Power, Structure and Hegemony. Volume I: World Power Index

By Daniel Morales Ruvalcaba

The main objective of the work “Power, structure and hegemony: Guidelines for the study of the international governance” is to analyze the incidence of the change of the structural positioning of the most powerful States on the international governance. To proceed in this labor, the first step has been to define the concept of international governance and to decompose it into simpler factors. One of the above mentioned factors is the national power.

This “Volume I: Index of World Power Index”, presents a brief exploration of some theoretical general notions to the study of the national power and certain particular trials to its measurement. The purpose of this review is to identify a set of useful and valuable variables for the design of a scale that contributes to the weighting of the national power.  This way, will proceed with the differentiation of the national capacities -into material, semi-material and immaterial- and then, to the formulation of a statistical instrument that will serve as a technique for a multidimensional measurement of the national power: the World Power Index (WPI). In this book, the results of the WPI are published by the first time –as well as its respective subscripts- for more than 160 countries with annual figures from 1975 until 2013.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Daniel Morales Ruvalcaba
• Release date: Aug 28, 2016
• ISBN: 9781507148235

Book preview

Presentation of the work Power, structure and hegemony

1. The main purpose of this work is to analyze the incidence of the structural positioning change of the most powerful States of the international system –especially the hegemonic- on the international governance, while new powers ascend.

2. In order to achieve so, the first step is to define the concept for international government and to set some guidelines for its analysis, which is carried out on the Prologue. The thesis deduced from this section is that the national power of the States and the substantial legitimacy are both determinant factors who influence the international governance. The other components, which are the formal legitimacy and the international political direction, are equally important factors, though they are not structuring but confirmatory and conductive of the built governance over the hierarchy of power, respectively. However, if national power is so decisive on the international governance, how to proceed on its study? In other terms, how to understand and to compare the national power of the States not only at present, but over the last decades?

3. This Volume I: World Power Index, exposes a brief exploration of some general theoretical concepts for the study of the national power as well as certain particular essays for its measuring. The purpose of this review is to identify a group of variables which shall be useful and valuable for the design of a scale that contributes to the national power deliberation. Thus, just as mentioned before, shall proceed with the differentiation of the national capacities –into material, semi-material and immaterial capacities- and later on, with the formulation of a statistical instrument for the measuring of the national power: the World Power Index (WPI).

4. The WPI is a valuable technique on the reading of ascent and descent of the national capacities from all countries around the world. However, is is worth to recognize that the power distribution among the States and the international structure observed nowadays, are conditioned by longue durée processes. In other words, the power of the States is sustained on the national capacities which have been configured over the course of centuries. In order to understand this long-standing processes, the WPI shows certain limitations since it lacks of enough statistical data for its management. With the aim to overcome such limitation and to have a wider historical perspective, this work is based on the theoretical concepts of center-semiperiphery-periphery initially proposed by the Dependency Theory and then by the World-systems perspective.

5. The link between such theoretical concepts and the WPI contributes to the creation of a whole model for the study of the international structure from 1975 to 2013. In this way, the Volume II: International sctructure model firstly examinates the general features of each one of the world-system areas and then, there is precisely established the positioning of every State in such areas, but in regards of their national power. The analytical juxtaposition of the WPI and the center-semiperiphery-periphery cathegories helps to identify the convergence between some states that, ultimately, allow them to place themselves critically into the existing power categories (for example, world powers, middle powers, etc.), to try new States groups and finally, to disclose their exposed potentials and vulnerabilities.

6. Once modelled the international structure and placed every State on it, then shall proceed to develop the third part of this work, which consists on identify the influence of the structural ascent or descent of a State –or group of states- on the international governance.

7. From the group of recognized powers, the hegemonic power shall be studied more thoroughly, since it is the one that possesses the greater amount of material, semi-material and immaterial capacities simultaneously. Therefore, the Volume III. Hegemonic political cycles, is oriented to the study of those hegemons that have existed during modernity.

