Global Politics In A Changing World, Chapter 1

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1

Chapter 1

CONTINUITY AND CHANGE INGLOBAL POLITICS

Students today face a world that must seem alien to their parents. There is no longer

a Soviet Union and no superpower rivalry keeping the world balanced on the brink

of World War III. Fear of nuclear holocaust, so prominent during the Cold War, hasreceded, even as fear of terrorism has grown, particularly since September 11, 2001.

The power of communism as a competitive international ideology has vanished, and

new concerns about Islamic fundamentalism have emerged. Japan and Germany

have become economic superpowers and China will soon join them. Europe is

poised to move beyond economic integration toward political unity. The North

American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and other regional treaties and organiza-

tions are integrating markets and reshaping the economies of the Americas and Asia.

Globalization is the new buzzword, and outsourcing the economic concern of

the day.

Although many of the changes of the last few decades have been positive, point-ing toward thespread of peace, prosperity, democracy, andhumanrightsaround the

world, other developments have been worrisome. While Americans have largely

focused on the problem of terrorism, around the globe ethnic conflict and civil war

have emerged as serious challenges to world peace. A variety of new, very different

issues increasingly dominate the global agendafor example, the proliferation of

weapons of mass destruction and the danger of nuclear accidents, human rights

violations and genocide, the AIDSepidemic, international refugees and uncontrolled

migration, transnational drug trafficking and crime, hot money and monetary sta-

bility, poverty and economic underdevelopment, and aging populations, global

warming, and environmental degradation. Thepolitical institutionswe have relied on

to provideorderandfacilitatecooperationare meeting mixedsuccess in dealing with

these new challenges.

In years to come, we will look back on this era as one in which the world was fun-

damentally altered: simultaneous integration and fragmentation of political author-

ity are taking place at a dramatic pace, as the old breaks down and new

arrangements are made. A period of turbulent transformation, like the ones that fol-

lowed the fall of Rome, the Thirty Years War of the seventeenth century, and the

two world wars of the twentieth century, is now under way. Events since the end of

the Cold War have made clear that the modern system of global politics based onindependent sovereign states is eroding and evolving, and new political processes

and institutions are acquiring importance.




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2 Chapter 1 Continuity and Change in Global Politics

The Origins and Consequences of the State System

In this reader we describe our subject as global, not international, politics. We do so

becauseinternational restricts ourvision to the interactions of national governments.

Until recently, limiting ones view in this way was accepted practice. Most ob-servers viewed the world through the lens of an intellectual tradition that focused

attention on the activities of nation-states and on the international state system

created by their interactions. This tradition reflected events in Europe between the

fifteenth and seventeenth centuries that resulted in the development of highly capa-

ble, centralized, territorially defined units we call states. Emerging at a time when

technological, economic, and military developments were making war increasingly

destructive, the early European states were successful in controlling political activ-

ities and imposing order within their own borders, in building up wealth and military

power, and in intimidating their neighbors. Observing this success and fearing for

their own survival, others quickly mimicked the political and economic measuresthat had resulted in this centralization of authority, and the state system of organized

political life spread. Other types of political actors and organizations became less

significant. Over the course of several centuries, European states not only came to

dominate political life on that continent but gradually, through a combination of con-

quest and colonization, expanded their influence to the remainder of the world.

From a Feudal System to a State System Understanding how this state system

and the idea of sovereignty embedded in it emerged helps us to recognize that the

state system represented a particular historical solution to problems of providing

order and security rather than an inevitable, universal, or unchangeable reality. It

also helps us to understand the transformation under way today.

Europes state system had its roots in the turmoil that followed the collapse of

the Roman Empire, and European states had their origins in the territorial holdings

of powerful nobles during the Middle Ages. Under feudalism, those who owned

land also enjoyed political power over those who lived on their lands. The property

or fiefs of feudal lords ranged from holdings as small as a village to huge estates

scattered across vast distances. This feudal system was hierarchically organized:

in theory at least, every lord owed political loyalty and service to those above him

in the feudal hierarchy and was, in turn, owed allegiance and service by lesser

lords. In return for the loyalty and service given to them, nobles owed their vassals

protection from attack or violence. At the top of the feudal hierarchy stood the pope

in Rome and the Holy Roman Emperor in Germany, both claiming to be rightful suc-

cessor to the emperors of the Roman Empire and to exercise dominion over a

united Christian world.

Despite the apparent clarity of hierarchical relationships, the feudal system

invited constant struggle, and it offered at best imperfect security. Feudal lords rou-

tinely waged private wars against each other and against lords nominally above or

below them in the feudal hierarchy. These wars were fought to settle disputes or to

acquire greater wealth. Ordinary people regularly found themselves victims of thisfighting and subject to conflicting claims of loyalty.

By the end of the fifteenth century, both the fiction of a unified Europe ruled by

an emperor or pope and the notion that lesser lords could defend either themselves




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Continuity and Change in Global Politics 3

or their subjects against the predation of more powerful royal families were increas-

ingly challenged. The Protestant Reformation that began in 1519 marked a rebel-

lion against the Roman Churchs authority and attracted the support of lords who

sought to free themselves from papal interference in their affairs. Religious conflict

swept Germany in 1546, and a number of German princes used the opportunity togain independence from the Holy Roman Empire. The war was settled by the Peace

of Augsburg (1555), which, by declaring that Lutheran princes might impose their

religion on subjects regardless of the preferences of the emperor, was a giant step

toward legitimating the idea of state sovereignty. Equally important, with the failure

of the Catholic Church to stamp out Protestantism, the medieval unity of Christen-

dom and the belief that all of the Christian world was, or ought to be, a single polit-

ical unit was shattered.

The Peace of Westphalia, which ended the bloody strife of the Thirty Years War

(16181648), is frequently described as marking the emergence of the modern

system of sovereign states. The Thirty Years War inflicted unprecedented levels ofdestruction on Central Europe and undermined both the bottom and the top of the

old feudal order. The inability of lesser lords and princes to protect subjects or to

wage war effectively was clearly demonstrated. At the same time, the inability of

the Holy Roman Emperor to impose his will, even in league with major Catholic

allies both in Germany and across Europe, confirmed the hollowness of the old

hierarchical system. The Peace of Westphalia helped ratify the sovereign state by

giving major princes in the Holy Roman Empire the right to conduct their own

foreign affairs and to conclude treaties with other rulers. Although the emergence

of a system of independent sovereign states, each exercising effective independent

centralized political control over a clearly defined territory, was a long and gradual

process, scholars often date the birth of the modern state system from the year of

the Peace of Westphalia and call it the Westphalian system.

In the following centuries, the sovereign state, originally a European invention, was

globalized. Advances in technology enabled Europeans to extend their territorial

reach outward, first to the Americas and later to Asia, the Middle East, and Africa.

And where European colonies were established, European political institutions fol-

lowed, replacing traditional patterns of authority and security. At one time or another

during the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries, most of the world

was part of one of the vast empires ruled by competing European states. Great

Britain, France, Spain, and the Netherlands struggled with one another to seize the

resources of North America; Spain and Portugal imposed their rule over nearly all of

South and Central America; Africa was carved up by Britain, France, Germany, Italy,

Portugal, and the king of the Belgians; Britain exerted dominion over the Indian sub-

continent and colonized Australia; the Netherlands conquered the Indonesian archi-

pelago; and France seized much of Indochina. In Northeast Asia, Japan modeled

itself on the European states and began to build an empire of its own, while after its

war with Spain in 1898 the United States acquired the Philippines and Puerto Rico.

