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Labor internationalism and opposition to globalization:
antiglobalism and counterglobalism
Michael Hanagan
New School University
The distinction between anti-global and counter-global movements is central to
the analysis of the worldwide response to capitalist globalization. Following our
conference call, anti-globalism refers to movements that resist globalization while
counter-globalism identifies movements that formulate an alternative to capitalist
globalization. In the case of the labor movement, both anti-global and counter-global
movements have undoubtedly increased since the "Battle of Seattle" in 1999 but the
distribution of anti-global and counter-global movements varies considerably within the
worldwide labor movement. In some countries when supranational protest occurs, an
anti-global tone is overwhelmingly predominant. In other countries, counter-global
movements thrive alongside anti-global movements.
How can this varying orientation of labor movements be explained? While the
ideological orientation of trade unions and the structure of national trade unions
undoubtedly plans an important role in influencing political orientation, it is not
necessarily definitive. Despite their long-term ideological commitment to labor
internationalism, many Marxist parties around the world articulate exclusively anti-global
demands. Membership in transnational bodies such as the WFTU or the ICFTU is not
inconsistent with anti-globalism. Perhaps as important as ideology, location in a state
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system may be an important and neglected factor in understanding the orientation of
movements towards globalization. "State system" refers to a group of states that interact
with each other regularly and whose interaction systematically affects the behavior of
each member state. Most state systems are composed of geographical neighbors and
many have taken institutional form in regional organizations of state.
This paper argues that state systems influence the structures of states and
interrelationships with other states and that these have a profound impact on the response
to globalization of social movements that develop within state systems. The process of
state system formation is historically contingent and the paper's first section looks at the
development of one important state systems, the Westphalian system. The second
section examines one successor state to the Westphalian system, the Latin American state
system, and seeks to explain why it routinely produces anti-globalization labor
movements. The third section looks at post World War II Europe and considers the
contemporary European Union (EU) as a post-Westphalian state system that produces
important examples of counter-globalization labor movements.
The Westphalian State System, Westphalian State, and Labor Movements
Leading political scientists such as Stephen D. Krasner and Alexander Wendt still
debate whether the Westphalian state---territorial, independent, and aggressively pursuing
its strategic interests---is an accurate depiction of contemporary international relations.1
While it may be a poor model for understanding contemporary international relations, it
deserves consideration because it importantly influenced the formation of modern state
systems and because it still shapes much of our thinking about states. Modern labor
movements emerged for the first time within this Westphalian system. The labor
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movement that emerged under the Westphalian order adopted a program of counterglobalization in so far as it supported the expansion of free trade and the implementation
of international labor standards. Still the foundation of labor movement internationalism
in Westphalian Europe was the national political party. Labor internationalism always
coexisted uncertainly with nationalism.
The Westphalian state system is often presented as a model of self-interested
competitive behavior among states but a real understanding of the state system must be
based on its history. History alone can explain the specific genesis of the Westphalian
system and why subsequent state systems modeled on it have developed in different
directions. The territorially-based, sovereign Westphalian state system began its
development before the Age of the Democratic Revolution and the Era of the Industrial
Revolution. In Europe, the rudiments of the centralized, bureaucratized and
interventionary "consolidated state" developed either in advance or simultaneously
with industrialization and democratization. As we shall see, in colonial states that
had thrown off imperial domination, such as Latin America, democratization advanced
ahead of both industrialization and state capacity. Different sequences of historical
development were crucial to the evolution of state systems and to the social movements
that emerged within them.
In Europe, out of the wreckage of more embracing political concepts of world
empire and world church, a distinctive state and state system began to emerge with the
Peace of Westphalia that ended the Thirty Years War (1618-1648). The Westphalian
system recognized religious. diversity within the Holy Roman Empire. It strengthened
territorial princes against imperial claims of allegiance and ended efforts to maintain an
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institutionally-unified Christendom. It defined a political world where independent and
sovereign territorial states were the dominant legitimate authorities and could even
determine the religious faith of their subjects.2 Still only the rudiments of what have
come to be called the "Westphalian state system" emerged in the 1640s and 1650s. Only
a century later did political theorists such as Emer de Vattel and Christian Freiherr on
Wolff codify the practical principles of the settlement into an intellectually coherent
concept of a "Westphalian system." 3
Whatever its ideological foundations, warmaking was the dynamic force that
drove the Westphalian system relentlessly on.
Military competition forced state makers to bargain with bankers and taxpayers in
ways that they would have scorned had the very survival of their state not been at issue.
Wars and the fear of losing them led statesman to increase ruthlessly their control over
the national territory in order to collect taxes and conscript men. Concern for war led
authorities to improve the health of the general population and to promote increased
fertility (or at least to decrease infant and child mortality).4 As Europe democratized,
prolonged wars with uncertain outcomes led governments to pledge social and political
reforms to raise popular morale. "The state makes war and war makes the state" said
Charles Tilly and international war proved a powerful engine for increasing state's
extractive capacities.5
The "balance of power" was the system's guiding principle and constituted a
continuous invitation to war. It called for all states to band together against any state that
threatened to dominate the system. In 1700 as soon as he heard that the deceased Spanish
king had left his kingdom to Louis XIV's grandson, the Austrian Emperor, Leopold I
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prepared for war. Whatever the legitimacy of its claims, France could not be allowed
such a dramatic increase in its power. To work, the new system required three
competitive powers and it usually had at least five.
