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| Centre and periphery or multipolar economic order?中心与边缘或多极化的经济秩序？ 从一个订单到另一个的过渡的引用现在是常见的，因为是试图提供一个理论框架，可以充分代表新的结构。随着新的大型和不断增长的经济体的出现推动了这一转变，扩大了全球的经济竞争领域，就必须制定一个新的范例，能够捕捉到新世界的复杂性。联邦储备委员会主席本·伯南克在他在堪萨斯市的年度经济研讨会上的开幕词中含蓄地表达了一个新的范式的必要性。他评论伯南克指中心和外围之间的传统区分的19世纪的模式，其中核心出口厂商在商品交换的边缘，看到它不再能够捕捉当前经济秩序的复杂性，为越来越多的世界制造能力是现在新兴市场的发现。7 4本纳科特和罗伯特E.利坦的方向，金融治国（纽黑文，CT和伦敦：耶鲁大学出版社，2006），页3。5苏珊奇怪，“什么理论？在疯狂赚钱”的理论，对全球化和区域化，华威大学的研究中心工作论文18 / 98，1998，6页。6另一种观点认为，在国际关系的现实主义者，一些经济学家顽强，是国家权力的侵蚀被夸大了，变化体现在全球化一词已不亚于对面的学校说：奇怪，什么理论？“，17页。7本伯南克，'全球经济一体化：什么是新的，什么不是？'，就职演说，联邦储备银行堪萨斯市第三十年度经济座谈会上，杰克逊洞，怀俄明，25月2006。The rapid transformation of the world economic order and the widespread perception that some structural and irreversible changes are under way have focused debate on the likely shape of the new order. References to the transition from one order to the other are now common, as are attempts to provide a theoretical framework that can adequately represent the structure of the new one. As the transition is driven by the emergence of new large and growing economies, widening the global economic playing field, it becomes necessary to devise a new paradigm that can capture the complexity of the new world. The need for a new paradigm was implicitly expressed by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke in his opening remarks at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City’s Annual Economic Symposium in 2006. In his comments Bernanke refers to the traditional distinction between centre and periphery— ‘the nineteenth-century pattern, in which the core exported manufactures to the periphery in exchange for commodities’—and sees it as no longer able to capture the complexity of the current economic order, ‘as an increasing share of world manufacturing capacity is now found in emerging markets’.7 The direction of 4 Benn Steil and Robert E. Litan, Financial statecraft (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2006), p. 3. 5 Susan Strange, ‘What theory? The theory in mad money’, Centre for the Study of Globalisation and Regionalisation, University of Warwick, working paper 18/98, 1998, p. 6. 6 ‘The alternative view, tenaciously held by realists in international relations and some economists, is that the erosion of state power has been exaggerated and that the changes encapsulated in the term globalisation have not been nearly as great as the opposite school asserts’: Strange, ‘What theory?’, p. 17. 7 Ben S. Bernanke, ‘Global economic integration: what’s new and what’s not?’, inaugural speech, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City’s Thirtieth Annual Economic Symposium, Jackson Hole, Wyoming, 25 Aug. 2006. New power centres and new power brokers 487 International Affairs 84: 3, 2008 . 2008 The Author(s). Journal Compilation . 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd/The Royal Institute of International Affairs capital flows is another striking aspect of the breakdown of the core–periphery paradigm. ‘In the nineteenth century, the country at the center of the world’s economy, Great Britain, ran current account surpluses and exported financial capital to the periphery. Today, the world’s largest economy, that of the United States, runs a current account deficit, financed to a substantial extent by capital exports from emerging-market nations.’ Bernanke’s reference to the centre–periphery model is striking as it brings back into the debate an analytical tool that was particularly popular in the 1960s. Besides suggesting that the rapid transformations and economic development of some countries and regions pose the sort of issues and challenges that were common in the 1960s,8 the revival of the centre–periphery model provides some familiar points of reference for defining the world economic order. However, while it tells us what the current order is not, it does not tell what it is. In its ‘classic’ formulation, the centre–periphery model maintains that the world economic system is organized around two poles that are linked in an asymmetric power relation, where the centre controls and influences the periphery. Pre-eminent in manufacturing, the centre exports financial capital and high-value manufactured goods to the periphery in exchange for commodities and low-value goods.9 For example, in the years following the Second World War the United States supported the exports of the fast-growing economies of Western Europe and Japan through a relatively open market for imports of foreign goods, despite asymmetric treatment of US exports in Europe and Japan. An implicit bargain was struck, according to which these countries accepted a hegemonic system that gave the United States an expanding role in foreign policy.10 In recent years the model has been extended to include, in the centre, all countries with open capital markets and market-determined exchange rates— such as the United States and the euro-zone—and, in the periphery, all countries with relatively closed capital markets and managed exchange rates—such as China, developing Asia and oil-exporting countries.11 In this formulation the centre issues the main international reserve currency and keeps it stable in terms of its purchasing power over tradable goods and services—as the dollar was in the 1950s and 1960s, and as it has become once more from the mid-1990s into the new millennium.12 8 Such as, for example, persistent imbalances, undervalued currencies and US involvement in unpopular and expensive military operations. 