world court thread / cj#913> Mark Douglas Whitaker: THREE STRATEGIES FOR

more local level. But in disrupting power, on the other hand, we should
respect that a society will only go so far before it will want 'normalcy.'
Even if that normalcy was a prison, it was home. A great deal of power is
always given to those who promise stability, and people will vote for any
groups who want to promise it. So if we upset security issues, we will have
lost. We have to walk between these two poles of disrupting power and
respecting a society's desire for stability. Everything strategically I
propose takes that into account. The CDI assures that it will be utilized
as an intermediary force structurally speaking. It affects a change in the
interactions of how politics comes together on the local level, and thus,
it is one step toward the 'moderation--'the democraization--of the radical
neoliberal regime we presently face, held together by unrepresentative
media structures warping our ability to communicate issues to ourselves and
unrepresentative state power arrangements that preference artificical
corporate citizens over human citizens.

So the CDI is both conservative and radical: conservative in the sense that
it is coalitional and non-extremist and based on localism and community
issues; and radical only in the sense that it actually asks local people to
participate in democratic procedures. This I have defined as a moderating
influence, considering the present status quo a radical and extremist view
which only exists because of lack of systemic power to challenge it. The
sociopolitical effect of the CDI is to dismantle sociospatial distance
between social networks, to help generate solidarity and coalitional
consenus building structures in society. Ideologies of a more general urban
interest can develop due to the CDI holding 'open' the channel of local
coalition building for politics in the wider political ecology, instead of
the factionalism and clientelism we witness and are told to consider
'democratic.'

Merely to look at the structure of the CDI misses the point, because I am
looking at its effect on informal networks, socialization, ideological
creation--instead of just the formal structure of the CDI. I am looking at
the wider social effects of the CDI's recognition process on political
formation.

And best of all, no one has to force people to do anything. This is
optional. Research on incentives say that incentives for action (especially
political action) attracts a population sample which may be more interested
in their own individual benefit and may be even opposed to the politics per
se which the private incentive was designed to get them involved in in the
first place. The CDI makes sure that the 'cream of the crop' is
selected--those that want to participate, and who are motivated themselves
(instead of motivated by solely private incentives).

I am describing the CDI and Hanse Nationalism which follows in terms of
urban politics just for rhetorical compactness. In the text of the CDI
(Appendix One) I mention that this would be useful for facilitating
coalitions and networking in both rural and urban areas. So I see a role
for the CDI in 'both' areas, through they are interrelated in the same
political economy despite being to some extent separate cultural arenas.
Possibly due to denser and more multiplex relationships in rural areas, the
critical mass [Marwell and Oliver, 1984] to introduce the CDI would be
inherently easier for people to achieve.

As many in political sociology would express, cultural frames of discourse
are highly important as bases for politics in all societies. In a sense
what is cultural is profoundly related to the interaction with the
structural. [Billig, 1995; Nash, 1989], because it provides formal network
mobilization material against the structural when the time is sensed to be
opportune. The CDI is a structure for facilitating local and nation-state
political coalitional building from a different systemic level--a sited
consensus politics which can develop into a localized systemic power.
Developing a vocabulary to define structures as having externalized
political ecology effects, and particular political ecologies as
perpetuating particular structures is one area where we require more
research.

