International Normative Order

This article analyzes the history of the World Bank during its first fifty years. It is argued that since its beginnings the Bank has used credit as a lever to expand its influence and institutionalize economic ideas, concepts of the world, and political prescriptions in client states. Behind its technical façade, the Bank has always acted, albeit in different forms, in the interface of the political, economic, and intellectual fields at the international level, due to its singular condition as a lender, political actor, and inductor of ideas and prescriptions about what to do in questions of capitalist development, from an Anglo-Saxon perspective. Based on a wide and varied international literature and the sources of the institution itself, the text approaches the theme taking into account the US policy towards the institution, changes in international economic policy, and the principal decisions of the Bank's board.

Resumen:
El artículo analiza la historia del Banco Mundial durante sus primeros cincuen-ta años. Se argumenta que, desde el principio, el Banco utiliza el crédito como palanca para ampliar su influencia e institucionalizar ideas económicas, visiones del mundo y prescripciones de política en sus clientes. Detrás de su aspecto técnico, el Banco siempre ha funcionado, aunque de diferentes formas, en la intersección de los campos político, económico e intelectual a escala internacional, en función de su condición singular de prestamista, actor político y promotor de ideas y recetas acerca de lo que se debe hacer en cuestiones de desarrollo capitalista, en clave anglosajona. Basado en una amplia y diversa literatura y fuentes de la institución internacional, el texto aborda la cuestión teniendo en cuenta la política de Estados Unidos hacia la institución, los cambios en la economía política y la gestión de decisiones internacionales claves de la entidad.

A roundtable review on Zhang Feng's Chinese Hegemony: Grand Strategy and International Institutions in East Asian History (Stanford, 2015) with Victoria Hui, Ja Ian Chong, James Holmes, and Yongjin Zhang, with a response from the author. Published by H-Diplo and the International Security Studies Forum (ISSF).

No weakening, but rather an expansion, of statehood can be observed in the contemporary world. This does not, on the other hand, imply that extensive forms of constitutional ordering do not exist outside the realm of states. Instead, the evolution of world society has been characterized by a protracted dual movement where the expansion and densification of statehood and autonomous forms of transnational ordering gradually emerged in a mutually constitutive fashion. One implication of this is that neither the concept of the state nor the concept of nonstate transnational entities is adequately capable of delineating the object of constitutional analysis. Instead, the concept of normative orders has been introduced as an overarching category capable of identifying the contexts within which constitutional ordering emerges.
Subsequently, a distinction between the internal and external dimensions of the law of normative orders has been introduced, specifying them as respectively oriented towards establishing internal condensation of a given normative order and external compatibility between different normative orders. With this background, a framework for the analysis of constitutional frameworks of normative orders is developed. The central element is a distinction among three dimensions: First, a constitution implies a coupling between a constitutional object, in the form of a hierarchical organization of a given normative order capable of reproducing an autonomous source of authority, and a concordant legal framework. Second, constitutionalization implies a coupling between an internal reconstruction of an external constitutional subject within the constitutional object, and the register of legal rights, establishing a framework for exchanges between the constitutional object and the wider world as represented by the constitutional subject. Third, constitutionalism denotes the institutionalization of a double function, in the form of a principle-based and legally fortified striving toward universal inclusion, providing a sense of direction in time through an articulated form of constitutional consciousness.
The insights developed are briefly illustrated by the case of the global Fairtrade Certification System.

There has been a recent renewal of interest in aspects of the political theory of Johannes Althusius (1563-1638), particularly in the realm of European Studies. The mainstream treatment leans toward the position that Althusius may be counted as one of the founding fathers of modern federalism. Whilst this paper does not completely dismiss such view, it also points out to other aspects of Althusian theory that are of crucial importance for its contextualised understanding. These neglected aspects are also of a considerable interest to contemporary thinking on issues of globalisation, coexistence and political plurality. I suggest that, if we take both sides together – pluralism and federalism – we may be able to find more contemporary relevance to Althusian political thought than is usually expected from the prevailing interpretations. Of peculiar importance is the way Althusius connects deep philosophical assumptions of unity and diversity to their application in a pluralistic political ontology. It is pointed out that much of the distortion that occurs in alternative ideological models that attempt to account for globalisation and political systems in general, both domestic and international, stem from reductionistic ontologies. Althusian pluralism, on the other hand, avoids similar intellectual pitfalls, as well as their potential or actual political distortions. The resulting agenda is that of an interpretation of global politics that sees the nation-state as simply one manifestation of political association between many other possibilities, including non-public associations operating both at transnational and localised levels.

Uluslararası sistemde gücün nasıl dağıldığının, uluslararası sistemin işleyişi ve uluslararası sistemde yer alan aktörlerin davranışı üzerinde önemli bir etkisi vardır. Soğuk Savaş sonrası dönemde uluslararası sistemde tek süper güç olarak kalan ABD, 1990’lı yıllar boyunca iyicil hegemonya olarak tanımlanan bir strateji çerçevesinde bu konumunu sürdürmeye çalışmıştır. Buna karşılık bu çalışmanın temel konusunu, Bush Doktrini olarak adlandırılan Amerikan dış ve güvenlik politikasının 1990’lı yıllarda geçerli olan hayırhah hegemonya kavramın küresel tek merkezli bir hegemonik istikrar arayışına geçiş çabasının teorik olarak incelenmesi oluşturmaktadır. Bu çerçevede, uluslararası sistemde ABD’nin sahip olduğu tek kutuplu yapının sürdürülmesini sağlayacak sistemik güç unsurlarının oluşturulması büyük önem kazanmaktadır. ABD’nin, terörizme karşı savaşta kullandığı demokratik barış teorisi ve önleyici savaş argümanları kapsamında, tek taraflılığı öne çıkararak sürdürdüğü politikaların Rusya, AB ve Çin gibi önemli uluslararası aktörler ile ilişkiler ve uluslararası normatif düzen üzerindeki yansımaları da incelenmektedir.