Clashes over power & Clashes over values

Clashes over power & Clashes over values

Is globalization dead? • (Now that we are in the midst of the worldwide economic crisis…)

What is globalization? • David Held: the “widening, deepening and speeding up of worldwide interconnectedness in all aspects of contemporary social life.”

The economic crisis will not slow down globalization: • All kinds of groups are still connecting: global charities, professional organizations, world religions, musicians, art dealers, criminals, international terrorists, etc.

Is any one actor in charge of cooperation? Globalization has multiplied the number of problems that no organization or country can solve on its own. Problems such as: • international economic crises, • international trade • nuclear proliferation, • proliferation of biological weapons • climate change, • terrorism (illegal migration, • transnational crime, and • pandemics (avian flu, SARS, swine flu, AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria).

How are these problems going to be solved? • By the assertion of raw military power? • By a coordinated action of the international community (or at least its most influential members)?

Do we need global governance? • It seems so. • People are calling for it.

An increasing need for the regulation of issues such as: • labor standards, • commercial whaling, • data privacy, • Internet content, • stem cell research, • e-commerce, • global warming, • terrorist financing, • sweatshop labor, • food safety regulations, • genetically modified foods.

Who is in charge of global governance? • Primarily: International organizations -- IGOs (e.g., UN and its special agencies, G7, G20). -- NGOs (e.g., International Accounting Standards Committee, The Global Business Dialogue on e-Commerce, Internet Engineering Task Force, Internet Society).

How efficient are those organizations? • They are mostly Cold War holdovers often described as “dysfunctional.” • There is an urgent need for changes in multilateral institutions, international law, rules, and coordinating mechanisms. • The UN is badly in need of structural reform, including reconsideration of the right of the permanent members of the Security Council to veto any resolution.

How efficient are global governing organizations? • Critical decisions about an international response to the financial crisis have been left largely to the G-7 (the group of highly industrialized states), an unrepresentative body that excludes major new centers of global savings and trade surpluses, such as China. • Given widespread suspicion in emerging markets about the IMF's motives and standards, expanding the IMF's power would require reforming governance at the organization (new voting and appointment rules). Industrial states, especially European ones, are overrepresented; the United States has too much influence; and new centers of wealth, which have accumulated massive savings, are underrepresented.

A Problem: • Collaborating with others often means relinquishing power, a concession that does not come easily to sovereign nations. • This does not mean that countries have to give power to a world government, to some supranational entity that will rule over world affairs. • It is precisely because such an institution is not possible that governments must collaborate with one another more effectively. • Yet that is a goal that has proved very elusive.

Unfortunately, it is highly likely that the efforts to: steer international integration, solve international crises, and better manage the global commons will continue to fall short. • The gap between the need for effective collective action at the global level and the ability of the international community to satisfy that need is the most dangerous deficit facing humanity.

The risk of major geopolitical instability resulting from: • Global economic recession: many of these vulnerable countries and regions lie on political fault lines (e.g. Pakistan, Ukraine). The crises help promote anti-Western reactions, including militant forms of Islamic fundamentalism. • Trade protectionism: the failure of multilateral trade negotiations that weakened the World Trade Organization. • Institutions such as the IMF and the WTO could become largely ineffective and irrelevant because of a general shift away from the belief in a rule-based international order and toward a view of the world in which power is all-important.

Great power politics is here to stay: • Back in the 1990s, the dominant view of globalization held that booming business ties between countries were the best antidote to war. • Power, it was thought, would inevitably shift from governments to the private sector and nongovernmental organizations.

Threats to global security: • The likelihood that any given country was embroiled in an inter-state conflict (between 1989-2003) was at its lowest point since the 1950s. The problem is that other forms of conflict and violence have soared: • Intra-state conflicts. • The number of people killed or injured by terrorists has gone from about 7,000 in 1995 to more than 25,000 in 2006. • Violent crimes are also going up in many countries, especially the poorest ones (international criminals, mainly narcotraffickers). • Many European countries are reporting higher crime rates as a result of the expanded presence of international criminal gangs in their midst. • One could also add the spread of contagious diseases and nuclear proliferation to the list.

