The presentation discuss the main theoretical approaches to use for understanding the Caribbean within the dynamics of today's world.

1. INTERNATIONAL
RELATIONS
OF THE CARIBBEAN
International Relations Theory
and Approaches in the
Caribbean
Dr. Jacqueline LAGUARDIA MARTINEZ

2. http://cmuscm.blogspot.com/2014/01/creating-value-through-modularity.html

3. http://www.adweek.com/socialtimes/infographic-the-global-iphone-supply-chain/196826

4. www.forestsclimatechange.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/From-Forest-to-Food-A-Supply-Chain-Hypothesis.jpg

5. https://operationsroom.wordpress.com/category/apparel/

6. https://operationsroom.wordpress.com/category/apparel/

7. What basic unit of
analysis to use?
Nation-State Transnationalization
?

8. What theory
approach to adopt?
Globalization Internationalization
?

9. Two different interpretations of how the
international economy has changed
• Internationalization refers to an increased
exchange of goods, services and capital.
• Globalization refers to a change in the division
of labor that erases distinctions between national
economies

10. Why Globalization?
• Social structure is becoming transnational, more
than merely an interstate system (Ej: world trade is
basically intrafirm trade; global production chains
shows that the productive activity that takes place in a
specific nation is not a “national” activity; emergence
of supranational institutions as the G-7 Forum, the
UN, the OECD; the WTO,…)
• Epistemological shift is required for this ontological
change
• Emergent transnational studies

11. Globalization
• It questions the nation-state centered analysis.
• It denotes a transition from the linkage of national
societies predicated on a WORLD ECONOMY to an
emergent transnational or global society predicated on a
GLOBAL ECONOMY.
• The accumulation of capital, trade and investment are no
longer confined to the nation-state.
• Its central tendency is usually located at:
1. The ascendance of transnational capital (transnational
capitalist class, transnational practices)
2. TICS
3. Global culture

12. Globalization: Definitions
• New global historical configuration of post-Fordism, an emergent
cultural logic of capitalism (Harvey et al.)
• It involves capitalist markets and sets of social relations and
flows of commodities, capital, technology, ideas, forms of
culture, and people across national boundaries via a global
networked society (Castells)
• The emergence of a new transnational ruling elite and the
universalization of consumerism (Sklair)
• Clash of civilizations (Huntington)
• Discourse to legitimize the strategies of imperialist capital (Amin)
• Globalization theory serves as an ideological rationalization for
class inequalities and obscures present world reality (Petras)
• It is a cover concept for global capitalism and imperialism
• It is the continuation of modernization and a force of progress

13. Globalization: Definitions (Robinson)
• Two interwoven process
1. Spread of capitalism production around the world and its
displacement of al pre capitalist relations
2. Transition from the linkage of nations via commodity
exchange and capital flows in an integrated international
market to the globalization of the process of production itself.
• The essence is GLOBAL CAPITALISM, which has surpassed
the nation-state stage of capitalism (capitalism is the first form of
society to spread globally and to incorporate all societies into a
world system).
• Under Globalization the capitalist system is breaking down all
precapitalist residues and integrating the various polities,
cultures and institutions of national societies into an emergent
transnational or global society.

14. Globalization norms (Robinson)
• Economic norm: Neoliberalism (elimination of state
intervention in the economy; regulation over the
activity of transnational capital; macroeconomics
adjustments that harmonize fiscal, monetary and
industrial policies as requisite for the activity of
transnational capital).
• Political norm: Global management (extension of the
Western democracy model and supranational
institutions).
• Cultural norm: Individualism and consumerism
(mass communication and advertising).

