Book Review: Global Crises and the Crisis of Global Leadership

Global Crises and the Crisis of Global Leadership, edited by Stephen Gill, brings together an array of scholars influenced by his previous work (1992, 1993, 1995, 2000) to examine aspects of global governance in a time of crisis. Gill argues that we face a “global organic crisis” marked by multitudinous crises of capitalism, most centrally: crises of accumulation, ecological stability, legitimation, and social reproduction. This situation is produced by the contradictions embedded in the neoliberal phase of capitalism; at issue is how basic conditions of existence are increasingly mediated by neoliberal governance arrangements. To challenge this state of affairs, we must examine existing leftist-progressive movements, and re-evaluate our theories of global governance and social change. The book contributes to this endeavor by taking one of Gramsci’s key questions as its guiding concern:

In the formation of leaders, one premise is fundamental: is it the intention that there should always be rulers and ruled, or is the objective to create the conditions in which this division … of the human race … is no longer necessary? (17)

This work is squarely in the neo-Gramscian tradition, and is intended for critical academics and theory-minded activists and politicians. It endeavors to chart a new research agenda focused on the “perennial and often imperial theme of leadership in world affairs and, specifically, how that leadership has addressed – and may address – global crises” (9). In charting this new agenda, Gill critiques other neo-Gramscian approaches, focusing on two main traditions: the Robert Cox-inspired focus on international order premised on U.S. hegemony (Cox 1981,1987; see also Arrighi 1990, 1994; Gill 1989, 1993), and more recent examinations of the “transnational capitalist class” (Carroll and Femmena 2002; Carroll and Carson 2003; Carroll and Sapinksi 2010; Kentor and Suk Jang 2004; Robinson and Harris 2000; Robinson 2005, 2007; Sklair 1997, 2001; Staples 2006).This work takes a middle ground. It does not disavow the power of the United States, nor that capitalists, especially through corporations, have amassed a great deal of power in shaping world affairs. Yet, Gill prefers the language of “elites,” whose interests are managed by a cadre of experts. It is against these elites and their undemocratic managerialism that progressive, “non-authoritarian lefts” must struggle.

The book is divided into four sections. The first focuses on laying out a Gramscian approach to global power relations. Gill’s first chapter outlines a dualistic theory of crisis: a situation where democratic procedures can be suspended in a state of “emergency” and an “eschatological” crisis in which the old is dying and the new cannot be born (27). This ultimately amounts to a “crisis of social reproduction,” where neoliberal capitalism can no longer reproduce the basic conditions of existence. In the second chapter, Nicola Short mobilizes some of Gramsci’s essential political concepts (hegemony, leadership, the “modern prince,” and organic intellectuals) to examine the rise to dominance of neoliberal ideology. Short argues that neoliberalism was not the only possible solution to the welfare state crisis in the late 1960s and early 1970s; however, it became “historically effective through strategies of intellectual and moral leadership articulated to the structural power of capital in the core liberal states” (47). Thus, Short explains, neoliberalism is defined by an “aesthetic of crisis” as it emerged in a time of crisis with two basic answers: all social problems can be solved by subsuming them under market relations, and good governance means politics as techno-expert managerial administration.

Picking up on the notion of leadership by experts, chapter three, by Claire Cutler, examines the role of private actors in “transnational governance,” focusing on lawyers and financial analysts. One pertinent effect of neoliberal ideology has been a blurring line between public and private governance, and the depoliticization of “experts” with private interests (57). Cutler argues that the daily reproduction of capitalism necessitates a class of experts to mediate the “dialectical relationship between local and global politico-legal orders and economies, refashioning localities according to the logic of private transnational governance, while simultaneously advancing the transnational expansion of capitalism” (68). In this first section of the book, the authors clearly argue that our era is defined by the dominance of neoliberal ideology which, through institutionally created common sense, seeks to expand opportunities for capital accumulation by increasing commodifiable aspects of life and restructuring the notion of governance towards one of undemocratic expert-elite management.

The book argues that this ideology is in crisis, and one of the central aspects of this crisis is capitalism’s relation to the environment. The second section examines peak oil, climate change, and the global fresh water crisis as aspects of the global ecological crisis. Tim DiMuzio argues that peak oil represents a dual crisis of “petro-market civilization” as the price of oil and the amount of carbon in the atmosphere are both set to increase with no coherent policy framework aiding the transition to alternative energy sources. Richard Falk argues that climate change currently represents the greatest threat to human security and well-being, yet short-term economic “necessity” is obscuring the long-term unfeasibility of continuing down our current path. Hilal Elver discusses the contradictions in the global freshwater crisis, and increasing attempts to privatize freshwater services, price water, and create viable waters trading markets. While 90 percent of freshwater is still governed publicly, the utility companies involved in the private water business have consistently pushed their way into governance mechanisms (especially at the UN, where the “stakeholder” approach to governance is clearly visible in the water sector).

