COMING ATTRACTIONS

Nathan Andrews

Telling tales of conformity and mutual interests

The limits of a (neo)liberal international order
Nations have no permanent friends or enemies, only permanent interests. --Lord Palmerston, British Foreign Minister, 1846-51 Institutions have minimal influence on state behaviour and thus hold little promise for promoting stability in the post-Cold War world.1 International relations is a difficult subject of study, due to the intricacy of myriad issues left unresolved by practitioners and/or theorists. Primary to these issues is the concept of powerhow to define it, who exercises it, and who authorizes its use. A major part of this complexity is that international relations is practised in an anarchic systema system where there is no
Nathan Andrews is a PhD student in political science at the University of Alberta. 1 John Mearsheimer, The false promise of international institutions, International Security 19, no. 3 (winter 1994-95): 5-49.
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recognized overarching authority to determine who gets what, when, and how. This has resulted in the global governance narrative, according to which certain collective norms and practices are perceived to form the basis on which states and nonstate actors interact.2 In contrast to this governance is government, which is seen to dwell more on politics and some kind of binding decisions regarding norms, principles, and procedure. This article analyzes the limits or deficiencies of such liberal normative claims and also intends to shed light on the applicability of international norms at both the international and domestic levels. In this context, the article argues that the liberal order, while very appealing and modest, does not sufficiently explain states behaviour (especially that of powerful ones) at the international level. Inasmuch as the formation of interdependences, regimes, and transnational organizations are on the ascendency, states (at least for now) continue to hold centrality in world affairs, and powerful states often determine how and to where the power pendulum swings. In fact, much of what goes on in the international system is dominated and controlled by these states, which often determine the extent to which international organizations and other transnational networks influence the system. This phenomenon leads to the marginalization of other states that are expected to be equal members of these international organizations. Hence, mutual interest does not often translate into mutual benefits. This, I will argue, is the primary limit of a (neo)liberal international order. Governance without government refers to Kenneth Waltzs third imagethe condition where there is no arbiter to ensure that there is real as opposed to imagined conformity to rules, principles, or norms of behaviour. This has implications for international hierarchy as well. For the purpose of this discussion, liberal international organizations, institutions, and regimes, all with normative underpinnings, will be used interchangeably. And liberal here encompasses regime theory, (neo)liberal institutionalism, and the English school, as well as aspects of constructivismespecially those constructivists who share the ontology of a socially constructed global order (such as Alexander Wendt, John Ruggie, Martha Finnemore, and Kathryn Sikkink). This conglomeration of theories can be problematic but for analytical purposes I insist and will show that all of these theories share common ground. I shall use the European Union to buttress the statist critique and the United Nations global compact to illuminate the ethical challenge of a liberal order.
2 See James N. Rosenau and Ernst-Otto Czempiel, eds., Governance without Government: Order and Change in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).
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THE LIBERAL CONCEPTION OF WORLD ORDER

In terms of a general conception, Bull defines international order as a pattern of activity that sustains the elementary or primary goals of the society of states or international system.3 These are elementary and universal goals that most theorists will name as security against violence, keeping promises, or carrying out agreements, and stability in the possession of things (property). A central feature of (neo)liberal institutionalism is the idea of complex/ global interdependencea relative consensus deriving from mutual or shared interests. The perception is that even though states may sometimes form interdependencies, they do not control the outcomes as the regime is endowed with a kind of invisible hand to steer affairs and ensure that all interests and concerns are considered. At least, if a world government is not possible due to anarchy, states and nonstate forces can form these global convergences to perform the same functions. The end of the Cold War has made it increasingly difficult for them to separate foreign from domestic policy as the contemporary world has become a tapestry of diverse relationships. The logic of anarchy that dominated state behaviour during the Cold War era is replaced by the logic of cooperation and mutual interest, decreasing the salience of the state. This phenomenon results in governing arrangements referred to as international regimes. In this sense, sovereignty changes its traditional definition from a territorially defined barrier to a bargaining resource. 4 With complex interdependence comes the burgeoning of international organizations and transnational actors. The liberal idea of order in international relations is one in which international organizations, intergovernmental organizations, civil society organizations, and international nongovernmental organizations set the agenda due to lack of hierarchy among issues. The argument is that a multitude of actors have managed to shift the discipline from international relations to the study

3 Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977), 8. 4 See Robert O. Keohane and Joseph Nye, Power and Interdependence: World Politics in Transition (Boston & Toronto: Little, Brown, 1977), 4; and Robert O. Keohane, The globalization of informal violence: Theories of world politics, and the liberalism of fear, in Keohane, ed., Power and Governance in a Partially Globalized World (London & New York: Routledge, 2002), 11.