As the European empires retreated in the twentieth century, they left rudimentary

European-type states in their wake. The boundaries of these new postcolonialstates, however, followed the colonial frontiers drawn by the Europeans and fre-

quently separated members of the same tribal groups and enclosed members of

disparate groups. The consequences of the artificial boundaries that had been




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drawn would become clear in the ethnic strife within and across state borders that

has plagued global politics since the end of the Cold War.

State Sovereignty The idea of state sovereignty was at the heart of the state sys-

tem and provided the justification for monarchs behavior toward lesser nobles andtoward one another. During the centuries when Europes states were solidifying,

sovereignty was embodied in the monarch himself and meant that, within the

boundaries of his state, the monarch was the supreme authority (with the exception

of God, who granted the king a divine right to rule). Sovereignty had both exter-

nal and internal implications. Externally, since each king was the supreme authority

within his kingdom, sovereignty necessarily meant that all kings were legally equal

and that none had the right to interfere in anothers internal affairs. Internally, direct

control of the tools of military power and the development of bureaucracies able to

administer the law and to collect taxes meant that monarchs could exercise signif-

icant control over what went on within the boundaries of their kingdoms.The idea of sovereignty made it possible to distinguish between domestic

(intrastate) and international (interstate) politics. This had not been the case in the

Middle Ages, when numerous secular and religious authorities might have respon-

sibility for or rule over the same or overlapping territory. Instead of the feudal

worlds confused map of tangled allegiances and authorities, in which a single indi-

vidual might owe loyalty to a number of different warring institutions or leaders, the

concept of sovereignty permitted the drawing of neat, clean maps, in which each

bit of territory and each person living on it belonged to one, and only one, state.

Since early modern states were regarded as the exclusive property of their

rulers, Europes eighteenth-century kings regularly traded provinces and popula-

tions with little concern for inhabitants well-being or preferences. However, follow-

ing the French Revolution in 1789, the ideas of nation (a community of people

with a shared culture and history, that is, a group of people who regard themselves

as sharing a common identity and purpose) and state were united, and sover-

eignty shifted from dynasties to the body of citizens more generally. The notion

of a nation-state, which gained popularity during the nineteenth and twentieth

centuries, implied that a state served the interests of a particular national group.

The doctrine of state sovereignty had several important consequences for the

study of international relations. First, it ratified the state itself as the principal unit of

international relations and regarded relations among states as creating an interna-

tional system. Under international law, only states enjoyed legal status. Nowhere is

sovereignty enshrined more clearly than in the United Nations Charter. According to

Article 2, paragraph 1: The Organization is based on the principle of the sovereign

equality of all its Members. The implication is spelled out in paragraph 7: Nothing

contained in the present Charter shall authorize the United Nations to intervene in

matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state. . . .

A second logical corollary of the claim that each state was sovereign was the

assertion that the international system was anarchic. In this context, anarchy

merely means the absence of an accepted higher authority: that no state recog-nized the right of any other state, or any other actor, to tell it what it must do. This

anarchy, the absence of an accepted higher authority, means that states must




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depend on themselves (self-help) for security and that the failure of other states

to carry out their promises and agreements must always be regarded as a real pos-

sibility. Anarchy means that the order that exists in global politics reflects the power

of sovereign states to protect and advance their interests, and it means that states

always see war as a possibility if disputes cannot be settled by other means.A third implication of sovereignty was an emphasis on national interest as the

driving force behind state policies. Rather than pursue the well-being of the world

as a whole, each state is expected to act in what it perceives as its own best inter-

ests. Indeed, each states need to ensure its own security under conditions of anar-

chy is seen as creating an overriding national interest in increasing the states

power relative to its neighbors.

A fourth corollary was that the only way to prevent powerful states from threat-

ening one anothers survival was through countervailing power. To prevent any

single state from becoming strong enough to conquer all of its neighbors, a bal-

ance of power had to be maintained. States had to be constantly vigilant and toband together, and even go to war if necessary, to limit the ambitions of powerful

neighbors. In other words, each states sovereignty could be preserved only by

using war or the threat of it to ensure a balance of power in the system.

A fifth implication of state sovereignty was that all states would be driven by the

same logic in their behavior and would behave similarly. Because all states, regard-

less of their particular ideology or culture, needed to protect themselves against

possible attack by neighbors, it was assumed that foreign policy was determined

almost entirely by external factors, particularly the distribution of power. This meant

that domestic features such as whether or not a country was democratic, followed

free-market economic principles, or was predominantly Christian or Islamic would

make little difference in its definition of national interest and therefore the policies it

followed.

A sixth consequence of state sovereignty was the claim that domestic and inter-

state politics could be neatly separated. The domestic arena was usually idealized

as a well-ordered and peaceful environment, controlled by a single government that

enjoyed a monopoly of legitimate authority and the means of coercion and vio-

lence. The conflictual, anarchic international arena, by contrast, was the realm of

foreign policy. Unlike domestic policy, foreign policy was seen as dictated princi-

pally by necessity, fear, and self-aggrandizement rather than by justice, morality, or

altruism. In contrast to the feudal system, in which all violence was between nobles

within the same empire or Christian world and was in this sense intracommunal, the

state system distinguished between violence within states (rebellion or civil war),

which was not supposed to occur, and violencebetween states (war), which was a

normal, if unfortunate, feature of politics.

The Changing Nature of Global Politics

For some three hundred years, international politics was equated with the European-originated state system. During this time, relations among Europes states and

the extension of European empires and rivalries to other continents meant that




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sovereign states continued to be the focus of the study of global politics and that

the threat of war among them remained the overriding concern of scholars and

practitioners. Most states were preoccupied with their military power relative to

others, and many leaders followed balance-of-power policies, employing shifting

alliances to counter threats posed by other states. The most important events inglobal politics in this period were the great wars, centered in Europe but waged on

a global scale: the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (17921815), World War I

(19141918), World War II (19391945), and the Cold War (19471991).

The nineteenth century, however, saw an erosion of the classical balance-of-

power European state system. The industrial revolution and the growing power of

nationalism made war a riskier and more devastating enterprise than in the past,

greatly complicated the measurement of power and skewed its distribution, and

increased the impact of domestic factors on foreign policy. At the same time, the

development of transnational economic ties and the emergence of ideologies, like

Marxism, that crossed national boundaries reduced the impermeability of statefrontiers and created new links among societies. Many of the changes in global pol-

itics that began in the nineteenth century accelerated in the twentieth and became

visible at the end of the Cold War, which had pitted communism against capitalism

and the Soviet Union and its allies against the United States and its allies.

Redefining Security For reasons we will explore, recent decades have wit-

nessed a redefinition of the concept of security in global politics. Historically, secu-

rity was equated with the capability of a state to protect its territory and subjects

from military aggression by other states. This meant that security could only be

attained by increasing military power, joining alliances, and/or appeasing foes.For most of the history of the state system, land was a key source of wealth and

power, and states had a great incentive to extend their territorial boundaries. More

territory meant more men for the army and more land to exploit for raw materials

and on which to grow food. More territory also meant greater protection from pos-

sible invasion or additional opportunities to initiate aggression oneself. Not surpris-

ingly, the major European powers found themselves repeatedly at war for territories

like Silesia, Alsace and Lorraine, and the Rhineland, which offered economic and

military benefits to whoever possessed them.