As the state system became more firmly established, it became more carefully
calibrated: relatively slight changes in the power balance produced major conflicts. As a
result, in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe warmaking became nearly
continuous. While the end of the Thirty Years war marked the end of one of the largest
wars in early modern European history, it was quickly followed by other conflicts that
took hundreds of thousands of lives. In the second half of the seventeenth century, the
Franco-Spanish War (1648-1659), the War of Devolution (1667-1668), a first Ottoman
War (1657-1674)) the Franco-Dutch War (1672-1678), a second Ottoman War (16821699), and the wars of the League of Augsburg (1688-1697) were all major conflicts that
cost at least one hundred thousand lives, sometimes much more.6 The eighteenth-century
was even more brutal and unrelenting. The pace of war only slowed down in the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries as European rulers confronted revolutionary
democratic challenges within their own nations; nevertheless, wars when they did come
were much more deadly with greater losses among civilians than during the first century
and a half of the Westphalian era. Dramatic collapse in these wars and poor performance
risked the loss of great power status. For many states, lack of success resulted in
absorption by more militarily successful states.
In some sense the high point of the Westphalian state system in Europe was
reached in World War I when European states, none of which actually wanted to go to
war, each mobilized to counterbalance what each saw as a threat to the balance of power.
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In the end, one of the powerful reasons sending the U.K. into the war was its fear that the
German invasion of Belgium presaged its annexation by Germany. The strategic
importance of Belgium, opening England to foreign invasion, was one important
calculation in the U.K.'s decision to declare war.
Clear territorial boundaries were a characteristic of Westphalian states but
continuous warfare gave new importance to strategically-defined borders. While taking
territory anywhere they could get it, rulers made more of an effort to build territorially
contiguous states with strategically defensible borders. The doctrine of "natural
boundaries" had long antecedents but emerged publicly during the French Revolution as
revolutionaries tried to resolve the tension between national identity and strategic
calculation in the drawing of state boundaries.7 The doctrine of "natural borders" asserted
that military defensible borders represented a legitimate goal for state expansion. Of
course, astute rulers had long appraised the strategic value of adjacent territories before
advancing their own claims, but the claims of the French revolutionaries meant that
strategic value justified annexation independently of any other legal claims.
From the beginnings of the Westphalian order in 1648, to its culmination in
World War I and until its end in 1945, strategic considerations constituted a key element
of warfare and a major aspect of treaty settlements. The 1815 Vienna settlement gave
rise to a United Netherlands combining modern day Belgium and Holland that was
designed to strengthen France's northeastern border and to protect England's southeast
flank. In 1919 at St Germain, the Austrian SouthTyrol/Alto Adige was given to Italy in
gross violation of the self-determination principle. The basic reasons diplomats gave the
territory to Italy were strategic and political. The South Tyrol controlled access to the
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militarily vital Brenner Pass and the Alpine watershed provided Italy with protection
against vengeful Germans. In 1920 British authorities also felt that Northern Ireland was
valuable military asset, its shipbuilding industry, a vital national resources. It was a
bulwark against an independent Irish Free State that might seek allies with a hostile
France or Germany and so constituted a strategic danger to the imperial heartland. The
Peace settlement of 1921 preserved British military control over four ports in the Irish
Free State and, for a variety of reasons including calculations of military strategy,
retained Northern Ireland in the U.K..
State capacity also expanded alongside strategic borders in Westphalian Europe.
Prompted by military concerns, dramatic expansion can be seen in the centralization and
control of the great European powers of the seventeenth and eighteenth century. These
developments culminated in the French Revolution and the decades of war that followed.
The consolidated state of the French Revolution was a "high-capacity" state of an
unprecedented character; it was a bureaucratized, centralized state that intervened in the
daily life of ordinary men and women.
In revolutionary France, a dramatic increase in democratization occurred
simultaneously with the expansion of state capacity. In the throes of war, the French
Revolution deepened the democratization of the country while greatly accelerating the
centralization that the Bourbon's had begun.8 Rapid state centralization was accompanied
by a whole series of citizenship rights including the right to trial by jury, religious
toleration, freedom of the press, the end of legally privileged corporations, and the
abolition of noble titles. More importantly many males--the number varied according to
different election laws---received the right to vote. Subsequently democratization and
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state capacity fed on one another, democratization increasing state capacity and vice
versa. Demands for public schooling, old age pensions, and highway building would
emerge from democratic politics and bring increases in state capacity.
By themselves the consolidated, democratizing state of the French Revolution
would have attracted only limited attention from European rulers. What made them all
take notice was the ability of the French state, with its enhanced extractive capacity and
increased popular support, to wage effective war. The armies of Ancien Regime Europe,
based on demoralized conscripts and professional mercenaries, were no match for the
more willing and more numerous conscripts and volunteers of the revolution. Mass
conscription was one of the new innovations of the revolutionary era. In revolutionary
armies, rich and poor shared food and shelter. This cross-class experience helped instill a
spirit of citizenship among Frenchmen. Unlike the armies of Frederick the Great, the
armies of Napoleon could perform quick night marches over difficult terrain and parade
through big cities without losing half of their number in desertions. French armies could
send out preliminary lines of skirmishers and expect those who had not been killed or
wounded to return.9
The example of the revolutionary French armies continued to transform European
statemaking long after Napoleon had been whisked away to St Helena. Looking at the
French case, European rulers sought to increase popular loyalty and expand state capacity
while avoiding democratization. Mercenary troops fell out of favor while central
European monarchs turned to teachers to inculcate political loyalty in the common people
and to draft boards to conscript the commons into royal armies. Restored monarchs
retained the centralized measures --but not the democratic rights--enacted by French
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occupying regimes or introduced their own centralizing legislation. Some of the
centralizing legislation introduced in response to the French Revolution had longstanding
antecedents in pre-revolutionary legislation.10 One great result of the Westphalian
system stressed by Tilly was that while it recruited and trained an unparalleled number of
professional military men, it also effectively subordinated the military to civilian rulers
and bureaucrats. Increasingly in states where war was frequent and military success was
required, civilians led governments, not generals.