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of the global society.5 They reduce the resort to military force and also act as catalyst for coalition formation while providing arenas for political initiatives. They are independent factors for explaining regime change.6 To stretch the point further, these regimes are assumed to be congenial institutions for weaker states since they offer effective and useful linkages. Even seen as a summative phenomenon, these sovereignty-free actors are perceived to conform to logics of appropriateness. 7 Yet the question of what is appropriate is assumed. While these multilateral institutions and transnational networks are not necessarily antirealist, they appear to shape and modify the behaviour of actors by providing avenues for action and alliances, and they are considered to be our best bet in bringing some degree of hope into a world fraught with instability, injustice, fragmentation, and environmental disorder.8 Another feature is the universal applicability of norms and principles. To liberal institutionalists, thinking of cooperation among sovereign states in the absence of a world government requires respect for the legal and moral rules upon which the working of the international society depends.9 Thus, morality is not limited as in the Hobbesian view, and neither is it conceived of in Kantian termsderiving from the higher morality of a cosmopolitan society. Rather, it evolves from established dialogue and consent concerning the common rules and institutions that govern the conduct of members.10 The complex rules that ensure the liberal order are mainly constitutional and normative principles, rules of coexistence, and rules to regulate cooperation among statesall culminating in international law. Keohane
5 Michael Barnett and Kathryn Sikkink, From international relations to global society, in Christian Reus-Smit and Duncan Snidal, eds., The Oxford Handbook of International Relations (Oxford: University Press, 2008), 62. 6 Keohane and Nye, Power and Interdependence, 54. 7 See Andrew W. Knight, Global governance as a summative phenomenon, in Jim Whitman, ed., Palgrave Advances in Global Governance (New York: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2009); and Martha Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink, International norm dynamics and political change, International Organization 52, no. 4 (1998): 887-917. 8 Knight, Global governance as a summative phenomenon, 161. 9 Hedley Bull, Society and anarchy in international relations, in Herbert Butterfield and Martin Wight, eds., Diplomatic Investigations: Essays in the Theory of International Politics (London: Allen & Unwin, 1966), 38. 10 See Barry Buzan, The English school: An underexploited resource in IR, Review of International Studies 27, no. 3 (2001): 471-88.
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posits that international regimes have four components: principles (implicit and explicit), norms, rules, and decision-making procedures.11 It is worth noting that both liberals and realists share the view that anarchy is a central fact of international relations. However, while some liberals argue the state is still as relevant as society (Hedley Bull, for instance), others, such as Keohane and Ruggie, argue that nonstate forces are rapidly stepping up to usurp some of the primary roles of the state in world politics, leaving it with limited power. Thus, morality is limited under both realism and (neo)liberal institutionalism in terms of the rationality and prudence that bind international actors to act in ways consistent with their national interests, but the latter perceives that the decreasing utility of state and the subsequent need for cooperation will engender compromise on certain norms and rules of conduct.
GLOBAL GOVERNANCE AND INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTIONS: DECLINE OF THE STATE?

