The New Realism: Perspectives on Multilateralism and World Order. Edited by Robert W. Cox. New York: St. Martins Press/United Nations University Press, 1997. 275p. $55.00 cloth.

David Skidmore, Drake University

This book is one in a series of publications produced under the auspices of a wide-ranging program on the future of multilateralism sponsored by the United Nations University from 1991 to 1995. According to program coordinator and volume editor Robert Cox, the projectís principal aim was to explore the prospects for creating "a new multilateralism built from the bottom up on the foundations of a broadly participative global society (p. vii)."

Cox contrasts the "structural-critical" approach adopted by contributors to the present volume with the "problem-solving" theories that dominate mainstream studies of multilateralism. Scholars working in the regime theory tradition implicitly adopt a normative preference for the status quo while seeking to resolve the short-term coordination problems faced by national authorities in the management of multilateral cooperation. Cox and his fellow contributors to The New Realism instead prefer a more critical stance toward existing multilateral institutions and focus on the conditions that might allow for long-term structural change in the direction of a more just and democratic world order.

The book is organized into three parts. Part I, labeled "Realities," explores the underlying structural trends that are driving the evolution of multilateralism in the present world order. Three of the four essays in this section complement one another nicely. Collectively, these contributions examine the declining competence of the modern state as the central manager of social, political and economic life. As territoriality becomes an increasingly tenuous foundation for political authority, states face growing challenges from an increasingly diverse array of social forces.

Susan Strange notes that economic globalization has enhanced the bargaining power of internationally mobile capital vis á vis state authorities while also complicating the task of managing increasingly integrated national economies. These realities have compelled states to cede growing authority to non-state actors, including transnational business firms, inter-governmental organizations and professional associations.

This reshuffling of authority relations takes place, however, within what Cox later refers to as a "dominant transnational class (p. 247)." The diffusion of power away from traditional states in favor of actors and institutions that can better perform certain system-maintaining functions poses no fundamental threat to the hierarchies of privilege that characterize the existing international order. Multilateral institutions may gain autonomy at the expense of states, but the international system remains firmly controlled by elite interests.

Yet, as Rodolfo Stavenhagen points out, globalization also gives rise to an array of anti-systemic forces that could eventually provide the basis for a more genuinely bottom up vision of multilateralism. Stavenhagen posits the emergence of a nascent grassroots civil society at the global level. As capital has become more mobile, popular forces have likewise been compelled to seek alliances beyond existing national borders. Transnational social movements have begun to cohere around issues such as environmental decay, human rights, labor conditions, the status of indigenous peoples and alternative development. Although it would be wishful thinking, as Stavenhagen recognizes, to suppose that these popular movements yet have the power or organization to overturn the institutions of the present international order, their very existence suggests that top down models of globalization will not go unchallenged.

Rounding out this group of essays, James Rosenau explores the dialectic between globalizing and localizing forces in the contemporary international system. The latter include ethnic, religious, familial and other sub-national groups who seek to obtain a greater degree of autonomy or control over their lives from outside forces. Rosenau speculates about whether both globalizing and localizing tendencies might derive from common micro-foundations. More concretely, he argues that both sets of forces challenge the authority of the nation-state in favor of some sort of alternative "imagined community (p. 63)," whether sub-national, supra-national or transnational in scope.

Together, these three articles highlight the fragility of the existing state system and suggest the possibility of a stronger and less state-centric multilateralism in the future. As some scholars have suggested, perhaps the world is moving toward a multi-level polity in which authority is parceled out more on the basis of functional specialization than territoriality. What these contributions underline, however, is that the character of any restructured multilateral order will be hotly contested among three sets of forces: (1) top down globalizers, (2) bottom up globalizers, and (3) localizers.

Cutting across all three of these categories are gender cleavages. V. Spike Petersonís contribution to Part I provides a valuable overview of how gender discrimination remains built into the very fabric of political and economic life in modern societies. Yet neither Peterson nor the other authors adequately explore how gender issues can be successfully integrated with the models of globalization and multilateralism discussed elsewhere in the book.

Part II of The New Realism , titled "Perspectives," examines how various non-Western cultural traditions approach the topic of multilateralism. Separate chapters discuss Islamic (Hassan Hanafi), Indian (Satish Chandra) and Chinese (Hongying Wang) perspectives. All three offer rich accounts of how the intellectual traditions of each civilization have regarded cooperation across political and cultural boundaries. In refreshing contrast with some recent works, these authors resist the temptation to treat civilization clusters as homogenous and unchanging wholes. Instead, these essays emphasize the intellectual diversity within each culture and the important role that interactions among distinct civilizations have played in the evolution of each.

In comparing civilizations, two important common patterns stand out. In each civilization, including the West, centralizing and monist tendencies compete with decentralizing and pluralistic tendencies. Centralizing forces often gain the upper hand during periods when members of a civilization face severe competition or threat posed by outside forces. A second cleavage common to each of these civilizations pits realists, who tend to adopt a pragmatic approach to dealing with outsiders, against idealists, who typically defend visions of cultural purity against perceived threats of contamination.

