Richard Sklar, professor emeritus of political science at the University of California at Los Angeles kicked off a three-day conference on International Capitalism and the Future of Development last night when he spoke about "Postimperialism: Concepts and Implications."
The conference includes 14 presentations from scholars from around the country concerning the concept of postimperialism, said Government Professor David Becker, who organized the conference.
Becker said postimperialism examines the effect of international capitalism on the world.
The conference will cover postimperialism in many areas of the world including Latin America, Africa, North Africa and Europe, he said.
Increasingly, issues of development and change in every aspect of international political economy must be understood in the light of the form of an emerging international capital class, Becker said.
"The most visible evidence of the existence of such a class is the tremendous growth of multinational corporations in numbers, size and countries of origination," Becker said. "MNCs today characteristically approach the situation and competitive requirements from a totally global perspective."
"This approach to issues of international political economy, challenges the prevailing tendency and discipline to prioritize the state and to view other institutions merely as a part of an environment that shapes decision-making by states," Becker added.
Sklar discussed the importance of corporate responsibility in his keynote address.
"In postimperial thought, the Doctrine of Domicile signifies a corporate predilection to respect the policies and values of host governments," Sklar said.
"However, good corporate citizenship is not the same thing as good behavior according to current international standards," he said.
"In the absence of moral restraint, opportunistic cooperation with a corrupt government may result in grievous harm to the host country," he continued. "By itself, the Doctrine of Domicile does not imply that social responsibility will be an invariable rule of corporate conduct."
"The doctrine of postimperialist thought could be extended to embrace international codes of conduct," Sklar said.