Those who believe that globalization is booming also argue that the traditional 1648 Westphalian system is not applicable to present-day world politics since the pillars of the Westphalian temple are crumbling. The three features outlined above indicate that in contemporary world politics, the state has limited utility both as an analytical category and the embodiment of sovereignty, implying less regard for domestic politics. This puts the states ability to protect its people into question because citizens under this regime become global citizens and are considered to thrive without an attachment to a border. Since this new order of nonstate actors is seen to possess normative authority, the question is why do we need states?12 As exemplified by the 9/11 attacks on the US, Keohane suggests that a state that is extremely powerful in many dimensions can also be vulnerable in others. But before one accepts the notion that the state has become unnecessary in contemporary times, it is noteworthy that most transnational regimes lack international legal personality and often appear invisible under
11 Robert O. Keohane, After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1984), 59. See also Stephen D. Krasner, Structural causes and regime consequences: Regimes as intervening variables, International Organization 36, no. 2 (1982): 185-205. 12 Saskia Sassen, A new cross-border field for public and private actors, in Yale Ferguson and R. Barry Jones, eds., Political Space: Frontiers of Change and Governance in a Globalizing World (Albany: SUNY Press, 2002), 173.

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international law, and thus the case that they can protect the citizenry better than the state is unconvincing.13 The argument is not that the state remains unshaken by these global webs and forces; the point is that the state still prevails amid these forces. It is instructive to refer to Gregory Shaffers account of how the US and the European Union shaped the World Trade Organization to their advantage.14 Shaffer shows how the US and EU shaped the World Bank and International Monetary Fund to induce developing countries to liberalize their markets in American and European self-interest. An insider account is given by the former senior vice-president and chief economist of the World Bank, Joseph Stiglitz, in his critique of the power politics that underlie processes of the Washington consensus. Where were those normalizing international regimes in these instances? In fact, since liberal theories of cooperation suffer from the systemic neglect of domestic factors, we may in the end arrive at a two-level game where there is a strong interplay between the domestic and the international levels, but we definitely cannot discount that the domestic game will be more influential.15 I shall elucidate this point further with some processes and practices within the European Union.
THE CASE OF THE EUROPEAN UNION

Woodrow Wilsons proposal for the League of Nations (often seen as the archetype of liberalism) and other neo-Wilsonian liberal viewpoints seem to undergird the establishment of the European Union. When we begin to think about complex interdependence or international regimes, we cannot help but bring the EU into the discussion. This is because the EU has been conceived of as a model of international (or regional) organization worth emulating. Many such organizations springing up in the east (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations) and the south (the African Union) appear to be following the legacy of this exemplary body. The EU faces many challenges
13 Claire A. Cutler, Transnational business civilization, corporations, and the privatization of global governance, in Chris May, ed., Global Corporate Power (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2006), 202. 14 See Gregory Shaffer, Power, governance, and the WTO: A comparative institutional approach, in Michael Barnett and Raymond Duvall, eds., Power in Global Governance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). 15 See Helen Milner, International theories of cooperation among nations: Strengths and weaknesses, World Politics 44, no. 3 (April 1992): 496; and Robert D. Putnam, Diplomacy and domestic politics: The logic of two-level games, International Organization 42, no. 3 (summer 1988): 427-60.
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today, from an identity crisis to a democratic deficit to currency issues. For reasons of limited space, we shall specifically touch on the legitimacy crisis and regional inequality, both of which are linked to the other challenges. Established by six European countriesGermany, Italy, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlandsthe EU (formerly the European Economic Community) has grown into a union of 27 memberstates. Yet legitimacy has become a hard currency in the EU.16 The primary question that I have posed is how can we trust that a supranational actor will act in the interest of the majority of European people, or that transnational arrangements will positively reflect national/domestic concerns?17 This problem became more apparent when the EU constitution was rejected by France and the Netherlands during referendums in May and June 2005. Many reasons have been given for this failure but the number of French and Dutch voters who said no to the constitution shows the disagreement between EU governments and the public over the benefits of integration. The main concern is the absence of coordination and/or communication between the European masses and the elites, or what Schmidt calls lack of communicative discourse, which results from a nonexistent public sphere.18 The issue with complex interdependence, as exemplified by the EU, is that it is perceived that once the union is in place, domestic or national concerns will automatically be addressed. There is a blurring of the line between what is domestic and what is transnational or regional, and sometimes the latter is given priority over the former. Either way, there are serious costs attached. This is especially true since the European Commissions efforts to create a sense of a European people have not been successful. This point still recognizes the commissions efforts towards a common European passport, and European symbols and identity-building initiatives like the EU day, logo, flag, licence plates, and anthem. However, these measures have not yet resulted in a more united Europe per se. Without establishing a strong identity, where every citizen feels part and parcel of the unions processes, the EU will remain a fragmented democracy and will be limited in its effort to integrate European countries.