Territorial disputes, however, create special barriers to cooperation. Fights over

territory are essentially zero-sum games: the more of a territory that one country

seizes, the less of it that is available to other countries. When the United States

seized California from Mexico in 1848, the amount of territory the United States

acquired was exactly equal to the amount that Mexico lost. Zero-sum situations

like these, where the size of the pie is fixed and states are simply trying to decide

how it is to be divided, are inherently conflictual, since interests are incompatible.

Although any definition of security must still take account of military threats from

other countries and potentially zero-sum conflicts of interest like those over terri-

tory, in todays tightly connected world it must take account of much else as well.

Nonmilitary dangers and situations in which one sides gain does not necessarilymean an equal loss to the other side are increasingly common.




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Today, many of the dangers threatening us are not posed or created directly by

other states, and events occurring entirely within the borders of other states, even

states far away, may endanger our well-being. Ethnic and tribal strife, for example,

have forced millions of people to become refugees, swamping the economic and

political capacity of neighboring states. Diseases such as AIDS, SARS, Ebola, anddrug-resistant tuberculosis threaten to spread around the world. Our species well-

being and even survival are jeopardized by intensifying ecological crises such as

global warming, which threatens to raise sea levels enough to submerge island

nations like Fiji and the Maldives and to inundate heavily populated coastal regions

of countries like China, Bangladesh, and the United States. Rapid population

growth in the developing world is straining the planets capacity to feed itself and

dispose of its wastes, and profligate use of resources by wealthier nations adds to

a global environmental problem that is beyond the ability of any single state to

solve. Economic concerns, too, have assumed a higher place on the global

agenda. Prosperity is increasingly determined by decisions of faraway individualsand corporations, largely outside the control of individual states. In todays world,

international trade and finance issues are receiving the attention formerly reserved

for questions of war and peace because they directly affect whether ordinary peo-

ple in nations around the globe will be able to live happy, meaningful lives, or even

to avoid destitution or starvation.

This new, broader sense of what is necessary to ensure human safety and well-

being challenges notions of security based on mutual respect for sovereignty. It

means that states more and more often perceive that the safety and well-being of

their citizens is being threatened by events within the borders of other states. As a

consequence, the principle that states should not interfere in each others domes-

tic affairs is increasingly ignored. For example, the United States regularly violates

this stricture when it demands that the government of Afghanistan stop the activi-

ties of groups such as al-Qaeda within its borders, ban the cultivation of opium

poppies within its territory, and halt its repressive treatment of women; when it

insists that China improve its human-rights record in return for trade privileges; or

when it takes action against European-based companies that operate in Cuba.

So do the United Nations (UN) and its affiliated agencies like the International

Monetary Fund (IMF) when dealing with human rights, economic development,

and environmental issues. The UN was not reluctant to intervene in South Africas

domestic sphere in opposing that countrys apartheid policy, and the IMF routinely

forces states to alter their economic policies as a condition for receiving loans.

Such intrusions significantly limit the sovereign independence of target states and

in some cases, as when the IMF forces loan recipients to adopt austerity policies,

may even threaten to bring about the governments overthrow.

Dilemmas of Collective Action Many of the issues on the new, broader security

agenda cannot be dealt with effectively by individual states. Instead, they require

collective action by many, sometimes even all, states. Ecological threats such as

global warming and disappearing rain forests offer a good illustration of the prob-lem. Carbon dioxide emissions, which are the main source of global warming, are




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produced in a variety of ways, the most important of which is by automobiles.

Reducing such emissions would benefit everyone; individually, however, each of us

would prefer that others make the sacrifice necessary to reduce carbon dioxide

while we continue our own carbon dioxideproducing activities. Many Americans,

for example, would be happiest if global warming could be prevented by reducedautomobile use in Europe and the developing world, without limits on automobile

use or stricter emissions controls in the United States. At the same time, Americans

naturally worry that if they make the sacrifices required to reduce carbon dioxide

production, other nations will simply increase their carbon dioxideproducing

activities and global warming will occur anyway. Even though they fear global

warming, many Americans therefore are reluctant to make the sacrifices necessary

to counter this threat. The decision by President George W. Bush to back out of an

international agreement, the Kyoto Protocol, that the United States had earlier

signed reflects this logic. The Kyoto Protocol called for states around the world,

including the United States, to reduce the emission of the greenhouse gasesresponsible for global warming. In part, President Bushs decision was based on

the argument that, compared to poorer, less developed countries, the United States

was being asked to pay a disproportionate share of the cost of slowing global

warming.

Or consider the problem of global deforestation. The worlds tropical rain forests

absorb a great deal of carbon dioxide and are important sources of oxygen. In

addition, they are home to a wide variety of plant and animal life. Their destruction

exacerbates a number of environmental problems that cross national boundaries,

including soil erosion, desertification, and global warming. However, much of the

rain forest that has not already been destroyed is located in a relatively few eco-

nomically less developed countries, such as Brazil and Indonesia. Why, these

countries reason, should they sacrifice their own nations economic development

for the good of other nations, many of which have already achieved a standard of

living far higher than theirs? Why should they not have the right to cut down their

jungles to provide new land for farmers and timber for export? In general, there is

tension between developing and developed countries regarding environmental

issues. Developing countries argue that wealthy countries produce far more waste

per capita than they do and already enjoy prosperity. Developed countries respond

by contending that rapidly expanding population and economic growth in the

developing world create the greatest burdens on the worlds environmental health.

Threats to security like these pose dilemmas of collective action. In a dilemma

of collective action, if each actor pursues its own selfish best interests, the result is

something that is worse for everyone, including the actors acting selfishly. On the

one hand, individual actors share a common interest in enhancing the general wel-

fare by cooperating with one another to overcome collective problems and will

suffer if these problems go unsolved. On the other hand, each state wishes to avoid

paying its share to solve the problem and wants absolute guarantees that others

will do at least their fair share. In the absence of a higher authority able to assure

that each actor contributes its share, actors may evade their responsibilities, bothbecause they fear being taken advantage of by others and because, if possible,




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they would like to take advantage of others. Finding ways to overcome these dilem-

mas of collective action and work together to solve common problems is one of the

major tasks of global politics.

As dilemmas of collective action suggest, the anarchic nature of the international

system, in which sovereign power is divided among individual states, impedescooperative settlements, even when common interests exist. Since anarchy means

that there is no higher authority to make sure that states carry out their promises,

trust is low. In this situation, every actor fears that, regardless of the commitments

or treaties its neighbors may have made, they may break their word if it is in their

short-term interest to do so. The absence of higher authority is a structural obsta-

cle to cooperation. New political arrangements and institutions are necessary if

these dilemmas and the new security agenda are to be dealt with effectively.

Conflict, Cooperation, and the New Security Agenda In contrast to a world in

which most problems are seen as zero-sum, a world in which actors are individuallyunable to ensure their citizens security and in which there are numerous dilemmas

of collective action places a premium on cooperation. In variable-sum games the

size of the pie, as well as how it is divided, depends on the policies pursued by

actors. This is a good description of the world that is now emerging.

Territory, for example, has become less important as a source of wealth and mil-

itary power. Increasingly, these depend on advanced technology and global trade.

Trade and technology, however, are not fixed the way territory is. The creation of

technology and growth in trade can be fostered by cooperation among actors. The

liberal global economic policies that have been pursued by Western democracies

since World War II underscore the value of working together cooperatively to

increase the total size of the pie. The collapse of the Soviet Union has been

explained in part by its isolation from the global trading system the United States

and its allies created after World War II and by the Soviet Unions failure to keep

abreast of technological change. By contrast, the willingness of Chinas communist

regime, beginning in the 1970s, to open up the country to global trade and invest-

ment triggered rapid economic growth that has made it a major player in the global

economic system.

