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The eye of power: the politics of world modeling

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BremerStuart A.. Simulated Worlds: A Computer Model of National Decision-Making. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977.
Global Modelling Reappraised. Special Issue of Futures, Vol. 14, No. 2. London: Butterworth, 041982.
GuetzkowHarold and ValadezJoseph J., eds. Simulated International Processes: Theories and Research in Global Modeling. Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1981.

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Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2009

Richard K. Ashley
Richard K. Ashley
Affiliation:
Associate Professor of Political Science at Arizona State University, Tempe.
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International Organization , Volume 37 , Issue 3 , Summer 1983 , pp. 495 - 535
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Copyright © The IO Foundation 1983

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References

Thoughts developed in this piece have benefited considerably from discussions at the July1980 Conference on Large-Scale Global Modeling, Wissenschaftszentrum, Berlin. The article itself has benefited from the comments, suggestions, and criticisms offered by Peter Katzenstein and an anonymous referee on an earlier draft.

1. Meadows, Donella H., Meadows, Dennis L., Randers, Jergen, and Behrens, William K. III, The Limits to Growth (New York: Universe, 1972)Google Scholar.

2. Deutsch, Karl W., “On World Models and Political Science,” Publications Series of the International Institute for Comparative Social Research, Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin (1978), p. 1Google Scholar.

3. Guetzkow, Harold, “Six Continuing Queries for Global Modelers: A Self-Critique,” in Guetzkow, and Valadez, , Simulated International Processes, p. 333Google Scholar.

4. Clark, John and Cole, Sam with Curnow, Ray and Hopkins, Mike, Global Simulation Modeling (New York: Wiley Interscience, 1976), p. 6Google Scholar; Gilette, R., “Hard Sell for a Computer View of Doomsday,” Science 175 (10 03 1972), pp. 1088–1092CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Forrester, Jay, World Dynamics (Cambridge, Mass.: Wright-Allen Press, 1971)Google Scholar.

5. Quoted in Gilette, “Hard Sell.”

6. World modeling has contributed to and afforded reference points for a continuing dialogue among such figures as Kahn and Wiener, Falk and Mendlovitz, Ehrlich, Hardin, and Heilbroner of the United States; Schumacher of the United Kingdom; Kothari of India; Herrera and associates at Fundación Bariloche in Argentina; Galtung of Norway; Tinbergen of the Netherlands; Dumont of France; Kaya and associates of Japan; Kosolapov, Modrzhinskaya, and Stephanayan of the Soviet Union; and many others. A constructive review of controversies pertaining to world modeling is Alker, Hayward R. Jr and Tickner, Ann, “Some Issues Raised by Previous World Models,” in Deutsch, Karl W. et al. , eds., Problems of World Modeling (Cambridge, Mass.: Ballinger, 1977)Google Scholar.

7. Gramsci, Antonio, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, ed. and trans, by Hoare, Quintin and Smith, Geoffrey Nowell (New York: International, 1971)Google Scholar.

8. See Meadows, Richardson, and Bruckmann, , Groping in the Dark, pp. 20–21Google Scholar, Table 1.

9. See, e.g.,Marcuse, Herbert, “Industrialization and Capitalism in the Work of Max Weber,” in Negations: Essays in Critical Theory (Boston: Beacon Press, 1968)Google Scholar; Habermas, Jürgen, Towards a Rational Society, trans, by Shapiro, Jeremy (London: Heinemann, 1970)Google Scholar, especially the article “Technology and Science as Ideology”; Foucault, Michel, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (London: Tavistock, 1970)Google Scholar, and The Archaeology of Knowledge (New York: Pantheon, 1972)Google Scholar.

10. For discussions of these themes see Marcuse, “Industrialization,” and Habermas, Towards a Rational Society.

11. Pierre Bourdieu uses the term doxa to refer to a social condition wherein “there is a quasi-perfect correspondence between the objective order and the subjective principles of organization.…” Under these conditions, he writes, “the natural and social world appears self-evident.” See his Outline of a Theory of Practice, trans, by Nice, Richard (London: Cambridge University Press, 1977)Google Scholar.

12. Useful reference points in this connection are Habermas, “Technology and Science,” and Theodore Adorno et al., eds.,The Positivism Dispute in German Sociology, trans, by Adey, G. and Frisby, D. (New York: Harper, 1976)Google Scholar, especially the exchange between Habermas and Hans Albert.

13. Ibid. See also Habermas, Jürgen, Knowledge and Human Interests, trans, by Shapiro, Jeremy (London: Heinemann, 1971)Google Scholar, and “A Postscript to Knowledge and Human Interests,” Philosophy of the Social Sciences 3 (1975)Google Scholar.