16 John Gillingham, European Integration, 1950-2003: Superstate or New Market Economy? (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 480. 17 See Nathan Andrews, The EU and global governance: Is the EU still a model for other regional organizations? in Sabrina Hoque, ed., Geopolitics vs. Global Governance: Reinterpreting National Security (Halifax: Dalhousie University, 2009), 60. 18 Vivien Schmidt, The European Union: Democratic legitimacy in a regional state? Journal of Common Market Studies 42, no. 5 (2004): 975-97.
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Another challenge the EU faces is regional economic and developmental disparities. Reports that have sought to explain the costs of integration have shown that the union faces rising regional disparity.19 We should not expect that a poor country that joins the EU will automatically receive a boom in various sectors of its economy. However, with the liberal promise of mutual benefit and the claims that such institutions are congenial for weak states, as Keohane and Nye argue, one would not expect to find such wide economic disparity, across class and income, within the union.20 The income and economic disparity reveals that while some states experience a boom, others face dislocation. It appears European elites and politicians are actually misselling Europe by focusing on the union and neglecting economic and social demands at the domestic level.21 In a meeting with the Ghanaian press in Accra in 2008, Ambassador Filiberto Sebregondi, head of the EU delegation to Ghana, suggested that one problem the union faces is the inability of countries like Slovakia and Estonia to make regular financial contributions in support of developmental programs. It will be in the unions interest to empower member-states instead of giving false hope of mutual benefits. In fact, looking at current trends, one may say that the main actors in the union are Germany, France, Italy, the United Kingdom, Spain, Poland, and perhaps the Netherlands, which continually engage in power politics; the remaining members (although some lie in the middle) are only bandwagoning to ascertain whether the union still has benefits for them at all. This makes the promise of the EU elusive. The assertion here is strengthened when we juxtapose the primary actors against such member countries as Malta, Hungary, Latvia, Estonia, Slovenia, and Slovakia as it reveals the top-bottom, core-periphery dynamic within the union. The relative-absolute gain dichotomy in the EU poses further limits to cooperation. Recent widespread economic and social protests in EU member countries such as Ireland, Greece, the UK, and France reveal the fundamental existential crisis the union is facing. Failure to address these existential deficits will result in what
19 Kazuharu Kiyono, The EU faces increasing regional disparities, research report on the EU, Japan Centre for Economic Research, August 2007, www.jcer.or.jp. See also Kurt Geppert and Stephan Andreas. Regional disparities in the European Union: Convergence and agglomeration, Papers in Regional Science 87, no. 2 (June 2008): 193-217. 20 Mark Blacksell and Allan M. Williams, Development, distribution, and the environment: Future challenges for Europe, in Blacksell and Williams, eds., The European Challenge (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994). 21 Erik Jones, Mis-selling Europe, The World Today 62, no. 1 (January 2006): 17-19.
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I call the mummification of the unionthe case whereby the institution is redundant and only fit for exhibition in a museum, or simply to be kept as an historical artefact.22 This brief section has sought to show the limits of European cooperation. While liberals admit some kind of peaceful coexistence, Waltz, for instance posits that this assumption of cooperation, reciprocity, and mutual interests is impracticable since the idea would require an entity that possesses more of the qualities of government. This is because states, even when they cooperate, will so often look to their defences in times when their survival in the international system is threatened.23 Although the EU is hardly seen through a realist lens, Seeberg argues that, especially with regard to its policies on Lebanon, it exhibits the traits of a realist actor dressed in normative clothes.24 My conclusion is that instead of thinking of how cooperation is formed and maintained after hegemony, as Keohane would suggest, we can start by assessing the efficacy of cooperation in the midst of hegemony, and how state interests in such regimes are not always as mutual as disciples of this discourse would want us to believe. In this sense, the egoistic self-interest of states is not just a causal variable (as Krasner argues), and states do not only act as a transmission belt between societal actors and the international system (as Moravscik claims): instead, state power can be a very independent variable within the regime itself.