It is important to recognize that trade and investment are collectivelybeneficial.

Unlike territory, trade and investment offer great opportunities for cooperation.

Indeed, in the absence of cooperation everyone loses. If actors squabble over how

to divide the pie and refuse to work together, the pie shrinks in size. For example,

during the Great Depression of the 1930s, countries sought to protect domestic

industries from foreign competition by erecting tariff barriers and to increase their

share of world trade by reducing the value of their currency compared to the curren-

cies of others (thereby making their goods cheaper overseas while making it more

expensive to buy imported goods at home). As countries emulated one another in

using these beggar-thy-neighbor policies, the net result was a contraction of

global trade. Exchanges of goods and services that would have profitedallcoun-

tries, and contributed to world employment, were prevented. This not only increasedthe severity of the Depression but ultimately contributed to political instability in




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countries like Germany and Italy, which made them easy prey for demagogues like

Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini.

In a world in which variable-sum games offer incentives for cooperation, political

institutions and organizations provide the tools that make this cooperation possi-

ble. The proliferation of global and regional economic institutions after World War IIfacilitated interstate economic cooperation and helps to explain the rapid recovery

and growing prosperity of Europe and Japan, which in turn led to greater prosper-

ity for Europes and Japans trading partners, including the United States. Under

American leadership, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), the World

Bank, and the IMF reduced trade barriers, provided loans for reconstruction, and

stabilized currency rates. This facilitated rapid growth in global trade and the emer-

gence of new public and private institutions that stimulated greater economic activ-

ity worldwide.

The emergence of cooperative institutions to solve common problems has not

been limited to the economic sphere. A combination of new transnational threats tosecurity and the growing capacity of people in different countries to communicate

and work together has produced a proliferation of transnational organizations deal-

ing with a wide range of issues. In the environmental arena, for example, groups

such as Greenpeace and World Wildlife Fund mobilize people directly for political

ends. These organizations constitute a genuine global civil society that exists inde-

pendently from the traditional pattern of state-to-state relations.

This suggests a final reason why pressure for global cooperation is growing.

Individuals have an increasing capacity to make their opinions known to others and

to work together globally, both through their states and directly. In recent years,

democracy has spread from North America, Western Europe, and Japan to Latin

America, where a number of military regimes have returned political power to civil-

ians, and to the former Soviet-bloc states of Eastern Europe. The seeds of democ-

racy have also been planted in Russia and in a number of African societies. But

even where democracy is absent, growing literacy rates and mass media expose

peoples to the wider world in which they live, mobilize them to place pressure on

governments to look out for their welfare, and enable them to communicate directly

with citizens of other societies. To be sure, improved literacy and knowledge do not

necessarily result in a preference for peaceful, rather than violent, solutions to

conflicts of interest. They do, however, mean greater awareness of the complex

ways in which people around the world depend on each other and greater pressure

to develop governmental and nongovernmental institutions to solve problems that

transcend borders.

Integration and Fragmentation One of the major trends in the world today is

toward greater transnational integration. The well-being of human beings every-

where is affected by actions of other individuals around the globe. People are

increasingly aware of this interdependence and have recourse to a growing variety

of institutions and organizations other than states.

Some of these new or increasingly important institutions are intergovernmentalorganizations (IGOs), that is, organizations that have states as members. These

IGOs not only serve as forums for negotiation but also attempt to hold their




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member states to commitments they may have made and to enforce the decisions

made by the group as a whole. The growing authority of economic institutions

like the World Trade Organization (WTO), the successor to the GATT, and the Euro-

pean Union (EU) reflects a major process in global politics, that is, the surrender by

states to global and regional actors of selected responsibilities and the centraliza-tion of specific tasks. Thus, when NAFTA came into force in 1992, the United

States, Mexico, and Canada agreed to surrender a measure of independence in

making economic policy in order to enjoy the collective economic growth promised

by free trade. Although integration of this sort is taking place mainly in the devel-

oped world and is further advanced in economic issues than in political or military

ones, the trend marks growing recognition that states are poorly equipped to

respond effectively to the challenges created by growing interconnectedness of

peoples everywhere.

Also drawing the world together in a complicated network of relationships that

cut across national borders are a variety of other nonstate actors. We havealready referred to some nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), like Green-

peace and the World Wildlife Fund, that have ordinary people from nations

around the world as members and that address the concerns of global citizens.

Other border-spanning nongovernmental organizations are motivated by profit

rather than by public policy concerns. In the modern world, in which the global

economy is linked by immense transnational corporations (TNCs) like Sony,

Shell, and IBM that can take advantage of wage and cost differentials around the

world, the prosperity of workers in a country may be largely determined by

investment and market decisions that are beyond the control of that states gov-

ernment, or indeed the government of any single state. Increasingly, global trade

involves the movement of goods and services among corporations and among

corporate subsidiaries rather than among states. Particularly when these

transnational corporations collude with each other, their power may dwarf that of

states, and states may be forced to adapt their policies to meet the demands or

accommodate the interests of transnational corporations rather than pursuing

other preferred policies.

Thanks to technology, the world of finance has become global, too. Just as cor-

porations can move raw materials and finished products around the globe to take

advantage of lower wages, higher skills, and better markets, so also can investors

move vast sums of money around the world to obtain higher or safer yields and to

benefit from minute changes in currency rates. In fact, using cyberspace, they can

do this virtually instantaneously. What this means is that, despite the importance of

such matters in determining national prosperity and coping with inflation or unem-

ployment, governments lack the resources to control macroeconomic (monetary)

policies in their own countries if foreign investors seek to undermine them. The

funds that investors can shift dwarf the resources available to governments.

The integration taking place in todays world involves more than economics,

though. More than ever before, ordinary people are introduced to a global, rather

than purely national, culture. People all over the world are exposed to foreign massmediatelevision, radio, filmsand many people in wealthy countries are con-

nected by the Internet, the facsimile machine, global advertising, and jet aircraft.




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Such exposure erodes cultural differences and homogenizes the tastes and habits

especially of young people in urban areas. Today, it is possible to travel around the

world eating at McDonalds, sleeping at Hilton hotels, and never being exposed to

local customs and tastes. The fear that cultural homogenization will bring with it lib-

eral Western attitudes that erode morals and local values and unravel the fabric oflocal communities has produced a backlash in countries like Afghanistan, Iran, and

China, where even satellite dishes have been outlawed. Islamic fundamentalism

that is, belief that a community should be governed according to the dictates of the

Muslim holy book, the Koranrepresents another response to the inroads of sec-

ular modernity. And nowhere is the struggle between new and old more vividly

reflected than in the efforts of some Islamic governments to limit the autonomy of

women, especially middle-class urban women who have been educated and have

professional aspirations.

One reaction to economic centralization and cultural homogenization in recent

years has been the rediscovery of cultural roots and the reassertion of ethnic,religious, tribal, and other identities to resist the rootlessness of modernity. Iden-

tity politics plays a growing role in providing psychological security to people

who fear and loathe the remote forces that reduce their economic status and

erode the ethics and tastes that have held sway in their communities, sometimes

for centuries.

