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CIAO DATE: 2/99
Multidimensionality of Globalization, Environmentalism, and the New Transnational Social Forces
Department of International Relations and
the Center for Sustainable Development
University of Brasilia, Brazil
International Studies Association
40th Annual Convention
Washington, D.C.
February 16–20, 1999
Abstract
This article has three parts. In the first one I analyze the fundamental characteristics of the process of Globalization, as well as its multiple dimensions: military, economical-productive, financial, communicational-cultural, religious, affectionate-interpersonal, scientific-technological, population-migratory, ecological-environmental, epidemiological, police-criminal and political. In the second part I analyze the impact of the emergence and development of the multisectorial environmentalism on the sociopolitical alignments and on the formation of new transnational social forces: Conservative-globalists, Progressive-globalists, Conservative-globalist-sustainabilists, Progressive-globalist-sustainabilists, Conservative-nationalists, Progressive-nationalists, Conservative-nationalist-sustainabilists and Progressive-nationalists. In the third part, I analyze the redefinition and future of democracy, the problems about global environmental governance and I make some speculations about alternative futures of global governance.
1 - From the International to the Transnational System and the Multiple Dimensions of Globalization
In the second half of the 1980’s there has been an extraordinary intensification of the process of Globalization, which had started in the 1950’s, throughout the world. The years of 1989 (collapse of Eastern European Communism) and 1991 (end of the Soviet Union) concentrated that change. I point out bellow the main features of the Globalization process and its multiple dimensions. Even though this is a personal conceptualization and classification, the following authors have been inspiring: Rosenau 1990, North 1990, Guidens 1990, Caldwell 1990, Sand 1990, Fossaert 1991, Buzan 1991, MacNeill, Winsemius and Yakushiji 1991, Porter and Brown 1991, Stern, Young and Druckman 1992, Hurrel and Kingsburry 1992, Cairncross 1992, Kennedy 1993, Morin 1993, Brown 1995 and 1996, Commission on Global Governance 1995, Zolo 1995, Risse-Kappen 1995, Held 1995 and Werksman 1996.
First, the world compacts itself progressively and the distance becomes gradually closer, even though among deeply diverse realities. It is fundamental to emphasize that Globalization is not homogenization. The limits between national and international increasingly blur and the internal-external relationship becomes more and more porous.
Second, there is a movement from the International System to the Transnational-bifurcated-global-system. The International System was state-centric. The Transnational-bifurcated-global-system is simultaneously state-centric (not hegemonic) and multi-centric (high diversity of social forces-actors, like transnational corporations, non-governmental organizations, inter-governmental organizations, epistemic communities and media-opinion-makers).
Third, there is a new nature in the microsocial-macrosocial relationship. The modern social theory had been constructed considering the macrosocial as the national society in an international context, the social as diverse levels of sub-national aggregations and the microsocial associated to the local level. Due to the intensification of the process of Globalization, the macrosocial becomes the planetary society, the social becomes many intermediate levels, including the national, and the microsocial still is associated to the local level. However the microsocial is deeply penetrated by the macrosocial level, in a way that its own dynamic is globalized, in varying degrees, since the most intense one of the world cities (New York, Los Angeles, Sao Paulo, Tokyo, Bangkok, London, Frankfurt, etc.) or of the world socio-technological spaces (Antarctic, radio-telescopes and satellites launching bases) to the weakest one of the most remote places (some deserts, mountains and tropical forests). In such a context the players, the political-civilizational arenas and the economic-political agendas come to be always transnationalized, even tough in different levels.
Fourth, there is a partial erosion of the Nation-State as the regulating center of social life and identities definer/builder. In the same time, the complex asymmetrical interdependence among countries increases, which sometimes implies fragmentation of national societies (Russia, Yugoslavia, etc.).
Fifth, there is a partial erosion (in different degrees) of the national democratic systems by the growing power of transnational and transnationalized players, and a increasing discrepancy between the territorial national based system of representation and the transnational social forces based system.
Although the literature presents a focus in the economic dimension, I consider the Globalization as a multidimensional process, characterized by thirteen interrelated dimensions: military, economical-productive, financial, communicational-cultural, religious, affectionate-interpersonal, scientific-technological, population-migratory, ecological-environmental, epidemiological, police-criminal and political.
The military dimension was the first one to be developed, since 1941, with the Japanese attack to Pearl Harbor— when by the first time war acquire a planetary scope (until that time, even in the 1914-1918, war was still an European affair), and presented its highest point in the second half of the 50’s, when the USA and USSR reached the planet destruction capability by intercontinental missiles and satellite spying (assured mutual destruction doctrine). In both countries the military establishments overlapped main parts of economic and scientific life, producing the scientific industrial military complexes, which structure will tend to be reproduced in most countries—creating a huge net of espionage and weapons commerce. Since the missile Cuban crises (1962) until the beginning of the Reagan administration (1981) there is a process of limited distention, building of mechanisms of mutual trust and managing agreements to the arms race. Such measures meant a reduction in the nuclear war risks. From 1981 to 1984 there is a new intensification of the military Globalization with a extraordinary increasing in the military budgets of the superpowers, the development of first strike weapons and the American attempt to develop a self defense doctrine that would make possible win the nuclear war. The coming to power of Gorbatchev in the USSR, in 1985, started a process of reduction in the military globalization: unilateral reduction of military expenses and the acceptance of in locus verification of the military facilities by the USSR, progressive and almost generalized reduction of military expenses and of the importance of Armed Forces, since 1989 (exception to Asia); diminution of intercontinental missiles, since 1990; strong reduction of Soviet Armed Forces, since 1991, and partial deactivation of the missiles, since 1993.
