Reference no: EM133243855
How to better understand this problem in relation to globalization and the state, with respect to poverty and inequality. In the subject of Political Science
THE VALUE OF EMPIRICAL RESEARCH IN THE STUDY OF GLOBALIZATION
The value attached in this chapter to empirical research into globalization does not mean disregarding the many good reasons for studying globalization as an ideology; or, in other words, the commitment to empirically investigate globalization does not entail the renunciation of the study of its ideological aspects. Ideology is also susceptible to empirical analysis; if we wanted to do so, we could adopt the typical tools of classical studies on power (see Chapter 5), re-examine pluralistic or elitist theories in order to find out how various approaches and theories are shaped and gained effect (see Chapter 4), or also use the concepts typical of the analysis of contemporary political ideologies (see Chapter 13).
Defining globalization as an ideology has, moreover, notable advantages, since it greatly facilitates the understanding of the rivalry between globalizers and anti-globalizers. However, it also presents some drawbacks. Perhaps the most important is that the empirical debate becomes something ostensibly more complex: it is no longer a question of finding out whether globalisation, as a phenomenon, effectively and weakens the nation-state and the welfare state in practice, but of showing how and in what way the state and economic policies have become battlegrounds of the ideological struggle between liberals and its critics. Thus, from an ideological perspective, the scientific discussion around theories, hypotheses, data and empirical observations would acquire a different meaning. The data would tend to reflect which ideology is ahead: if, for example, we were to reduce the size of the state, the data would reflect the consolidation of neo-liberal ideology; if, on the other hand, social spending increased or remained stable, we could say that anti-globalization would be able to compensate or resist the forces of neoliberals. As in any ideological struggle, victory would depend on the material, institutional and ideological resources available, as well as on the mobilization strategies adopted by each group.
Although this type of analysis is very sensitive, the aim of this chapter, as has been pointed out, is different; It consists of offering some data, concepts and analytical tools that help to better understand what is being discussed when talking about globalization, what is at stake and in what terms it is proposed. After all, the data that we would need to attribute the reason to one or another argument definitively are not easy to contract or generate, while the available ones usually differ from being complete or coherent. Consequently, the political scientist's job should not be to find out who is right, but to examine how and on what data "globophobic" and "globophilic" arrive at his conclusions; what data they use and in what way; what they highlight and what they omit; what starting assumptions they handle; and, in general, what political science has to offer to better understand the phenomenon. Moreover, before any claim about globalization is taken for granted, it is necessary to verify it empirically. Thus, for example, the assertion that higher rates of interdependence are associated with greater democratization is not fulfilled in very notable cases: in China, opening-up has not yet led to a process of democratization; in Russia, openness has resulted in a concentration of wealth and an increase in inequalities that is very threatening to democracy. Therefore, as political scientists, before asking ourselves if something is right or wrong (the ideological perspective on order, help to understand, offer tools that allow each participant in the debate to critically examine the validity of their own and third-party arguments. Let's look at a simple example.
The debate about globalization received a renewed impetus with the publication of the book The Malaise of Globalization (2002) by Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize in Economics and former chief economist of the World Bank. The fact that a Nobel Laureate in Economics, with direct management experience in an institution as central as the World Bank, accused the US Government and the IMF of mismanaging the financial aspects of globalisation, marked a milestone in the debate on this issue. Stiglitz has argued that the policies promoted by the IMF during the 1997 Asian crisis were wrong, to the point that they contributed to aggravating it. However, this author argues, the failure of the IMF cannot be attributed to an error of judgment of its managers regarding the ideal measures that could have been adopted, but to the fact that its policies and its ruling elites have been more oriented during the 90s to safeguard the interests of investment banks and the Wall Street financial sector. than those of the countries concerned. A close examination of the IMF's anti-crisis prescriptions allows Stiglitz to conclude that the financial institution's first objective has been to help Wall Street investors get their money back, not the affected countries to minimize the effects of the crisis. In Stiglitz's vision (2002: 168), the fluidity of contacts and the crossed labor careers between Wall Street, the US Treasury Department and the IMF, explain why the IMF was "captured" by the financial markets and, more specifically, by the investment advisory banks, in collusion with the Treasury Department, an ultra-liberal bastion even in the time of President Bill Clinton.
As serious as Stiglitz's accusations are, if they were true (which should also not be taken for granted), they would not be new to political science: it has enough tools (models on the delegation of power, hypotheses about organizational cultures, observations about bureaucratic politics or tools such as network analysis) to account for how and when an institution or regulatory agency can be "captured" by interests. that corresponds to regulate. In the financial sector, more specifically, hugh Heclo and Aaron Wildawsky's analysis of globalization is classic, we must ask ourselves "what happens", "why", "how", and if"it could happen in another way". The work would therefore consist in putting significantly The prívate government o f puhlic money (1974), about the ability of the Financial City of London to obtain regulations favourable to itself at the expense of the general interests and thecoherence of the monetary policy of the United Kingdom. Undoubtedly, these types of explanations could be perfectly applied to the study of IMF policies and give rise to some interesting hypotheses with which any political scientist could begin to work (for example, dividing into two groups the economists of these institutions, those from universities and those from investment banking, and studying their positions, careers, personal relationships with other professionals and their decisions). In fact, there are already some studies along these lines; among them stands out the recent work of Robert Hunter Wade (2002) on the control exercised by the US Treasury Department over key positions in the World Bank and his very detailed study of the sequence of pressures from the IMF and the US Treasury that forced the resignation of Stiglitz as chief economist of the Bank for discouraging Ethiopia from liberalizing its financial sector (against the recommendation of the IMF). Wade's study is a study of ideas, the power and power of ideas, and demonstrates that simple hypotheses about how and why (or through what mechanisms) things happen and modest research (based on a dozen personal interviews) can have a higher explanatory potential than a macro or structural explanation. which normally requires data that is impossible to find and hypotheses that are difficult to verify.
It has often been objected that the explanations provided by social scientists do not always detail the concrete causal mechanisms that lead to the phenomena they purport to account for. Identifying these causal mechanisms requires rigorously examining the data. Only in this way is it possible to deepen the full understanding of phenomena as complex as that of globalization. However, depending on the data on which the attention is focused, the conclusions may be very different. As has been explained in this chapter, in the last extreme, the differences between globalizers and anti-globalizers are due, to a largeextent, to the fact that both focus on different aspects of the same process: for the former, globalization generates economic growth and, therefore, is efficient from the economic point of view; for the latter, the process does not improve those who are worse off, so it is ineffective from the point of view of equity.
In the four main debates around which, in this chapter, the controversy about globalization has been articulated, the importance and autonomy of politics has been highlighted, as well as the need to flee from clichés and dogmatisms, examine and contrast the data, and carefully analyze policies, institutions and actors. As indicated in Chapter 3, the content of this chapter exemplifies what it means, in practice, to affirm that the work of the political scientist consists of making assumptions, defining concepts, elaborating hypotheses, examining the empirical evidence available to support one's arguments and contrasting theories, and reflecting on the rich and practical implications of the conclusions drawn. In the case of the debate on globalization, it has been seen how this set of tasks can be carried out from a plane closer to political theory, offering tools that allow us to understand under what conditions it is possible to formulate reasoned statements about equity, justice and the legitimacy of the political order, or from a plane that, without neglecting theoretical assumptions, it is based primarily on empirical observation.