And identity politics is central to a second major global process, fragmentation of

states. Although civil strife plagued states such as Vietnam, South Africa, Indonesia,

and Nigeria prior to the end of the Cold War, it has become a virtual epidemic in

recent years, especially in the developing world where Europeans imposed artificial

frontiers in previous centuries. Ethnic, tribal, religious, and racial cleavages have

exploded in such countries as Bosnia, Somalia, Rwanda, Congo, Liberia, Sierra

Leone, and Sudan, accompanied by the virtual collapse of state institutions.

The combination of these integrative and disintegrative pressures is transform-

ing global politics before our eyes. Old institutionsold organizations and patterns

of behaviorare increasingly overwhelmed as their legitimacy is called into ques-

tion and as new problems arise that they are ill equipped to handle. At the same

time, new institutions are emerging. Understanding where this process is leading

how human needs will be met around the world and how we will come to view our-

selves and our relations to one anotheris the challenge facing us as inhabitants

of this world and members of this global community.

From a State-Centric to a Turbulent World

In this chapter and those that follow, we provide two types of readings. Each chap-

ter begins with one or more general pieces drawn from the academic literature to

lay out the contours of the issue that the chapter addresses. Following this, shorter,

current pieces are presented that vividly describe or reflect particular aspects of the

issue; in many cases, these are drawn from news sources, and they show how theissue impacts our lives today.




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Turbulence in World Politics: A Theory of Change and Continuity 13

1.1 Turbulence in World Politics: A Theory ofChange and Continuity

James N. Rosenau

In our first reading, political scientist James Rosenau describes a rapidly changing

world of diminishing state authority and capacity in which sovereignty means less

and less. He argues that change in recent years has been so dramatic as to make

the term international politics obsolete. Instead, he speaks of postinternational

politics to express the idea that todays world is far more complex than a system

of sovereign states.

Rosenau argues that for the first time in three hundred years turbulent change

has altered the three major dimensions, or parameters, of global politics. The firstof these parameters reflects peoples capabilities: people today are better edu-

cated than their ancestors and are constantly exposed to the world around them

because of modern technologies such as televisions, satellite dishes, and comput-

ers. As a result, they can understand their own interests and can participate directly

in global politics, rather than relying on their states.

The second parametric change, Rosenau argues, is the rise of new actors that

operate alongside of and interact with the older state system. To serve their inter-

ests, people organize into a variety of nonstate groups like Amnesty International.

The third change that Rosenau points to is that people today no longer automati-

cally accept authority. Governments and authority figures can no longer assumethat people will blindly follow their commands; instead, they have to earn citizens

loyalty or else suffer the fate of the Soviet Union, which collapsed in 1991.

Rosenau emphasizes two sources of these changes: the revolution in microelec-

tronics that has made possible instantaneous and inexpensive communication and

the emergence of issues like environmental pollution that affect everyone. New

technologies enable people to communicate and travel quickly. New issues foster

the creation of nonstate groups to tackle them; the authority of these groups is rein-

forced by states inability to solve problems. The authority of new groups and insti-

tutions grows as the authority of states declines. Ironically, Rosenau concludes,

these changes are at the same time promoting greater fragmentation and greater

integration in global politics.

Previewing Postinternational Politics

The very notion of international relations seems obsolete in the face ofan apparent trend in which more and more of the interactions that sustainworld politics unfold without the direct involvement of nations or states.

Rosenau, James N., Turbulence in World Politics. 1990 Princeton University Press. Reprinted by permission ofPrinceton University Press.




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So a new term is needed, one that denotes the presence of new structures andprocesses while at the same time allowing for still further structural development.A suitable label would bepostinternational politics. . . . Postinternational politics isan appropriate designation because it clearly suggests the decline of long-standing

patterns without at the same time indicating where the changes may be leading. Itsuggests flux and transition even as it implies the presence and functioning of sta-ble structures. . . . It reminds us that international matters may no longer be thedominant dimension of global life, or at least that other dimensions have emergedto challenge or offset the interactions of nation-states. And, not least, it permitsus to avoid premature judgment as to whether present-day turbulence consists ofenduring systemic arrangements or is merely a transitional condition.

Accordingly, the term will henceforth be used to designate the historical era thatbegan after World War II and continues to unfold today. It is a shorthand for thechanges wrought by global turbulence; for an ever more dynamic interdependence . . .

for the centralizing and decentralizing tendencies that are altering the identity andnumber of actors on the world stage; for the shifting orientations that are trans-forming authority relations among the actors; and for the dynamics . . . that are fos-tering new arrangements through which the diverse actors pursue their goals. . . .

Turbulent Change Doubtless every era seems chaotic to the people who livethrough it, and the last decades of the twentieth century are no exception. It is as ifSpaceship Earth daily encounters squalls, downdrafts, and wind shears as it careensinto changing and unchartered realms of experience. Sometimes the turbulence isfuriously evident as thunderclouds of war gather or the lightning of a crisis streaks

across the global sky; but often the turbulence is of a clear-air kind, the havoc itwreaks unrecognized until after its challenges have been met or its damage done.

In seeking here to account for this turbulence in world politics and the changes thatit both reflects and promotes, the analysis will focus on the underlying and enduringdynamics out of which daily events and current issues flow. Some of the dynamics arelocated at micro levels, where individuals learn and groups cohere; others originate atmacro levels, where new technologies are operative and collectivities conflict; and stillothers derive from clashes between opposing forces at the two levelsbetween conti-nuity and change, between the pulls of the past and the lures of the future, betweenthe requirements of interdependence and the demands for independence, betweencentralizing and decentralizing tendencies within and among nations. . . .

. . . Turbulence is . . . more than the commotion that accompanies shifts in majorvariables. Such fluctuations make up the day-to-day life of any system, be it socialor meteorological. Just as shifts from cloudiness to showers to sunshine constitutenormal weather patterns, so do electoral shifts from right to center to left or indus-trial shifts from high to moderate to low productivity form standard political andeconomic patterns. . . . When the systems boundaries no longer contain the fluc-tuations of the variables, however, anomalies arise and irregularities set in. . . .These are the hallmarks of turbulence. Meteorologically, it appears in the form of

hurricanes, tornadoes, tidal waves, droughts, and other abnormalities of naturethat transform the terrain across which they sweep. Socially, it is manifested intechnological breakthroughs, authority crises, consensus breakdowns, revolution-




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ary upheavals, generational conflicts, and other forces that restructure the humanlandscape in which they erupt.

It follows that uncertainty is a prime characteristic of turbulent politics. While thefluctuations of variables usually adhere to recognizable patterns, regularities disappear

when turbulence sets in. At such times, the structures and processes of world politicsenter a realm without prior rules or boundaries. Anything may happen, or so it seems,as demands are intensified, tensions exacerbated, relationships transformed,policymak-ing paralyzed, or outcomes otherwise rendered less certain and the future more obscure.

Closely related to the uncertainties associated with political turbulence is thepace at which it moves. Unlike conventional diplomatic or organizational situations,which evolve in the context of formal procedures, cautious bargaining, and bureau-cratic inertia, those beset by turbulent conditions develop rapidly as the repercussionsof the various participants actions cascade through their networks of interdepen-dence. Sustained by the complexity and dynamism of diverse actors whose goals and

activities are inextricably linked to each other, and facilitated by technologies thattransmit information almost instantaneously, turbulent situations tend to be markedby quick responses, insistent demands, temporary coalitions, and policy reversals. . . .