UNIVERSAL ETHICS?

Another major limit of the liberal order is the question of ethics and morality. The normative underpinnings of the liberal argument imply that with the right norms and principles, we may not even need states. They think the need to cooperate and the benefits of cooperation justify the application of universal norms and principles. The idea of a global ethic is charming but we should understand that states (especially powerful ones) cannot be expected to adopt a universal conception of what is good or bad, let alone nonstate
22 Andrews, The EU and global governance, 57. 23 Kenneth Waltz, Man, the State and War: A Theoretical Analysis (New York, London: Columbia University Press, 1959), 204. 24 Peter Seeberg, The EU as a realist actor in normative clothes: EU democracy promotion in Lebanon and the European neighbourhood policy, Democratization 16, no. 1 (February 2009): 18. See also Sten Rynning, Return of the Jedi: Realism and the study of the European Union, Politique Europenne no. 17 (2005): 10-33; and Hubert Zimmermann, Realist power Europe? The EU in the negotiations about Chinas and Russias WTO accession, Journal of Common Market Studies 45, no. 4 (2007): 813-32.
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actors such as corporations. If this idea suffers deficits even among European countries with relative commonalities, then it remains a fairytale in a system that encompasses the worlds countries with all their different languages, cultures, and levels of economic growth. Kennans claim that governments need not provide any moral justification, nor accept any moral reproach, sufficiently explains the ambiguity of justice and morality in international relations. In the absence of truly governmental institutions, as Thucydides once asserted, the stronger states do what they can and the weaker links do what they must. To add insult to injury, the poor states will only have to perceive that they are receiving a good share of joint gains, although they may actually be receiving little or nothing. The facade underlying this liberal notion is that it assumes all states will be having an equally jolly rollercoaster ride as all power asymmetries are erased. Yet, in a regime where leadership must be assumed primarily by powerful and self-confident states,25 mutual gains can hardly be envisaged, and fairness will be relegated to nothingness. In general, the liberal notion obfuscates and distorts by concealing bias instead of revealing and removing it.26 The challenges of the UN global compact will clarify this point.
THE UN GLOBAL COMPACT

The UN global compact, launched in 2000, appears to be a useful publicprivate framework for corporate social responsibility. It was designed for businesses that share a commitment to align their operations, strategies, and practices with some 10 universally accepted principles that fall within the areas of human rights, labour, environment, and anticorruption. Derived from existing conventions and protocols such as the UN declaration of human rights (1948), the Rio declaration on environment and development (1992), the International Labour Organizations fundamental principles and rights at work (1998), and the UN convention against corruption (2003), it has been hailed as the worlds largest corporate citizenship initiative. The compacts overarching mission is to realise a more sustainable and inclusive global economy through responsible business practices, and it counts on companies, especially participants of the compact, to adopt practices that will ensure both economic profitability and social-environmental sustainability.27
25 Keohane and Nye, Complex Interdependence, 233. 26 Susan Strange, Cave! Hic dragones: A critique of regime analysis, International Organization 36, no. 2 (1982): 479. 27 See United Nations global compact annual review, leaders summit, 2007, 5, www. unglobalcompact.org.
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The case for a global initiative like the global compact lies in what Ruggie calls the new global public domaina domain in which it is useful to consider Wapners notion of a world civic politics and Cutlers private governance and private authority.28 Transnational corporationsinstead of statesare the building blocks of this new global regime, and they are able to reconstruct, shape, and direct affairs even beyond the control of states. This idea gains strength from, or rather strengthens, the Washington consensusthe neoliberal notion that the proliferation of private governance (investments by transnational corporations) is a good thing, especially for developing countries.29 But this notion is itself doubtful, especially when one considers the bottom billion around the world who wallow in poverty, and the point that even in these global regimes, development has not reached acceptable levels. The compact exemplifies current trends in thinking in international affairs and development and it has done quite well in bringing corporations together with NGOs and labour groups to deal with corporate social responsibility issues, but it falls short of many expectations.30 One important issue is whose norms and principles is it using? Can there be universal principles and codes of ethics by which companies everywhere will be expected to operate? What form will this global norm take and how will it benefit everyone on the globe? These questions show this global endeavour to be farfetched. A major critique of the compact concerns accountability, as with legitimacy in the case of the EU. Accountability also raises questions of monitoring and evaluation. Although over 3000 companies worldwide have joined, the greater majority of businesses around the world are not participants.31 Those who choose to join are not strictly obliged to conform since practices of ethics and morality appear to differ from country to country, and especially given that the UN has yet to prove itself a trusted and able global governing body.
