DWA 227 · Authoritarianism in the Age of Globalization · Week 2 · Tue Sep 1 & Thu Sep 3

Contesting
Globalization

Three levels of analysis: structure, state, society

A framework for the week

Three levels of analysis

Level 1 · Structure — anarchy & the gold standard

Level 1 · Structure

Nineteenth-century civilization rested on four institutions. The first was the balance-of-power system… The second was the international gold standard… The third was the self-regulating market… The fourth was the liberal state.… Of these institutions the gold standard proved crucial; its fall was the proximate cause of the catastrophe. Polanyi, The Great Transformation (1944): 3

A framework for the week · Polanyi

The double movement

Marketizing movement (laissez-faire)

Goal — expand the self-regulating market; disembed the economy from social, political, and cultural institutions
Drivers — capital owners, financial institutions, free-market advocates
Methods — deregulation, free trade, privatization, less state intervention

Protective countermovement

Goal — re-embed the economy in social and legal limits; protect human life, nature, and productive enterprise
Drivers — workers, farmers, civic organizations, state regulators — across the political spectrum
Methods — labor law, environmental protection, social insurance, tariffs, central-bank controls

The trigger — fictitious commodities

“The commodity description of labor, land, and money is entirely fictitious.” — Ch. 6: 75–76

Labor — human life and activity. Unregulated: wage collapse, unsafe work, social decay

Land — nature. Unregulated: resource exhaustion, pollution, ecological collapse

Money — purchasing power and credit. Unregulated: speculation, business failure, unemployment

Level 1 · Structure — climate

Another factor curbing globalization is climate change. Extreme weather will increasingly upend logistics as ports flood, rails buckle, and airplanes are more frequently grounded by storms.… Policies designed to slow the planet's warming by cutting emissions are raising global transportation prices, incentivizing companies to manufacture goods closer to consumer markets. O'Neil, "The Myth of the Global," Foreign Affairs (Jul/Aug 2022)

Level 2 · The state — regional blocs

"The Rule of Three"

Level 2 · The state — after 2008

Since the 2008 financial crisis

3-to-1

new protectionist measures vs. liberalizing ones (Global Trade Alert)

2015

the WTO's Doha Round of talks "sputtered to a close"

2018

WTO Appellate Body unable to function — US has not approved new judges

Level 3 · Society

But the fount and matrix of the system was the self-regulating market.… Our thesis is that the idea of a self-adjusting market implied a stark utopia. Such an institution could not exist for any length of time without annihilating the human and natural substance of society. Polanyi, The Great Transformation (1944): 3

Level 3 · Society — Frieden's examples; Bryan's Cross of Gold, 1896

Cross of Gold

European farmers displaced by cheap New World grain — migration to the cities, and to the New World
July 9, 1896 — Bryan, 36, closes the Democratic platform debate over gold vs. free silver, Chicago
Nominated for president the next day, on the 5th ballot; lost to McKinley that November

You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns; you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold. William Jennings Bryan, Democratic National Convention, July 9, 1896

Level 3 · Society — fictitious commodities

Labor is only another name for a human activity which goes with life itself… land is only another name for nature, which is not produced by man… The commodity description of labor, land, and money is entirely fictitious. Polanyi, The Great Transformation (1944), Ch. 6: 75–76

Level 3 · Society — Equiano, 1789

Olaudah Equiano

By his own account, born c. 1745 in Essaka, an Igbo town in present-day Nigeria; kidnapped with his sister at age 11
Sold repeatedly; crossed the Atlantic as a child aboard a slave ship
Purchased his own freedom in 1766, for £40
Published The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano in 1789, timed to Parliament’s debate on the slave trade — among the first bestselling books published in English by a Black author, and a founding text of the British abolition movement
The birthplace claim is contested: historian Vincent Carretta has found naval and baptismal records suggesting a South Carolina birth — which Carretta reads as evidence of Equiano’s skill as a political writer, not proof the Narrative is false

Level 3 · Society — the auction block

“We were not many days in the merchant’s custody before we were sold after their usual manner, which is this:—on a signal given, (as the beat of a drum) the buyers rush at once into the yard where the slaves are confined, and make choice of that parcel they like best.”