The globalization of the economy has its first important moment in the decade of 1950, when the multinationals corporations were formed —economic actors with global strategies. These actors progressively got out of the nation-state control and, in the 80’s, turn to be transnational corporations- in which the decision making process reaches a global scope, being no more relevant national differences among headquarters and branches. Also in the 80’s several medium-size enterprises turn to be transnational ones—being less visible than the large corporations, though operating by the same logic. The economic productivity increases tremendously as a product of the combination of technological revolutions (microelectronics, robotics, new materials, energy efficiency, biotechnology, recycling and pollution control) and managerial ones (total quality, reengineering ). The development of economic productivity massively eliminates jobs of low and medium qualification, producing structural unemployment around the world. The international commerce is intensified creating stronger pressures for the diminishing of trading barriers (creation of World Trade Organization in 1994) and the formation of regional economic blocs, complementary to the Globalization process (NAFTA, Mercosul, etc.)
There is a strong trend for the national societies to divide in three segments: the globalized, the national defensive and the marginalized. The first is formed by individuals and organizations which have qualifications and productivity matching global competition (the great majority of the population in developed countries, aproximately one/fifth of the population in countries like Brazil, Argentina and Chile, and almost non-existent in African countries).
The second segment is formed by individuals and organizations which survive because are protected by political or geographical structures from the global market competition. The national segment is in a transitional situation and in the long run will enter in the globalized segment or fall down in the marginalized segment.
The third segment is formed by a population who suffer increasing deprivation from a material, cultural and psichological point of view.
The consolidation of the economic Globalization in the decade of 1990 differentiates the countries in six types, according to the level of centrality of its insertion in the world system:
Developed: countries with information-knowledge intensive productive structure, high attractiveness to transnational corporations and financial money, and a high level of governance and per capita income rate—OCDE countries, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong and Israel.
Superpower: present the same features of the Developed countries, but with military power of planetary scope—USA.
Emerging: countries with high economic dynamism, medium or low-medium per capita income and high attractiveness to transnational corporations and financial money—China, Brazil, Thailand, Malaysia, Philippines, Brunei, Turkey, Hungary, Poland, Slovene, Baltic States, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Emirates, Mexico, Costa Rica, Trinidad and Tobago, Chile, Argentina.
Stagnated: countries with low economic dynamism, low or medium per capita income, and low attractiveness to transnational corporations and financial money—Indonesia, Russia, South Africa, Yugoslavia, Ukraine, Armenia, Burma, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, Paraguay, Kenya.
Extremely Poor : countries with no economic dynamism, low per capita income rate, no attractiveness to transnational corporations and financial money, and precarious governance—large part of Africa, Bangladesh, Haiti.
Politically Excluded : countries in situation of civil war and/or non-governmental economy and/or religious fundamentalism and/or terrorist states— Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, North Korea, Argelia, Sierra Leona, Somalia.
The financial dimension is located in the financial transnational markets, where the speculative money circulates electronically in high velocity, eroding progressively the regulating capacity of Nation-States (even the most powerful ones). The transnational financial markets present a diversity of actors like the internationalized banks, mega-speculators, pension funds, investment funds, etc. The Bretton Woods institutions come to be each time more limited to deal with the phenomenon of financial Globalization and the volatility of circulation of speculative money turn to be the worst threat to the stability and predictability of the system.
In the decade of 1960 begins the Globalization of the systems of communication, coming to be, according to a cultural-symbolic point of view, what MacLuhan called, almost prophetically (though with a homogenizing bias) “global village”. In the decade of 1980, the communicational-cultural Globalization implicated in a revolution in the telecommunications—satellites, globalized television, Fax-simile and E-mail—the cutting down of prices and the increasing of transcontinental air transportation, and the spreading out of contents, life styles and leisure styles, originally north-American ones. A growing minority of world population has the opportunity to travel to other countries, speak different languages and experiment directly other cultures. The majority of the world population has access through television to information about other societies. Like in the other dimensions, the Globalization of culture is far from implying its homogenization; but on the contrary there is a process of restating the differences, which redefine themselves as such in relation to the globality.
