Global Government and Global Opposition
Strange, Susan. “Global Government and Global Opposition.” In Politics in an Interdependent World: Essays Presented to Ghita Ionescu, edited by Geraint Parry, 20-33. Aldershot: Edward Elgar Publishers, 1994.
After recognising the relevance of discussions of a ‘new medievalism’ in the global political economy Strange suggests that the best way of addressing the nature and use of power is her structural model. She suggests that the deterriotrialisation of power and the increasing importance of ‘diplomacy’ between firms as laid out in Rival States, Rival Firms (with John M. Stopford, 1991), argues for a more complex view of ‘interdependence’. She then highlights three central issues: the idea that the operations of multinationals might be understood as a parallel and competing tax and welfare system to that previously operated by states; this relative loss of control over social functions by states has led to reduced stability in the global economy; and lastly societies have increasingly lost their ability to make autonomous decisions concerning methods of and priorities of governance. She then links this analysis to the re-emergence of Euroscepticism, before finally identifying some possible groups that may offer opposition to these tendencies, namely environmentalism, feminism, fundamentalism and regionalism.
Keywords: Corporations; States; Structural Power, Power; Theory; Authority vs Markets