The Calm Before the Storm? Revolutionary Pressures and Global Governance
| Date | 01 January 2006 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0192512106058635 |
| Author | Adam K. Webb |
| Published date | 01 January 2006 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
The Calm Before the Storm? Revolutionary
Pressures and Global Governance
ADAM K. WEBB
ABSTRACT. Has the era of revolution passed? Many scholars think
globalization and democratization make a recurrence of the great social
revolutions unlikely, now that global webs of economic interest bind
states together and democratization absorbs popular discontent. I argue
against these views here. The present climate is the calm before the
storm. Precisely those factors that make national revolutions unlikely
(economic, political, and cultural globalization) may lead to a global
revolutionary crisis in coming decades. Despite the lack of a global state
to capture, transnational political institutions are creating a global
political arena for future upsurges of revolt. They lock in policies
favorable to global capital, while remaining unresponsive and hence
brittle. The loss of democratic legitimacy within nation-states, combined
with rising inequality, make the world system quite vulnerable to crisis in
the long run. A future profound economic crisis, if it overlaps with the
cultural fault lines of our time, may recreate globally many of the
dynamics that led to earlier revolutionary ruptures within nation-states.
Keywords: • Global governance • Globalization • Neoliberalism
• Revolution • Social movements
In 1979, Iran erupted into social revolution. The Shah’s regime collapsed, the
resolve of its American backers having weakened, and the Ayatollah Khomeini
returned in triumph from his Parisian exile. As the clerics outmaneuvered their
political rivals to install an Islamic state, observers called Iran’s upheaval “the last
of the great social revolutions.” It came as the latest in a series of such world-
historical examples of revolutionary change – France in 1789, Mexico in 1910,
Russia in 1918, and China in 1949 most prominent among them. In varying ways,
the great revolutions had all seen the masses rise up under inspired leadership,
overthrow an old regime, and remake their societies in ways that moved onlookers
around the world.
International Political Science Review (2006), Vol 27, No. 1, 73–92
DOI: 10.1177/0192512106058635 © 2006 International Political Science Association
SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi)
A quarter of a century later, Iran in 1979 often seems the “last” of the great
revolutions in a more profound sense. Many political scientists, historians, and
sociologists suspect revolution in general has become a thing of the past. We live
in a climate of globalization and the apparent triumph of liberal modernity. It
seems unlikely any society will again be violently reconstructed, root and branch,
in an upsurge of revolt. That need not imply that all major social and political
change is over. Even those who assume revolutions have passed foresee upheavals
and restructuring in the decades to come. But the changes they have in mind are
not supposed to hinge on revolutions in the old sense. If one pushed today’s
China watchers to imagine the future collapse of the authoritarian regime in
Beijing, for instance, most would describe something like the “velvet revolution” of
1989 in eastern Europe. The liberal middle class will bring pressure to bear, and
the repressive apparatus will crumble with few if any shots fired. The reforms of
the past two decades will culminate in China’s entry to the world of liberal
democracies. Even if the process plays out more turbulently than in East Germany
and Czechoslovakia, even if a few cadres end up swinging from lamp posts outside
Zhongnanhai, such turbulence will not amount to revolution. China’s political
and social structure will most likely keep more continuity than it loses. Or take the
more intense, antiliberal revolutionary pressures afoot in the world today. Few
social scientists expect any Islamist radical movement to win power and repeat the
Iranian experiment of 1979. Such movements may cause strife, and may bring
down the odd dictator or dynasty. But they will have little chance to carry through
a wholesale remaking of any state in the Islamic world. Even in the unlikely event
that they came to power here or there, pressure against “terrorist havens” or even
outright intervention by western powers would leave such revolutions stillborn.
The assumptions swirling around these specific scenarios may or may not be
right, but I do not want to take them apart here. They are united by a broader
theme: the dismissal of revolution as irrelevant in this century. Such dismissal
comes from many quarters. It comes as no surprise that those who speak for the
prevailing power structures take this assessment for granted. Take as one example
the US National Intelligence Council’s recent report, Mapping the Global Future,
which projects alternative scenarios for 2020. Its writers expect the global capitalist
economy to keep momentum, leading in the most optimistic scenario to broad
economic growth and further liberalization. The perils that most exercise them
hardly rise to the level of revolution. Global poverty, ethnic conflicts, and other
challenges are one-dimensional, not system-threatening. Western powers will have
to step in now and then to put out fires, but the fires will mainly burn the people
closest to them. Even truly global challenges such as the AIDS pandemic and the
risk of bioterrorism have to do more with suffering along the way to a liberal
hereafter than with the destination itself. They also argue that geopolitical rivalry
is less likely to lead to a great-power war than at any time before. The rise of China
and India raises questions mainly about the pace and smoothness of their inte-
gration into the world system, not the fact of integration. The authors’ worst-case
scenario, dubbed “The New Caliphate,” means turbulence and terrorism through-
out the Islamic world, with a more centralized transnational leadership and a
growing popular support base, but probably not the control of territory by a
revolutionary state (National Intelligence Council, 2005). From this fairly typical
vantage point, no real threat exists now, or is likely to exist in this century, to the
overall structures of late modernity worldwide.
On the surface, even those who do not share such analysts’ affection for present
74 International Political Science Review 27(1)
To continue reading
Request your trial