Locating Authority in the Global Political

Economy
Abstract:
Nature of authority in the global pol
economy
Rules governing intl commercial relations,
w/c today form part of the juridical
conditions of global capitalism, location and
structure of political authority are argued to
be historically specific
Significance of the private corporate power
in the construction of the global political
economy and hegemonic authority relations
changing nature of authority in the generation
and enforcement of international commercial
norms.
It argues that these norms, known as the law
merchant (lexmercatoria)or private international
trade law, are essential to the historical
constitution of the global political economy
although their role is obscure and little
understood by students of international relations.
This obscurity is argued to be significant for at least two
reasons.
First, the article posits that the law merchant is
so foundational that it is both a constitutive
element of global capitalism and an attribute of
the capitalist order (Wood, 1981; Cutler, 1995)
- The law merchant is a crucial mediator of
domestic and global political/legal orders
- The law merchant thus forms part of the
juridical foundations of global capitalism.
Second, the paper argues that the prevailing
ontological, epistemological ,and ideological
orientations in the study of international
relations and international law render this
foundation invisible and thus limit our
understanding of the nature of authority in the
global political economy(Cutler,1997)
- An examination of the historical evolution
of the law merchant reveals a dialectical
movement in the consolidation and
expansion of corporate power.
- This movement parallels the consolidation
of state power and capitalism in the nationstate and the subsequent transnational
expansion of capitalism beyond the nationstate

Robert Cox, the article adopts a Gramscian

approach and identifies material capabilities,
ideas, and institutions as three categories of
forces that interact to produce a historical
structure or bloc that constitutes global authority
at a given time(Cox, 1981,reprinted1985:218)
Problematizing the notion of "authority" in the
global political economy and shows that the
location and structure of legitimate authority are
not obvious or self-evident
The medieval law merchant operated to support
a predominantly private commercial order,
generating merchant laws and institutions that
operated outside the local political economy of
the period.
However, with the establishment of the state
system and the gradual emergence of nationally
based capitalist activity, the law merchant
disappeared, becoming part of states' domestic
legal orders.
There it was neutralized of political content by
distinctions between "public" and "private"law.
As a body of "private" law, the law merchant
came to be regarded as apolitical and neutral in
operation and in effect
the law merchant is being reconfigured and
reconstituted as a "handmaiden" of transnational
capitalism, for it reaches both inside the state
and outside to connect local and global
political/legal orders.
The analysis thus links authority and hegemony
and places the law merchant at the nexus
between economics and politics, private and
public activities, and local and global political
economies
the article concludes that the obscurity of the
law merchant and private authority create both
analytical and normative grounds for adopting
an historical materialist approach that
incorporates
national,
subnational
and
transnational influence

The problematic Nature of Global Authority

authority: both elusive and indispensable

concept, linked to central issues of pol
philosophy and the social sciences