请将“In fact, what some have interpreted as the retreat of the state is an internal realignment of power within the state apparatus to privilege the institutions, offices, and agencies in closest contact with the centers of the global economy, while subordinating or disempowering those offices and agencies that draw support primarily from domestic constituencies.13 The offices of presidents and prime ministers, treasuries, and central banks now assume the leading role in state policy, while ministries of commerce, labor, health, welfare, and education, among others, are being subordinated ideologically to the tenets of international competitiveness and further disempowered through budget and staffing reductions. Cox (1992, 31) does not follow up on this observation except to say that the internal realignment of state apparatuses “needs much more study.”14 In fact, Aglietta (1979, 29) suggests in a similar vein that the internal realignment of state power, the internal restructuring of the state apparatuses, and their systematic articulation with the institutions of global capitalism now requires us to conduct new “internal analyses of the political field such as those of Ralph Miliband, which study in detail the organization of the state apparatuses, their penetration by the forces that represent social groups, and the relationships that form within them.”

In this formulation, the internationalization of the nation-state entails an internal restructuring of the state apparatus and a realignment of its attachments to various class forces, but its policies continue to be generated by the systemic requirement that it manage the contradiction between (now) global accumulation and domestic legitimation (O’Connor 2002, xiii–xviii). The function of the nation-state has not been diminished as a result of globalization, although the form of state intervention in the economy and society has changed considerably. As Leo Panitch (1994, 69) puts it: “The state now takes the form of a mediator between the externally established policy priorities and the internal social forces to which it also still remains accountable.”

In this regard, Panitch (1994, 63) argues that there has been a tendency among globalization theorists “to ignore the extent to which today’s globalisation both is authored by states and is primarily about reorganising, rather than by-passing, states.” Panitch (1994, 63) contends that “far from witnessing a by-passing of the state by a global capitalism, what we see are very active states and highly politicised sets of capitalist classes.”15 Indeed, Panitch (1994, 64) identifies nation-states as the authors of a new global regime, which now:

defines and guarantees, through international treaties with constitutional effect, the global and domestic rights of capital. This process may be understood in a manner quite analogous to the emergence of the so-called laissez-faire state during the rise of industrial capitalism, which involved a very active state to see through the separation of polity from economy and guarantee legally and politically the rights of contract and property.16

Ian Robinson articulates the same concept in his analysis of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) by noting that many international trade agreements, including the WTO, go far beyond the effort to merely liberalize trade between nations, or construct an international division of labor, as previously characterized the world capitalist system (Schirm, 2002, Chaps. 3–5; Cf. Wallerstein, 1980). These new treaties between nation-states prohibit discrimination between national and foreign owned corporations (so-called national treatment) and even create new corporate property rights such as guarantees of intellectual property rights, the repatriation of profits, and extended patent protection, among others. In this respect, the more recent trade agreements do not merely liberalize trade between countries, but “function as an economic constitution, setting the basic rules governing the private property rights that all governments must respect and the types of economic policies that all governments must eschew” (Robinson 1993, 2).17 These new private property rights typically go well beyond those previously established in most countries, although they frequently mirror U.S. property and contract law and, thus, effectively extend the U.S. Constitution’s 5th and 14th Amendment protections to virtually the entire globe (Hartmann, 2011).





The Internationalization of the State: A Case Study


Mexico provides an excellent illustration of how nation-states act as the agents of globalization and how trade agreements like NAFTA give constitutional effect to the new global and domestic rights of “foreign” capital. Historically, Mexico relied heavily on import-substitution and managed trade policies that emphasized industrialization, infrastructure development, and domestic economic diversification. Mexico’s emerging industries were protected from import competition through high tariffs, quotas, and licensing, while the costs of protection were borne by established economic activities, particularly the agricultural and oil sectors (Babb, 2001, Chaps. 4–5; MacLeod, 2004, Chap. 2; Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development [OECD], 1995; OECD, 1996, 9). These policies were sustained by the state-owned monopoly in oil and petrochemical products, which allowed the government to use super-profits from high worldwide oil prices in the 1970s to modernize infrastructure, subsidize other sectors of the economy, and to subsidize low food prices. While this policy established an industrial base and allowed Mexico to modernize much of its economy, the policy reached its limits in the small size of the country’s domestic market, the growing inefficiency of many state enterprises, a large trade management bureaucracy, and the lack of international competitiveness in protected sectors of the economy. The government’s ability to subsidize inefficient and noncompetitive sectors of the economy, as well as low food prices for citizens, collapsed with the decline in oil prices during the 1980s. These pressures were magnified by the Latin American debt crisis, which allowed the United States and the International Monetary Fund to exert considerable pressure on the Mexican government for structural adjustment.

In response, the Mexican government began “unilaterally” liberalizing its trade and investment regimes in the early 1980s under the Presidency of Miguel de la Madrid in a bid to attract new foreign direct investment. President Miguel de la Madrid (1981–1988) initiated the liberalization of Mexico’s trade and FDI regimes as part of the government’s solution to the 1982 debt crisis (Gestrin and Rugman, 1996, 65–70). The debt crisis emergency softened political resistance to policy change and Madrid used this window of opportunity to initiate a sustained and far-reaching program of economic reform. Madrid’s short-term strategy for dealing with the debt crisis included a large devaluation of the peso, a reduction of real wages in the public sector, and a privatization program that reduced the number of state-owned enterprises from 1,214 to 468 during his presidency (MacLeod, 2004, 70–78). These policies were designed to restore investor and business confidence by increasing exports and reducing the federal budget deficit.

De la Madrid’s reforms explicitly broke with Mexico’s history of import substitution and rejected managed trade as a theoretical basis for a viable model of long-term economic development. However, it was not until 1984 that the de la Madrid Administration reached a consensus that trade restrictions were an additional obstacle to further economic recovery (Babb, 2001, Chap. 7; Ramirez de la O, 1993, 60–86). In 1979, 60% of the total value of imports to Mexico was subject to licensing requirements and by December of 1982 this coverage had been extended to 100%. However, this policy was softened in December of 1984 when licensing requirements were eliminated for 17% of the total value of all imports to Mexico. After several months of negotiations, Mexico joined the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) in June of 1986 and, as part of its accession commitments, Mexico eliminated import licensing requirements on all but 27.8% of the value of its imports. In addition, the trade weighted average tariff on imports was reduced from 16.4% to 13.1% and tariff dispersion was reduced.

President de la Madrid also challenged Mexico’s highly nationalist view of foreign direct investment (FDI), which is partly ensconced in the Mexican Constitution (petroleum and land) and partly in federal legislation. In particular, President de la Madrid’s abandonment of the import substitution regime was accompanied by modifications to the 1973 Law to Promote Mexican Investment and Regulate Foreign Investment. The 1973 Foreign Investment Law limited foreign equity in Mexican firms to a maximum of 49%, subject to exceptional case-by-case rulings by the National Foreign Investment Commission (NFIC). In 1984, President de la Madrid issued new “Guidelines for Foreign Investment and Objectives for Its Promotion,” which stipulated that foreign ownership shares up to 49% in private firms would no longer need federal authorization, but simply had to be registered with the government (excluding numerous sectoral exemptions). The new guidelines also included a list of sectors where foreign investors could hold shares in excess of 49% subject to approval by the NFIC. The new guidelines did not guarantee automatic approval, but the change was designed to encourage the expectation that approval would be expedited in the preapproved areas. Importantly, the new Guidelines did not change the 1973 law, but only altered its administration and implementation (Ramirez de la O, 1993, 67).18”翻译为中文