The religious dimension of the process of Globalization is one of the most complex ones due to have one of the oldest pre-history: the large religions of the world have been trans-civilization, trans-empire and trans-national ones for the past two thousand years. However, in the last two decades there has been a new kind of expansion-contraction of religions (the classic and emerging ones) characterized by the different postures they hold regarding the other dimensions of the process of Globalization ( particularly the financial, communicational-cultural and economic-productive ones). Therefore some religions posit themselves as convergent to the process of Globalization (like main stream Protestantism, Catholicism and Judaism) and some others posit themselves against it (Islam, Hinduism, Orthodox-Oriental Christians, Liberation Theology Catholics, conservative Protestants, fundamentalist Judaism and fundamental Xintoism) and even others maximize their insertion among the cultural elites (Zen-Buddhism, Kardecist Spiritists, “New Age” Cults). Simultaneously to these different postures regarding the Globalization there is a tendency to the ecumenical, expressed by strong similarities regarding some points—environment protection, drugs abolition, and critics to hyper-consumption. Due to the easiness created by the communicational-cultural Globalization, religions (new and old ones, large and reduced ones) nowadays have the capacity of global and accelerate expansion in a not yet known manner.
The interpersonal dimension of Globalization is centered in the emergence and expansion of new forms of professional, love and friendship relationships, which are characterized by self-reflexivity, inter-culturality, trans-nationality, multi-languages, a tendency to the androgynous, geographical mobility, a high contractility (game rules explicitly invented and agreed) and the development of the seven intelligence dimensions (verbal, logic-mathematics, intra-personal, inter-personal, spatial, kinestesic and musical). The affectionate-interpersonal dimension of Globalization is decisive to the understanding of the emergence of the two new forms of globalized personality: the man-woman-organization and the woman-man-planetary. The first one promotes a sectorial self-knowledge only oriented to the strategic interaction and the egoistic individuation. The second one promotes a deep self-knowledge oriented to the interaction simultaneously strategic and expressive and to a responsible individuation.
The scientific-technological dimension is located in the exponential increasing of intensity in the interactions inside the international scientific communities by journals, fax-simile, E-mail, Internet and face-to-face interaction in congresses. The role of the scientific inputs in the diverse global decision-making processes also increases—in corporations, inter-governmental agencies, NGOs. The transnational cooperation among institutions of teaching-research (pure and applied ones) and corporate institutions (applied science and technology) is rapidly developed, giving a fundamental contribution to the developing of economic productivity.
The world population keeps growing tremendously in a rate of 1.8% each year, turning to be almost 100 millions inhabitants annually added to the planet. This growing happens in a very uneven manner, creating critical situations in regions of non-favorable resources-population relationship and/or low governmental efficiency like in Africa, Middle East, South Asia and Central America. The extreme diversity in the distribution of population, wealth, and governance, combined with global communication stimulates huge migrating fluxes, which put destabilizing pressures on some frontiers. The borders become very complex and differentiated in three larger types: a) non-existing ones to a growing minority of individuals of a very high qualification, who constantly move in their occupations and can move from one to another country whenever wanted; b) crossed with rigorously given Visa, where is indicated maximum date of return, to the vast middle class tourists with supporting banking account and international credit cards; and c) impossible to be crossed legally to the huge majority of deprived ones who, attracted by the expectation of a life improvement, try increasingly to find illegal ways to migrate.
The sportive dimension is located in the accelerated development of an economic-sportive-communicational complex of transnational scope and presents the following characteristics: sets up new global parameters for competition and excellence among individuals and groups; creates new role models (sportive heroes) deeply pervading the world imaginary and tending to be considered very important to the self-individuation processes; raises a technical-sportive culture highly interdependent and synchronic; organizes events simultaneously watched by very large proportions of world population (10 to 30%) like the Olympics, World Soccer and Basketball Cup, One Formula Championship; produces sportsman/woman of mobile identity, regarding the team they play for (a basketball player may defend almost simultaneously his own club, university or country, even when the club or university are not in the same native player’s country) or regarding the possible combinations of dimensions of his/hers identity (a skier may be from Argentina, live and train in the in Swiss Alps with German equipment and be sponsored by American Companies); activates huge amounts of financial funds in the areas of production of sportive equipment and services and marketing of globalized products; creates a elite of sportsman/woman-citizens easily moving out of countries, residence and nationalities; orients the world tourism in relation to places of competitions; raises intensive international public security problems due to the high attractiveness of high visibility events to world terrorism. The world sportive competitions, each time larger and more frequent, are an example of extraordinarily well succeeded international (soft) regimes formation, combining competitive spirit and cooperation. The sports games rules are well known, monitored and authorized by the sportsman/woman, couches, referees, journalists and general public.