Viewed in this context, it is not surprising that, in 1988, protests and uprisingsfollowed quickly upon each other in Soviet Armenia, the West Bank, Poland,Burma, and Yugoslavia, or that the same time span was marked by regimes beingshaken up in the Soviet Union, Chile, Haiti, and Lebanon. Likewise, and no lessconspicuous, 1988 witnessed cascades of cooperation: within weeks of each other,negotiations to end wars were initiated in Afghanistan, Angola, Central America,Cambodia, the Western Sahara, and the Persian Gulf. The winds of turbulence, in

short, can propel postinternational politics in many directions, through the worldsdiplomatic and legislative chambers, where compromises are reached, no less thanthrough its streets and battlefields, where conflicts are joined. . . .

It could be argued that high complexity and high dynamism are not new to worldpolitics, that global wars, revolutions, and depressions reflect such conditions, andaccordingly, that change has always been at work in world politics. In order to differ-entiate the familiar and commonplace changes from the profound kind of transfor-mations that seem to be occurring today, one other attribute of political turbulenceneeds to be notednamely, it involves parametric change. . . . [W]hen the orienta-tions, skills, relationships, and structures that have sustained the parameters of worldpolitics begin to crumble . . . the course of events is bound to turn turbulent.

Three dimensions of world politics are conceptualized as its main parameters. Oneof these operates at the micro level of individuals, one functions at the macro level ofcollectivities, and the third involves a mix of the two levels. The micro parameterconsists of the orientations and skills by which citizens . . . link themselves to themacro world of global politics. I refer to this set of boundary constraints as the orienta-tional or skill parameter. . . . [T]he structural parameter . . . refers to the constraintsembedded in the distribution of power among and within the collectivities of theglobal system.The . . . relational one . . . focuses onthe nature of the authority relations

that prevail between individuals at the micro level and their macro collectivities.All three of these parameters are judged to be undergoing such a thoroughgoingtransformation today as to bring about the first turbulence in world politics since




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comparable shifts culminated in the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648. . . . In the case of thestructural parameter, the transformation is marked by a bifurcation in which thestate-centric system now coexists with an equally powerful, though more decentralized,multi-centric system. . . . In the case of the relational parameter, the long-standing

pattern whereby compliance with authority tends to be unquestioning and automatic isconceived to have been replaced by a more elaborate set of norms that make thesuccessful exercise of authority much more problematic, thus fostering leadership andfollowership conflicts within and among state and nonstate collectivities that can fairlybe judged as amounting to a series of authority crises which, in both their pervasivenessand their scale, are new and global in scope. Lastly . . . the analytic skills of individualshave increased to a point where they now play a different and significant role in worldpolitics. . . .

. . . Earlier eras have witnessed wars that shifted global structures from multipolarto bipolar foundations and revolutions that undermined the prevailing authority

relationships; but not since the seventeenth century have circumstances arisen inwhich the values of all three of these fundamental parameters underwent reinforc-ing realignments. . . .

The Sources of Change What are the forces at work . . . that drive theseparametric transformations? Five seem particularly relevant. One involves the shiftfrom an industrial to a postindustrial order and focuses on the dynamics of technol-ogy, particularly on those technologies associated with the microelectronic revolu-tion that have made social, economic, and political distances so much shorter, themovement of ideas, pictures, currencies, and information so much faster, and thus

the interdependence of people and events so much greater. A second engine ofglobal change is the emergence of issuessuch as atmospheric pollution, terrorism,the drug trade, currency crises, and AIDSthat are the direct products of newtechnologies or of the worlds greater interdependence and are distinguished fromtraditional political issues by virtue of being transnational rather than national orlocal in scope. A third dynamic is the reduced capability of states and governmentsto provide satisfactory solutions to the major issues on their political agendas, partlybecause the new issues are not wholly within their jurisdiction, partly because theold issues are also increasingly intertwined with significant international compo-nents . . . and partly because the compliance of their citizenries can no longer betaken for granted. Fourth, with the weakening of whole systems, subsystems haveacquired a correspondingly greater coherence and effectiveness, thereby fosteringtendencies toward decentralization (what I call subgroupism) at all organizationallevels that are in stark contrast to the centralizing tendencies (here regarded asnation-statism or transnationalism) that marked the early decades of [the twentieth]century and those that preceded it. Finally, there is the feedback of the conse-quences of all the foregoing for the skills and orientations of the worlds adults whocomprise the groups, states, and other collectivities that have had to cope with thenew issues of interdependence and adjust to the new technologies of the postindus-

trial order; with their analytic skills enlarged and their orientations toward author-ity more self-conscious, todays persons-in-the-street are no longer as uninvolved,ignorant, and manipulable with respect to world affairs as were their forebears. . . .




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. . . One of the five dynamics, the shift in micro capabilities and orientations, isdeemed to be more powerful than the other four. . . . That is, although world politicswould not be on a new course today if the microelectronic and other technologicalrevolutions had not occurred, if the new interdependence issues had not arisen, if

states and governments had not become weaker, and if subgroupism had not mush-roomed, none of these dynamics would have produced parametric change if adults inevery country and in all walks of life had remained essentially unskilled and detachedwith respect to global affairs. . . . Without the micro transformations . . . none of theothers could have emerged on a worldwide scale, and in this sense the enlargementsof the capacities of citizens is the primary prerequisite for global turbulence. . . .

. . . Once the micro level shifts began . . . alterations in the status of states,governments, and subgroups were bound to follow, as people became receptive tothe decentralizing consequences inherent in their growing capacity to locate theirown interests more clearly in the flow of events. The subtlety of these interactive

processes is perhaps most clearly evident in the links between the expansion of cit-izen skills and the technologies made available by the microelectronic revolution.If one asks what the advent of instantaneous communications and informationretrievalof satellites bringing pictures of ongoing events into homes everywhereand of computers storing, processing, and disseminating information heretoforeunknown and ungatherablemay be doing to individuals as actors on the globalstage, the answer seems inescapable that the new technologies have had a pro-found, if not always desirable, impact upon how individuals perceive, comprehend,judge, enter, avoid, or otherwise interact with the world beyond their workplaceand home. . . . No longer does the translation of commitment into action await

word brought by stagecoach that like-minded citizens are banding together or thatleaders discern an opportunity for effective participation. Today, events and thewords about them are, in effect, simultaneous occurrences. Unlike any prior time inhistory, therefore, citizens are now able to intrude themselves readily into a situa-tion anywhere in the world, because information about its latest twists and turns isimmediately at hand. . . .

Indeed . . . the ability tomobilize those skills and orientations is somuchgreater andspeedier than in the past that the practical effect is an expanded capacity for identify-ing and articulating self-interests and participating effectively in collective action. . . .

The Technological Dynamic . . . [P]olitical systems are also subject to a broad arrayof changes originating in the economy and society, all of which are also sufficientlydynamic to spur still further changes once they have been absorbed by the polity.

. . . [T]hree dynamics are conceived to be especially relevant as exogenous sources ofglobal turbulence. . . . [O]ne is the pressures created by extensive changes in the struc-ture and size of populations in recent decades. A second involves the shifting availabil-ity and distribution of natural resources, especially those related to the generation ofenergy. The third derives from the . . . consequences of technologies in all fields ofhuman endeavor, from informationprocessing to medicine,biogenetics andagriculture.