8. Throughout modern history, only three States have reached hegemony in the world-system: The United Provinces, Great Britain and the United States. Such hegemons, as in every social phenomenon, have had periods of determined length: in this case, they have been named as hegemonic cycles or cycles of hegemony of the world system. However, hegemonic cycles consist of five phases: 1) emergence or ascent, 2) deployment, 3) height, 4) decline, and 5) extinction. Such phases have been thoroughly studied from the econonomic dimension (Arrighi 1999; Arrighi, Hui and others 2001; Arrighi, Barr and Hisaeda 2001; Veraza 2004), but less from the political dimension (Gilpin 1999, Keohane 1988).

9. It is extremely important to delve into the examination of the political phases the hegemon power goes through, since if it is assumed that international governance is carried out mainly by those States with the greater national capacities endowment, then the hegemon –which is defined as the outstanding power due to its maximum material, semi-material and immaterial capcities- will be the most determining agent on the system governance. And, in that sense, turns out imperative to ask: What leads the international poltics of a hegemonic State?

10. Each phase of the hegemonic cycle corresponds to the promotion of ideas and values oriented by some ideology. This means that as the national capacities of a State evolve, it tends to benefit either to impede certain ideologies, which is translated into an international positioning at the forefront of determined politics, States and organizations. Such phases the hegemonic power goes through according its ideology will be hereby named as political cycles of world hegemonies and they are crucial to get to understand the international political direction that the hegemon runs on the international governance.

11. From the study of the national power, the characterization of the prevalence of some powers in the international structure and the identification of those ideologies promoted by the hegemonic power according to its current political cycle, then it is possible to understand the configuration of the international governance.

12. The whole work Power, structure and hegemony aims to contribute to understand the current changes occurring in the international governance. All will be tackled from a long durée perspective, which consists on a historical revision from the emergence of the United Provinces as a hegemony from middle 16th century up to the exctintion of the American hegemony and the ascent of the BRICS on the first decade of the 21st century.

Prologue: guidelines for the study of international governance

13. The man, throughout his existance, has had the permanent need to regulate and to order all his quotidian activities, which is to say: to govern himself. According to Karl W. Deutsch, ever since antiquity "the Greek used the term kybernetes [kubernáo] to name the helmsman of a ship; so the words ‘governor’ and ‘government’ they both come from that term. [...] The similarity between the duties of leading and governing have been recognized almost from the beginnings of the political thinking (Deutsch 1998, 20). Certainly, from ancient times, governance has been related to the art of direction, conducting and management. Therefore, to Xavier Arbós and Salvador Giner, the existence of a government has always been a basic condition in order to make possible a civilised life" (Arbós and Giner 2005, 4).

14. The government –as an authority who creates formal obligations in order to manage and to direct a society by means of the practice of power- is only possible at State level on its national, subnational or local scales. At international level; nevertheless, there is a prevalent and historical absence of a global government to exert a power monopoly and to produce formal obligations: differently from State level, the international system is not susceptible to be governed and the international order is not guaranteed by series of institutions to practice power control, but by the resulting cooperation from the interaction between States, international organizations and individuals.

15. Before moving forward, it is worth to stop and clarify more precisely the concept of governance as well as to point out the differences regarding that of governability.

16. The term of governance is frequently and easily confused with tat of governavility. Governability can be defined primarily as the quality of governable, or in words of Manuel Alcántara, as a combination of favorable conditions for the performance of the governement (Alcántara 1994, 11, Alcántara 1995, 38-39). In a couple of more complex definitions of the term, we may cite Juan Rial, who understands governability as the capability of the institutions and movements to move forward to defined objectives according to its own activity and to mobilize very consistently the energies of their members in order to reach those previously set goals (Rial 1988, 11); as long as Xavier Arbós and Salvador Giner define governability as the own quality of a political community according to which the government institutions act efficiently within their space in a proper way considered legal by the citizens (Arbós and Giner 2005, 13). Just as exposed before, government is derived from Greek, which means to pilot, guide or lead a ship. Therefore, quality of governable can be understood as the property or condition to be guided, led or managed. Dieter Nohlen explains that the concept of governability makes reference to the existing tension between the two parts and questions the government system as producer of political decisions and responsible of their execution, as well as its capability to live up according to the problems to be solved (Nohlen 1992, 2).

17. However, what is governance? Seemingly suited from french gouvernance, the word governance has been a term applied by France from the 14th century to appoing the art or style of governing. In fact, according to the Spanish Royal Academy, governance is defined as: art or mode of governing.