Clashes of Moral Values: • National vs. Global.

The emerging global morality: • If the group to which we must justify ourselves is the tribe, or the nation, then our morality is likely to be tribal, or nationalistic. • But the revolution in communications has created a global audience. As a result, we feel a need to justify our behavior to the whole world. • This new global society, with its remarkable possibilities for linking people around the planet, gives us the material basis for a new ethic. • National leaders need to take a larger perspective that that of national interest. They need to take an ethical perspective on globalization.

For the rich national of Canada, France, or Japan: • Not to take a global ethical viewpoint has long been morally wrong thing to do. • Now it is also, in the long term, a danger to their security.

This planet should be the basic unit for our ethical thinking on: • Human rights (global system of criminal justice); • Women’s rights; • Minority rights; • Environment; • Animal rights. • How well we come through the era of globalization (perhaps whether we come through it at all) will depend on how we respond ethically to the idea that we live in one world.

Important question: To what extent is the advocacy of a single moral code a form of hubris or of hypocrisy, the attempt to impose one particular philosophy on others?Conversely, does the recognition of diversity entail a resignation to moral relativism and conflict? The issue of relativism vs. universality is one which has to be faced, even if it cannot easily be resolved.

Example (2007): • A German judge citing the Koran in turning down a German Muslim woman’s request for a fast-track divorce on the ground that her husband beat her. • The judge, Christa Datz-Winter, said that the couple came from a Moroccan cultural milieu, in which she said it was common for husbands to beat their wives. The Koran, she wrote, sanctions such physical abuse.

Is morality hardwired? Are moral sentiments shaped by culture or genetics? • Biologists/Primatologists: some animals are surprisingly sensitive to the plight of others. (Four kinds of behavior — empathy, the ability to learn and follow social rules, reciprocity and peacemaking — are the basis of sociality). • Evolutionary biologists: the brain has a genetically shaped mechanism for acquiring moral rules, a universal moral grammar similar to the neural machinery for learning language. • Jesse Prinz, a philosopher at the University of North Carolina believes morality developed after human evolution was finished and that moral sentiments are shaped by culture, not genetics.

There is the conflict between self-determination (sovereignty) and justice. • National sovereignty can be a formidable obstacle to attempts at achieving justice across borders or at instituting effective international or regional human rights regimes; • Sovereignty is also a big obstacle to attempts at what might be called international centralization or centralized decision making for the solution of problems that are way beyond the means of any one state.

The way people perceive the world: Individualism/Collectivism. The fish tank example: Americans are more likely to see individual units. Asian are more likely to describe the context. The chicken, cow, and hay example: Americans are more likely to see categories. Asians are more likely to see relationships (chicken, cow, hay). The individualistic countries tend to put rights and privacy first. People in collective societies tend to value harmony and duty. They tend to underestimate their own skills and are more self-effacing when describing their contributions to group efforts.

Asian particularism (the perceptions of social order): • Do the Asian countries (there is of course some cross-variation) share the common feature of being skeptical of freedom and liberty, while emphasizing order and discipline? • A contrast is often drawn between the authoritarianism allegedly implicit in, say, Confucianism and the respect for individual liberty and autonomy allegedly deeply rooted in Western liberal culture. • Western promoters of personal and political liberty in the non-Western world often see this as bringing Western values to Asia and Africa.

The defense of authoritarianism in Asia: • on grounds of the special nature of Asian values; • on grounds that authoritarian governance is in the interest of economic development in Asia (Lee Kuan Yew, the former prime minister of Singapore).

The perceptions of religion & politics: • Are the differences between Muslim and non-Muslim societies with respect to the role of religion in politics irreconcilable to the extent that they make “clash of civilizations” inevitable?

Clashes over power & Clashes over values