Determined to keep strategically valuable territory, European states put a new
emphasis on efforts to assimilate their populations. State-sponsored school masters
sometimes enjoyed success in establishing a common language and culture among
peasant populations but, just as often, such efforts produced popular reactions that
strengthened attachments to minority languages and customs and served as the basis for
the evolution of new nationalisms. Almost everywhere, however, the nation state
remained a dream. The problems of ethnic minorities stretching across state borders
remained a lively issue in European politics into the twenty-first century.
Over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, democratic tides swept
over the consolidated states of the European state system but democratic tides ebbed as
well as flowed. No headlong rush to democracy occurred. State bureaucracies,
extending into the countryside and possessing extensive policing powers, were all in
place long before most of today's continental democracies were established. For most of
Europe, democratic advances of the years between 1848-1851 were quickly reversed.
Except for France where manhood suffrage was securely won in 1848, the first
substantial expansions of European suffrage generally came in the late nineteenth
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century. The majority of British males did not get the right to vote until 1884 and only
the electoral reforms of 1918, 1919, and 1928 gave the vote to all adults.
Democratization marched through continental Europe after World War I but, save for
France and the Low Countries, was pretty much routed in the 1930s as Europe massively
dedemocratized.11
Inevitably, the socialist parties that emerged in a Westphalian state system with
expanding suffrage were profoundly nationalizing parties. The basic activity of political
parties and increasingly of trade unions was carried on at the national level. In most of
the continent, European socialist parties were the first organized mass parties, and many
workers entered national political life under their auspices. In fighting for social reforms
and winning them socialist parties and trade unions also attached workers to states.12
Despite their strong national orientation, socialist parties generally favored market
expansions and gradually formulated the elements of a counterglobalization program.
Socialists parties were generally internationalist--at least within the framework of
Westphalian economic internationalism. Between 1870 and 1950, every nation, powerful
European industrial capitalists themselves were divided on the desirability of free trade or
protectionism.13 Throughout the period, while European labor movements often opposed
the colonial incorporation of states until European empires, they generally embraced the
incorporation of states into free trade zones.
Free trade was generally an article of internationalist faith among labor
movements but also a reflection of class interest for the workers of industrial nations.14
Falling agricultural prices, resulting from the entry of grain from the Americas and meat
from the Americas and Australasia, benefited urban workers; tariffs as aided rich and
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often reactionary landlords (and peasants). Savage political battles in France and
Germany yielded higher tariffs but embittered labor movements. In the U.K., the great
advocate of free trade, the election of 1906 was waged primarily over the Conservative
turn to protectionism and brought a huge Liberal victory----and the first large contingent
of Labour MPs into parliament. In 1931 in the U.K., the second Labour government's
defense of the gold standard has deservedly been ridiculed but it was perfectly consistent
with socialists' longstanding commitment to free trade.
While supporting the expansion of free trade, the labor movement also fought for
international labor standards. In its origins in 1889 the May Day commemorations were
intended as a battle for the eight-hour day. The foundation of the International Labor
Organization (ILO) in 1919 marks a high point of this internationalist strategy. The ILO
whose early founders were in close contact with European socialists was intended to
promote unified standards among Westphalian states. Indeed in the militant period after
World War I the ILO helped promote the spread of the eight-hour day, nation by nation.15
Yet for all its formal internationalism, the national structure of the European labor
movement remained predominant. Discussions of labor standards were carried out at
conferences organized by national sections and relations with the ILO were on a
government by government basis. The road to internationalism led through the
individual national party and was carefully regulated and supervised by national parties.
Preoccupied by national politics and authoritarian threats, labor movements showed
increasingly less enthusiasm for counterglobalization movements in the decade and a half
before World War II.
Non-Westphalian State Systems: Latin America
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In some areas where state formation was profoundly shaped by colonialism and
the age of the democratic revolution, state systems emerged that saw relatively low levels
of inter-state conflict and high levels of intra-state violence. The earliest example of such
a state system can be found in Latin America. This section argues that the combination
of low state capacity and democratization helps explain both decreased warmaking and
increased internal instability. It will also argue that, in contrast with Westphalian states
driven to state centralization by the force of war, state systems such as that of Latin
America can have an impressive stability in maintaining the status quo in regard to state
structure. In these states, labor movements have often developed in a nationalist
direction, not simply by building national parties as in Europe, but also by championing
projects for state expansion that Europeans had long taken for granted. In such labor
movements antiglobalization themes predominated.
Let us begin with the Latin American case. The Latin American state system had
important distinctive characteristics that distinguished it from the Westphalian state
system in Europe. Latin American states were characterized by: (1) relatively low levels
of warfare, (2) few strategic borders, (3) low state capacity, and (4) internal instability.
While the European and Latin American state systems had many contrasts, both
participated in the Age of Democratic Revolution 1776-1848 and democratization played
an important role in both systems.
A look at warfare in Latin America between 1816 and 1965 shows that it was far
less militarized and less involved in murderous inter-state conflicts than Europe and
North America in the post-independence period. On a per capita basis, Europe and North
America had over 86 times the number of men in the armed forces. European and North
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American armies killed more than 123 times as many people.16 Latin American wars
were often more devastating than European wars but they occurred much less frequently;
most casualties were concentrated in Colombia, Mexico, and Paraguay.