To summarize, the CDI uses existing cultural networks to build political
coalitions, and it brings people together to make their own bridges between
each other. It embeds politics into culture, instead of political machines
serving us what out 'culture' is. And the CDI makes sure through a double
blind and double round voting system that people with political machines
are dampened as a factor and held back. They are either swamped by the
inability to keep up their advertising throughout the long nine months it
takes to accumulate voting totals in the first round, or since it is so
easy to vote against anyone who attempts to machine together their
candidacy of huge campaigns will be deselected as a waste of money since
people can veto this person without having to wait for someone else
appearing to vote 'for.' It gives the veto effectively to the people
directly, instead of the people depending on a champion to oppose the other
(perhaps previous?) champion they elected or recognized. In other words,
all the advertising and machine politics in the world is marginalized,
since the CDI allows people who lack a candidate or a political machine,
merely to vote against a person they want to see ousted from popularity.
This is what they wanted to do anyway--just see that this person doesn't
win. The present strategy which the system selects for is forcing them to
back someone else equally powerful. Is that a check on power, if you have
to have recourse to it to deal with power? Better to put the veto into the
people's hands for cultural issues. And it is harder for local leaders to
sell out, since they are part of local group networks. The CDI moves to
give people veto against what they consider empty promises and lies without
depending upon a 'false challenger' to express their opposition, as well as
simultaneously networking people in a forum whom the citizenry has
recognized as capable of a intermediary role. It devolves ideological
politics to a more sociospatially cultural network orientation in society
which can hold much more complexity. Furthermore, the CDI tends to instill
more of a faith in democratic procedure than national political machines,
multimillion dollar ad campaigns, and their corporate sponsors (both
Democrat and Republican) can afford to purchase for themselves. It develops
an ideological politics more recognizably localized which considers local
citizens as a political force, instead of merely a market for distantly
derived political platforms. The CDI moves to claim cultural discourses for
local areas, and in a sense, it is an institutional 'third space' [Soja,
1997] form which makes the city culturally capable of reproducing itself
closer to the era of pre-capitalism. Pre-capitalism, the city itself was
much more of a 'third space' by definition. It was a group of people before
the rich and the poor began to stratify sociospatially in the city and
communicate only within the system of worksites. The CDI vivifies urban
culture and urban politics by socially developing an urban discourse which
moderates the sociospatial network separation of capitalism in the city.
The postmodern culture is highly related to this political frustration and
lack of cultural integration I would posit. These in turn effect capacities
for mobilizing for equity issues.

It is the wider political ecological effect of the CDI political process
strategy, within the nation-state context, which I will develop in the next
section.


(2) Hanse Nationalism: Balancing
    Local and National Identities and Politics
    ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
With the national-poltical parties presently moving to the 'high-end' of
the political market of TNC influence, there has opened a chasm of
unrepresented interests at the nation-state level. This makes it an ideal
time to press for something which will contribute to democratic procedural
maintenance in a long term sense. This political press is less policy
oriented and more a question of a process change which will have widespread
effects. Due to these widespread effects, it has a high return to its
initial involvement.

This change is for limited parliamentarian electoral voting laws on the
nation-state level. This small change will open up the political process of
the nation-state of the United States, which has long maintained only two
majoritarian parties as the only contenders and translators of nation-state
power. As such they were in the role of gatekeeper of the only means to
achieve nation-state power--a monopoly arrangement structurally speaking.
In a limited parliamentarian electoral regime, the Democrats and the
Republicans will be unable to hold back the localist political parties in
their desires for coalition building for nation-state power. The Founding
Fathers of the United States failed to countenance what would happen when
national political parties rendendered separate state governmental
machinery within the sway of one or the other national political
organization. A majoritarian system of voting has translated itself into to
the institutionlization of two parties and has jammed the tripartite
separation of powers in the government structure.

Yet how can we get this networking of urban interests in the CDI to a
nation-state level? In simultaneous strategies:

    (1) the preservation (and creation) of the local coalitional form
    as a sustainable political form through the CDI strategy,
    and

    (2) a press for limited parliamentarianism (meaning voting law
    changes)on the nation-state level, either through existing third party
    coalition 'one-issue' pressure in a special campaign, or through
    networking with multi-urban politics.

For case (1), the CDI strategy will assure that these nation-wide
expressions of localist interests remain influenced by local interests,
instead of merely becoming co-opting cultural frames and supporting
existing political processes of unrepresentative politics. The CDI holds
open the local coalitional base of politics, keep it from being co-opted
culturally as well as organizationally from externalized nation-state
political parties, and thus holds open in a wider sense the ability of
nation-state coalition building.

Yet limited parliamentarianism on the nation-state level electoral laws,
case (2), is required to add the 'pull' from the nation-state to make the
system of nation-state politics a venue which allows for these smaller
parties and interests to have a place in nation-state politics as separate
systemic interests. Otherwise they will take their place in the graveyard
of all third party contenders of the United States which attempt to move to
the nation-state level. In other words, getting established in power at the
nation-state level is a great gift in the subsequent election cycle for
third parties, something that none of them have ever experienced in the
United States.