“The closeness of the place, and the heat of the climate, added to the number in the ship, which was so crowded that each had scarcely room to turn himself, almost suffocated us.” Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano (1789), Ch. II

Level 3 · Society — 1999–2026

Coda · Xi Jinping, Davos, Jan. 17, 2017 — reframed

A structural read

Realism: agnostic about whether the market is open or closed, gold standard or not — concerned with the distribution of power among states
Davos, Jan. 2017 — days before Trump's inauguration, weeks after the Brexit vote

Whether you like it or not, the global economy is the big ocean that you cannot escape from. Xi Jinping, World Economic Forum, Jan. 17, 2017

Coda · Xi Jinping, Davos keynote, Jan. 17, 2017

But we should also recognize that economic globalization is a double-edged sword.

"Pursuing protectionism is like locking oneself in a dark room. While wind and rain may be kept outside, that dark room will also block light and air."

"It is not an inevitable outcome of economic globalization; rather, it is the consequence of excessive chase of profit by financial capital and grave failure of financial regulation." Xi Jinping, World Economic Forum, Jan. 17, 2017

Xi Jinping, Davos keynote, Jan. 17, 2017

>30%

"China contributed to over 30 percent of global growth every year on average" since the international financial crisis

China will keep its door wide open and not close it. Xi Jinping, World Economic Forum, Jan. 17, 2017

This week, mapped

Four texts, three levels

Text	Level(s)	Role
Polanyi (1944)	Structure → State → Society	Theorizes the cascade across all three
Frieden (2007)	Structure → Society	Historical case: the gold standard → the populist backlash
O'Neil (2022)	Structure + State	Climate and geography (structure); regional blocs (state policy)
Xi (2017)	Structure, realist reading	A state's move within great-power competition

Thursday · the two roles, per the syllabus

Connector and Applier

By Wednesday, 8pm: three questions framed in the context of the readings, about 300–500 words; roles alternate week to week. Graded complete/incomplete; two skips, no questions asked; no AI-generated text.

Connector

“Your job is to ensure a continuous semester-long conversation rather than a series of reviews of individual readings. Connect previous readings (and specific passages) to the current week’s readings. Your discussion questions should include at least three such connections. Construct a question that will stimulate discussion.”

Applier

“Apply the material assigned for the given week to real-world events (contemporary or historical, reported in reputable outlets). For each week, produce three such applications. Explain why and how the material applies. Your applications should stimulate discussion and even disagreement among your group members.”

Applier — one of this week’s three, worked

Announcing the April 2 tariffs — a 10% minimum on all countries, 34% on China, 20% on the EU — Trump said that “for decades, our country has been looted, pillaged … and plundered by nations near and far, both friend and foe alike” (Kurtzleben, NPR). Polanyi argues that a self-regulating market “could not exist for any length of time without annihilating the human and natural substance of society,” so society moves to protect itself (The Great Transformation, Ch. 1: 3). Here the protecting is done by a state, and NPR reports that Canada “has said it is prepared to impose its own retaliatory tariffs. So has the European Union.” Is state-against-state retaliation still Polanyi’s self-protection of society, or a different mechanism?

Thursday · in-class exercise — Spot the Applier

Which one is the Applier?

In your discussion group, 8 minutes: find the one genuine Applier question, and name which rubric line each of the other four fails. Then one group defends its pick.

Levitsky & Way, V-Dem, and Fukuyama describe political backsliding; Frieden describes an economic backlash that never fully resolved. Was Fukuyama's error about markets as much as regimes?
TSMC is building three fabs in Phoenix (~$65B, plus up to $6.6B in CHIPS Act funding) instead of expanding in Taiwan — a real case of O'Neil's regionalization. Is that market logic, or the same self-protective impulse Polanyi describes, applied by a state instead of a society?
The 2025 tariffs prove Polanyi was right about the gold standard.
How does O'Neil's regionalization data compare to the trade patterns Frieden describes for 1870–1914?
Like the gold standard, the 2025 tariffs raised consumer prices — Yale Budget Lab put the cost at $2,700–$3,400 per household a year (NPR).