In the middle of the1980’s, humankind becomes aware of the Globalization of environmental degradation and risk, which have being existing from since the decade of 1950, related to the destructive capability of nuclear weapons and the contamination potential —of air, water, soil and food chains—by part of the nuclear and chemical industry. The ecological-environmental dimension is the most powerful process of Globalization with extraordinary repercussions on the scientific activity and on basic concepts used to comprehend social reality: when the astronauts reached the moon in 1969 and described and photographed the “blue planet” from outer space, there was a turning point in the building of the Globalization image, which has shown its deepest consequences in the constitution of the “Global Environmental Change” scientific community in the middles 1980’s. Once the perception of the environmental Globalization was achieved we see ourselves obliged to move from the concept of international system ( referred only to social realities) to the global system one, because the later one permits us to distinguish and include social and natural realities, and also orients us in a systematic investigation about the modes of interaction in a planetary scale. Earth, its geologic and geographic characteristics, its fauna and flora and surroundings (including the soil) constitute our only environment. The human species could not exist without the delicate balances of biosphere. Even “small changes” in the natural environment (like the 4 Celsius degrees raising in the average temperature of the planet by the year 2050 according the global warming hypothesis) would make our lives extraordinarily more difficult. As species, we have been simultaneously conquers and hostages of nature, but such implications of the human adventure have become much more complex in the end of the 20th century: today we are obliged to build a civilization-model implying in concretely investments in micro-macro social reforms (personal self-understanding and self-knowledge, and changes in the consumption patterns and life-styles). It is mandatory to avoid the Cornucopia temptations (mankind by technology always solves all of its problems) and New-Romantic ones (to stop the scientific-technological development and to focus only in the reform of consumption patterns and life-styles).
The epidemiological Globalization is a product of the intense circulation of people, massive use of antibiotics and the human penetration in until then desert areas of the planet, like tropical forests. Such actions produce deleterious transformations in the world of microorganisms (bacterial resistance to antibiotics, emerging human lethal viruses) which increases the vulnerability of human species to pan-epidemic. AIDS is a very clear example of this vulnerability, even though its difficult propagation. The possible emergence of an air-transmission lethal virus (like the Spanish Influenza in 1918) keeps worrying the main world specialists in epidemiology and public health. To avoid a massive defeat of the investments in new antibiotics by the bacterial adapting capacity we must have a wise and careful use of these medicines, which is far from the present procedures of the valid medical logic.
The international organized crime, which was centered in the Colombian traffic of narcotics complex and in the Asiatic Southwestern Mafia during the 1980’s, has been growing extraordinarily as a result of the Soviet Union disintegration, moreover it’s peril has also grown dramatically due to the potentiality of smuggling radioactive material. The coordination among the national police is more and more out of phase in comparison to the criminal’s activities organization in a global scale. In the middle 1990’s, the figures related to the international organized crime represented approximately 3% of the world’s GNP, growing 15% a year and being recycled in the legal economy through the “customs paradises” and even central financial places like Luxembourg. Simultaneously to the expansion of the international organized crime, the international terrorism is still present though it has suffered important attacks in the last decade, and still new forms of transnational terrorism associated to religious extremism are emerging and they challenge the security of the societies once they have access to mass destruction weapons.
The political globalization rests on the advance of individualist and democratic regimes and ideologies in detriment of those authoritarian and socializing. In the last decade, democratic or semidemocratic regimes have been substituting authoritarian regimes in almost all the countries of the world. The human rights protection, the pluri-partidarism and the electoral competition have become unquestionable principles of the international and national political lives, though many times there can be found a significant distance between the rhetoric and the concrete reality. The revolution of the individual capabilities produced by the educational expansion has been drastically changing the understanding of “good social order” in favor of the individual’s valorization in terms of responsibility-performance, moreover limiting the intervention of the State-collectivity in order to promote the reduction of the inequality between the individuals (reduction of taxes and replacement of welfare for workfare). As a product of the revolution of the individual capabilities, there is a considerable growth of the social movements and non governmental organizations which constitute a third sector of social organizations of similar importance to the classical private and public sectors, furthermore this third sector has strong transnational relations.
The regulatory capabilities of the Nation State are being weakened by the other dimensions of the globalization, the economic in particular, the financial and cultural-communicational; and by the reinforcement of the infranational sociopolitical structures, and in the most drastic cases, leads to separatism and to national disintegration. The potentialities regarding the consolidation of democratic regimes or the progress of semi-democratic regimes into democratic ones are very distinct, depending on variables such as: greater competitiveness of the national economy, lesser proportion of the excluded-deprived population, greater economic and psychological independence of women, lesser power of the fundamentalist-radical ideologies, greater power of the anti-corruption attitudes-movements and greater governmental capability-efficiency.
As part of the political dimension, the global governance rests on the inter and transnational institutional building process—United Nations System, International Monetary Fund, World Bank, GATT-WTO, sectorial international regimes—prepared to administrate the problems of the planetary society. The process for building global governance institutions, has been following a slow and difficult pace since the end of the Second World War and it should not be taken for utopian proposals of creating a world government. A fundamental characteristic of the globalization process is the underdevelopment of the global governance dimension in comparison to the other dimensions, originally due to the blockade of the United Nations system by the Cold War. In the 1990’s, the global governance is not developing itself in equivalent speed to the other dimensions of the globalization due to the following reasons: a) conflict between the oligarchic (promoted by the G7 and the majority of the countries with high income) and the democratic governance arrangements (promoted by the majority of the countries with medium income and various countries with low income); b) lack of leadership oriented to the long term in the main countries of the world; c) the United Nations system (of international nature) blocks the emerging of a new governance transnational system. This could be instituted in a General Assembly with proportional representation of the world population (approximately three hundred), proportional representation of the transnational corporations (approximately two hundred) and the proportional representation of the federations of the scientific associations and NGOs (approximately one hundred). A Global Security Council formed by thirty members selected among the six hundred representatives would take the urgent decisions, though for a long historical period it would not be able to have the organizational density and structure demanded from a world government. Desirable as it might be, I consider it is still too far away from becoming feasible.