Parliamentarianism is perhaps the only unifying principle which the various
third parties in existence presently in the United States could ever hold
as some sort of common platform (in their small capacities, kept from
coalition building and developing a novel democratic procedural form for
nation-state politics). As an ideological call of unity in this diversified
bunch, parliametarianism is perhaps the only unifier of diversity.

I suggest that parliamentarianism should be a public pressure rhetoric for
a one-issue platform which could unite all third parties. It would be in
their collective as well as individual interest. It is not as vague as
'oppose globalization' and it has a very clear and understandable message
of "what to do". It's proactive, instead of reactive strategy. As such, it
will engender much more support, especially from already existing third
parties like the Greens, the New Party, the Socialists, and the
Libertarians. They all have to team up, less on ideological agreement, and
more of a sense that as a group all third party pressure would be useful
for pressing for something which third parties as individual groups could
utilize: parliamentarian electoral laws. They will all disagree of course
politically, yet can agree on the desire for getting power. In doing so,
they aid setting up a novel channel of politics for later: the formal
government coalition.

I will define a few terms. Majoritarian party: I am talking solely about
the United States in this instance--of either the Democratic Party or the
Republican Party. I call them the same--majoritarian party--because of
electoral laws which basically keep the playing field for national level
politics out of political form change by giving the citizenry basically two
rather evenly matched parties, which have come to reify the laws for their
approach to politics to their mutual advantage. This is contrary to what I
would define as a working democratic procedural system--one which has
several methods to reach the nation-state exercise of power. The
majoritarian parties monopolize the sole path to the nation-state level and
thus, create a very unrepresentative regime. Historically, the dual
majoritarian parties in addition have the cultural role in the nation-state
political ecology of 'splitting' the local 'working' vote which could,
aided with the CDI and Hanse Nationalism, be welded together into a working
counterpart to these majoritiarn parties on the national-level, effectively
balancing the neoliberal TNC-biased nation-state government in our present
era. The electoral law system calls for this majoritarian structural
outcome in the political ecology through 'winner take all' elections and
makes this the only political ecology outcome possible in the United
States, and it has nothing to do with the way the people vote or the
percentages of their support. In terms of law, either one of this party
will win, or the other will win because there are the only contenders which
have established cultural primacy, and they maintain it through the overall
poltical ecology and voting laws that select against other contenders
gaining a 'toehold' in government representation for the next election
cycle. Majoritarian parties as a group have made it very difficult for
third parties to register as nation-state contenders as a consequence, as
majoritarian parties have set the laws to levels that only they can reach.

I am using the word 'parliamentarianism in three senses:

    (1) a politically formal method of using the governmental structure
    and (not the political party caucus floor) for what the government was
    designed for, registering competing claims in formal coalitional
    building (instead of what I would describe as the informal coalitional
    building in political parties which then take office, yielding smaller
    voices out of the dialogue of majoritarian political parties
    inherently).

    (2) a word denoting a wider political plurality of parties on all
    levels of government.

    (3) As a policy, it calls for a change in the nation-state electoral
    laws to allow for 'parliamentarian' (sense 1 and 2) elections, instead
    of only having 'winner take all' election laws which is what is in
    place presently, which select for maintaining the majoritarian parties
    as the only power contenders on the nation-state level, as well as
    maintaining a single path model to nation-state level power which
    reifies only those particular interests which can network to that
    level of power politics by themselves.

The CDI can be seen as a feedback mechanism for achieving
parliamentarianism. Parliamentarianism both opens the door to third party
coalitional forms as well as the further extrapolation off interlinked
local systemic interests. This nation-state level platform of particular
urban systemic interests I would call Hanse Nationalism. Why have the CDI
anyway if the parliamentary quality of the electoral laws could generate a
sustainable political ecology for third party interests? The CDI is an
assurance that local coalitional forms of culture and politics are not
ignored by the ideological platforms of nation-state political parties,
third parties included. It is yet another means of pluralizing the
democratic procedural forms. The CDI is a structural mechanism to assure
that these local political ideas remain widely representational and the CDI
assures that cultural frames are maintained as complex as possible so a
sense of embedded and multiplex citizenship on the local level can develop
instead of just a political party consumer culture which can easily co-op
urban sites and lead to a sense of systemic drift described earlier.
Coalitional and multiplex interests on the local level provide a means to
give voice to the sociospatially separated interests in urban areas which
lack a political organization of their own urban politics which can have a
different systemic base. Urban sites normally house the most impoverished
people of a society and the most politically disfranchised. A democratic
procedural mechanism which leaves out these impoverished and their social
issues, would be leaving them to fend in a systemic power world of
organizations which would only temporarily and clientelistically see fit
they were included.

