The Role of Business in Transforming the Political Organization of the World

Having moved to the global level, capitalist political economy today is turning into a dominant way of governance in world politics, undermining the state-centrist model that has been developing since the time of the Westphalian peace treaties. As a result, we are witnessing a Schumpeterian phenomenon of “creative destruction” i.e., destruction of old accompanied by creation of new. The current world politics is dominated by the logic of destruction, and this destruction is not limited to changing interstate relations, as it is represented in most studies, but involves at the same time at least three levels of political organization of the world, forming a synergy effect: the level of the Westphalian world order; the level of interstate relations; the level of the national state. The Westphalian ststem is being blurred largely by transnational business activity. Entrepreneursinnovators form capitalism of co-participation. This capitalism rests not on interest, but on values and social ties that unite people in networks. Examples of such capitalism are various forms of sharing, peer-topeer networks, wiki-platforms, block-chain technology. Capitalism of sharing unites in- formational networks and human potential, the main resource of such capitalism is precisely human capital, human trust and social relations. The sharing is being transmitted to the international political sphere, supplementing the principle of the Westphalian sovereignty with the potential of eventually replacing it. At the same time, practices are being introduced into the political organization of the world from other projects of the political organization of the world, in particular Islamic (Islamic banks, hawala money transfer system, etc.). 

1. Avant D. (2004). The Privatization of Security and Change in the Control of Force. International Studies Perspectives, (5). 153–157. URL: https://www.socsci.uci. edu/~davant/pub/8_avant_isp.pdf (Accessed: 18.12.2017)

2. Bekkin R.I. (2017). Islamic economy in the “Islamic state”? MGIMO Review of International Relations, 6 (57). 132-142. DOI 10.24833/2071-8160-2017-6-57-132-142

3. Buzan B., Lawson G. (2015). The global transformation: history, modernity and the making of international relations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 421.

4. Coase R. (1937). The nature of the firm. Economica, (4). 386-405.

5. Coen D. [et al]. (2010). Political Science: Perspectives on Business and Government. Coen D., Grant W., Wilson G. (eds.). The Oxford handbook of Business and Government. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 9-34.

6. Fujita M. (1998). The Transnational Activities of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises. Dordrecht: Kluver. 257.

7. Foucault M. (2003). Government (the idea of state interest and its genesis). Filosofsko-literaturnyi zhurnal Logos, (4-5). 4-22.

8. Fukuyama F. (2011). The origins of political order: From prehuman times to the French Revolution. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 608.

9. Harmes A. (2006). Neoliberalism and multilevel governance. Review of International Political Economy, 13 (5). 725-749.

10. Hirschman A.O. (1977). The Passions and the Interests: Political Arguments for Capitalism before Its Triumph. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 192.

11. Huntington S.P. (1991). Democracy’s Third Wave. The Journal of Democracy, (2). 12–34.

12. Kaspe S.I. (2008). Centers and hierarchies: spatial metaphors of power and Western political form. Moskva: Moskovskaya shkola politicheskikh issledovanii. 320.

13. Kuznetsov A.V. (2014). Transnational corporations in the world. Mirovoe i natsional’noe khozyaistvo, 2 (29). URL: http://www.mirec.ru/2014-02/transnacionalnye-korporacii-v-mire (Accessed: 15.12.2017)

14. Lebedeva M.M., Kharkevich M.V., Kasatkin P.I. (2013). Global governance. Moskva: MGIMO. 220.

15. Lebedeva M.M. (2009). World politics: development trends. Polis. Politicheskie issledovaniya, (4). 72-83.

16. Lebedeva M.M. (2010). The technology of negotiations. Moskva: Aspekt Press. 192.

17. Lebedeva M.M. (2012). Modern trends of world development: a new quality of the world. Lebedeva M.M. (ed.). Metamorphoses of world politics. Moskva: MGIMO. 9-32.

18. Lebedeva M.M. (2016). The system of political organization of the world: “Per- fect Storm”. MGIMO Review of International Relations, (2). 125-133.

19. Lowery, D. (2007). Why do organised interests lobby? A multi-goal, multi-level theory of lobbying. Polity, (39). 29–54.

20. Melkumyan K.S. (2014). The FATF in Countering the Financing of Terrorism: the Specificity of the Approach. MGIMO Review of International Relations, 1 (34). 88-96.

21. Nebol’sina M.A., Nikitin A.I. (2016). Prospects for international regulation of private companies. MGIMO Review of International Relations, (2). 145-160.

22. Powell W. (1990). Neither Market nor Hierarchy: Network forms of Organization. Research in Organizational Behavior, (12). 295-336.

23. Reshetnikov G.O., Khokhlova E.S. (2012). Small and medium business: influence on the trends of world political development.

24. Lebedeva M.M. (ed.). Metamorphoses of world politics. Moskva: MGIMO. 258–289.

25. Rudenkova D. E. (2015). Lobbyism in the institutions of the European Union. Mezhdunarodnye protsessy, 13 (1). 68-80. DOI 10.17994/IT.2015.13.40.5

26. Schumpeter J. (1975). Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. New York: Harper. 464.

27. Sheingate A. D. (2003). Political entrepreneurship, institutional change, and American political development. Studies in American Political Development, 17 (2). 185-203.

28. Shumpeter I. (2007). The Theory of Economic Development. Capitalism, socialism and democracy. Moskva: Eksmo. 864.

29. Slaughter A.-M. (2009). A new world order. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 368.

30. Strange S. (1999). The West failure system. Review of International Studies, 25 (3). 345-354.

31. Teschke B. (2003). The myth of 1648: class, geopolitics, and the making of modern international relations. London: Verso. 322.

32. Vygotskii L.S. (1982). Thinking and speaking. A Collection of Works. Vol. 2. Moskva: Pedagogika. 504.

33. Waltz K. (1979). Theory of International Politics. Reading, Mass: Addison-Wesley Pub. C. 256.

34. Wendt A. (1999). Social theory of international Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 452.

35. Wilks St. (2013). The Political Power of the Business Corporation. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. 315.

36. Williamson O.E. (1975). Markets and Hierarchies: Analysis and Antitrust implications. New York: Free Press. 286.

37. Williamson O.E. (1985). The economic institutions of capitalism. New York: Free Press. 468.

38. Zingales L. (2017). Towards a Political Theory of the Firm. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 31 (3): 113-130. DOI: 10.1257/jep.31.3.113

39. Zinov’eva E.S. (2009). Russian interests in the field of Internet governance. Mezhdunarodnye protsessy, 7 (19). 101-108.