Because war figured as less important in political calculations, strategic borders
were less important in Latin American disputes. By 1825, marking the final triumph of
their revolt from European domination, Latin American states had become Westphalian
type states: they had acquired territorial borders and a sovereign government established
in the capital city. Unlike in Westphalian Europe, territorial borders were less salient in
Latin America wars because war was less important: Latin American states had little
inducement to demarcate, defend, and inspect border passages. Generally, Latin
American territorial borders were liminal. They marked off desolate and distant areas
signaling the extreme limits of state power rather than being strategic locations marking
points of confrontation between two political states. Although few and far between,
Latin American wars tended to break out in areas of unusual strategic and economic
importance such as the La Plata basin and in the mid-Pacific littoral where Bolivia, Peru
and Chile meet.
Border disputes in Latin America were often settled by arbitration. The great neocolonial powers, Great Britain and the United States, often played a role in arbitration,
typically obtaining advantages for themselves in the process as in the Chile-Argentina
disputes over Southern Patagonia of 1902, the Peru-Chile disputes over the Tacna in
1929, and the Ecaudor-Peru-Columbia quarrels of 1942. At the same time, groups of
Latin American nations often sought to exert pressure for a settlement as in the Chaco
War of 1932-1935.
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Unlike the French revolution in Europe, Latin American revolutions did not
produce high-capacity states. The savage wars of independence (1810-1825) had
basically been to control the patrimonial territories of the Spanish empire not to build a
new state; in Latin America no centralized state like Prussia or Piedmont existed to
incorporate weaker states. The vast territory of Spanish America with its different
cultures and often difficult terrain made overall coordination of the revolutionary effort
impossible and revolutionary armies were often autonomous actors rather than agents of
clearly-constituted governments. Even after the wars of independence, the Church still
possessed large properties and an elaborate set of immunities. Once independence was
achieved, British support, given in exchange for commercial access, meant that the new
nations need not fear further European intervention in their early decades. More threats
came from the American north in a civil war that brought Texas independence and an
extra-systemic war between Mexico and the U.S. (1846-1848) which helped centralize
the Mexican state while inflicting grave territorial losses on it
Except perhaps in a few cases such as Chile, Mexico, and Uruguay the force of
war did not increase Latin American states' extractive capacity and, throughout most of
the period, most Latin Americans paid considerably less taxes than North Americans or
Europeans. As Centeno has argued, most Latin American states emerged from the
revolutionary period built not on "blood and iron" but on "blood and debt." Latin
American elites balked at financing revolutionary efforts that by mobilizing masses in the
army threatened elite political predominance. Unable to extract resources from local
sources, revolutionaries turned to foreign lenders. In this way, Latin American
revolutionary leaders were able to find financing without transforming their nations'
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extractive capacities; the result of such strategies was successful revolution and
subordination to foreign lenders. When states ultimately proved unable to pay, they were
forced to relinquish control of natural resources or customs tolls and national sovereignty
was further undermined. 17
Another characteristic feature of the Latin American state system was the advance
of democratization. Latin America fully participated in the Age of the Democratic
Revolution. By 1825 most Latin American countries possessed constitutions conferring
some level of democratic participation and citizenship rights.18 In general, early Latin
American constitutions were distinctive in giving the head of government large amounts
of power but, overall, they were similar to most other constitutions of late eighteenth and
early nineteenth century Europe. Latin American constitutions had literacy and property
qualifications but so did the French constitution of 1790, the Spanish constitution of
1812, and many American state constitutions.19 Unfree labor and slavery still existed in
regions of democratizing Latin America but slavery also existed a large portions of the
democratizing U.S.. Still despite their constitutions and the widespread predominance of
republican forms of government (save in Brazil and Mexico for several decades), the
rights of citizenship were often unenforced.
In some ways the very existence of democratic constitutions which conferred
rights that were not enforced made Latin American elites fearful of taking the steps
necessary for the construction of high-capacity states. Fear of popular democracy limited
elites' willingness to recruit mass armies; small professional armies were handy checks
for democratic movements. No Latin American state imposed an enduring policy of
universal conscription on its male population and Latin American armies were generally
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small establishments. Although the poor, indians, and blacks were often conscripted,
universal military conscription was unattractive to elites who feared the massively arming
populations subject to social and economic discrimination. Armies did not serve as
"schools for the nation" nor was entry into the army an egalitarian experience where
recruits mingled across class and racial lines.
Of course, there are exceptions to every rule but these exceptions can also provide
a way of examining our argument and considering alternative possibilities. The example
of Uruguay as presented by Fernando López-Alves illustrates the case of a Latin
American country that constructed a strong democratic state in the twentieth century. 20
While a variety of forces contributed to Uruguay's path, warmaking clearly played a
central and distinctive role. From the wars of independence, Uruguayan rebels appealed
and won support from more popular constituencies in the cattleherding countryside.
Repeatedly fending off invasions from Argentina and Brazil, Uruguayan Colorado party
leaders succeeded in building a strong local constituency in Montevideo, the capital
which contained more than a quarter of the country's population in 1852. Warmaking
provided the basis for increasing state capacity. The war with Paraguay (1865-1870)
brought to power a whole series of military leaders committed to reform. These leaders
culminated with the regime of Colonel Lorenzo Latorre (1876-1880). Latorre was a force
centralizer who promoted education, expanded government bureaucracy, challenged the
power of rural caudillos, and enforced rural legislation. Despite everything Latorre had
remained a loyal member of the Colorado party and when he stepped down he handed
over power to his party. Despite the key role of a military leader, Latorre's administration
created a centralized state that began to get the upperhand over the military. Increases in
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state capacity preceded democratization and prepared its way. Latorre's regime created
the basis for the social reformist and democratizing legislation of José Battle y Ordoñez
at the beginning of the twentieth century.