Yet one might ask, are you considering the nation-state a vestigial and
fading structure with this Hanse Nationalism? Actually, I certainly hope I
avoid ever implying such a thing. In my view, Hanse Nationalism only would
work within the overall nation-state as a superstructure, as well as within
the political ecology which allows successful nation-state level third
parties. Think of it perhaps, as a deus et machina, something which
operates for democracy within the nation-state, balancing/leveling out the
political power to where the people are in the cities, instead of only
where the political machines want to operate. The political machines
(national political parties deserve to be called machines more than the
local urban machines ever did) still will be operating I feel. I am looking
at them as a resource, and as nothing which is inherently corrupt, just
corruptible without any political competition. We require a highly
pluralized political ecology where there is more than one method--being
associated with a majoritarian party--of getting to the national
government. With Hanse Nationalism as a democratic procedural path and
third party coalitions, majoritarian parties will be finished as
gatekeepers to the nation-state.

Actually 'Hanse Nationalism,' if one thinks about it as a term, is an
oxymoron. There was nothing nationalistic about the European Hanse (from
which I drew this term). There were a highly fluid formalization of mutual
trading networks which developed their own regulatory power upon which
merchants and could press on the level of the state for political power.
This is what I see occurring if urban areas can generate a superstructure
for voicing their power in the state, and keep themselves from being
co-opted. Their 'voice' I would argue, would be the commonalties of
experience they could capitalize upon, if the national playing field was
open to the allowance of third (forth, fifth) parties, which would allow
them as urban sites to network their interests as well.

The way it is presently in the United States, with majoritiarn parties as
the only mechanism to get to the nation-state, the political result for any
call of systemic change will be apportioned and split effectively by the
dual majoritarian parties--rendering it moot--with perhaps some for the
third party which calls for the change. This is how, in an organizational
sense, the United States has become one of the least democratic of the
'democracies' because any effective local democracy is either ignored or
filtered out of reaching the nation-state level of power because they are
unable to develop national organizations which can sustain themselves.
Majoritarian parties have 'grown' into the niches which the electoral laws
of 'winner take all' require.

This aspect of political ecology effects of governmental structure is
something which should be added to any theorization of a balance of power
in a society or a government. One has to look at the political ecology
effects of laws and organizations and structures of socialization as much
as 'formal' government if one wants to comprehend the workings of a
political system. Returning to the Hanse of pre-nation-state Europe for the
moment, when capitalist groups came into power in the disturbances of the
late 1700's to late 1800's, they chucked the localized Hanse conceptions. I
am saying that the Hanse networks, in a structural sense, had some highly
beneficial structural points which can be extrapolated into present day
politics, in the United States as well as in any nation-state organization
which is experiencing great inequities because of massive urbanization
without much political representation. The positive points:

    (1) structural politics
    (instead of ideological, or at least 'local
    ideological'), so they stick around based on local interests;

    (2) maintains localism and politics
    (and thus embedded economics
    [Granovetter, 1985] around urban sites, allows for coalitioning
    as an ongoing urban process between cities as well as
    within individual cities. Organize power in cities and one keeps
    economics there as well, instead of disembodying it to TNC's.

    (3) population concentrations and stratification in urban sties leave
    a great many impoverished people waiting for organization, without any
    power or linkages to the formal system of power. The ethnic enclave
    history of the United States cities and urban political power, and how
    these local forms challenged the political sovereignty of nation-state
    organizations is actually 'political' history of the United States. It
    is in urban sites where there is a dearth of organizational
    facilitation, which would be networked with the CDI and slowly tabled
    to the nation-state level with a minimal political party co-option.

A good critique would be that the Hanseatic qualties of city representation
and urban political power in the nation state will be devisive. How will
they work together to make a Hanse Nationalism out of their varied urban
interests? The 'nationalistic,' or supra-local quality of this Hanse
Nationalism will come from the existence of the nation-state as a realm of
power.