14. Habermas's position, a later contribution to the so-called Positivismusstreit in West German sociology, represents a broadening of critical theory's attack on positivism to include the influential perspective of Karl Popper. Part of the controversy centers on the term “positivism” itself. Popper, on the defensive, insists on a “quite specific and precisely defined sense” of the term, and then suggests that it does not apply to him: “I have fought against the aping of the natural sciences by the social sciences, and I have fought for the doctrine that the positivistic epistemology is inadequate even in its analysis of the natural sciences which, in fact, are not carefully generalizing from observation as is normally believed, but are essentially speculative and daring; moreover, I have taught, for more than 38 years, that all observations are theory-impregnated, and that their main function is to check and refute, rather than to prove, our theories. Finally, I have not only stressed the meaningfulness of metaphysical assertions and the fact that I am myself a metaphysical realist, but I have also analysed the important historical role played by metaphysics in the formation of scientific theories” (quoted in Giddens, Anthony, ed., Positivism and Sociology [London: Heinemann, 1974], p. 18Google Scholar). As Giddens writes (p. ix), “The word ‘positivist,’ like the word ‘bourgeois,’ has become more of a derogatory epithet than a useful descriptive concept, and consequently has been largely stripped of whatever agreed meaning it may once have had.” Thus I shall try to refer only to “liberal positivism” as a specific form characterized by the commitments mentioned here. Extremely useful critical overviews of the controversy appear in Alker, Hayward R. Jr, “Logic, Dialectics, Politics: Some Recent Controversies,” in Alker, , ed., Dialectical Logics for the Political Sciences, vol. 7 of the Poznan Studies in the Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1982)Google Scholar; Radnitzky, Gerard, Contemporary Schools of Metascience, 3d enl. ed. (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1973)Google Scholar; and Bernstein, Richard, The Restructuring of Political and Social Theory (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976)Google Scholar. See also Shapiro, Michael, Language and Political Understanding (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981)Google Scholar.

15. A definition in terms of these commitments is largely due to Giddens, Positivism. But see also Alker, “Logic, Dialectics, Politics”; Radnitzky, Contemporary Schools; and Bernstein, Restructuring. On consensus versus correspondence theories of truth see Habermas, Jürgen, “Wahrheitstheorien,” in Fahrenbach, H., ed., Wirklichkeit und Reflexion (Pfullingen: Neske, 1973)Google Scholar. The anonymous and undated English translation of “Theories of Truth” that I have seen was provided by Hayward R. Alker Jr.

16. See O'Neill, John, ed., Modes of Individualism and Collectivism (London: Heinemann, 1973)Google Scholar. For a recent exposition of related issues-flawed by the authors' (excepting Giddens and perhaps also Berger and Offe) mistaken presupposition that functionalism exhausts the serious alternatives to methodological individualism-see the pieces by Elster, JonCohen, G. A., Giddens, Anthony, Van Parijs, Philippe, Roemer, John, and Berger, Johannes and Offe, Claus, in Theory and Society 11 (07 1982)Google Scholar. Papers by Hayek and Popper in the O'Neill volume make clear the political liberal concerns behind and animating the appeal for methodological individualism in the social sciences. The exchange of papers in Theory and Society is noteworthy insofar as it makes clear the affinity between methodological individualist and theoretical utilitarian points of view (a methodological principle for the former is an ontological premise for the latter).

17. For a similar position see Alker, Hayward R. Jr, “On Cybernetic Hierarchies in Sociocultural Change,” paper presented at the Xlth World Congress of the International Political Science Association, Moscow, U.S.S.R., 08 1979Google Scholar.

18. Groping in the Dark, p. 199.

19. Ibid., p. 268.

20. Future, p. 6.

21. Groping in the Dark, pp. 84–85. Many of these same concerns animated work on the so-called Bariloche world model. See Herrera, Amilcar, Scolnik, Hugo et al. , Catastrophe or New Society? A Latin American World Model (Ottawa: International Development Research Center, 1976)Google Scholar. Explicitly responding to the parochial “developed world” perspective of World3, the Bariloche modeling group has taken positions that, methodologically and epistemologically, represent radical challenges to the predominant point of view of world modelers discussed here. See especially Groping in the Dark, pp. 142–65, where representatives of the ASDELA Group of the Candido Mendes University, Rio de Janeiro, respond to a questionnaire circulated to all major world modeling groups. Their answers stand in sharp contrast to those supplied by other modeling teams.

22. Future, p. 48.

23. Future, chap. 1.

24. This is an explanation from a point of view that I shall later be calling “communitarian.” Quite evidently, it departs radically from a utilitarian point of view, which simply presupposes the necessity of-and sees no need to problematize or account for–the privacy of the individual acting unit and its economic decisions.

