Embedden Liberalism

Cam Hainey   

Professor Shirk

International Politics

November 5^th, 2017

Why It’s Hard For Embedded Liberalism Could Occur

            In “The Principles of Embedded Liberalism: Social Legitimacy and Global Capitalism” by Abdelal and Ruggie they argue that new regulatory bodies are needed, there needs to be international agreements and governments need to be more interventionists. I believe that their ideas that globalization has done a lot of good for people but ultimately needs to be regulated is a good idea. I believe that more good could come from that than negatives. However I don’t think that could ever happen and here’s why. First off, there are too many moving parts; such as every country needs to be on board with the regulations that are made and as we have seen it isn’t easy to get every country to agree with every aspect of worldwide regulations.  Abdela and Ruggie’s idea that cooperation will be essential for this new era of globalization is great, and they are right, cooperation will be essential and it’s the only way that something like this will happen. However they say the United States isn’t in a position to force its emergence, I think that this is apart of the problem of too many moving parts. For this idea to work and cooperation to happen, I think that a powerful state like the United States need to force other countries to agree with what they are supporting. You can’t create a new era of globalization regulations without the support and backing of superpower states. These states can help bring states together which helps to reduce the number of “moving parts” which make it easier to get something like this to happen.

Second, this idea of getting every country to agree with the same regulations assumes that every country apart of this committee is a rational thinking, non-corrupt country. If every country is rational thinking and can see the big picture and agrees to these regulations, then Abdela and Ruggie’s idea would be great and could work today. However, there are countries that are corrupt and have outside influences to the decisions that they make. In addition to that, there are countries who are going to be self motivated, they want to do what is best for their state and sometimes seeing the big picture and committing to that is much harder to accomplish because of that.

Third, big business influences governments greatly, in any government, the elected officials need the support from some big businesses to get the financial support to help them get elected. If governments begin to go against what the big business want then they will begin to lose financial support and could have trouble being re-elected, the areas which they represent could lose out if the businesses begin to make layoffs or leave the area. Resulting in the members of these areas to be against the government or that particular individual. Or big business could begin to support someone new who supports them and will do what they want when it comes to helping them continue to make money.  

Ultimately I think that creating new regulations and creating a new era of globalization would be a great idea, the benefits would be worldwide and could help millions and could solve many problems. However ultimately like I have said, I just have a hard time believing that something like this could happen because big business has too much power and control in state governments.