15. Types of globalization
• Technological
• Economic
• Cultural
• Discoursive
Material or
ideational
reality?
?

16. Consequences?
Positive Negative
?

17. Globalization: Consequences
• It provides the material basis for the emergency of a singular global
society (global culture).
• It could mean the integration of all national markets into a single
international market.
• It generates fresh economic opportunities, political democratization
and cultural diversity.
• It promotes the “peripheralization” of labor in advanced capitalist
countries (part-time, temporal, subcontracting, ...)
• It promotes relocation of transnational capital and the use of cheap
labor (immigrant, female, children labor).
• It promotes cultural homogenization, increases destruction of natural
species and the environment, and undermines democracy.
• It promotes the depoliticization of publics and citizens.
• It does not imply an absence of global conflict, but rather a shift from
interstate to more explicit social and class conflict.

18. A new culture: the culture
of resistance
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TtZXwHbJTs

19. What theory
approach to adopt?
Other
theoretical
visions
IR traditional
paradigms
?

20. IR theoretical frameworks
1. Realism
2. Liberalism
3. Constructivism
4. Institutionalism, marxism, neogramscianism,…
 Modern state system as the key political institution
(hegemony, power, use of force come from nation-states,
rational actor able to promote cooperation) in a competitive
state system.
 Globalization is seen as some new stage in inter or cross
national relations as the interaction among nation-states.

21. How globalization modifies the
dynamics of the nation-state
system?
The emergence of a world economic system
is agreed, but the possibility of the
ultimate disintegration of nation-states
and national cultures is far to be
accepted.

22. Development
theories
UNEQUALITY among regions and countries

23. http://www.degreescout.com/blog/third-world-genius-a-look-at-untapped-talent
Contribution to Scientific Research

24. http://www.degreescout.com/blog/third-world-genius-a-look-at-untapped-talent
Contribution to Patents

25. http://www.viewsoftheworld.net/?p=2258
Mortality rates of under-five year old children

26. http://www.viewsoftheworld.net/?p=3448
Distribution of Billionaires

27. http://www.viewsoftheworld.net/?p=4214
University Rankings (Top 200 universities)

28. http://ourworldindata.org/data/food-agriculture/hunger-and-undernourishment/

29. Development theories
Modernization
Developing countries will develop following the
same paths that rich countries followed in earlier
periods. The spread of capitalism and technology
outward from the developed capitalist part of the
world would allow less developed nation-states to
advance to the same level).

30. https://mhsaphuge1.wikispaces.com/file/view/article_image.php.jpeg/396738164/article
_image.php.jpeg

31. Development theories
Modern state system as the key political institution

32. World System Theory
• World system is a multicultural territorial division of labor in
which the production and exchange of basic goods and raw
materials is necessary for the everyday life of its inhabitants
(Wallerstein, 1974).
• World system is an intersocietal networks in which the
interactions are important for the reproduction of the internal
structures of the composite units and importantly affect changes
that occur in these local structures (Chase-Dunn and Hall).
• World system is a military alliance and conflicts among a
group of states in a region (Wilkinson).
• The transfer or exchange of economic surplus is the
fundamental criterion of a world systemic relationship.
Diplomacy, alliances, and conflict are additional (Gunder Frank
and Gills).

33. World System Theory
• There is a power hierarchy between core and periphery.
• The core has more economic and political/military power.
• The core get the main benefits through price inequality.
• Peripheral countries are structurally constrained to experience
developmental processes that reproduce their subordinate status.
• Core and peripheral countries generally retain their positions
relative to one another over time, although there are individual
cases of upward and downward mobility in the core/periphery
hierarchy.
• Between the core and the periphery is an intermediate layer of
countries referred to as the semiperiphery.
Intersocietal hierarchy composed of core, peripheral
and semiperipheral societies

34. Modern World System (Wallerstein)
• The modern world system is capitalist, political structured as
an interstate system of unequally powerful and competing states.
• Its is a world-economy formation.
• The core has remained composed of several states, while
exhibiting a phenomenon called the “hegemonic sequence” (the
rise and fall of hegemonic core states).
• The basis of the core power is the concentration of
innovations in new lead industries and in military and
organizational technologies that affect the relative power and
capacities of firms and states.
• With the most dynamic economy and often the largest military,
the core (hegemonic, leading state) also disseminates its
language, culture and currency as global standards.

