Coping with Globalization

Cross-National Patterns in Domestic Governance and Policy Performance

Steve Chan, James R. Scarritt

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781136346033
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: International Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This volume probes the interactions between domestic and international political economies, and inquires about their effects in different regional and national contexts. The contributors seek to identify persistent patterns as well as changing trends in regard to these important questions of theory and policy by applying systematic cross-national analyses.

1

Globalization, Soft Hegemony, and Democratization: Their Sources and Effects

STEVE CHAN AND JAMES R. SCARRITT

INTRODUCTION

It is often said that in an age of globalization, national and local leaders and populations become increasingly subject to forces outside their domestic jurisdiction and popular control. The Westphalian tradition of territorially based and juridically autonomous states has supposedly come under the strain of a changing global economy and cultural shift. These changes challenge the capacity of national leaders to formulate and implement authoritative policy and that of people to hold them accountable for doing so. The massive and rapid exodus of speculative foreign capital was the proximate cause of the so-called Asian economic flu of the late 1990s. Adverse foreign reactions to domestic repression, whether in Tiananmen Square, Chechnya or Chiapas, illustrate possible constraints on domestic authoritarianism. Recent attempts by members of the European Union to influence the composition of Austria’s coalition government (specifically to seek the exclusion of the Freedom Party with its neo-Nazi sympathies) furnish still another example of the putative influence of external political, economic, and cultural forces on domestic governance. World Trade Organization (WTO) regulations prohibit local communities from deciding to divest from countries that do not meet these communities’ standards of democracy, wages and working conditions, or environmental protection.

In this volume, we seek to understand the extent, as well as the limits, of the influence of globalization processes. Unlike much of the existing scholarship, however, we rely on quantitative approaches to further this understanding. Case studies can offer profound insights. We choose instead to search for cross-national patterns. In particular, we seek to understand the nature and extent of global (or regional) influences on domestic political change and policy performance (such as economic growth, inequality, democratization, and the provision of basic human needs) and the domestic conditions that mediate this influence. This empirical undertaking is found mainly in subsequent chapters, although it begins in an illustrative way in a later section of this chapter. Our introduction begins with an exercise in conceptual clarification.

WHAT IS GLOBALIZATION?¹

Webster’s dictionary defines ‘globalization’ as the act or process ‘to make worldwide in scope and application’. According to Randall and Theobald (1998: 235–42), Mittelman (1999: 5–7), Holton (1998) and Held et al. (1999), globalization has three central dimensions: economic, cultural, and political. The economic dimension is often viewed as having causal primacy. It involves ‘the organization of production and consumption of goods and services at the global level … achieved mainly through transnational corporations’ (Randall and Theobald, 1998: 235). It involves substantial increases in trade and foreign investment. The cultural dimension has been, by and large, the result of ‘developments in communication and information technology’ (Randall and Theobald, 1998: 237). It reinforces the economic dimension through creating a consumer culture. Finally, the political dimension includes global awareness and networking around issues, ‘a proliferation of international or governing regulatory organizations and of international regimes’, and ‘a trend toward the globalization of social classes and social movements’ (Randall and Theobald, 1998: 239–40) and, one might add, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), including those at the grass roots. In sharp contrast to definitions that conceive of globalization as a single smooth or cumulative process, these dimensions and their various aspects are in dialectical relationships with one another in which universalizing pressures trigger particularistic responses and vice versa. States, IGOs (intergovernmental organizations), NGOs, social movements, and local communities are not prisoners trapped in an intractable web of economic and cultural globalization. Including all of these at least partially contradictory processes in the concept of globalization makes it difficult to test the overall impact of this general phenomenon. Subsequent sections of this chapter, as well as the chapters that follow, test aspects of this impact, and we lay out a research agenda in the concluding section of this chapter for a more inclusive test.

Francis Fukuyama’s (1992) philosophic celebration of the demise of totalitarian ideologies and the triumph of liberal ideals, and Samuel Huntington’s (1991) historical analysis and Larry Diamond’s (1999) more conceptual analysis of the ‘third wave’ show the increasing popularity of at least formal democratic principles and institutions in the world. The breakdown of trade and investment barriers and the concomitant rise of international capital and multinational corporations provide seemingly indisputable evidence of economic interdependence and globalization. ‘Sovereignty at bay’ (Vernon, 1971) appeals to many as an apt description of the political and economic reality that they, as public officials or private citizens, have to address – for better or worse. Few who suffered through East Asia’s recent financial turmoil will doubt the impact of international capital, in the form of both investment funds and foreign debts, on their country’s macroeconomic performance and their personal or corporate asset values (Jomo, 1999). Likewise, recent foreign interventions in Kosovo, Haiti and Iraq should convince even the most skeptical observers that international conventions and norms regarding aggression, ethnic cleansing, and human rights increasingly challenge the Westphalian tradition which buttresses each state’s assertion of exclusive domestic jurisdiction. Of course, we are also told that advances in information technology and modern telecommunication have made the world ‘a smaller place’. As inhabitants of this ‘global village’, we increasingly share the same thoughts, values, and habits – a cultural convergence, if you will.