I would like to see the local as much as the nation level of politics
balanced. Both can go awry and to extremes I recognize. This is why I
propose melding urban power structures into nation-state level
structures--to counterbalance each other and derive the benefits of both
systems of power--the wider identity and interests of nationalism and the
recognition of highly local power as a national institutioal force in
politics, instaed of only majoritarian parties.

So, "Hanse Nationalism" means Hanse (parochial localism) and the
nation-state (linked to larger structures), each moderating the other, by
basically creating structures which integrate local politics and allow them
to network their concerns as local entities into national issues and
pressures, based on the ideological common issues which they will develop
if given the political ecological space to develop a nationalist level
politics.

The historical clientelistic nation-state majoritarian parties in the
United States are of a different economic and cultural positionality base
than from where the Hanse Nationalism pressures would be deriving. This can
be seen throughout the past 20 years as localized urban politics has become
more of a site for consensus building and political experimentation in the
United States--become highly multicultural. Yet the national level
interests have failed to congeal precisely because of 'glass ceiling' of
'winner take all' elections that keeps majoritarian parties in sole power.
I feel that it is simple. The basic survial of the United States as a
democracy depends upon widening systemic power and integration of more
local multicultural interests on the national level of power. Otherwise,
the fabric of society will continue to fray without a sense of
representation at the national level.

Yet there is a role for majoritarian parties to play in Hanse Nationalism.
One important note is that, ironically, large parties are a future resource
in the *maintenance* of parliamentarianism, as long as the political
ecology works to make them competitors in splitting ideological appeals
against parliamentarianism. Parliamentarianism and majoritarian parties can
balance each other, each checking the other's abuses of power. Presently,
there is nothing to check the abuses of majoritarian power. With more
political choice of method, political culture will be less oriented toward
clientelistic relationships.

Yet majoritarian parties a resource? I thought you said they were something
to be removed post haste. Thinking this neglects to consider their changed
role in a political ecology of parliamentarian elections in two senses.
First, a political ecological change can reverse the traditional role of
these gatekeepers to power, turning them into informal coalition builders.
As such they will become just one of the many paths to nation-state power,
making for a more democratic procedural process, which I defined earlier as
minimizing first-order power relationships of monopoly control on methods
to power. Let us say that there were more players on the field of
nation-state politics which could win power. Following the literature into
the interaction with state structures and political parties in Europe and
the United States [especially Kerisi et al.], what happens is that the
majoritarian parties moderate themselves politically to gather more
supporter in situation where they are 'out' of power. This is one of the
side effects of widening the political structural choice. It makes the
large parties over into a coalition form, otherwise large parties don't
stay in the running at all. Change their overall ecology and they will
change.

Secondly, they will be a strategic 'presence' in the political ecology, by
both sopping up coalitional building into their structure to survive,
majoritarian parties can simultaneously split the danger of an ideological
upheaval in the nation-state (i.e., fascist, or revolution, etc.) Whereas
before they contributed to the frustration and the endangerment of
democratic procedure, in a different political ecology then can contribute
to a maintenance of the plurality of political means of democratic
procedure, by splitting any large ideological pressure. They become a force
of political ecological deflection of ideological interests. The danger I
see is that a 'fascist' type of power with grass roots ideological support
with develop potentially if the government becomes a fragmented plurality
on the nation-state level either politically or economically, leaving an
opening for such a group to move into power, or for the increase of TNC
pressure on the nation-state level. This is why I suggest that only one
area of the nation-state government, the House of Representatives perhaps,
should be parliamenarianized. This will preserve the recourse to having a
systemic influence of a dueling majoritarian political parties on one level
of the nation-state government which leads to systemic centralization in
the nation-state level to some degree, which is positive. It is only
negative when majoritarian parties dominate the only democratic procedural
path, as they have for both Houses of Congress throughout the history of
the United States. This partially provides for a "Hamiltonian" sense of the
importance of assuring that national economic interests and the
nation-state political interests elide for nation-state stability, yet only
partially: far from the full extent which was institutionalized at the time
of the Continental Congress in the 1780's. This role in the novel political
ecology I would posit provides more structural security for the
nation-state through open elections than it ever could buy with repression.
Further elaborating this point, majoritarian parties, when they
simultaneously providing for informal coalition building and splitting
ideological endangerment of the nation-state and parliamentarianism,
majoritarian parties provide for increasing the plurality of methods of
achieving power and preserving these democratic procedural methods, both
marks of actual democracy. Competing majoritarian parties may even
ironically contribute to disrupting TNC backed attempts to dominate the
discourse of the nation-state, in a different political ecology.

