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Globalization and the Changing
Logic of Collective Action
PHILIP G.CERNY
Globalization is purported to have many effects. In this article,
Philip Cerny argues that globalization is transforming states—
the basic units of the international political economy—in profound
ways. As the scale of markets widens and economic organizations
become more complex, Cerny posits, current states are becoming
insufficient to provide the range of public goods demanded by
their citizens. Rather than creating a single “super-state,” however,
he identifies a series of overlapping political arenas that are
developing at the local, intermediate, and transnational levels.
States continue to have great cultural force, Cerny concludes,
and will not soon disappear. However, they may suffer a crisis
of legitimacy.In both modern domestic political systems and the modern international system,
the state has been the key structural arena within which collective action has
been situated and undertaken, as well as exercising structural and relational
power as an actor in its own right. However, the state is being not only eroded
but also fundamentally transformed within a wider structural context. The
international system is no longer simply a states system; rather, it is becoming
increasingly characterized by a plural and composite—or what I [call]
“plurilateral”—structure. This transformation has significant consequences for
the logic of collective action. The word “globalization” often is used to represent
this process of change. Globalization is neither uniform nor homogeneous; its
boundaries are unclear and its constituent elements and multidimensional
character have not as yet been adequately explored. But by reshaping the
structural context of rational choice itself, globalization transforms the ways
that the basic rules of the game work in politics and international relations
and alters the increasingly complex payoff matrices faced by actors in rationally
evaluating their options....
... In the modern study of international relations, the state has constituted
the key unit of collective action, while the interaction of states has been the
very object of inquiry; similarly, in the domestic arena, the state has both
encompassed the political system and constituted a potentially autonomous
collective agent within that field.