Yet globalization is a dialectical rather than a cumulative process. Available statistics provide compelling evidence that the economic distance between the developed and underdeveloped economies and that between the privileged and disadvantaged classes are increasing rather than diminishing. The Matthew principle – the rich get richer, the poor poorer – underscores not only the widening income gap but also mounting discrepancies in life chances (such as access to education, health care and, yes, personal computers and the internet). From this perspective, globalization seems to be more of a codeword for the expanded opportunities of the more affluent segments of national and international society rather than a process that enriches all through accelerated growth. To those who are less fortunate (such as those poor Indonesians and Mexicans who had to bear the brunt of austerity programs), the same processes look more like a ‘race to the bottom’.

Just as economic disparities and differences in life chances are not diminishing for the people of the world, one may also question whether the world has reached the ‘end of history’ for contending political ideologies. That various authoritarian regimes have met their demise does not in itself constitute proof that the relevant mass publics or elite circles have assimilated the democratic ethos. Although many countries have adopted formally democratic institutions in recent years, it remains quite problematic whether their political culture has undergone a concomitant change to promote and secure those civic values and political norms (e.g. social trust, civic mindedness, norms of diffused reciprocity, tolerance for dissent) that are critical for deepening, consolidating and sustaining democratic politics. Just recall that even in an established democracy such as the United States, voters have been known to reject the idea of affirmative action for minorities and equal-rights protection for gays and lesbians.

Accordingly, democratization as a globalization process, as the term is commonly used, seems to refer more to the wider geographic spread of certain forms of government, and less to the deeper cultural and institutional transformation of the relevant polities, what Diamond (1999: 49–60) calls the globalization of hollow democracy. As such, the political reforms of the recently proclaimed democracies in Eastern Europe and Latin America are fragile and vulnerable to reversal. There are ominous signs of political alienation and cynicism among the established democracies. The United States, for example, has suffered a sharp and persistent decline in the social capital and civic ethos necessary for securing democracy (Putnam, 1995).

Significantly, qualitative and quantitative studies of political change seem to agree that external influences are much less significant than internal ones – to the extent that they can be conceptually and operationally separated – in shaping a country’s democratization (e.g. Hollifield and Jillson, 2000; Bratton and van de Walle, 1997). This view receives support from Ray’s (1995) quantitative assessment of the relative role played historically by systemic-level and state-specific forces in motivating regime transformation. For each period studied by him, the former turned out to be much weaker than the latter. For instance, systemic-level forces were responsible for only 2.7 per cent (1865–1905), 1.4 per cent (1905–45), and 0.6 per cent (1945–85) of the changes in democratic scores for those countries included in his worldwide sample – compared to, respectively, 17.8 per cent, 29.3 per cent, and 28.5 per cent accounted for by country-specific forces. These results do not encourage optimism about the efficacy of external intervention to promote democratization and direct our attention instead to domestic conditions and processes.

Naturally, there is also the highly contentious matter of whether ideals such as liberal democracy are truly universal values shared by all people, or whether they are in fact parochial concerns shaped by different historical circumstances and perhaps employed to disguise and advance national or class interests. It does seem, however, that many proponents of liberal democracy as a globalization force tend to be more concerned about the protection of people’s negative rights – that is, their right to be free from government interference and oppression – than about their positive rights – that is, the proposition that people everywhere are entitled to be free from the deprivations caused by hunger, disease, and poverty. A concern for procedural rights is often not matched by a comparable interest in substantive rights – in distributive justice if you will. However, a deeper democratization would probably result in a greater concern with substantive rights and thus a challenge to aspects of economic globalization.