Thirdly, majoritarian parties will continue to have one unchanged role,
that of orienting nation-state identity of the national culture at large.
In a functional sense, what they can do for the varied population of the
nation state is to provide a sense of identification larger than their
circumscribed interests. This stabilization of identity for a huge
multicultural state is in addition to their other two changed roles
mentioned above.

One has to make a differentiation between state interests and democratic
interests. A democratic state is perhaps the trickiest balance, especially
one which allows for a plurality of democratic procedure. In my eyes is the
only state capable of being called a democracy, because any other would
depend upon first-degree power relationships to maintain it instead of
democratic procedure. One always has consider one's desires for a stable
state (which would likely be undermined by full democratic
plurality--aspects outside the scope of this essay) with one's desires for
democracy.

One may ask what about labor groups and other methods of organization? Are
they included? Thinking in these terms seems to posit that there is a
separation of interests here between labor interests and localized
interests, which is false. There's nothing stopping these groups from using
these ideas/structures or participating. Actually, they would have a head
start already being nation-state wide organizational forms, for utilizing
these localized networking principles and strategies which develop out of
them. That's the whole point: to aid integration on communal interests, and
network to levels of politics on wider dimensions of power.



(3) "Affirmative Cooperatives:"
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Using Mutualized Economies of Scale for Developing a Separate Third World
Financial Sector There are always elites of some sort. What is important to
realize their activities can be influenced by changing the political
ecology of interaction of systemic and non-systemic interests, either
though organizational structural change or the increase or decrease of
choice for a service. Cooperative structures which by definition are
organized around mutualized economies of scale of production and
consumption (instead of privately organized economies of scale of
production only) provide a useful comparison on how leadership 'styles' are
affected by organizational structural constraints. Albert O. Hirschman's
conceptions of exit and voice describe quite simply the strategic options
available in different political ecologies. [Hirschman, 1970] There are
situations where 'exit' is preferred, when there are many options for the
same service. There are situations where 'voice' of political complaint or
challenge is the preferred option. These situations of voice are more
likely to occur when there is a lack of individual choice for a service. So
there is a great potential for political feedback as well as a call for
creating mutualized economies of scale which cooperatize elements of
production or process of services or goods. In the Third World's case, a
highly beneficial mutualized economy of scale exists for redistribution of
economic wealth to these marginalized areas of the world's political and
economical circuits. Thus, they should effectively look into developing
their own political and economic circuits.

One would think that the World Bank as the world's most strategically
central lender with around 77 billion in callable assets (1987 figures) and
a profit every year since it's founding in 1948 would be making its
member's wealthy. Yes, and no. For the largest holders of the capital, the
returns are very great. Yet for many nation-states involved in the Bank
(like Chad with .01% of the capital, or Bangladesh with .33% of the
capital), many of these nation-states are experiencing the rigors of
'structural adjustment,' which means orienting their economies to repay
their loans at the expense of their social services to their populations.
Unlike the egalitarian principle of the United Nations "one nation, one
vote" principle, the World Bank's internal politics is determined by the
relative size of the capital allotment to the Bank from each nation-state.
The three largest holders of bank capital (1987 figures, in both the
International Development Association (IDA) and the International Bank for
Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) were the United States, West Germany,
and Japan. It is the interest payments which seems to be the Banks largest
profit generator. The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development
figures for 1987 showed that the bank had taken "$1.1 billion more in
repayments of interest and principal on old loans that it paid out in new
loans to the developing countries." [Hancock, 1989] Thus in this privatized
economy of scale, organized and orchestrated by a few incredibly wealthy
nation-states, the greater number of nation-states are getting a poor
return in the organization as well as experiencing a maintaenance and
increasing impoverishment of their marginalized position.