Given these variations within each cultural complex, it is clear that attitudes toward multilateral cooperation are nowhere constant or monolithic. Each civilization has passed through periods of greater openness and others featuring greater closure. Rather than blanket generalizations, it is necessary to undertake detailed study of the conditions under which different cultures either embrace or resist multilateralism.

Part II also contains perhaps the most original essay in the volume. Kinhade Mushakoji explores the relationship between multiculturalism and multilateralism. The global hegemony of the Western world over the past century and more has shaped the boundaries of legitimate political discourse worldwide. The institutional forms of the modern European state have been universally adopted or imposed throughout the post-colonial world. The language of modern political and economic life revolves around rational-formal concepts such as sovereignty, the market, development, progress, nationalism and human rights. The design, procedures and language of existing multilateral organizations reflect these same characteristics. Western discourse is treated as universal and timeless.

Mushakoji argues that the triumph of rational-formalism, itself a by-product of the Western-sponsored modernization process, has "occulted" or hidden the survival of traditional ways of thinking and acting in much of the non-Western world. At the overt level, traditional thought and language are disparaged and treated as illegitimate. Yet beneath the veneer of modernization, many people continue to find that traditional discourses make better sense of the substantive realities that shape their lives. The result is a yawning gap between the formal principles of political life and the tradition-guided practices of ostensibly modern institutions.

This gap between universalistic forms and culturally pluralistic realities hampers the effectiveness of existing multilateral institutions. A consensual facade glosses over substantive differences and promotes miscommunication. Peacekeeping operations or development projects that neglect "occulted" realities are doomed to failure. Mushakoji calls for a multilateralism that acknowledges not only a "pluralism of interests" but also a "multicultural pluralism of values (p. 246)." This would require that previously marginalized discourses be accorded legitimacy and a voice.

Part III, titled "Dynamics," is mostly disappointing. Chapters on the United States relationship to the United Nations (Harold Jacobson), multilateralism and the former Soviet bloc (Mihály Simai) and Africa (Fantu Cheru) are unremarkable. Bjorn Hettneís chapter on regional responses to globalization does, however, merit comment. Hettne discusses the various motivations and forms that comprise recent movements toward regional integration and cooperation. Hettne contends that some forms of regionalism offer a reasonable middle ground between the limitations of the nation-state as an economic unit and the homogenizing and undemocratic characteristics of an unfettered global market economy. His preferred brand of regionalism would center around a "benign" mercantilism designed to preserve a degree of diversity and autonomy among groups of like-minded nations.

Robert Coxí conclusion focuses on the social polarizing consequences of globalization. A new multilateralism is needed that can steer this process toward more just and democratic outcomes. Cox is pessimistic about efforts to restructure existing multilateral institutions through piecemeal reform. Instead, he argues that a reconfigured multilateral order will follow the ripening of popular mobilization and the creation of a genuinely grassroots civil society at the global level.

It is perhaps this insistence on radical restructuring rather than incremental reform that explains the volumeís strange neglect toward existing multilateral institutions and the struggles that surround them. Popular movements have shown a surprising ability to shame or pressure governments, international organizations and large corporations into embracing progressive multilateral initiatives in recent years. The global treaty banning landmines, the World Bankís shift toward "greener" lending policies, the spread of micro-banks that provide credit to the poor, and the public pledges by several high-profile corporations to renounce reliance upon child labor and Third World sweatshops are all products of an increasingly effective grassroots style of transnational politics. Pitched at a higher level of abstraction, much of the volume (excepting Stavenhagenís brief chapter) fails to analyze the lessons and implications of these hopeful instances of bottom-up transformation.

This chief value of this volume is that it reflects a welcome emphasis on social forces, rather than the distribution of state power or institutional structure, as the principle determinants of future multilateralism. Mainstream inquiries typically seek to explain variation in the degree of multilateral cooperation or the efficiency of international institutions. Cox and his colleagues instead focus on the content of multilateralism, or, in other words, the particular purposes, interests and values served by multilateral institutions and practices. While problem-solving theories emphasize quantitative measures of cooperation, a structural-critical approach steers attention toward the qualitative features of a given international order.

Still, The New Realism suffers from a number of unresolved tensions. While some authors, such as Cox, stress materialist factors, others, such as Mushakoji, accent ideational factors, such as cultural values and beliefs. It is left unclear how these fundamentally differing perspectives can be stitched together. A number of contributors extol the need for a more multicultural form of multilateralism. Yet this raises the question of whether the enshrinement of cultural diversity means abandoning the search for common values and universal rights across civilizations.

The bookís most puzzling feature is its title. Few of the contributors to the present volume could rightfully be termed realists, old or new. Cox himself is more an intellectual descendent of Gramsci than of Morgenthau. If labels matter, then The New Realism is an inexplicably misleading choice.

These complaints aside, the book as a whole makes a welcome contribution to our understanding of the long term forces shaping the future of multilateralism. The New Realism raises questions too often ignored in mainstream research and several of its contributors offer fresh insights that deserve further thought and research.