While Latin American states avoided war between states, the same cannot be said
of civil war. Low capacity states were too weak to respond to popular demands and their
weakness often inspired resistance. Democratic constitutions that conferred rights that
went unenforced were a standing invitation to protest. Unable to carry out broad political
programs, state had to ignore groups, negotiate particularistic policies, and repress
popular claims which could easily lead to an escalation of conflict. Over the course of
both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, civil war has taken a much higher toll of
Latin American lives than conflict between states.
A look at Latin American and Westphalian state systems focuses comparison
between democratization in low-capacity and high-capacity states. In both Westphalian
Europe and Latin America, the Age of the Democratic Revolution produced an early
wave of democratization that did not fully take in either system. In early nineteenth
century Europe, democratization was generally repudiated by reactionary monarchs who
continued centralizing policies. In contrast in early nineteenth-century Latin America
constitutional rights were not so much repealed as unenforced and large sections of the
population were excluded from citizenship. The pretence of democratic elections was
maintained while rival party leaders divided parliamentary seats in advance. With so
many unacknowledged claims, Latin American elites were naturally hesitant to arm and
mobilize large sections of their population.
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The nineteenth century failure to create high-capacity states remains a problem
for twenty-first century Latin American labor movements. Labor movement reformers
are naturally frustrated with low capacity states in which it was impossible to effectively
implement reforms on a national scale. In many Latin American countries, labor
movements and leftwing parties have undertaken the unfulfilled task of state formation.
As Jorge G. Casteñada has noted "this meant reducing social, regional, and ethnic
disparities, instilling a common language and developing a notion of citizenship and
equality before the law not too flagrantly at odds with inequality before society and
power."21
Seeing a need for state building, long-ago completed in Europe, Latin American
trade unions have often accepted corporatist integration into nation-building
governmental coalitions. Corporatism and long experience with U.S. trade unionism has
often made Latin American trade unions suspicious of international labor solidarity.
Particularly when supported by foreign labor movements, demands for international
standards have ben viewed by Latin American trade unionists as efforts to by already
industrialized nations prevent industry from establishing itself in their country. 22 In such
circumstances, nationalist anti-globalization behavior comes naturally to labor
movements resisting genuine threats from international financial organizations often
supported by the U.S.
A look at May Day protests in Latin America shows a vast increase in concern
with antiglobalization after the Seattle protests. 2001 May Day protests in Honduras
denounced free market reforms "imposed by international financial institutions" and
marchers in Costa Rica opposed "concessions to the open market." Colombian
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demonstrators were told that "the government is limited by the agreements with the IMF
which leaves it with little freedom of action."23 Throughout Latin America antiglobalization demands dominated labor movement protests in successive May Days.
Post-Westphalian Europe: The EU
Although Europe has had its share of anti-globalization movements, it has also
produced some important examples of counter-global movements. In the second half of
the twentieth century a remarkable change occurred as a post-Westphalian order emerged
in Europe. The new state system that increasingly emerged in Europe was characterized
by a "composite sovereignty" in which high-capacity, relatively democratized
Westphalian states composed the building blocks of a federation, itself characterized by
low capacity and limited democratization. Most power remained in the hands of the
separate states and it makes sense to classify European Union (EU) Europe as still mainly
a state system and not a federal state.
Considered as a state system, its most distinctive feature was its repudiation of
war. In the words of Karl Kaiser, "Europeans have done something that no one has ever
done before: create a zone of peace where war is ruled out, absolutely out."24 As
exemplified by the Gulf War of 1991, EU nations still involve themselves in wars but the
chances of EU nations engaging in conflict among themselves seems remote. After three
hundred years of incessant military conflict how did this happen?
In Europe, the Westphalian order dissolved immediately after World War II. The
Cold War divided Europe between two powers and made the old "balance of power"
game impossible. The U.S. and the U.S.SR both attempted to lead and coordinate the
nations in their respective regions of Europe. U.S. domination allowed a great deal more
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autonomy than Soviet domination, but both nations had considerable economic and
military leverage in dealing with the nations belonging to their respective blocs.
While the U.S. championed a variety of forms of European union, the economic
union that was originally established worked because it corresponded to the interests of
European states as these states were configured circa 1947. In post-World War II
Western Europe, in order to repair divided economies and sundered polities, individual
nations were willing to establish common control over vital coal and ore resources and
coordinate access to steel plants. The forces behind European integration were basically
nationalist in one form or another, political nationalism dominated in some
decisionmaking areas and economic nationalism in others. Germans sought to free their
nation from the political tutelage imposed after the Second World War; Frenchmen
looked to win access to German steelmaking capacity and ore fields; and Belgians sought
to maintain a failing coal economy. While the pursuit of national interest dominated the
political calculations of leading politicians, it produced a genuinely transnational product.
