believe the recipes that Leggewie proposes to be extremely unfortunate, among other things because of their doubtful realizability. I am referring above all to the idea of a sectoral demos, which is in fact a return to the idea of the corporatist state on a transnational level. I am no apologist for the old model of political corporatism, associated with Italian Fascism, but I cannot fail to recognize that it had a certain historical justification -- the desire to preserve the nation's "organic unity" in the face of a rift, which was absolutely impossible to resolve through traditional parliamentary procedures, between a Catholic and a Communist political subculture. In a transnational model, narrowing the scope of citizens' competence to issues concerning their professional sphere can no longer be justified in that way, the more so since in today's world it is almost impossible adequately to separate "sectors". Should educational issues, such as the introduction of school fees, be decided solely by the teachers, thus disenfranchising the fee-paying parents? Should the medical system be directed solely by doctors, and state policies the exclusive realm of professional administrators? I would find it uncomfortable to live in a society where ordinary users of these services would clearly be discriminated against compared with all those working in privileged sectors.
The contemporary market-based democratic state is not an ideal administrative mechanism, but it has been modified over the ages and has so far proven most effective under conditions of a pluralistic society. Reforming that mechanism, and especially getting rid of it, will require serious justification. Adherents of the transnational model, including Claus Leggewie, mainly point to two factors that necessitate a transition to a higher level of democratic representation. The first of these factors has very little to do with democracy. It is related to the appearance of certain fundamental (inter-regional or global) problems which are impossible to resolve solely through the institutions of the nation-state. These problems include ecological catastrophes. The consequences of the tsunami in South-East Asia, for example, cannot be seen as something that concerns only those countries that were the immediate victims of that natural disaster. An epidemic of malaria and other viral infections is inevitable unless the whole world assists in relieving the consequences of the disaster. One could add hundreds more similar problems where what is required is not only an internationalization of the efforts to master them, but, alas, a certain transnational coordination of those efforts. As I said, that factor bears no direct relation to democracy and can partly be addressed by creating functional transnational committees accountable to a special intergovernmental commission.
There is another factor, however, that directly concerns the question of democracy, and it is this factor that Leggewie is proceeding from in his reasoning. This is the emergence of new transnational protagonists who, because of their transnational status, are, as it were, excluded from the general democratic debate, which currently is confined to the framework of the nation-state. Their non-participation in discussion and decision-making appears unjust and irrational, since these very protagonists are, on the one hand, the mouthpieces of large multi-national groups of people, and, on the other, communities of presumably objective and qualified experts on certain issues. The conclusion drawn from this is that national polities should ensure the legal participation of transnational protagonists in the process of decision-making on those points on the political agenda that concern the latter's interests.
Such reasoning looks more persuasive when developed by adherents of corporate globalization than in an article by someone who obviously sympathizes with its opponents. Indeed, why should we consider anti-globalization networks to be more legitimate actors of the political process than transnational corporations? One does not need to be Marxist to understand that the very moment when leftwing non-governmental organizations acquire a legal right to interfere with the political process inside and outside a nation, they are most likely to start expressing the interests of the very capitalist corporations that they are seemingly combating. Transnational NGOs will simply turn into a legal means of "laundering" corporate "cultural and political capital". Leggewie himself expresses concern about this transformation: as far as I can judge, that is why he is favouring a "sectorization" of the participation of NGOs in the political process. If members of any ecological organization advocating the rollback of peaceful atomic energy were given the right to determine our country's energy policies, we would be likely to end up depending on those making super-profits out of the sale of oil. Inside a nation-state, the absolute power of any private interest is limited above all by some opposite private interest, and it is the state that organizes that competitive sphere in politics. It is impossible to imagine how, and using what criteria, it could control transnational subjects.
But there is another reason why the "sectoral" idea is unfortunate. There are very few cases when international problems objectively have a single obvious, or at least technically calculable, solution. At most we can get close to such solutions in the case of relieving the consequences of natural disasters -- noone will argue against the need to prevent the massive spread of viral infections or the contamination of drinking water. But controversy arises even in debates about more special ecological issues. And if we turn to issues of ethnic separatism, the integration of women, demography, and migration, it will be clear that an international participation of organizations with a different, non-European system of values will be seen as highly ambiguous. Would the Spaniards, for instance, appreciate legal interference into the political process of their country by transnational forces advocating religious homophobia or patriarchal misogyny? And now imagine what would happen if we legally let all the international genies out of the bottles where they have been enclosed by modernity? But if we limit transnational democratization to the narrow framework of political correctness, then why talk about democracy anyway? What looks more or less acceptable or even logical on a national level -- limiting the political space according to national traditions and the constitutional basis of a country - bodes ill in the context of transnationalization, at least for people seriously concerned about the problem of democratization.