2 - The expansion of environmentalism and the formation of new transnational social forces
The national concern regarding problems related to the environment deterioration has been growing almost continuously since the mid 1960’s, when the North American “environmental revolution” started. In the 1970’s this preoccupation expanded throughout Canada, Western Europe, Japan, New Zealand, Australia and culminates in the 1980’s when it reaches Latin America, Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union and the East and South Asia. In the 1990’s, as a result of the preparatory process of the UNCED, even the most latecomer countries (China, some countries of the Black Africa and some Arabian countries) started a debate about the environmental issues. The progress of the national conscience regarding the environmental problems has the shape of an ascending curve with short stagnation periods which are followed by new ascending periods.
As a consequence of these three decades of national concern regarding the environmental deterioration there was an emergence and development of: 1) NGOs and grass-root groups which struggle for the environmental protection moreover a great number of these groups and organizations act in an international scale; 2) State Agencies (federal, estate and municipal levels) in charge of protecting the environment (in 1970 there were twelve national environmental agencies; and in 1995, more then 180); 3) groups and scientific institutions researching environmental issues, most with a systemic approach, are strongly impacting the scientific community dynamics (this was reflected in the renown position achieved by the “Global Environmental Change” Scientific Community in USA); 4) managers and administrators’ sector which implement a paradigm regarding the management of the productive processes based on the efficiency of material consumption, in energy conservation, in pollution reduction, in eco-design and in total quality management; 5) a green consumer market which demands, among other things, food from an organic agriculture, high energy efficiency automobiles and electrical appliances, recycled paper, reusable containers, products produced using clean technologies and raw materials produced in a sustainable way; 6) multi-sectorial networks which establish and certify the sustainability of the production and transportation processes, and the products life-cycle like the various “green seals” and the ISO 14000; 7) agencies and international treaties in charge of solving the environmental problems that exceed the limits of national borders, such as the United Nations Environmental Program, the Vienna-Montreal Convention-Protocol for the protection of the ozone layer, the Basel Convention regarding the trade of toxic waste, the Rio Conventions regarding climate change and biodiversity.
All the actors and processes mentioned above constitute the global environmentalist movement whose values and proposals are being disseminated through the governmental structures, the non governmental organizations, the communitarian groups, the scientific community and the entrepreneurs. Environmentalism, which emerged as a movement of a small number of people, groups and associations, has now transformed itself into an intense multi-sectorial movement.
Environmentalism development process as a transnational historical movement deeply impacted the cleavages of the world’s system in the beginning of the 1990’s. Considering development and environment issues, three main cleavages can be defined in the international political dynamic: the first between the forces whose interest and orientation are inside the Nation State (the nationalists) versus the forces whose interests and orientation are located in the world scale (globalists); the second between the forces which consider environmental protection as a fundamental dimension to be combined with the economic development (sustainabilists) versus the forces in favor of the economic development without considering environmental protection (predatorians); the third between the forces in favor of a certain progressive income redistribution in national and international scale(progressists) versus the conservative forces from a social point a view (conservatives). The combination of these three cleavage lines permits to differentiate eight great acting forces in the world system: conservative-nationalists (CN), progressive-nationalists (PN), conservative-nationalist-sustainabilists (CNS), progressive-nationalists-sustainabilists (PNS), conservative-globalists (CG), progressive-globalists (PG), conservative-globalist-sustainabilists (CGS) and progressive-globalist-sustainabilists (PGS).
The Conservative-nationalists are in favor of protectionist economies, powerful armed forces and the Nation State as a superior entity of the international order while they are against the growth of the UN power, and moreover, they fear the transnational corporations. They are frequently racists. Some examples of the CN are: Republican far right and militias (USA), National Front (France), National Alliance (Italy), Zrinovski (Russia), regional oligarchies representing the low productivity sectors (Brazil and Argentina), the PRI right-wing (Mexico).
The Progressive-nationalists are in favor of protectionist economies with strong state intervention in favor of the social justice, powerful armed forces and they are against the transnational corporations and the expansion of the UN’s power. Some examples of PN are: the Workers Party in Brazil, the Communist Party in Chile, the Zapatista Front and the Revolutionary Democratic Party left wing in Mexico, sectors of the French Communist Party.
The Conservative-nationalist-sustainabilists are in favor of the environmental protection in a global scale, they reject the UN and the transnational corporations and they are in favor of powerful armed forces. Some examples of the CNS are: new-Nazis sectors in Germany and Austria, sectors from the USA militia, sectors from the Hindu, Islamic and Christian fundamentalism in various countries.
