Re: new paradigm in pop policy (fwd)

Mine,

He uses the construct of polyarchy because that is the model that the
transnational policymaker operates from and wishes to establish in the
periphery. Thus Robinson's work is both a critique of polyarchy at the
same time a recognition of the fact that this is the model that is
deployed. Robert Dahl's characterization of the working of political
system at the level of abstraction he takes it is relatively accurate
(taken at a deeper level, it is of course deeply contradicted). Robinson's
critique is that Dahl and others should find this to be desirable and
impose it upon the rest of the world.

Andrew Austin
Knoxville, TN

On Mon, 5 Jun 2000 md7148@cnsvax.albany.edu wrote:

>
>Andy, thanks for expanding on Robinson. I was not aware that Robinson was
>using a Gramscian mode of geo-political analysis, since I was sceptical of
>the concept "polyarchy". In political science jargon, this concept has
>been largely used to justify a pluralist mode of analysis by liberal
>theorists, such as Robert Dahl. It seems Robinson has a different
>kind of conceptualization, the one that emphasizes the dominant ideology..
>in any case, his observations seem to confirm my points about the
>ideological underpinings of the modernization theory and transnational
>capitalism. Mary's question makes much more sense now.... 
>
>I will also check out the article posted by Michael a while ago. let me
>read what the man says...
>
>Mine
>
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sun, 04 Jun 2000 23:51:32
>-0400 (EDT)  From: Andrew Wayne Austin <aaustin@utkux.utcc.utk.edu> To: 
>md7148@cnsvax.albany.edu Cc: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Subject: Re: new
>paradigm in pop policy (fwd) 
>
>Mine,
>
>Robinson uses a modified Gramscian mode of geopolitical analysis to reveal
>the underlying structural imperatives and the
>collective-behavioral/ideological orientation of polyarchic-style
>transnational policy formation. His is a historical materialist theory of
>globalization that conceptualizes a post-national hegemonic political
>dynamic driven by the transnational corporation. He theorizes the end of
>the cycle of hegemons as reflective of a global capitalist class that
>transcends the nation-state framework (which is not to say that
>nation-states are irrelevant). The policies of the global elite are
>popularly articulated as "democratization" and their theoretical
>underpinnings are modernization and structural-functionalism.
>
>The relevance of his theory and method for the question of population, and
>this emerges from his book but I know this mostly from our conversations,
>is that population control is based on modernizationist ideology, a
>component of which is the universal application of sledgehammer
>abstractions like the demographic transition, and is imposed upon "third
>world" people. Thus population control and other policies of this sort
>flow from the theory advanced by the global elite - and this is not
>speculation, since elites articulate this point of view (some of our list
>members advance the same oppressive line) - that the poor breed because
>they still struggle under a cultural idiocy, i.e., "traditional culture,"
>and that the key to lowering their birth rates is to put in the place of
>their backward/primitive institutions a modern industrial system with
>polyarchic political structures (bougeois democracy). Through their
>institutions they provide loans to the nations of the periphery, organize
>EPZs, a domestic police force, birth control regime, etc. All of their
>policy masquerades under the authority of bourgeois science.
>
>I would not think it necessary to point out, but after the discussion on
>the list of late it is crystal clear that one cannot proceed on the
>grounds of shared understanding, that the "traditional culture," i.e.,
>extreme poverty, is the creation of the core through centuries of
>imperialism, that EPZs and the modern machinery of liberal republicanism
>are the reorganized mechanisms of neoimperialism under conditions of a
>global civil society and a nascent transnational state. Their "scientific
>ideas" embed in popular consciousness because of their power to distribute
>their propaganda through the mass media and through the university system
>where professors and graduate students then indoctrinate their undergrad
>and grad students. Again, we have clear instances of their success in
>creating a legion of the faithful on this very list. The frame is the
>uncritical mind.
>
>Incidentally, it was Robinson who pointed out to me (and this follows
>logically from the facts he presents at the end of his book, which are
>incontrovertable) that the "third world" could be eliminated and the
>pending ecological holocaust would not be averted because it is the core
>who are burning up the earth. I think that many would profit from reading
>Bill's book and articles.
>
>Andrew Austin
>Knoxville, TN
>
>
>