18. After centuries of desuse, the term re-emerges in the USA during the third decade of the 20th century on the field of economics and more precisely on business management. However, even though it is true that the concept of governance was reconsidered on Economic Sciences, it has a different meaning on International Relations.

19. Several authors in the International Relations academy have used the term governance to relate the regulation of the existing international interactions given the absence of a government either a central political authority with a global scope. David Held and Anthony McGrew consider that given the absence of a world government, the concept of global governance provides a language to describe the links of rules creation systems, political coordination and problem solving beyond States and societies (Held and McGrew 2002, 8). From a similar perspective, Lawrence Finkelstein finds out that governance is to govern, without sovereign authority, relations that transcend national boundaries (Finkelstein 1995, 369). To Thomas Weiss and Ramesh Thakur it consists of the sume of laws, rules, politics and institutions who define, constitute and mediate the cross-border relations between States, citizens, intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations and the market (Weiss and Thakur 2010, 31-32); where as Pascal Lamy and Zaki Laïdi understand it as the combination of processes to elaborate, decide, legitimize, implement and control collective rules (Lamy and Laïdi 2002, 200).

20. No doubt, the idea of governance approaches in a significant way to that of governability. However, there is a remarkable matrix between both of them: governability is either the quality or possibility to be governed; whereas governance concerns the art or style of governing, as well as the action and effect of govern oneself.

21. Even though the popularization of the concept of governance is relatively recent, the phenomena of international governance is ancient itself. Since international governance regards how the States manage their matters collectively, it is possible to argue that international governance has existed since the very moment in which the States began to relate between them so they had to regulate their interactions.

22. So far, there is a theoretical and conceptual outline in the study of governance. Even so, the aim of this work is not just to expose a revision of the concept, but to move forward towards the characterization of the governance at international level in order to comprehend the current changes it is going through. In this regard, several questions come out: What are the features of international governance? If the subject under analysis is the international governance, what are the aspects it is comprised and determined by? What are the main variables to be considered? Ho to proceed in the study of international governance? And, above all, why Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, all allied by means of a new forum, are reconfiguring the internation governance at the dawn of the 21st century?

23. International governance does not mean world government. International governance consists of a system of rules and institutions who regulate the performance of the States and other non-state actors. Thus, international governance is a wider and lax concept: it is to govern without a government.

24. However, there are series of mechanisms which configurate the government, as well as they may be found on the international governance. Neverthles, it is worth to make some adjustements in regards of the space dimensión of the observed phenomena as well as on the nature of all the involved actors. Whereas the trinomial efficacy-legitimacy-stability becomes essential to de stady of national governments (Bobbio 1999, Deutsch 1998, Tomassini 1992), its comparable at international level may be national power-international legitimacy, international policital management; these three components are inherently related since the unbalance of any of them leads to generate deviatons and eventually, crisis on the international governance.

25. It is from the study of the meaning, scope and specificity of each one of the components of the trinomial national power-international legitimacy-international political direction that emerges the methodology for the study of international governance. How it comes to be?

26. Method comes from Greek words meta (beyond) and odos (path, route), which means path, way or steps to go beyond. Methodology (from Greek method and –logy, treatise or science) is simply the comprehension and explanation of the rout or steps to follow when performing an activity. On science field, metholdology is understood as the systematic mode to proceed during research, with the purpose of organize knowledge and to obtain a result. In fact, Jeffrey Alexander, who is a continuous scientist between methaphysical and empirical means, places outlining methodological assumptions as an immediate step just after observations (Alexander 1989, 15). Thus, methodology sets the strategy or way to proceed on empirical observation in light of a suit of determined theoretical assumptions.

27. In the case of International Relatios, methodology is the instrument that allows the researcher to organize observation of an international problem under a general scope theory. Evidently, this brings up a double demand: on one hand, the understanding of the matter of the current research itself, since it is only through its deep knowledge that it is possible to discern its nature, constitution, specificity and problems; on the other hand, it becomes mandatory to have mastery of understanding a theory (or a body of jointed theories between them), since it implies a method.