Once the factories and coal and ore fields of the European Coal and Steel community had
been integrated it would be extremely difficult to disintangle them again. The growth of
the European Iron and Steel community was established it encouraged Europeans to go
further along the route of cooperation.25
As cooperation grew in the 1960s and 1970s, members of the European
Community, both elite politicians and ordinary people, realized that economic integration
and increased political cooperation diminished the prospects of war with fellow
Community members. The change occurred gradually but it was fundamental to
subsequent changes. The ending of the dispute over German rearmament in 1955 was an
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absolute pre-requisite for the spread of a new pacific consciousness. The 1963 FrancoGerman Treaty of Friendship negotiated between the "grand old man" of German politics,
Konrad Adenauer and the "grand old man" of French politics, Charles DeGaulle was also
an important step. Symbolic gestures had enormous importance. Europeans of a certain
age never seemed to tire of the image of the Germany Prime Minister Helmut Kohl
shaking hands with the French President François Mitterand at Verdun in 1986. So
powerful was the image that Kohl and then President Jacques Chirac repeated the gesture
in 1996.
The recognition of the greatly reduced possibilities of military conflict had a
whole series of important consequences. As the possibility of war diminished, European
Community members began to tear down formerly strong internal borders. One by one,
European nations abandoned mass conscription. Military budgets within individual
nations began their long-term decline. Cooperation increased as the European Common
market merged into the European Community and, today, the European Union.
Despite serious challenges, the European commitment to mutual peace remained
firm. A key moment in the evolution of the EU state system was the incorporation of
East Germany into a united German state in 1989/1990. German reunification really did
represent a serious change in the balance of power within the EU. West Germany had
long been the economic powerhouse of EU development but the incorporation of twentymillion East Germany altered the established roughly equal demographic relationship
among major EU nations, since the U.K., France West Germany, and Italy each had
around sixty-million inhabitants. Initially opposed to immediate reunification, French
president François Mitterand quickly realized the futility and danger of French resistance.
22
Ultimately, he seems to have responded to this change by endorsing European Monetary
Union, so as to diminish enhanced German power by more thoroughly integrating
Germany into the EU. Another case where nationalist impulses have led to transnational
solutions.
But Mitterand's decision provides a striking contrast with a Westphalian response.
In 1700, faced with a similarly dramatic expansion of a rival power, Leopold I had
declared war!
As possibilities of war diminished with the EU, so did the salience of old strategic
borders. Where strategic borders had produced ethnic tensions, new solutions suddenly
became possible. For example, in the 1980s British politicians, including the prime
minister, Margaret Thatcher, acknowledged that Northern Ireland was no longer of
strategic value to Great Britain. Many Irish nationalists had already recognized that the
EU was making a preoccupation with border lines irrelevant. John Hume of the Social
Democratic and Labour Party, once a member of the Strasbourg European Parliament,
has forcefully argued that the expansion of Europe can be the bases for finally solving
Ireland's age-old British problem. With both the U.K. and Eire as members of the EU,
border problems are obsolete. The EU makes it possible to accommodate the loyalties of
some in Nothern Ireland to Great Britain and others to Eire while maintaining the
existence of an autonomous Northern Ireland. Hume argues that "The Single Europe and
the whole ongoing process of integration…will provide a context which will require and
should inspire, policy programmes and administrative instruments which will be crossborder and all-Ireland in scope."26
23
The present day "Good Friday" agreement that has brought a tense peace to
Northern Ireland would have been impossible in a Westphalian Europe. Both Irish and
U.K. governments are guarantors of the plan and each are recognized as intermediaries
for the respective, republican and unionist parties. The Good Friday agreement
approaches, ever so gently, the issue of joint sovereignty that was anathema to orthodox
Westphalians. Prior to World War II, the U.K. rejected all efforts of Irish governments
to represent themselves as legitimate parties in internal Northern Irish matters. Further
challenges to old Westphalian assumptions may be in the works. Some SDLP members
have proposed that every citizen of Northern Ireland should possess two passports. All
would have a Northern Irish passport and vote for representatives in the Northern Irish
legislature and everyone could also choose whether to have a passport from the U.K. or
Eire. Those who choose a U.K. passport could vote on sending members to the English
Parliament. Those with an Eire passport could send members to the Dail (the Irish
parliament). Such an idea is not anywhere near the front burner of Northern Irish politics
but it could only be seriously proposed within a state system like that of the current EU.
While exciting cross-border solutions remain in the discussion stage in Northern
Ireland, they have been implemented in some regions of EU Europe. In the
contemporary South Tyrol real progress has been made in ending eighty years of ethnic
discontent. In South Tyrol, ethnic Germans have been fighting to maintain their language
and culture since the cession of their province to Italy in 1919. The fascist regime
attempted to stamp out German language and culture altogether and failed.
The democratized Italian state was less repressive but negotiations in 1946-1947
and an autonomy statute in 1948 elicited some concessions----but most of them were
24
never put into effect. In the 1950s, a militant separatist movement began to emerge and
the South Tyrol elected autonomist deputies to the Italian parliament. In 1969, U.S.ing
the traditional rhetoric of Italian nationalism, a state document affirmed "The inviolable
nature of our frontiers…we repeat that our frontier is on the Brenner, consecrated by the
sacrifice of over 600,000 lives." 27 In 1972, considerable progress was made in the
negotiation of an agreement for "dynamic autonomy" but again it was only partially
implemented. This agreement seemed to have broken down until the admission of
Austria into the European Community in 1990. With Austrian entry into the European
Community, the pace of progress picked up and by 1992 even Tyrolese autonomists
agreed that the agreement was fairly enforced by the Italian government. The
diminishing importance of borders between EU members has led to further concessions.