The third section examines ethics, crisis, and subaltern forces in the context of global leadership. Solomon Benatar argues that because of the condition of global healthcare, the world has entered a state of entropy engendered by five dominant values: individualism, growth through liberalization, corporate managerialism as governance, hubristic notions of scientific progress, and compartmentalized thinking. We need to shift our values and perspectives on health towards not merely rights, but rights and responsibilities where needs and equity can be managed based on an ethic of solidarity in a more robust democracy. Mustapha Kamal Pasha argues that Western, orientalist discourses organized through disciplinary neoliberalism work to depoliticize and de-legitimate alternative discourses of global governance through marginalizing difference, and maintaining control over discursive fields and knowledge production. Pasha articulates a vision for political Islam as a moral alternative to Western, neoliberal notions of governance. Upendra Baxi argues that through the expansion of neoliberalism, with its penchant for private decision making rather than public debate, courts have become sites where judges can exercise “moral and intellectual leadership” in the interest of the oppressed. “Ajudicatory” leadership, as Baxi terms it, by activist judges as “organic intellectuals” can help re-work legal systems in the interests of those who do not benefit from the current form of globalization.

The last section explicitly challenges the current state of transnational neoliberal governance and offers alternative forms of global leadership. Teivo Teivainen explores the formation of the World Social Forum (WSF), and elucidates some of the internal debates that have characterized this process, particularly the tension between the forum as an open space for collaboration and dialogue, and calls for the forum to become more explicitly political and activist. Ingar Solty argues that the coming “post-neoliberal order” harbors three potential paths: green capitalism, democratic socialism, and barbarism. The first in the form of a massive financial grab for “nature” and the “green economy” as a new regime of accumulation, the second emerging in the “BRICS” and with alternatives developing in Latin America, and the last through accelerating trends of authoritarian leadership, especially in the context of access to resources. Adam Harmes argues against much of the literature cited in this work that posits crises as the best possible time for revolutionary change. Harmes calls for a re-conceptualization of progressive politics whereby progressives work with anti-globalization liberals (a broad coalition of the left) to build a new, left-leaning hegemony that uses the inevitable crises of capitalism to promote incremental progressive reform.

The concluding chapter, written by Gill, is where I will focus my critique. The ideas advanced in this work offer a refreshing step in a new direction, as they chart a path for studying the governance of crisis through the lens of leadership, and not merely states and institutions. Yet, I think they fail to follow through in addressing its guiding question: the relationship between rulers and ruled. There is a marked gap between the precise analyses of “the problem” and the weakly formulated platitudes that characterize the “progressive” alternatives to this order. I think this gap stems from the refusal to deal with the issues laid out in the book in terms of class politics. Every precaution is taken against this move (save Solty’s significant contribution). Gill characterizes the situation as “experts” or “elites” versus “the people,” which only allows him to advance an obscure version of progressive populism in the form of a “global party” comprised of millions of diverse “organic intellectuals” (253).

Gill argues that leftist movements can come together to create a new “common sense” using the tactics of “rights, redistribution and recognition” (233). Here Gill’s analysis essentially falls into the post-political populist trap that Žižek warns against (who deserves a closer reading; see Gill’s critique of Žižek on page 4). As Žižek (2009: 61) argues: “The ultimate difference between a truly radical emancipatory politics and a populist politics is that the former is active, it imposes and enforces its vision, while populism is fundamentally reactive, the result of a reaction to a disturbing intruder.” Gill’s work views neoliberalism as an intruder: a particular, undesirable form of capitalism, and does not advance a coherent critique of capitalism as such. Thus, Gill’s formulation is fundamentally populist, as the above “tactics” necessitate an appeal to “elites”: rights must be granted, redistribution must be directed, recognition must be given. Despite the radical contradictions Gill identifies (renewed primitive accumulation, ecological exploitation, and crises of social reproduction), the alternative strategies proposed amount to little more than a widening of the circle of institutionalized politics, and, in fact, perpetuate the relationship between rulers and ruled that Gill seeks to “abolish” (254). This is not necessarily a political critique (I am not admonishing Gill for seeking reformism over “revolution”) but a conceptual inconsistency that weakens the overall political argument.

While Global Crises and the Crisis of Global Leadership does begin to chart an exciting and necessary research agenda examining the governance of capitalism in a time of crises, the alternative conceptualizations of governance it advances do not measure up to the challenges it lays out. Nevertheless, the book should be widely read and discussed because, while it may not have all of the answers, Gill and colleagues are certainly asking the right questions.