Since it has also contributed to the shifts in population and natural resources,technology is perhaps the most powerful of the exogenous dynamics. . . . Tech-nology has expanded the capacity to generate and manipulate information and




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knowledge even more than the ability to produce material goods, leading to asituation in which the service industries have come to replace the manufacturingindustries as the cutting edge of societal life. It is technology, too, that has sogreatly diminished geographic and social distances through the jet-powered air-

liner, the computer, the orbiting satellite, and the many other innovations thatnow move people, ideas, and goods more rapidly and surely across space and timethan ever before. It is technology that has profoundly altered the scale on whichhuman affairs take place, allowing more people to do more things in less time andwith wider repercussions than could have been imagined in earlier eras. It is tech-nology, in short, that has fostered an interdependence of local, national, and inter-national communities that is far greater than any previously experienced.

1.2 Bloggers May Be the Real Opposition

The Economist

The microelectronics revolution, as Rosenau observes, is one of the factors at the

heart of the shift from international to postinternational politics. This revolution is

profoundly changing the meaning of borders and boundaries in todays world by

allowing individuals around the globe not simply to gather and analyze information

in ways that previously only states and other large, bureaucratic institutions were

able to do, but also to communicate with others around the world, ignoring politi-

cal divisions and unchecked by political authorities. In addition to being a force

driving globalization, however, this microelectronic revolution also fundamentally

shifts the balance of power between ordinary individuals and the states and elites

that govern them. As the following story from the British news journal The Econo-

mistobserves, the ability of state leaders to control what ordinary people know and

think is now challengednot only by advocates of greater democracy, but by

advocates of fundamentalist religion and by various ethnic, ideological, and class-

based groupsthanks to the new technology. For better and for worse, the power

to question authority is much more real today than in the past few centuries.

They call themselvespyjamahideen. Instead of galloping off to fight holy wars,they stay at home, meaning, often as not, in their parents houses, andclatter about computer keyboards. Their activity is not as explosive as the

self-styled jihadists who trouble regimes in the region, and they come in all stripes,secular liberal as well as radical Islamist. But like Gullivers Lilliputians, youthfuldenizens of the internet are chipping away at the overweening dominance of Arabgovernments.

Bloggers may be the real opposition, The Economist,April 12, 2007. 2007 by Economist Newspaper Group.

Reproduced with permission of Economist Newspaper Group in the format Textbook via Copyright Clearance

Center.




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Bloggers May Be the Real Opposition 19

In Egypt, for instance, blogging has evolved within the past year from a narcis-sistic parlour sport to a shaper of the political agenda. By simply posting embarrass-ing video footage, small-time bloggers have blown open scandals over such issues astorture and womens harassment on the streets of Cairo. No comment was needed

to air widespread disillusionment with last months referendum to approve consti-tutional changes, after numerous Egyptian websites broadcast scanned images of aletter from one provincial governor to junior bureaucrats, ordering them to voteyes. (The government claimed a 27 percent turnout, with three-quarters approv-ing; critics claim fewer than 5 percent voted.)

The Muslim Brotherhood, Egypts main Islamist group and most powerful oppo-sition force, has countered a recent government crackdown not with streetprotests, but far more effectively with a web-based campaign to help its arrestedmembers. More playfully subversive, an anonymous blogger has drawn a rave fol-lowing for his spoof version of Egyptian politics, which pictures the country as a vil-

lage ruled by an ageing headman. Through overblown praise of this exalted leader,and of his plans for his son to inherit the post, the blogger runs mocking circlesaround the suspected ambitions of Egypts 78-year-old president, Hosni Mubarak.

Such pinpricks have yet to puncture the dominance of any Arab state. But withinternet access spreading even to remote and impoverished villages, and withmuch of its user-generated content pitched in pithy everyday speech rather thanthe high classical Arabic of official commentary, the authorities are beginning totake notice. In February, an obliging Egyptian court fired a shot across the bows ofwould-be web dissidents by sentencing 22-year-old Abdelkarim Suleiman to fouryears in jail. A law student in Alexandria, he had strayed by penning bitter

critiques of Egypts main centre of Islamic learning, al-Azhar University, and ofMr. Mubarak, and posting them on his personal blog.

Bahrain, another country that hides authoritarian rule behind a veneer of demo-cratic practice, has taken to summoning bloggers for questioning, and tries to makethem register with the police. Saudi Arabia, which blocks thousands of websites,has silenced many web critics with quiet warnings. Syrias most prominent webactivist, who runs a news service reporting opposition, as well as government views,recently quit the country for similar reasons. But like the controversial opinions ofMr. Suleiman, the Alexandria blogger, the real story of what goes on in Syria is stillon the web, for anyone inclined to find it.




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Sovereignty, Borders, and Real Life

1.3 Why The World Isnt Flat

Pankaj Ghemawat

While the spread of literacy and the development of information and communica-

tion technology may indeed be leveling the world, giving increased power to ordi-

nary people (at the expense of sovereign states and their leaders) and allowing

individuals around the world to work together for profit or to solve shared problems,

Harvard Business School professor Pankaj Ghemawat warns against assuming

that national boundaries and global geography no longer matter. The reality is more

complex than that. As Rosenau would put it, the possibilities and pressures for

global integration coexist with possibilities and pressures for fragmentation.

Indeed, national and local loyalties, and national and local political and economic

institutions, not only continue to matter but are strengthened by the sense of alien-

ation and fears of powerlessness that a truly global world creates.

Ideas will spread faster, leaping borders. Poor countries will have immediate

access to information that was once restricted to the industrial world and trav-eled only slowly, if at all, beyond it. Entire electorates will learn things thatonce only a few bureaucrats knew. Small companies will offer services that previ-ously only giants could provide. In all these ways, the communications revolutionis profoundly democratic and liberating, leveling the imbalance between large andsmall, rich and poor. The global vision that Frances Cairncross predicted in herDeath of Distance appears to be upon us. We seem to live in a world that is no longera collection of isolated, local nations, effectively separated by high tariff walls,poor communications networks and mutual suspicion. Its a world that, if youbelieve the most prominent proponents of globalization, is increasingly wired,

informed, and, well, flat.Its an attractive idea. And if publishing trends are any indication, globalization

is more than just a powerful economic and political transformation; its a boomingcottage industry. According to the U.S. Library of Congresss catalog, in the 1990s,about 500 books were published on globalization. Between 2000 and 2004, therewere more than 4,000. In fact, between the mid-1990s and 2003, the rate ofincrease in globalization-related titles more than doubled every 18 months.

Ghemewat, Pankaj, Why the World Isnt Flat, Foreign Policy (Washington), March/April 2007, pp. 5460.

2007 by Foreign Policy. . Reproduced with permission of Foreign Policy in the for-mat Textbook via Copyright Clearance Center.




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Why The World Isnt Flat 21

Amid all this clutter, several books on the subject have managed to attract sig-nificant attention. During a recent TV interview, the first question I was askedquite earnestlywas why I still thought the world was round. The interviewer wasreferring of course to the thesis ofNew York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedmans

bestselling book The World Is Flat. Friedman asserts that 10 forcesmost of whichenable connectivity and collaboration at a distanceare flattening the Earthand leveling a playing field of global competitiveness, the likes of which the worldhas never before seen.

It sounds compelling enough. But Friedmans assertions are simply the latest in aseries of exaggerated visions that also include the end of history and the conver-gence of tastes. Some writers in this vein view globalization as a good thingan escape from the ancient tribal rifts that have divided humans, or an opportunityto sell the same thing to everyone on Earth. Others lament its cancerous spread,a process at the end of which everyone will be eating the same fast food. Their

arguments are mostly characterized by emotional rather than cerebral appeals, areliance on prophecy, semiotic arousal (that is, treating everything as as sign), afocus on technology as the driver of change, an emphasis on education that createsnew people, and perhaps above all, a clamor for attention. But they all have onething in common: theyre wrong.