To gain control of their own capital market in a TNC dominated and
globalzing era, as well as to develop some sense of political and economic
sovereignty over their internal development, I suggest that there is a huge
mutualized economy of scale waiting to be tapped amongst the massively
impoverished nation-states which have only a fraction of a percent invested
in the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

A cooperative structure could pool together these smaller countries both
politically as well as economically, and they could profit from their own
capital lending to themselves, as well as determine to a greater extent
their own developmental programs. Yet an 'affirmative' structure of lending
which allowed mixed membership may be more successful in this case [Meyer,
1989], where they would likely still want to participate in the privatized
World Bank structure simultaneously. It is found that the most stable form
in many co-operative forms is a partial elision between individual
self-interest and a mutualized economy of scale which has been
institutionalized in one function of the cooperative structure. [Meyer,
1989; Tendler et al., 1988] Credit is generally maintained in a
co-operative structure only when it is beneficial to a production method
which is unable to be performed without it, or elites require money to
market the co-operative goods. So I am either suggesting the first choice,
determining some aspect of food production which they could economies and
thereby reduce their experience of externalized costs of production, or
make a marketing oriented co-op for local products on the world market. For
the record, I should suggest the long shot of changing the overall
structure of the World Bank to have a co-operative distributive function of
the profits (perhaps by United Nations law), though this is highly unlikely
to be achieved because of the systemic power of the nation-states which are
profiting from the privatized banking structure as well as the budgetary
separation of the United Nations and the World Bank which are not fiscally
related or answerable to the United Nations, and thus, the United Nations
is unable to influence the Bank organizationally in this regard. The World
Bank is simply a private organization.

More research should be done on what mutualized economies of scale could be
developed for Third World nation-states, which would facilitate a separate
world capital market which may serve a redistributive function in addition
to the lending functional in the name of finance. This would simultaneously
provide a buffer against TNC economic dislocation as well as reduce TNC
scope.


Conclusion: DeGlobalization:
            Notes for a Philosophy of Development, and Nation-State
            Democratic Security
            ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
This essay has touched on two flanking strategies for countering the
erosion of both the nation-state from the inside by TNC political
domination, as well as from the outside, by strategies of developing
capital markets which are increasingly separated from privatized TNC forms.
This is both a long term and a short term strategy. It has offered a means
for a democratic philosophy of a plurality of structural forms of power
simultaneously as the best means to avoid what I have called systemic
drift, defined as a process which abets increasing inequity, clientelism,
and organizational embeddedness in society. I would add that a tacit point
which has been running in the background of this argument, is that this
systemic drift in addition abets ecological degradation. Thus, this becomes
a political philosophy theory, a developmental philosophy, and a recipie
for sustainable development.

I have argued that political structures can be a strategic means to embed
economics to the localized level which has yet to be considered in the
literature on development. I have posed historical sociological analysis of
a systemic drift which is related to the two above points of local
political marginalization combined with increasing TNC presence in the
world though the nation-state government abetment of this process.

I am interested in using sited systemic power relations as a long term way
to plan for sustainable development. As political pathways embed certain
economic relationships, I argue that the "developmental philosopher's
stone" of sustainable development is based on sustainable forms of politics
which avoid the systemic drift phenomeon.

So the 'big question' becomes: how to both diffuse people's interest in a
world government, which will only solidify the TNC power they opposed in
the first place, as well as generate interest in the nation-state political
venue as the form of government most adaptable to develop a sustainable
political conception, and thus, sustainable economic development?

I have posed several invigorating strategies, using the United States as
the example. If the Untied States can be brought within a more equitable
political sphere, it will have large effect on the politics of the
'globalizing' economy, since this globalizing economy is greatly
underwritten by military might and laws of the United States.

Yet in a sense, as I mentioned earlier these were abstract examples in
political theory as much as political analysis, on how these were
'sustainable political' principles which could be utilized in any
nation-state. It is only crippled political structures worldwide allow the
systemic interest of TNC's to dismantle the nation-state economies in
preference for their own TNC penetration and dominance of the economy and
of political structures. One has to build slowly for long term
sustainability. There is alot of practical experience involved in
developing localized political elites which are systemically linked to
local interests, and there is much change economically to be pressured from
that political change between systemic actors. Yet change the systemic
actors so that externalized costs are fed back into the system of politics,
and out of their conflicts they will find solutions.