25. (New York: Dutton, 1974).

26. The problem of documentation in world modeling research is very significant. Donella Meadows writes, “[Global models'] documentation should be (1) clear to both analysts and laymen, (2) easily available, and (3) timely. Not one global model, including our own, has met all three of these documentation conditions; most have met none of them. This lack of documentation is a disgrace. No other supposedly scientific discipline would permit such irresponsible reporting” (Groping in the Dark, p. 245). Measured against these demanding standards, Hughes's effort performs fairly well (although the real test of documentation is: does the documentation permit one to reconstruct and actually run the model?). I do not mean to attack his effort by holding it up to standards he did not intend to meet.

27. World Modeling, p. 29.

28. Ibid., especially chap. 3.

29. Mesarovic, Mihajlo et al. , Theory of Hierarchical, Multi-Level Systems (New York: Academic Press, 1970)Google Scholar.

30. World Modeling, p. 31, emphasis added.

31. Ibid., pp. 30–34.

32. Ibid., p. 31.

33. Ibid., p. 32.

34. Ibid., p. 32. Hughes writes: “… [R]ather than a single effort to close these upper-strata loops, it has been found more productive to proceed incrementally. Specifically, WIM has increasingly closed loops which represent societal and political processes in individual aspects of lower strata. For instance, initially the loop which alters fertility patterns in the society was completely open and only scenarios affected fertility patterns. More recently WIM relies upon a relationship between income levels of the society and the pattern of fertility. This loop implicitly represents the change in values and decisions regarding family size which occurs as family incomes rise.”

35. Ibid., pp. 188–89.

36. See Habermas, “Theories of Truth.”

37. See Guetzkow, Harold, “Long-range Research in International Relations,” American Perspective 4, 4 (1950), pp. 421–40Google Scholar.

38. Simulated International Processes, p. 332.

39. Forrester, Jay W., “Global Modelling Revisited,” Futures 14 (04 1982), p. 103CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

40. John M. Richardson Jr., “A Decade of Global Modelling,” ibid., p. 139.

41. Simulated International Processes, p. 341.

42. Ando, Albert et al. , eds., Essays in the Structure of Social Science Models (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1963)Google Scholar.

43. Simulated International Processes, chaps. 7 and 8.

44. Ibid., p. 344.

45. Ibid.

46. This theme requires considerable elaboration. For now, I simply follow Habermas to offer the undefended interpretative hypothesis: what was primarily decisive in the evolution of SIP was not so much a fit between the simulations and an objective (pseudo-objective) reality but the anticipation that each evolutionary step, viewed as a statement about the world, could be defended as true, truthful (sincere), appropriate to the circumstances, and comprehensible. That is, each step was undertaken in the anticipation that it somehow held out the promise of a freely arrived at consensus spanning all parties and joining their descriptive understandings of, and normative stances toward, their world.

47. Bremer, , Simulated Worlds, p. 4Google Scholar.

48. Ibid., p. 5.

49. Guetzkow, and Valadez, , Simulated International Processes, p. 8Google Scholar.

50. Ibid., p. 355.

51. See Bremer, , Simulated Worlds, chap. 2, especially pp. 39–54Google Scholar.

52. See Giddens, Anthony, Central Problems in Social Theory (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, chap. 2.

53. Forrester, , “Global Modelling Revisited,” pp. 95–96Google Scholar.

54. As I discuss later, this is a “communitarian” perspective on international politics—a position pioneered by Karl Deutsch in postwar internationalist scholarship.

55. Groping in the Dark, p. 2.

56. Meadows, of Dartmouth College, was trained in biophysics and is principal author of Limits to Growth. Richardson, a political scientist who worked on the Mesarovic-Pestel world model, is with the Center for Technology and Administration of The American University. Bruckmann “majored in seven different fields, ranging from engineering to economics, at five universities”; he is on the staff of IIASA.

57. Forrester, “Global Modelling Revisited.”

58. “Modellers and Politicians,” pp. 122–28.

59. Groping in the Dark, p. ix.

60. Ibid., p. xix.

61. Ibid., p. viii.

62. Ibid., p. 290.

63. Ibid., p. 288.

64. Ibid., p. 291.

65. Popper, Karl, The Open Society and Its Enemies, vol. 2 (London: Routledge, 1966), p. 98Google Scholar.

66. Shapiro, , Language and Political Understanding, p. 2Google Scholar.

67. All references are to the (John) Bowring edition of Bentham's, Collected Works, vol. 4 (New York: Russell & Russell, 1971)Google Scholar.

68. See Michel Foucault, “The Eye of Power,” in Foucault, , Power/Knowledge, edited by Gordon, Colin (New York: Pantheon, 1980), pp. 152–53Google Scholar. As will quickly become evident, my reading of Bentham is indebted to Foucault. I borrow the title of this article from Foucault.