28. Theory simplifies reality and turns it reasonable to the observer, but at the same time, it consistenly emphazises some aspects and turns on its side others: the theory implicitly devises a guideline to the researcher, in order to observe, discern, prioritize and arrange those aspects from reality in accordance with the solution of a specific problem. Such guideline is not untidy and arbitrary, but methodical and strategic. Hence the name methodological strategy. Properly understood, from the theory comes inferred a methodological strategy for the research –a path was a step leads another, then another and so forth- in order to complete a whole investigation and to provide answers to a problem.

29. The following lines aim to stand some methodological guidelines for the study of international governance. As exposed before, such methodology comes from the anlysis of the three basic components of international governance: national power, international legitimacy and political management.

National power

30. The word power comes from Latin posse (Corominas 1967, 465), compound by two contractions: the first one coming from Indo-European, potis or potes, which means possibility either capability; the second comes from Latin, esse (from the verb sum), which means to be or to exist. Thus, there is the expression pote est, which is translated into to be in possibility of or to be capable of. Over time, pote est became a single word: potest. In turn, it went vulgar into posse, keeping it original meaning, though. Therefore, nowadays power still means the capability to do something (Real Academia Española 2015), or even possessing legal authority to do something. But, what does state power consists of? Further more, what are its feautres and specificities? How to study the power in international relations?

31. The nation-state power operates in two different ways: inwards, whithin its inner state boundaries and otwards, on the international system. To this respect, Tomás Mestre Vivesw explains that the power exerted inwards is called political power, whereas the power exerted outwards is called national power (Mestre Vives 1979, 156). The main concern here is to study the importance of the national power on the international governance, but before that, it is worth to study the political power.

32. There’s plenty of literature in regards of political power: there are extraordinary elucidations about it on classical works such as The Republic (Platón) between 5th and 4th centuries b.C.; Politics (Aristóteles) from the 4th century b.C.; Leviathan (Hobbes) published on1651; the Second Treatise of Civil Government (Locke) written on 1689; De l’esprit des loix (Montesquieu) from 1748; Considerations on representative government (Mill) from 1861; Note sul Machiavelli, sulla política e sullo stato moderno (Gramsci) edited on 1949; Politics and goverment (Deutsch) published on 1970; and Sécurité, territoire, population (Foucault) dictated on 1978, to mention some of the most outstanding . All of them agree to argue the vicisitudes and disputes for the power within the State, political body recognized by the members of a society in order to regulate public life. One of the more relevant studies in regards of the holistic understanding of the politic power has been elaborated at the end of the 20th century by Norberto Bobbio. To this Italian philosopher and jurist, political power is configured based on economic, ideological and coercive powers: The economic power draws on the property of assets, necessary or so considered in shortage situations in order to make those who don’t possess them to take on certain behavior [...]. The ideological power draws on the property of cognition forms, doctrines, knowledge, even information itself or behavioral codes in order to influence external conduct [...]. The coercive power is necessary for all societies so they cand defend themselves from outer attacks either to prevent their inner disintegration (Bobbio 1999, 111-112). Thus, to Norberto Bobbio the trilogy of political power lies on richness, knowledge and strength.

33. Compared to the political power, literature regarding national power is less plentiful and more recent. In this work, national power will be understood as a product of the recursive combination of the different national capacities of a State. What are those? Even though that is the matter of Chapter II. Methodology for the selection of variables in national power measuring, briefly in this Prologue it can be written that there are three big groups of national capacities: 1) material capacities: they define the necessary materiality so that a State is able to guarantee its territory impregnability above others in conflict situations and to boost certain internal growth processes; 2) semi-material capacities: they are based on the first ones, since without materiality there is no welfare nor development for a given population. These capacities are translated into several factors which combine social material aspects coming from situations of richness, well-being and creative potential of a national-society; 3) immaterial capacities: they are tertiary, crucial and decisive. They are related to those qualities endowed by a given country which allow it to organize and design itself as well as to influence beyond its boundaries. These capacities depend on the first ones and the second ones, although at some point of the performance and dynamism of a State they become critical over the others, above all when it has to do with transcending national borders.

34. However, there is a dimension of the national power corresponding each one of the three capacities categories: the material capacities refer to the economical-military power, the semi-material capacities correspond to the socio-institutional power and the immaterial capacities allude to the communicative-cultural power of a State.

35. How to process this range of national capacities previously explained? The best strategy is by designing statistics