35. Development theories
There is a correspondence of the boundaries of the
capitalist world-economy to that of an interstate
system comprised of sovereign states.

36. Capitalist World-Economy (Wallerstein)
• It was able to expand from its initial European base to
incorporate the entire world and eliminate all other
historical systems from the globe.
• Current changes in the post 1945 World-System: (1)
United States is not the most efficient producer nor the most
prosperous country and (2) the Cold War is over.
• Changes starting in the 70´s: Started the decline of the
relative power of the USA and the great disillusionment with
developmentalism in the Third World.
• According to Wallerstein the collapse of the USSR was a
geopolitical catastrophe for the USA, since it eliminated the
only ideological weapon for the USA to restrain Europe or
Japan (or new emerging actors) from pursuing their self-
defined objectives.

37. World System Theories under
Globalization
• Collapse in the faith in the state as the central
locus of social change and progress.
• To reconceive the concepts of center and
periphery outside of a nation-state and/or
geographic basis.
• Development and underdevelopment should be
reconceived in terms of global social groups and
not nations.

38. Marxism
• Social classes and capital accumulation as the key unit of
analysis, rather that the nation-state or the state system per
se (neither centers of accumulation nor political power are any
longer correlative with nation-states).
• Tensions in the state system are derivative of the of class
tensions and uneven national development is a consequence of
the uneven capital accumulation.
• Economic and political networks are increasingly located in
transnational spaces and managed by transnational classes and
groups.
• Globalization conceived as scenario of competing national
capital (equivalent to state rivalries) and looks for a new
hegemon (usually a nation-state) in the international system.
• How globalization modifies the interstate system?

39. What approach to adopt?
Question for debate
?

40. For studying IR in the Caribbean (and
in general) we need to:
• Not only to look at the current socioeconomic,
political structures at the national level but the
transformation of those structures.
• To think how might development be conceived,
as a transnational rather than a national
phenomenon?
• How to understand the Caribbean’s alignments?

41. So far, both unit of
analysis

42. Still the Nation-State
because…

43. • It still exists and still relevant as a control/regulatory actor because
there is not a transnational/supranational authorities yet and
domestic politics still matter (nation-states are main political actors
in the international system, national governments are the sources of
national policies and main responsible on encouraging regional
integration and preserving national sovereignty, …).
• The function of the nation-state is shifting from the formulation
of national policies to the administration of policies formulated by
transnational elite acting through supranational institutions.
• It is still the spatial reference point for most of transnational agents
as well as for local opposition to globalization.
• Basic measurements and indicators are all based on nation-state
data.
• The economies in the developing countries still react in regional
patterns, influenced partly by the style of capitalism dominant in a
particular region (Daves).

44. Bibliography
1. William I. Robinson, Beyond Nation-State Paradigms: Globalization,
Sociology, and the Challenge of Transnational Studies, Sociological
Forum, Vol. 13, No. 4. (Dec., 1998), pp. 561-594
2. Immanuel Wallerstein, “The World-System after the Cold War”, Journal
of Peace Research, Vol. 30, No. 1. (Feb., 1993), pp. 1-6.
3. Christopher Chase-Dunn; Peter Grimes, World-Systems Analysis, Annual
Review of Sociology, Vol. 21. (1995), pp. 387-417.
4. Daves, Bryan R. Review: “A Small World after All? The Reach and Grasp
of the Globalization, Debate”, Journal of Interamerican Studies and World
Affairs, Vol. 42, No. 2, Special Issue: The European Union and Latin
America: Changing Relations. (Summer, 2000), pp. 109-121.
5. Steven R. David, “Explaining Third World Alignment”, World Politics,
Vol. 43, No. 2. (Jan., 1991), pp. 233-256.
6. B. R. Tomlinson, “What Was the Third World?” Journal of Contemporary
History, Vol. 38, No. 2. (Apr., 2003), pp. 307-321.
7. Douglas Kellner, “Theorizing Globalization”, Sociological Theory, Vol.
20, No. 3. (Nov., 2002), pp. 285-305.