Thus transnationalization understood as the admission of transnational actors to participate in the political process side by side with national parties is a dead end. This process does not lead anywhere. Or rather, in all likelihood, it does not lead to any kind of democracy. Democracy, generally, is only possible on the condition of severing (now, unfortunately, purely formally) the members of any community from their relations and associations that go beyond that community. Of course, the oath of allegiance that is obligatory to every naturalizing immigrant to the US has become a purely formal exercise in that country, but the conservatives who refuse to abolish that procedure are absolutely right. Democracy, the self-government of citizens, exists to the extent to which a person involved in the affairs of his state is able to abstract himself from his allegiances to all other -- ideological or professional -- unions and associations. Whatever Rousseau's critics may say, he was largely right when he pointed out the incompatibility of the status of citizen of the republic and member of a private association. However, contemporary democracy, which unites the members of a nation rather than the inhabitants of a city, has had to accept reality and legalise political parties, which undoubtedly undermine citizens' devotion to the common good of the republic. This compromise could only be reached at the cost of formally removing all transnational actors from the political process and institutionalizing political parties within the nation-state. Of course, today's transnational actors are able to buy out the political assets of weak states, capturing positions in executive and legislative power, and consequently simply buy the state as such: the budgets of most countries today are simply incommensurable with the annual revenues of large companies such as Exxon or General Motors.
On the other hand, it is entirely unclear why, in discussing the project of European integration, Leggewie refuses to adopt the more natural point of view that advocates of the federalist movement uphold. "The simple transfer of mechanisms and procedures of direct and representative democracy from the nation-state to the transnational level of decision-making is impossible", he writes. I have failed to detect a corroboration of this thesis in Leggewie's article. Nor have I found in his text a critique of the federalist model, whose adherents have been promoting, not a "simple transfer", but a subsidiary distribution of powers from the nation-state level down to the local level and up to an international level. I am no supporter of the federalist movement, but at least the projects of global integration that its theorists propose do not provoke the kind of protest that is aroused by variants of transnationalization such as the above-described.
It seems to me that the reason why European theorists are abandoning the idea of creating a European state with equal political representation for all its citizens is that Europe is aspiring to be a special political formation rather than simply a large territorial state. Europe is trying to become a model for inter-confessional and inter-civilizational global unification. But European thinkers and politicians cannot fail to realize that global democracy following the principle of "one person one vote" will mean the civilizational death of the demographically declining West in the sea of the East's Asiatic masses. Europe is also bent on geo-cultural opposition to the Anglo-Saxon model of "nation-building" -- the "export of democracy" to weak and defenseless countries -- which is already smelling of a simple hegemonism of brute force with a shade of chauvinism ("we are the most civilized people in the world and therefore have the right to bomb anyone"). In view of all these unquestionable limitations, Europe, and in particular Germany, is attempting to play the "transnationalization" card, and plug certain segments of the anti-globalization movement into that geo-cultural projection. A movement which, according to a widespread view, supposedly represents "global civil society" in an embryonic state.
Thus the "transnational" course (in Leggewie's version) is wrongheaded, and it would be a great pity if that were what the global protest movement ultimately chose. One should think that Russia has a geo-cultural potential of its own, based on national tradition and historical experience, which it can use to realize an alternative model of "transnationalization". That model could be based on the idea of federalism and a new understanding of the principles at the basis of the Russian Federation and the Commonwealth of Independent States. The meaning of that alternative would be a mutual acceptance of the sovereignties of different states and simultaneously a coordination of foreign and defence policy and non-interference into international politics. However, a fully-fledged discussion about that model is only possible upon the condition of attentively and critically scrutinising the new conceptions of West European scholars. That is why the Russian publication of Claus Leggewie's article is highly useful for a Russian society currently suffering from a severe "orange" hangover.
Related articles:
Claus Leggewie
Transnational movements and the question of democracy (bg) (de) (en) (ru)
Social movements can provide an early warning system to mainstream politics. But once institutionalized, their lack of democratic mandate raises problems of legitimacy. This paradox must be negotiated if democracy is to respond to the global situation. [Russian version added] [2005-05-20]
Valery Tishkov
An anthropology of NGOs (en) (ru)
Organizations calling themselves "movements" are by no means always popular. Placing the legitimacy of the nation-state at the mercy of such ambiguous entitites would be ill-advised. [2005-06-01]
Sergey Lukashevsky
A comment on Claus Leggewie's article (en) (ru)
How would NGOs that promote democracy per se fit in to a system of democracy where coalitions representing specific publics compete for official status? [2005-06-01]