In 2001 a new revision of the Tyrolese statue has come into effect which provides much
more thoroughgoing recognition of the international (ie Italian and Austrian) guarantees
of the treaty, increased autonomy for the South Tyrolese legislature. and measures of
recognition for the small Ladin population.28
Today, the South Tyrolese autonomy statutes have won wide acceptance and the
South Tyrolese play an important role in the Arge-Alp a transnational body composed of
cantons, provinces and regions in the alpine areas of Germany, Austria Switzerland and
Italy. These groups are one of the most active members of the EU's Committee of
Regions.
The substantial degree of autonomy won by the South Tyrolese since Austria's
entry into the European Community contrasts with the minor concessions won by the
Slovenes of the Julian Region of Italy. Although two conventions signed by the Italian
25
and Yugoslav governments in 1949 and 1955 eased the passage of people and goods
across the border and greatly reduced tension, the Slovene population obtained none of
the concessions won by the South Tyrolese. The major difference of course is that the
line between Yugoslavia and Italy corresponded with a strategic border that still
possessed some significance.29 The inclusi on of Slovenia into the EU may well lead to
dramatic changes in this area.
One of the clearest indicators of the devaluation of strategic borders within the
modern EU is the decentralization of modern-day Belgium. For decades liberal Wallons
and more conservative Flemings have been held together by their fear of annexation by
larger neighbors. A unified Belgian kingdom was long promoted by the U.K. which had
long sought a stable independent territory on France's borders across the English
Channel.
As tensions between the French and Flemish speaking communities increased in
the 1960s, politicians decided to abandon the centralized unitary Belgian state in favor of
a federation that would have three elements: Flanders, Brussels, and Wallonia. Brussels,
the capital, located in Wallonia but containing larger numbers of Flemish speakers was to
occupy a special position. A complex division of administrative responsibility was made
between national governments, regions and communities. While responsibility for
international relations and economic policy is largely retained by the central government,
non-territorial communities have important say on education, cultural policy and aspects
of social welfare and geographically-based regions deal with planning, the environment,
housing, energy and transport. Communities also exist for the protection of the German
speaking minority which is mainly located in the Flemish areas.30 Belgian federalism
26
constitutes an extremely interesting experiment in dealing with ethnically-divided
polities. But let U.S. stress the point. The fracturing of the Belgian state was unlikely in
a region menaced by hostile and threatening neighbors.
While consolidated states remain the fundamental units of EU decisionmaking
they can no longer claim to be omnicompetent. In a low-capacity federated state with
relatively limited democratic rights, bargaining is carried out not only about policies but
also about competency, about which institution, consolidated state or EU, has
jurisdiction. And current trends are leading to further complications, producing a
checkerboard EU legal system in which some laws apply in some EU nations and not in
others. European Monetary Union, the greatest achievement of the EU, has further
fragmented EU unity and led to a very significant reinforcement of the extremely
dangerous principle that individual nations can opt out of EU policies. The result is an
increased emphasis on a "multitrack" and a "two (or three) speed)" Europe based on
"variable geometry." In the hard economic times of the 1990s, even some of the old
stalwarts adopted policies of financial retrenchment and increasingly national
governments began to impose vetoes on EU expansion. In 1995 the Austrian EU
commissioner for agriculture balked at efforts to develop further a common agricultural
policy and the German Bundesrat asserted the need to scale back Germany's financial
commitments.
While the growth of state capacity within the modern EU has slowed considerably
there has been no return to the Europe of independent states. EU labor movement act
within a larger political unit that is more reminiscent of the Holy Roman Empire than
Westphalian Europe. Europe too has its anti-global movements but it also has developed
27
significant counter-globalization movements. Why? The counter-globalization character
of these movements is not unrelated to the deterritorialized character of the contemporary
EU.
Characteristic features of these new movements are their autonomy from existing
national reform organizations, their easy spread across European borders, and their
willingness to adapt to regional and local situations. One example of the new type of
social movements emerging within the EU is the” Clean Clothes Campaign,” (CCC) a
coalition of groups against sweated labor that originated in the Netherlands and has found
"partners" in much of Western Europe. The counter globalism of the CCC is based on its
acceptance of the spread of free markets so long as wages and working conditions follow
international guidelines. CCC urges consumers to purchase goods produced according
to international labor standards; in their origins, the standards developed by the CCC are
based on ILO standards.31
Unlike earlier labor reform movements the CCC is a relatively decentralized body
in which local affiliates possess a great deal of autonomy. While the CCC is not in most
cases an organization dominated by labor organizations, it almost everywhere includes
trade unions and is frequently supported by socialist party affiliates, religious
organizations, and women’s groups. So far, there is little evidence that the trade unions
that support the CCC are engaged in low wage work that would give them a narrow
economic interest in its success. The CCC began with the publication by a research
group of a book revealing a major Dutch retailer, C&A, sold clothes made by low wage
workers in many areas of the world. This publication initiated a campaign in which the
CCC formed ties with other Dutch organizations.
28
In 1994, the campaign went European as CCC formed partnerships with
organizations in other European countries. These partnerships are quite flexible and the
composition of the CCC groups differs throughout Europe. Recently subsidized by the
European Commission, the CCC is concerned with Third World labor conditions and
stresses the importance of international labor solidarity. CCC has a very effective
presence on the worldwide web and the internet is one of its important vehicles for
recruiting supporters and establishing international connections.
Within Europe, from nation to nation, CCC affiliates represent a variety of
different approaches to anti-sweating. In the U.K., the group has a distinctly working
class and feminist appeal, calling itself “Labour behind the Label,” and is associated with
Women Working Worldwide, a feminist group within the Labour Party. In April 1996,
Women Working Worldwide issued a statement explaining their particular involvement
in anti-sweating campaigns as an act of “international solidarity” on the part of both trade
unionists and feminists. They noted that “trade liberalisation affects women differently
from men and their definition of basic rights is not the same.”
