Institution-formation theory and principles of its construction. Globalization and the main mechanisms of the development of society. A. L. Safonov
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communications and the most advantageous coastal trading locations in the East and the New World, which were involved in an intensive exchange of goods with Europe. Then, beginning in the first quarter of the nineteenth century, when Europe underwent the “industrial revolution”, a fierce struggle began to promote cheap European goods in eastern markets. Finally, in the last third of the nineteenth century, the “core” countries fought for the final division of the world. In this case, it was not only about markets for finished products but also about the objects of capital exports, i.e. the objects of investment.
The state and its institutions remain the most important instruments in the struggle for world domination. The western European nation state, since the beginning of modern times (i.e. the era of the global economic system), has been manifesting the interests of commercial and entrepreneurial circles. It played a decisive role in the process of the peripheralization of the whole world and the creation of different levels of wages and levels of consumption corresponding to the three main zones.
Among the “core” countries of the global economic system, there is an Asian country, Japan, which began its “ascent” in the last third of the nineteenth century. This indicates that the relationship between the core and the periphery is not reduced to the “West-East” confrontation and the “clash of civilizations”. At the same time, the “liberation” of the countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America from political colonial dependence did not result in any major changes in the global economic system.
Coercion by force was necessary to lower the status of the defeated state and to incorporate the victim of expansion into the global economic system as a source of raw materials, a market, and an object of investment. By the twenty-first century, when most peripheral countries were already functioning steadily as such, the need for coercion by force had diminished considerably along with the costs of these actions, though far from “gone”, as many believe. Direct military coercion, albeit in new forms that reduce the scale of permanent military presence in peripheral countries, has persisted and will continue for the foreseeable future, as the precedents of Iraq, Afghanistan, Serbia, Libya, Syria, etc. indicate.
As a result of actions to control markets, a colonial system emerged that existed from the sixteenth century until the middle of the twentieth century.
The financial and social costs of administering the dependent countries of this era, with their primitive material production, were very high. They often did not recoup the maintenance of colonial administrations and power structures. All this led to the disintegration (and, according to several reasonable opinions, to the dismantling from above) of Europe’s largest colonial empires and the transfer of former colonies to a neocolonial mode of exploitation after World War II. Notably, after the war, Great Britain, of its own volition, granted first partial autonomy and then nominal political independence to its colonies and protectorates. In doing so, it shifted the costs of administration and moral responsibility for the low standard of living of the population from the metropolis to the administrations of the new states.
Thus, the change from colonial to neocolonial dependence turned out to be not a “liberation” but a form of increasing the efficiency of the economies of the “core” countries of the world system. Social expenditures began to be borne by the newly independent states. Nevertheless, the former metropolises retained control over the financial and, in part, manufacturing sectors of the newly emerged political entities.
At the same time, the “decolonization” of countries of the world’s periphery, which took place in a historically short period from the end of World War II to the mid-60s, reduced political contradictions among countries of the capitalist “core” (which caused two world wars), giving financial, manufacturing, and trade entities relatively equal access to the markets of former colonies.
It is obvious that gaining nominal independence, i.e. changing the international legal status of a territory, does not in principle mean that it is capable of automatically changing its position in the global economic vertical. The existing global system of economic and political elites, increasingly independent of national governments, does not allow many countries to develop effectively. This allows those elites and those states that are in the “core” of the world system to maintain the efficiency of their own financial, manufacturing, and trade entities at the expense of the resources of the periphery.
It should be noted that systemic opposition plays an important role in the constant marginalization of the geopolitical periphery. It encompasses the so-called “anti-systemic movements”, i.e. mass protest social movements aimed at overcoming “backwardness” and raising the living standards of certain population groups in one way or another. These include various kinds of mass movements in the “core” countries, and communist and national-liberation political associations in the Third World (existing under a variety of slogans – from socialist and anti-globalist to national and religious fundamentalist).
The cumulative result of their existence is that by introducing local tensions into the system in the short term, they, in turn, become its stabilizing factor. To a large extent, the actions of these movements prevent the population from consolidating to counter the real causes that lead to the deterioration of their social and economic situation. In some cases, they create a legitimate pretext for building a repressive system and institutions of total control over the population. All of this is required for the effective functioning and risk reduction of the global economic vertical.
The uncertainty of global development is greatly exacerbated by the fact that new centres of civilization are beginning to compete with the countries of Europe and North America. As an example, China is moving steadily toward first place in the global economic vertical. On the one hand, it is a state with a constantly growing economy and industry. On the other hand, China is an independent civilization with a developed culture, dating back to the third millennium BC.
1.3 Globalization and the principles of its study
The phenomenon of globalization has been studied based on various views of reality. There are several ways to classify theoretical approaches. In a number of works, globalization is viewed as an objective historical trend of deepening interstate and inter-civilizational interactions and contacts. The study of this phenomenon was also carried out through the study of its geo-economic and geopolitical aspects, as well as the impact of globalization on the nation state and its structural subdivisions. In addition, attempts were made to comprehensively summarize the processes of globalization. It was implemented in the “world system” approach to the analysis of this phenomenon, which sees it as a period in the development of society characterized by increasingly multidimensional and comprehensive interactions between social subjects and entities.
One of the leading objective components of globalization is the global crisis of resources and demographics. It arose in the process of increasing global connectivity, that is, with the formation of economic, transport, and information components of globalization. Based on the analysis of this phenomenon, the resource- and environment-based approach to the assessment of global development appeared and grew in influence, and one of its offshoots was transformed into the “concept of sustainable development”. The basis of this concept is the clarification of objective natural resource limitations (“limits of growth”) that stand in the way of the material and economic activity of humankind. As a consequence, within the framework of this theory, studies have been conducted to determine the optimal size of the global population10.
Philosophers who developed several concepts of stage-by-stage development of humankind toward creating a single global society can be considered the forerunners of modern globalism. Fundamental works of this socio-philosophical school of thought were created by philosophers and scientists such as I. Kant, K. Marx, P. Teilhard de Chardin, V. Vernadsky, A. Toynbee, B. Russell, K. Jaspers, etc.
Based on the scale of the transformation
Appendix 1 has a full list of various schools of thought on globalization and authors who belong to them.