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eastchance.com essays feature
Author: Roxana Georgiana Radu
Coping with globalization: political challenges and realities
Competition – this is the fundamental principle regulating the new world order, the one we call “globalized”. Beyond the excessively –used examples of Microsoft’s success, Al Queda’s extended terrorism and MacDonald’s worldwide reach, globalization affects profoundly the power balance at the highest level, altering at the same time our understanding of virtually all aspects of society. Once the initial enthusiasm regarding the role of supra-national organizations and of trans-national trade started to decrease, some of its consequences and collective fears reached the surface: is the nation-state an obsolete concept? How can the problem of continuously increasing social inequality be solved and what is the future of democracy?
Initially determined by the political changes taking place in the last 20 years, the new wave of globalization (since there are authors who place the first globalization wave between 1870-1914) we are confronted with at the present time makes each day more obvious its boomerang effect: it is now globalization that influences to the highest degree the everyday political decisions. In response to the great transformations at the end of 1980s and beginning of 1990s, such as the collapse of communism and the disintegration of the Soviet bloc in Europe, the rise of China and Japan as powerful competitors in the global economy, as well as the extensive adoption of neo-liberalist ideology around the globe, new actors, mainly non-state players, and new movements have acquired the power to reshape the traditional world order based on the sovereignty principle dating back to the 1648 Peace of Westphalia.
While globalization is believed to put a great emphasize on developing a world economic system in which foreign aid, foreign direct investment, transnational production or the relocation of economic activities outside the advanced industrial countries would bring about equality and social justice, it is the same process to be accountable for creating a more unstable world and flagrant unevenness, for stirring fundamental population movements, for rendering confuse the notion of “identity” or for giving a global dimension to terrorism. Together with the advantages of greater mobility and instant communication, new societal cleavages are born due to the knowledge gap and the mechanisms of community inclusion and exclusion.
From a political point of view, globalization challenges the very definition of the nation-state, questioning the influence domestic power can still exert in a world of mobile resources, with consequences ranging from urban transformation and international migration to the extension of drug trafficking, of AIDS or worldwide access to information. Whereas its economic role is reduced to the minimum, the state must comply with and adapt, either directly or indirectly, to supra-imposed institutional and policy reforms. A positive illustration in this sense is the unavoidable signing of the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper, as a precondition to establishing any financial terms with World Bank. On the other hand, some of the new implications are harder to be dealt with, such as implementing policies concerning migration, dislocation, integration in a multi-ethnic setting etc. What is more, it becomes extremely difficult to match the global market priorities with the national interests, especially in the public benefit. The state tends therefore, if responsive to its citizenry, to become a source of resistance to the growing political threats globalization poses. On the other hand, from an economic standpoint, the nation-state cannot anymore decide on international trade tendencies set by non-state actors and by the same token, breaking away from them is not a viable way out.
Furthermore, with the rise of anti-globalization movements, the politicians’ concern for the changes occurred in individual lifestyles, in addition to the transformations in the lives of communities and societies, increased likewise. In industrially-advanced societies, material well-being seems to override social justice to an extent never reached before, while social inclusion processes appear only in the light of cost-benefit calculations. However, since the attention shifted to the so-called “Third World countries”, these, too, started to develop according to the driving force of the global market. But what happened to the deep-seated values and beliefs in such an incessantly changing context? Given that they are not so easily adaptable and cannot be replaced at the same speed, the concept of “identity”, both individual and collective, becomes a mixture of superseded reference points, rendering more acute the individual need of belonging to a community that would point his place in the world.
Consequently, religious fundamentalism and ideological extremism are reinforced and globalization brings about the permanent threat of acquiring power by unconventional means. It becomes impossible to put an end to terrorism because in an era of constant flow of goods, services and capital across the national boundaries, it always strikes as an invisible enemy. Besides, the principle of competition seems to apply to insurgent movements as well, many claiming overlapping responsibility for the most atrocious attacks. Hence the political decisions taken under these new pressures by the international organizations or by the single states in order to fight against this backdrop have a different impact.
Rather than firmly strengthening the national cohesion, this phenomena, in fact, affects drastically the political mobilization. The adoption of bridging strategies that make the characteristics of the right, the left and the centre on the political spectre almost indistinguishable, together with the process of party “cartelization” (as described by Katz and Mair, 1993) results, on the part of the population, into a further-perceived knowledge gap and a deeper lack of trust in local political authority, the locus of power moving along these lines to the supra-national organizations. Nevertheless, as informal unions would risk lack of coordination and split of power, rigid, highly institutionalized blocs would be more likely to curtail the freedom of action.
To some degree, these possible outcomes push towards a deeper consideration of the prospect of belonging to a global community, which should be not only economically beneficial, but also consistent with the political values and beliefs. Subsidiary questions, as to whether the future of democracy can be jeopardized or regulatory mechanisms enforced to prevent that, remain to be answered in the years to come. Whatever the ultimate shape of the international system, it will largely depend on the dynamics of the globalization process.
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