Decentralized, cross-border, flexible, and adaptive, the CCC may well be a
forerunner of a new generation of EU labor movements. It certainly helps to enlarge the
sphere of counter-global movements within the contemporary labor left and it has
important similarities with European human rights movements and other social
movements.
Conclusion: anti-globalism, counter-globalism and state systems
In summary, this paper has argued that war plays an important role in the shaping
of progressive labor movements. Attitudes towards globalization are profoundly shaped
29
by the state systems within which social movements develop. State systems are shaped
by state capacity and state capacity is shaped by war. Social movements which develop
within high capacity states and low capacity states both protest globalization but labor
movements within high-capacity state systems show more support for counterglobalization, for alternatives to the uncontrolled expansion of markets. In part this is
because labor movements within high capacity states may have more confidence in states'
abilities to act. There is little evidence that particular trade unions, say those engaged in
low-wage production, encourage international minimum standards in order to protect
their own position, but it is possible that workers in industrialized countries have a
general interest in such solidarity. In the particular case of the modern EU,
deterritorialization and the ease of forming transnational movements may encourage faith
in counter-global programs that depend on the implementation of reforms across borders.
In contrast, counter-globalization demands and movements are often weaker in
low-capacity state systems, anti-globalization demands, stronger. This may seem
counter-intuitive because such states might seem to suffer disproportionately from market
exposure. But labor movements in low capacity states--for good reason-- may have little
faith in state action. Labor movements distressed by the inability of their state to protect
labor may join nation-building coalitions that are highly nationalistic. Such coalitions are
often hostile to international institutions.
30
Notes
Stephan D. Krasner Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1999, Alexander Wendt
2
Peter H. Wilson, The Holy Roman Empire, 1495-1806. New York: St Martin's Press,
1999.
3
Krasner, Sovereignty
4
Anna Davit, "Imperialism and Motherhood," in History Workshop 5(1978): 9-66.
5
Charles Tilly, Coercion, Capital and European States AD 990-1990.
6
Charles Tilly, Coercion and Capital.
7
Denis Richet, "Natural Borders," in eds. François Furet and Mona Oazouf, A Critical
Dictionary of the French Revolution. Pp. 763-770.
8
Charles Tilly, "Contention and Democracy in Europe," forthcoming June 2003.
9
John Lynn, Bayonets of the Republic Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
10
Michael Hanagan, “From the French Revolution to Revolutions,” in Storia d’Europe,
vol. 5, eds. Paul Bairoch and Eric Hobsbawm (Einaudi, 1996), pp. 637-674
11
Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes.
12
Marcel van der Linden, “The National Integration of the European Working Classes
(1871-1924),” International Review of Social History XXXIII(1988): Part 3: 285-311.
13
see Carl Strikwerda, “The Troubled Origins of European Economic Integration:
International Iron and Steel and Labor Migration in the Era of World War I,” American
Historical Review 98:4(1993): 1106-1129. For an example of the full complexity of this
debate in a single country, Andrew Marrison, British Business and Protection 1903-1932.
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996.
14
Herman Lebovics, The Alliance of Iron and Wheat in the Third French Republic,
1860-1914: Origins of the New Conservatism. Baton Rouge; LSU Press, 1988.
15
Gary Cross, A Quest for Time: The Reduction of Work in Britain and France, 18401940. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989.
16
Miguel Angel Centeno, "Limited War and Limited States," paper given at the seminar
on Militaries and State Formation in Comparative and Historical Perspective, New
School, 1998.
17
Miguel Angel Centeno, Blood and Debt: War and the Nation-State in Latin America.
University Park Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001.
18
Lester D. Langley, The Americas in the Age of Revolution, 1500-1850 New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1994.
19
John Lynch, "Conclusion" in Latin American Revolutions 1808-1826: Old and New
World Origins ed. John Lynch. Norman: University of Oklahoma, 1994. Pp. 376-377.
20
Fernando López-Alves, State Formation and Democracy in Latin America, 1810-1900
Durham: Duke University Press, 2000.
21
Jorge G. Casteñada, Utopia Unarmed: The Latin American Left after the Cold War, p.
283.
22
See essays by Mark Anner, Ralph Armburster, Joel Stillerman, Heather L. Williams in
special issue of Social Science History on theme of Labor Internationalism, ed. By
Michael Hanagan, forthcoming 2003.
1
31
Agence France Presse, May 1, 2001.
R.C. Longworth, Europe asks why U.S. can't see its miracle," Chicago Tribune July
31, 2002.
25
Alan S. Milward, The European Rescue of the Nation State Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1992.
26
John Hume, A New Ireland: Politics, Peace and Reconciliation. New York: Roberts
Rinehart, 1997. P. 135.
27
Mario Toscano, Alto-Aidge-South Tyrol. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1975. P. 247.
28
Antony Alcock, "The South Tyrol Autonomy," unpublished paper, May 2001.
29
Feliks Gross, Ethnics in a Borderland: An Inquiry into the nature of Ethnicity and
Reduction of Ethnic Tensions in a One-Time Gencoide Area. Westport, CT: Greenwood
Press, 1978.
30
John Fitzmaurice, The Politics of Belgium: A Unique Federalism. London: Westview
Press, 1996.
31
"Codes, Monitoring, and Verification--Why the CCC is Involved" Clean Clothes
Newsletter June 15, 2002.
23
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