9 The subordination of the periphery, moreover, extended to political issues. 10 See Benjamin J. Cohen, ‘Bretton Woods system’, in Routledge Encyclopedia of International Political Economy (London: Routledge, 2002), pp. 84–91; Paola Subacchi, ‘From Bretton Woods onwards: the birth and rebirth of the world’s hegemon’, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, forthcoming. 11 Michael P. Dooley, David Folkerts-Landau and Peter Garber, ‘An essay on the revised Bretton Woods system’, working paper 9971 (Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research, 2003). 12 Floating exchange rates are very much the product of financial maturity and the development of institutions and rules that allow policy-makers to follow stable monetary and fiscal policy without adhering to an external nominal anchor. See Michael D. Bordo and Marc Flandreau, ‘Core, periphery, exchange rate regimes and globalization’, working paper 8584 (Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research, 2001), p. 45. Countries in the periphery, which have always faced serious difficulties in floating, have pegged their currencies. Recent financial crises, especially that in Asia in 1997, have shown that pegging may be the best solution in the absence of deep domestic financial markets and of domestic policies and credible institutions that could create a domestic anchor. Paola Subacchi 488 International Affairs 84: 3, 2008 . 2008 The Author(s). Journal Compilation . 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd/The Royal Institute of International Affairs Then countries in the periphery willingly peg their currencies to the key currency in order to anchor their own price levels more reliably,13 control their exchange rates and avoid any currency appreciation that would undermine the competitiveness of their exports, while accumulating safe, low-yield securities issued by the centre. The periphery’s reserve accumulation is an important source of finance for the centre’s current account deficit, keeping interest rates in the centre lower than they would otherwise be.14 The distinction between centre and periphery remains a powerful concept, but does not capture the complexity of the current economic order. Today a growing share of world manufacturing capacity is found in emerging market economies, which increasingly supply developed economies with manufactured goods. Unlike the past when the centre—Britain—exported capital and had a current account surplus, now the world’s largest economy, that of the United States, runs a current account deficit. This is financed to a substantial extent by capital exports from emerging market nations. More importantly, the US current account deficit has undermined the dollar’s ability to provide exchange rate stability to countries that peg their currencies to it.15 Since 2002 the dollar has been depreciating in tradeweighted terms, breaking a 20-year pattern of appreciation and starting an unprecedented long decline. Finally, the centre–periphery model bundles together under the same label similar outcomes that have different causes—for instance, current account surpluses from countries with different paths of economic development, such as China and commodity-exporting countries. Similarly, it does not make any provision for developed countries or regions that have floating currencies— such as Europe and Japan—but lack the ability to finance deficits with their own currencies. The complexity of today’s world economy, with a changing cast of actors and an expanding playing field, suggests a shift to a multipolar structure where many players interact with one another.16 This is a visually powerful representation which captures the new prominence of countries that previously played a marginal role—on the ‘periphery’. In this sense, a multipolar structure could be regarded as the logical replacement of the centre–periphery model. However, in its current formulation such a theoretical framework is unsatisfactory for a number of reasons. First, it does not address the issue of how power is distributed. Second, it implicitly assumes that economic power is correlated with the size of a single country’s economy, using the size of GDP—actual or potential—as a proxy for economic power. Third, it uses the national state as the reference unit in the global distribution of economic power. Reasoning in terms of national economies 13 Ideally, the centre country should have no exchange rate objectives of its own, and so be able to follow an independent monetary policy focused solely on stabilizing its own price level. 14 Dooley et al., ‘An essay’, p. 18. 15 The US current account deficit has, however, recently narrowed, falling from just over $810 billion in 2006 to $745 billion in 2007. 16 Emerging countries such as China prefer multipolarity, which promotes their status and minimizes the role played by the United States. See Robert A. Kapp, ‘The big crap shoot’, China Economic Quarterly 12:1, March 2008, p. 27. |