28 See John G. Ruggie, Reconstituting the global public domain: Issues, actors and practices, European Journal of International Relations 10, no. 4 (2004): 499-531. 29 See, for example, John L. Manzella, The poor are benefiting from globalization, in Nol Merino, ed., Globalization (Detroit, New York, & London: Greenhaven Press, 2010); David Dollar, Globalization, poverty and inequality since 1980, World Bank Research Observer 20, no. 2 (fall 2005); World Bank, Globalization, Growth and Poverty: Building an Inclusive World Economy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). 30 See Jean-Philippe Thrien and Vincent Pouliot, The global compact: Shifting the politics of international development, Global Governance 12 (2006): 55-75. 31 Oliver F. Williams, The UN global compact: The challenge and the promise, in Gabriel Flynn, ed., Leadership and Business Ethics (Dublin: Springer, 2008), 231.
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The annual sustainability reports companies are expected to send to the UN have not yet altered the nature of malpractices in the areas in which they operate. It has become fashionable these days to find companies making references on their websites that they abide by international best practice. Such statements are often just vague words that mean nothing in reality. In addition, there is no monitoring, nor is there a penalty for not adhering to the code.32 One can particularly question whether there is an international consensus on what constitutes best practice and whether companies can live up to this regardless of where they operate. NGOs and globalization critics see the compact as a cover story that grants legitimacy to an idea that has not yet proved itself. Even companies with poor labour and human rights records can simply join the compact, pay their annual dues, and submit annual reports that highlight areas of corporate citizenship without necessarily changing their behaviour. In fact, there is simply no way to ensure good corporate practice, but the current voluntary framework within which corporate initiatives such the global compact operate makes it susceptible to nonconformity. The best way would have been a worldwide mandatory legal framework, which also seems utopian, since given international anarchy, the independent and universally accepted arbiter of this global framework is unknown. For instance, there is no general definition of human rights or labour rights with which every country agrees. This reveals the challenge of advocating for global principles for businesses. It remains problematic to assume that international norms should supersede domestic regulations in terms of companies responsibility and accountability to the countries and communities within which they operate. To be sure, the global compact has not been successful in this endeavour. The goal of the compact is to reveal the moral and the human face of the neo-invisible hand of the market. Former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annans call for a compact of shared values and principles was met with much optimism from business leaders and globalists. However, there remains the challenge of defining shared values and principles and making sure they are applicable in all places. Deva lists directional uncertainty and misuse of the Compact as a marketing tool as some of the major deficiencies of the compact.33 Companies remain powerful to the extent that corporate
32 Gerald F. Cavanagh, Global business ethics: Regulation, code or self-restraint, Business Ethics Quarterly 14, no. 4 (October 2004): 625-42. 33 See Surya Deva, Global compact: A critique of the UNs public-private partnership for promoting corporate citizenship, Journal of International Law and Commerce 34, no.1 (2006): 107-51.
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social responsibility rankings by world-acclaimed rating agencies do little to reshape their prevailing deplorable conduct, meaning that corporate social responsibility as currently practised is unlikely to make an impact in developing countries, where most of the problematic practices occur.34 Instead of finding ways of ensuring some conformity to the commitments stipulated in the compact, the UN appears to be soliciting more members without realizing that in this instance big does not necessarily translate into better, and the diversity of the compacts membership has yet to reveal demonstrable changes in corporate behaviour worldwide. Thus, instead of congratulating itself for being the worlds largest and most widely embraced corporate citizenship initiative, the Compact Office shouldstrive for quality control.35 UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said a couple of years ago that markets flourish only in societies that are healthy. And societies need healthy markets to flourish.36 If we are to take this statement seriously, we would assume that the global compact can genuinely establish a healthy relationship between the market and society. However, the reality of company malpractices and human rights violations around the world turns the statement into one of those well-intentioned pronouncements that mean nothing in practice. Thus, the vagueness in global initiatives and the deficits of international regimes as outlined here require states (recipients) to be more proactive towards corporate social responsibility policy implementation. Institutions have paradoxical effects, argues Keohane. They are essential for the good life, but they may also institutionalise bias in ways that make the good life impossible to attain for many people.37 The question that comes to mind when one hears such statements is why do we need these institutions or why do we promote them if there is no guarantee that they can serve the purpose(s) for which they were established?