A sustainable politics is perhaps the best defense and plan for ecological
degradation, instead of 'managerial' techniques which fail to integrate in
highly multiplex relationships people and the environmental level. I would
add as an aside that a rural political processes in themselves can be used
as an environmental feedback into urban politics. If rural areas have a
more secure financial sphere organizations which depend upon, they will
have their own agenda. This depends upon further research into which crops
contribute through technological productions of economies of scale in
processing or harvesting, with economies of scale and well-chosen crop
production to be strategic mechanisms for webbing people to embed mtuliplex
organizations, so they will be more likely to oppose a degradative force
which disrupts them.

As the Progressives noted in their critiques of the inheritance of the
state power ideologies inherited from the European eighteenth century
thinkers, there was little place for the United States (and the world's for
that matter) urban sites in such theories of power in a nation-state. This
essay is a contribution on how to structurally move to adapt local urban
input systemically into the nation-state political structure, and how to
'philosophically' understand its value in politics and the creation of
'sustainable politics' that avoids clientelistic and unrepresentative
informal relationships. Strategically, this is done though developing what
urban sites (meaning urban impoversihed interests) generally lack that
makes them succeptible 'prey' to clientelistic representation--they lack
multiplex relationships which can serve as a resource for reducing the
costs of political mobilization in an urban as well as a nation-state
context for themselves.

This essay posits a work of theory in how to systemically integrate and
conceptualize urbanization and political parties into fully 'functional'
actors in a theory of state, and what types of state laws effect an
equitable balance of power. The balance of power should theoretically take
more than the governments organization into account, as it traditionally
does. It should take into account

(1)political ecological effects of the government structure on society,
(2)the state's and political parties' effects on cultural centralization,
(3) the role of informal parties as long term actors in competion
relationships, (4) as well as urbanization (through the CDI) as endemically
a means to provide a workable relationship between local political
pressure, national political pressure, and state authority, which
preferences the coalition of power between them instead of as historically
has been the case in the United States, only the national political
pressure and the state elision.

It's a way of realizing that 'factionalism' as it is called by the early
founders of the United States is innately a part of any working
nation-state democracy, and should be taken into account functionally as a
process in how to integrate and balance this factionalism in a functional
theoretical sense to maintain a plurality of democratic procedures.
Democracy is nothing more than having equal recourse to a plurality of
means or strategies to speak to power. This will ensure a removal of
first-degree power relationships from the methods of achieving nation-state
power which contribute to systemic drift described above.

These strategies will ensure that the impoverished have a political
recourse of their own besides falling back on pressuring the process of
systemic drift which only leads in the long term to increasing unsustainble
development practices and increasing inequity in political and economic
relationships. With the CDI and Hanse Nationalism, a means is developed to
guide this political voice into systemic action of its own on the
nation-state level instead of relying on clientelism of intervening parties.

In terms of TNC and nation-state led globalization, we have to work on
cutting all hydra's heads at once, at both the nation-state level that
TNC's rely upon to rubberstamp economic globalization, and addtionally in
the international financial sector.

We should be thinking of strategies of facilitating this process of this
simultaneous systemic opposition which both primes and institutionalizes a
local political force in a manner which is sustainable, as well a
facilitating the Third World nations to develop a capital market for their
countries. I'm serious about this second one, as much as their first.

It is important to remember that these are not direct political policy
proposals merely for the United States. These are political process
proposals to assure that the mechanisms are more representative by
integrating different network of power instead of increasing only just one
method of power in a political procedural system. Thus, they avoid getting
the process tailored by the most powerful interest in a society, which I
would argue is what happens and what does happen in the systemic drift
sense.

Without a means to 'peg' and institutionalize local coalitional building as
a resource to be utilized for national level politics, the systemic drift
occurs, and with it the systemic inequalities of culture, politics, and
economics will occur, leading to ecological degradation. The Hanse
Hationalism theory of an equitable democratic state, with its CDI
conception, are designed to maintain a local systemic power in urban areas,
facilitating a path for a local, non-clientenistic grass roots politics.
Therefore, structurally, a systemic drift can be held in abeyance and a
democratic politics can be maintained. We lack a state theory of democratic
politics that deals with urban sites. I offer that this is one, and is an
ethical basis for the 21st century to seriously consider as a model of
politics, unless they would enjoy a re-run of the 20th century massive
inequities justified off of democratic poltics, further marring it as a
political ideal.

--------------------------------------------------------------

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