The Progressive-nationalist-sustainabilists are in favor of the sustainable development in national scale, leaded by a strong interventionist State which will promote social justice and they are against the UN and the transnational corporations. Some examples of the PNS are: a predominant sector from the Workers Party in Brazil, sectors from the Chilean Communist Party and from the Uruguayan Ample Front, sectors from the French, Chilean and Brazilian Green Party, sectors from the French and Italian Communist Parties.
The Conservative-globalists are in favor of open economies to the world market, a central role to the transnational corporations, a partial disarmament and a gradual improvement of the UN partially limiting the Nation State’s power in order to built a transnational authority based on a stratified structure of countries: empowerment of the Security Council (enlarged), the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization. The CG are the dominant force in the world system and they represent what is known as neoliberalism. Some examples of the CG are: predominant sectors from the great North American, West-European and Japanese parties, the modern sectors from the Brazilian center and right parties, the Chilean National Party, the modern sector from the Argentinean Justice Party (Cavallo), governing since 1989.
The Progressive-globalists are in favor of open economies to the world market, a central role for the transnational corporations, a strong disarmament and a fast building of global governance institutions, particularly regarding the regulation of speculative capital circulation, through the combination of principles of population representation and financial power. Some examples of GP are: the left wing of liberal western parties such as the North American Democratic, the French Socialist, the German Social-democratic, the British Labor; the Brazilian Socialdemocratic (in a rhetoric level the President Fernando Cardoso can be included among them) and the Chilean Socialist.
The Conservative-globalist-sustainabilists are in favor of open economies to the world market, a central role attributed to the transnational corporations, a partial disarmament and the fast building of global governance institutions, particularly in the environmental field, through a definitely oligarchic way based on the country’s financial capability principle. Some examples of CGS are: the vice-president of the USA, Al Gore, predominant sectors of the Dutch and Scandinavian Social-democratic parties and the French Ecological Generation Party.
The Progressive-globalist-sustainabilists consider that the wasteful way of life and the energy inefficient productive systems which predominate actually in the high and medium income countries are condemned not just morally but also economically. Because of that they support deep reform in the international order aiming to allow environmental policies feasible in their respective national spaces. The PGS support the idea of sustainable environmental development with the attenuation of social asymmetries in national and world scales. To the majority of the PGS this attenuation should be done through an active-selective integration of the peripheral economies in the world market and through a subsidized sustainable technology transfer by the rich countries. The PGS are in favor of the immediate establishment of a supranational authority, combining the transnational and international principles in order to face the problems related to the planetary social-environmental crisis. Although from a normative point of view the PGS support a democratic way of building up global governance, they are willing to accept oligarchic forms provided that it accelerates the process. Some examples of the PGS are: sectors from the Dutch, Scandinavian and Brazilian Social-democratic left wing; German, Austrian, Scandinavian, French, Brazilian and Chilean Green Parties’ predominant sectors.
As described above, the Nation State’s regulatory capabilities are weakened by the globalization (the economic, financial and cultural-communicational globalizations in particular) and by the reinforcement of the infranational sociopolitical structures. This, in the most drastic cases, leads to the separatism and national disintegration. The erosion of democracy as a national-based political system affects not the regimes already consolidated (Western Europe, North America and Australia) but mainly the potentialities regarding the consolidation of democratic regimes recently established or regarding the progress from semi-democratic regimes into democratic ones (Latin America, Eastern Europe, India and Asian Tigers). Nevertheless, this impact is greatly differentiated from country to country, depending on variables such as: greater competitiveness of national economy, lesser proportion of the excluded-deprived population, greater independence of women, lesser force of radical-fundamentalists ideologies, greater development of anti-corruption movements-attitudes and greater managerial capability-efficiency.
Up to now, the globalization process is generating a segmentation process in the national societies, though it is still not a historical need and the situation can change due to the great systemic uncertainty. This segmentation takes place between the individuals and organizations belonging to the globalized, the national and the marginalized segments of the national societies. The segmetation profile varies extraordinarily according to the countries (and even regions inside a country). The globalized segment of the society are aproximatelly the following (the figures are just general indicators without pretension of precision): around 60% in USA, Singapore, Taiwan, Norway, The Netherlands, Switzerland, Luxemburg and Denmark; 50% in South Korea, Israel, Spain and Italy, 25% in Chile, Turkey, Brazil, Hungria, Thailand, Argentina and Mexico; 15% in Venezuela, Colombia, South Africa and Russia; less than 5% in Nicaragua, Dominicana, Nigeria and Syria.
The perspective of integrated national societies (with low social asymmetries), which predominated during the period of the socialism and the high welfare capitalism legitimacy (1945-1980) seems to have finished due to the way the fundamental dimensions of the contemporary social dynamic is combining:
3 - Progress, Impasses and Alternatives in Building up Global Governance
In parallel to the process of the national democratic systems’ partial erosion, a building process of global governance institutions is developing and it affects, in a contradicting way, that former process. In the environmental field, seven institutional dynamics , with different rhythms and densities, can be drawn from the last decade:
The Agreement for the Protection of the Ozone Layer is definitely the best example of success in the building of international regimes aiming the protection of the global environment. The use and production of CFC has fallen dramatically in the developed countries during the beginning of 1990’s and has grown only with some limits (as a product of the Montreal Protocol and London Amendment impacts) in the continental and emerging countries. There are four main factors to explain this success: the fast consensus formation in the scientific community and the efficiency of the extra academic communication (epistemic community effect), the fact that the CFC production is concentrated in few actors (transnational corporations), the American government leadership in the international negotiations, the CFC’s producers fast response in investing in research and development of alternative technologies that are commercially feasible.