CONCLUSION

I will conclude by summing up six main reasons why a neoliberal (regime) order is deficient. Some of these points may overlap. First, states, while they make efforts to cooperate, are often self-interested. Second, the dominance of
34 Steven Scalet and Thomas F. Kelly, CSR rating agencies: What is their global impact? Journal of Business Ethics 94 (2010): 69-88. 35 Deva, The global compact, 150. 36 United Nations global compact, annual review 2008, 4. 37 Keohane, The globalization of informal violence, 16.
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power, especially the use of power (latent or manifest) by the most powerful states, makes an order based on mutual interest only a utopian idealtype, if not totally redundant. Third, a liberal order requires some amount of morality and the expression of justice and fairness, both of which are absent (or at least unreliable) in international relations today. Fourth, transnational corporations will often privilege the need for profit accumulation over best behaviour and practice. Thus, codes of conduct in their universal and voluntary constructions cannot apply to them. Fifth, normative international relations is not practicable since there is no way states will agree on what is good or bad, or what is the best action to take in any circumstance. Thus, an order based on such universally accepted norms is essentially utopian. And sixth, the Westphalian temple has not yet collapsed, and, in fact, powerful states continue to hold centrality in world affairs in the midst of nonstate forces. These points do not suggest that the realists have won the debate, though they speak to the utility of aspects of their assumptions, particularly in the cases and examples explored above. My points do not assume the world cannot enjoy peace or stability, as both ideals do not necessarily derive from transnationalism or a global Kantian agenda. Neither have I argued that international organizations or regimes should be discarded. I only sought to expose the inherent complexities and flaws embedded in the idea of a complete set of implicit and explicit principles, norms, rules, and decisionmaking procedures around which actors expectations converge in a given area of international relationsan arrangement born out of self-interest but does not thrive on it, as also argued by Krasner in the 1980s.38 Critics of the views expressed here will argue that my case is parochial in terms of the level of analysis, but they will be missing the important point, with which even Keohane and some of his colleagues may agree. The argument is that realism, in terms of international anarchy, could be a good starting point for an understanding of international politics and how states order and calculate their preferences to attain self-interested benefits even within interdependence. Certainly the debate should not end here, as I have shown that corporations also exhibit some force in the international system. In fact, anarchy, as described here, may be what the states make of it, as the social constructivists posit, but this does not sufficiently discount the fact that there is anarchy, however defined. And anarchy causes powerful
38 Stephen D. Krasner, Structural causes and regime consequences: Regimes as intervening variables, International Organization 36, no. 2 (1982): 186.
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states to use the vicissitudes of powerpolitical, social, and economic to disenfranchise and marginalize less powerful states. In the presence of anarchy, cooperation is limited and the particular will of powerful states prevails over the general will, which should derive from real, not imagined, mutual interest. Knight argues that we need a global summative and a multilevel network of international organizations, intergovernmental organizations, civil society organizations, international nongovernmental organizations, and transnational corporations.39 Indeed, no vision of the future is realistic which does not take account of the existence of social, economic, diplomatic, and strategic interaction on global scale.40 However, the fact that states are not islands insulated from the rest of the larger world does not mean these global networks have taken them captive, determining what they do and how their foreign policies are framed. In short, we cannot conceive of the utility of these institutions without first understanding and potentially curbing the preponderance of state power.

39 Knight, Global governance as a summative phenomenon, 184. 40 Bull, The Anarchical Society, 261.
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