In truth, the world is not nearly as connected as these writers would have usbelieve. Despite talk of a new, wired world where information, ideas, money, andpeople can move around the planet faster than ever before, just a fraction of whatwe consider globalization actually exists. The portrait that emerges from a hardlook at the way companies, people, and states interact is a world thats only begin-

ning to realize the potential of true global integration. And what these trendsbackers wont tell you is that globalizations future is more fragile than you know.

The 10 Percent Presumption

The few cities that dominate international financial activityFrankfurt, HongKong, London, New Yorkare at the height of modern global integration; which isto say, they are all relatively well connected with one another. But when you exam-ine the numbers, the picture is one of extreme connectivity at the local level, not aflat world. What do such statistics reveal? Most types of economic activity that couldbe conducted either within or across borders turn out to still be quite domesticallyconcentrated.

One favorite mantra from globalization champions is how investment knows noboundaries. But how much of all the capital being invested around the world isconducted by companies outside of their home countries? The fact is, the totalamount of the worlds capital formation that is generated from foreign directinvestment (fdi) has been less than 10 percent for the last three years for whichdata are available (200305). In other words, more than 90 percent of the fixed

investment around the world is still domestic. And though merger waves can pushthe ratio higher, it has never reached 20 percent. In a thoroughly globalized




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environment, one would expect this number to be much higherabout 90 per-cent, by my calculation. And fdi isnt an odd or unrepresentative example. . . .

A Strong National Defense

If you buy into the more extreme views of the globalization triumphalists, youwould expect to see a world where national borders are irrelevant, and where citi-zens increasingly view themselves as members of ever broader political entities.True, communications technologies have improved dramatically during the past100 years. The cost of a three-minute telephone call from New York to London fellfrom $350 in 1930 to about 40 cents in 1999, and it is now approaching zero forvoice-over-Internet telephony. And the Internet itself is just one of many newerforms of connectivity that have progressed several times faster than plain old tele-

phone service. This pace of improvement has inspired excited proclamations aboutthe pace of global integration. But its a huge leap to go from predicting suchchanges to asserting that declining communication costs will obliterate the effectsof distance. Although the barriers at borders have declined significantly, theyhavent disappeared.

To see why, consider the Indian software industrya favorite of Friedman andothers. Friedman cites Nandan Nilekani, the ceo of the second-largest such firm,Infosys, as his muse for the notion of a flat world. But what Nilekani has pointedout privately is that while Indian software programmers can now serve the UnitedStates from India, access is assured, in part, by U.S. capital being investedquite

literallyin that outcome. In other words, the success of the Indian it industryis not exempt from political and geographic constraints. The country of originmatterseven for capital, which is often considered stateless.

Or consider the largest Indian software firm, Tata Consultancy Services (tcs).Friedman has written at least two columns in theNew York Times on tcss LatinAmerican operations: [I]n todays world, having an Indian company led by aHungarian-Uruguayan servicing American banks with Montevidean engineersmanaged by Indian technologists who have learned to eat Uruguayan veggie is justthe new normal, Friedman writes. Perhaps. But the real question is why the com-pany established those operations in the first place. Having worked as a strategyadvisor to tcs since 2000, I can testify that reasons related to the tyranny of timezones, languages, and the need for proximity to clients local operations loomedlarge in that decision. This is a far cry from globalization proponents oft-citedworld in which geography, language, and distance dont matter.

Trade flows certainly bear that theory out. Consider Canadian-U.S. trade, thelargest bilateral relationship of its kind in the world. In 1988, before the NorthAmerican Free Trade Agreement (nafta) took effect, merchandise trade levelsbetween Canadian provincesthat is, within the countrywere estimated to be20 times as large as their trade with similarly sized and similarly distant U.S. states.

In other words, there was a built-in home bias. Although nafta helped reducethis ratio of domestic to international tradethe home biasto 10 to 1 by themid-1990s, it still exceeds 5 to 1 today. And these ratios are just for merchandise;




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Why The World Isnt Flat 23

for services, the ratio is still several times larger. Clearly, the borders in our seem-ingly borderless world still matter to most people.

Geographical boundaries are so pervasive, they even extend to cyberspace. Ifthere were one realm in which borders should be rendered meaningless and the

globalization proponents should be correct in their overly optimistic models, itshould be the Internet. Yet Web traffic within countries and regions has increasedfar faster than traffic between them. Just as in the real world, Internet links decaywith distance. People across the world may be getting more connected, but theyarent connecting with each other. The average South Korean Web user may bespending several hours a day onlineconnected to the rest of the world intheorybut he is probably chatting with friends across town and e-mailing familyacross the country rather than meeting a fellow surfer in Los Angeles. Were morewired, but no more global.

Just look at Google, which boasts of supporting more than 100 languages and,

partly as a result, has recently been rated the most globalized Web site. But Googlesoperation in Russia (cofounder Sergey Brins native country) reaches only 28 per-cent of the market there, versus 64 percent for the Russian market leader in searchservices, Yandex, and 53 percent for Rambler.

Indeed, these two local competitors account for 91 percent of the Russian mar-ket for online ads linked to Web searches. What has stymied Googles expansioninto the Russian market? The biggest reason is the difficulty of designing a searchengine to handle the linguistic complexities of the Russian language. In addition,these local competitors are more in tune with the Russian market, for example,developing payment methods through traditional banks to compensate for the

dearth of credit cards. And, though Google has doubled its reach since 2003, itshad to set up a Moscow office in Russia and hire Russian software engineers, under-lining the continued importance of physical location. Even now, borders betweencountries defineand constrainour movements more than globalization breaksthem down. . . .

The champions of globalization are describing a world that doesnt exist. Its afine strategy to sell books and even describe a potential environment that maysomeday exist. Because such episodes of mass delusion tend to be relatively short-lived even when they do achieve broad currency, one might simply be tempted towait this one out as well. But the stakes are far too high for that. Governments thatbuy into the flat world are likely to pay too much attention to the golden strait-jacket that Friedman emphasized in his earlier book, The Lexus and the Olive Tree,which is supposed to ensure that economics matters more and more and politics lessand less. Buying into this version of an integrated worldor worse, using it as abasis for policymakingis not only unproductive. It is dangerous.




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1.4 Our Borderless World

Moiss Nam

By contrast to Pankaj Ghemawat in the preceding selection, Moiss Nam, the

editor of the journal Foreign Policy, stresses the reducedor at least changed

significance of political borders in todays world. It may be comforting to imagine a

world divided clearly and unambiguously by the the dark and impermeable

maplines representing the boundaries of sovereign states. But which borders mat-

ter, in what ways, for which purposes, and for what people is in flux. True, states

continue to exist and continue to divide the world along their borders. And true,

individuals continue to exhibit loyalty to their national group and continue to expect

a state to protect their nations interests and customs. At the same time, however,

the forces of integration and fragmentation that Rosenau discusses are making

borders porous. Ideas, goods, and sometimes (although not always) people are

able to move more and more freely across them. The result is a world in which state

borders and national loyalties have not disappeared but in which interactions

across borders serve to unite as well as divide.

Acountry's borders should not be confused with those familiar dotted linesdrawn on some must

Documents

Global Politics In A Changing World, Chapter 1