The Global Environment Facility is being slowly built up, however it is revolutionizing the mechanisms for transferring multilateral resources, in the allocation efficiency direction. The negative factor is the small magnitude of the allocated resources -and the unfavorable short term future trend- if compared to the global environment needs. Among the positive aspects there can be drawn: a negotiation process in which the developed countries ceded in terms of a democratic decision-making process and the rest of the world ceded in terms of seriously taking the substantive efficiency considerations, the formation of a dynamic ad hoc structure to the management of the fund combining the UNDP (United Nations Development Program), UNEP (United Nations Development Program) and World Bank relative advantages and the international promotion of a methodology which is non economicist, systemic and sophisticated in the cost-benefit evaluation.
The Framework Convention on Climate Change (Rio 92) and the Kyoto Protocol (1997) have been, up until now, a relative failure due to the following factors:
The Biodiversity Convention has a double impact. On one hand it has extraordinarily increased the international public conscience regarding the importance of the biological diversity (almost unknown-existent outside the academy before the 1990’s) and it also inaugurated the concept of common concern of humankind. On the other hand, it is structurally hardly functional due to the fact that the USA keeps a reticent attitude regarding the convention in all those aspects that do not clearly protect the intellectual property, as it has been historically defined in the American civilizing culture: excessive privilege in the concentrated forms of intellectual property, patents developed in scientific-technological centers which are knowledge-capital intensive and the under-dimensioning regarding the importance of other forms of low intensity knowledge-capital property. USA is a subsystem-actor—complex and internally heterogeneous, since it is constituted by a network of big and small corporations, universities, state agencies and NGOs—extraordinarily important in that matter, considering that two thirds of the world scientific-and technological capacity of biodiversity and biotechnology is situated in its territory; this nation-state’s grade of centrality is not repeated in any other matter linked to the global environment. The efforts for protecting biodiversity and its sustainable development is extremely differentiated nowadays: from important breakthroughs in countries such as Costa Rica and Belize that established agreements for pharmacological and alimentary research with transnational corporations; through countries with new ambitious rhetoric with little correlation in effective policies as Brazil, Malaysia and Mexico; and countries as Canada and the USA ( that have significant species extinction, despite their wide protective system of biodiversity); and up to the acceleration of the destruction in countries in collapse of governance ( in important parts of Africa).
The production of Agenda XXI has been a great effort of international negotiation to produce a normative consensus and has been a relatively effective program for mankind related to sustainable development. After the Rio Earth Summit some countries elaborated national Agendas XXI, and especially China, whose authoritarian regime mobilized from the top an important part of the society to incorporate components linked to the documents of Rio in its planning. The United Nations Development Program structurally redefined its line of action in favor of the sustainable development axed by the Agenda XXI. In spite of the positive impacts of the Agenda, the decrease of importance of the environmental question among the public and the decrease in the quest for building global governance, post-Rio, made the document not as important to perform an international mobilizing role visualized by their idealizers.
The agreement to extend the Antarctic Treaty signed in Madrid,1992 constituted another great success of global environmental governance. A coalition lead by international NGOs (particularly by Greenpeace), Australia, and France got to block, for at least half a century, a strong offensive of powerful transnational corporations and the Bush administration who were attempting to open Antarctica to controlled mineral exploitation. The horizon of disputes between preservationists ( that see Antarctic as an international park free of economic activities forever ) and conservationists ( that believe a judicious use of some Antarctica’s mineral resources ) probably changed in a irreversible way in favor of the former.
The United Nations Sustainable Development Commission, established in 1993 after its creation by the General Assembly in 1992, has been developed rather slowly, having the character of almost non-influence in international relations. The destiny of the Sustainable Development Commission was connected to the obsolescence of the main bodies of the UN (especially the General Assembly and ECOSOC) and to the failure of reformist efforts that seemed to be promising when Butros Ghali ascended to the general secretariat on January 1992. The U.N. Commission on Global Governance lead by Carlson that produced the report “Our Global Neighborhood”, and the Commission on the Fifty Anniversary of the UN lead by Paul Kennedy (both in 1995) are excellent and smart proposal for reforming the UN. Unfortunately their impact on the organization has been minimum. Further than what optimistic analysts and actors could foresee in 1992—the environmental matter motivating the UN and also being its main force of structural reformulation—what happened was the contrary—the inefficiency and the inertia of the UN system ended by obstructing the dynamism of the environmental matter. It is evident nowadays that a more consistent incorporation of the environmental matter in the UN system depends on a deep structural reform of it, which can mean the acceptance of its passage from an international-intergovernmental system to a transnational-transgovernmental system. Mankind’s current tragedy is summed up by the non-existence of strong actors in order to propose, to lead, and to impose this transition. The powerful state-nations are against this step (USA, France, United Kingdom, Spain, Russia, China, India, Brazil, South Korea, Indonesia), reticent ( Germany, Italy, Canada) or timidly favorable ( Japan, Holland, Sweden). The transnational corporations are obviously opposed since they hold most of current power in the publicly non-regulated global market; the internationalized NGO’s are normatively favorable, but they are loci of a radical organizational individualizing culture that extremely limits their capacity of articulation and of political leadership; the scientific community, although it is structurally and normatively quite internationalized, still needs leaderships and networks of social intervention to be able to deal with a task of such magnitude ( though the evolution of organizations such as the Union of Concerned Scientists is promising ); and at last the more influential structures and religious leaderships, as the almost ensemble of Islamic and Christian groups, remain prisoners of cosmologies elaborated a thousand years ago when mankind faced material, political, ethical and spiritual dilemmas radically different from those of today.
