Re: new paradigm in pop policy (fwd)

agreed!

Mine


>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
>
>
>