Normative agreement or objection aside, the description of democratization as a globalization process seems unwise and unwarranted because it is likely to give short shrift to the cross currents pointing to the ‘clash of civilizations’ (Huntington, 1993). Islamic fundamentalism, Asian Confucianism, ethno-political violence in some African and Latin American countries, and the revival of ethnic and religious animosity in Eastern Europe belie the suggestion of universal values and political convergence. It is often difficult to tell whether the ‘globalists’ are advancing an ideal or offering a description or prediction; the distinction between ‘ought’ and ‘is’ (that is, between value and factual statements) tends to be all too often blurred.

There is of course a great deal of evidence suggesting certain convergences of popular and consumer culture. Children in Western Europe have increasing access to Netscape and CNN, those in Eastern Europe learn English at school, those in China are attracted to Coca-Cola and McDonald’s, those in Latin America form fan clubs for Star Trek and Star Wars,and Michael Jackson and Michael Jordan become cultural icons for African children living in even very remote villages. One tends, however, to confuse rather than clarify matters when one refers to these phenomena as forces of globalization when they in fact represent signs of America’s cultural hegemony. It is also a bit disingenuous to showcase a military campaign conducted by a Western alliance in Kosovo – a campaign that sought deliberately to bypass the authority of the United Nations – as a cause advancing globalization and ‘world order’. Likewise, one wonders what analytical gains, and losses, follow when one attributes to international capital or international agencies such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank prominent roles as representing globalization without acknowledging the significance of US command of so many of the relevant financial, institutional and ideological assets, and its significant, if partial, control of the collective agenda.

The question can be put in another way. What value-added does one gain when one replaces pluralistic or state-centric views of international–domestic relations and a dialectical view of globalization with one that assigns particular importance to forces that are supposedly beyond the authority and power of states or other organizations, forces that are in some sense supposed to bring all the inhabitants of the world closer together – whether figuratively or literally? One may engage in ‘concept stretching’ when one combines a variety of heterogeneous phenomena and calls them by the same name (Sartori, 1970). One may choose to subsume under the concept of political participation nonviolent acts such as voting, making campaign contributions, attending rallies, writing to officials, and protesting, and violent acts such as rioting, plotting a coup, and joining a revolutionary war. But do the gains in connotative coverage justify the loss in denotative precision?

Globalization as a concept may imply the operation of powerful, impersonal, even natural, forces that are somehow independent of human agency. It also often implies some inevitable outcome regardless of our personal or collective preferences. As such, this perspective can shape subtly but profoundly the nature of not only academic scholarship but also social commentary and political discourse. Is one really to assume that the forces of globalization have nothing to do with statist, class or organizational agendas? Or is the truth of the matter closer to the other way round? That is, that ‘globalization’ forces are to a substantial degree produced by the actions and policies of states, MNCs (multinational corporations), social movements, and NGOs – the consequent pulling and hauling are the very substance of international relations and what statecraft is all about. Would it be more realistic to expect that states and NGOs in fact try to promote, bend, or forestall the forces of globalization even though, obviously, some are better at it than others? Is it not a big part of this game, if not the entire point, to shift onto others the burden of adjustment? Moreover, does not the nebulous term ‘globalization’ hide what is really happening – namely, a redistributive process that affects values, power, income, status, and life chances, a process whose consequences are hardly neutral for all concerned. Calling it ‘globalization’ may direct attention away from questions about national and organizational interests and responsibilities.

These points are illustrated by the controversy about the role of regionalism in globalization. Mittelman (1999: 111) asks ‘Is regionalism merely a way station toward neo-liberal globalization, or a means toward a more pluralistic world order in which distinct patterns of socioeconomic organization coexist and compete for popular support?’ His answer is that contemporary regionalism involves aspects of both of these directions due to the dialectical nature of what he calls the globalization syndrome. The varying regional impacts of globalization that are analyzed in subsequent chapters demonstrate the unevenness of economic globalization, but it is less clear that they demonstrate organized resistance to it.

WHO ADJUSTS?

If by globalization one means the increased flo...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Full Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Notes on Contributors
• List of Tables and Figures
• Foreword by Edward S. Greenberg
• List of Abbreviations
• 1 Globalization, Soft Hegemony, and Democratization: Their Sources and Effects
• 2 Globalization, Regimes, and Development
• 3 Is it a Small World after All? Globalization and Government Respect for Human Rights in Developing Countries
• 4 Electoral Institutions and Economic Performance in Africa, 1970-92
• 5 Responses to Economic Risk in Four ASEAN Countries, 1975-97
• 6 Re-Assessing the Relationship Between Globalization and Welfare: Welfare Spending and International Competitiveness in Less Developed Countries
• 7 Political Uncertainty and Speculative Attacks
• Index