Fundamentally, the future of the national democratic systems depends on the successful insertion of the national economies in the process of globalization and on the construction of institutions of global governance. The construction of institutions of global governance will contribute to the revitalization or development of national democratic systems. The development of an oligarchic way of global governance will reinforce only the democratic systems of the well integrated societies in the economic globalization The development of a democratic via of global governance will stimulate the progress of the democratic system in most of countries in the world.
I conclude the article elaborating, for heuristic purpose, what I consider are the five alternative scenarios of global governance in the medium to long term.
First, we have the scenario of social-cultural bifurcation of mankind with low global governance. It constitutes a system of social separation generalized in national and international scale. Those included in the system are divided in two subcultures restrictedly connected. The dominant subculture is based on materialistic values and on individualities with strong techno-organizational capacity to conquer the external world and with low emotional capacity to self-consciousness and to inner expansion. The subordinated subculture is based on post-materialists values and on individualities equilibrated with the integrated development of techno-organizational and emotional capacities. Those included in the system do not accept responsibilities for the excluded ones and the politics of the former are based on a combination of selective repression, of concentration camps and of systematic extermination. The interstate competition and the national military structures continue to absorb a significant part of social energies and productive efforts. The main vectors of this scenario are already currently present during the mid-1990’s, though there are also significant counter-tendencies. The probability of this scenario is medium.
Second, we have the scenario of social-cultural bifurcation with oligarchic global governance. The social system is based on apartheid similar to the first scenario, but the interstate competition and military expenses are highly reduced. Rich countries’ current incipient structures of global governance are developed: NATO operating on a planetary scale, the institutionalization and reinforcement of the coordination of the G7’s inter- central banks; a more powerful International Monetary Fund mitigating the risks of the circulation of the speculative global capital; an extended Interpol with strong powers in order to combat international organized crime; a transnational agency with regulating, monitoring and patrol powers related to environmental and epidemiological problems. The world is safer for the included, though it is equally deprived and cruel to the excluded. Several indicators of this scenario are already present in the current world, though there are some significant countertendencies . The probability of this scenario is middle-high.
Third, we have the scenario of attenuated dual society with oligarchic global governance. It is constituted of a dual social system whose dominant members accept responsibilities for the attenuation of the needs of the deprived ones and there is a possibility of social mobility from the excluded level to the included. The dominants are divided in two subcultures as in the first and second scenarios, but in this case they are more interconnected and, though secondary, the post-materialist subculture has an extensive dynamic and influence in the general dynamic of the system. There is a powerful constructive movement of institutions of global governance combining transnational and international principles: the Security Council is constituted of delegates of developed, continental and emergent countries; an international security force under command of the Security Council; and, Transnational Public Authorities in the fields of environmental protection, public health, communication, finances, commerce and control of criminal activities. Few indicators of this scenario are present in the world today, though they can develop very fast due to the systemic uncertainty and to the conscious action of globalist-progressive, globalist-progressive-sustainabilists and globalist-conservative-sustainabilists forces. The probability of this scenario is middle-low.
Fourth, we have the scenario of an integrated society with middle social asymmetry and middle oligarchic global governance. In this scenario, not only national societies are integrated with middle social asymmetries but also with the distribution of wealth at the international level not presenting high asymmetries. This is a kind of society which gives high importance to the post-materialist values (political participation, quality of life, environmental protection, personal development) and uses sustainable productive systems in a very disseminated way. As in the last scenario, there is a powerful movement of building up institutions of global governance combining international and transnational components. This is a kind of governance with universal logic, though it is managed by responsible elite that self-perpetuate in a large scale; and not by generalized democratic proceedings. Very few indicators of this scenario are present in the world today, though they can develop in the future due to the systemic uncertainty. The probability of this scenario is low.
Fifth, we have the scenario of an integrated society with low social asymmetries and democratic global governance. This is the social system that corresponds to the Enlightenment and progressive ideals of the twenty century: the Wilsonian ideals of world government (League of Nations), Socialist Internationalism ( Federation of Socialist Societies) and Environmentalism ( one Earth, one World, one Government). Unfortunately, this scenario is very improbable.
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