69. Bentham, , Collected Works, 4: 40Google Scholar.

70. Ibid., p. 40, emphasis in original.

71. Ibid., p. 40–41, emphasis in original.

72. Ibid., p. 44–45, emphasis in original.

73. Foucault, , “Eye of Power,” p. 148Google Scholar.

74. Bentham, , Collected Works, 4: 39Google Scholar.

75. Foucault, , “Eye of Power,” pp. 156Google Scholar, 155.

76. Bentham, , Collected Works, 4: 38Google Scholar.

77. Deutsch, Karl, The Nerves of Government: Models of Political Communication and Control (New York: Free Press, 1966), pp. 251–52Google Scholar.

78. Foucault, , “Eye of Power,” p. 152Google Scholar.

79. Ibid., p. 152.

80. On the long evolution of this epistemic shift, see Hirschman, Albert O., The Passions and the Interests: Political Arguments for Capitalism before Its Triumph (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977)Google Scholar.

81. See Foucault, , “Eye of Power,' p. 146Google Scholar.

82. On the concept of internal relations, as opposed to external relations, see Oilman, Bertell, Alienation: Marx's Conception of Man in Capitalist Society, 2d ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976)Google Scholar, chap. 1 and appendices I and II. Any attempt to discern a Panopticon principle at work in the structuring of capitalist life would mention (1) the institutionalized expectation of an autonomous, objectively given market existing and operating independently of normatively laden social communication, including political discourse; (2) the reduction of market transactions to a single metric having its basis in the (presupposed) universal interconvertibility of human labor; (3) the subordination of economic practice to a putatively objective technical-rational logic of action; (4) the commitment to the ontological privacy and objectivity of the “possessive individual” and his or her economic interests; and (5) the commitment to the pluralistic conception of the state as an anonymous entity having no “personality” or interests of its own but finding its meaning and social import in its unique abilities to unite (or manage conflicts among) contesting, always partial vantage points and interests and to organize and orient collective action in ways transcending particular interests, thereby solving technical dysfunctions.

83. This feature of Bentham's design may not be immediately evident, especially from the brief description given here. It was not even immediately evident to Bentham in his earliest correspondence on the subject. Yet it was in just this feature that Bentham would later take special delight. As his argument proceeds Bentham discovers, to his evident glee, that he can dispense with many of the physical contraptions. At times Bentham is not even sure whether one really needs to have a physical presence in the all-seeing tower-just the self-disciplining recognition that the gaze might exist is enough to assure the principle's rule.

84. See, for example, Alker, Hayward R. Jr, “From Political Cybernetics to Global Modeling” in Merritt, Richard L. and Russett, Bruce M., eds., From National Development to Global Community: Essays in Honour of Karl W. Deutsch (London: Allen & Unwin, 1981)Google Scholar.

85. Hechter, Michael, “Karl Polanyi's Social Theory: A Critique,” Politics and Society 10, 4 (1981), p. 399CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

86. Nerves of Government, pp. 120–21.

87. See the works cited in note 14 above.

88. See Habermas, “Theories of Truth.”

89. See also Hayward R. Alker Jr., “Global Modeling Alternatives” (mimeo, n.d.).

90. See Macpherson, C. B., The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1962)Google Scholar. See also Tully, James, A Discourse on Property (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1980)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

91. See Herrera, Scolnik, et al., Catastrophe or New Society?

92. In the words of Max Horkheimer, immanent critique confronts “the existent, in its historical context, with the claim of its conceptual principles, in order to criticize the relation between the two and thus transcend them” (The Eclipse of Reason [New York: Seabury Press, 1974], p. 182)Google Scholar. See also Held, David, Introduction to Critical Theory (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), especially pp. 183–87Google Scholar.

93. Held, , Introduction, p. 187Google Scholar.

94. While the perspectives I am calling “communitarian” have much in common, especially as contrasted with utilitarian points of view, a comparison of leading communitarian thinkerslike Habermas, Foucault, and Bourdieu-discloses important differences. See, e.g.,Habermas, Jürgen, Communication and the Evolution of Society, trans, by McCarthy, Thomas (Boston: Beacon Press, 1979)Google Scholar; Foucault, Michel, Language, Counter-Memory, Practice, ed. by Bouchard, D. F. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977)Google Scholar; and Bourdieu, Outline.

95. Arend Lijphart, “Karl W. Deutsch and the New Paradigm in International Relations,” in Merritt and Russett, From National Development. See also the Markovits and Oliver article in the same volume—a comparison of Deutschian and Durkheimian positions.

96. See, e.g., his “On World Models and Political Science.”