Globalization and Democracy - Essay Example

? Globalisation and Democracy The number and of the The practice of modern democracy is quite debatable. There are lots of controversies around the very question of what actually constitutes the essence of democracy. It should be recognized that there is no unified theory of democracy in modern political science. In the mid-twentieth century UNESCO encouraged the scientists to develop the concept of "democracy”. There were several tens of definitions suggested. Today we can count about 550 interpretations of democracy; among them there are those kinds of democracy, indicating the "truncated" forms of democracy that are reduced only to the procedure of alternative elections. There is no doubt that since the nineties of XX century, the term "globalization” has become the most prevalent in the global politics and political science. There is no need to dwell on those objective preconditions, which caused the appearance of the given term. Suffice it to list only the most significant ones. They are the growing internationalization of markets of goods and services, as well as the growth of financial interdependence between countries and regions, and uniformization of political regimes on the basis of the almost universal acceptance of democratic governance and the associated incidence of common culture (mass culture) models and patterns of consumption, and hitherto unprecedented development of informatization and communication, allowing to reduce the spatial and temporal boundaries between people, nations and states. With all the objective fullness of the given concept, which does not allow to doubt the existence and development of this process in the modern world, its rationale, interpretation and prediction in global political science, there is quite strong subjective beginning in it. It is connected on the one hand, with everyone’s inherent striving to simplify and speed up all the positive phenomena of reality in order to have time to enjoy their outcomes during lifetime. On the other hand, such subjectivity in the interpretation of globalization is associated with the exploitation of people’s natural psychological needs by worldwide mass media in order to ensure the individual interests of certain groups of countries, united by such concept as "developed". As a rule, political observers tend to perceive a certain inferiority of post-totalitarian countries’ democratic systems, their non-conformity to Western standards, due to their communist past. Certainly, the development of democracy in post-communist countries, where historical continuity and even cultural tradition were distorted by more than 70-year period of revolution and state violence, has its own characteristic shortcomings. Liberalization of the economy in post-communist countries failed to provide a deep structure of property relations (as in Poland or Hungary), as well as led to a huge social stratification of society on the poor and the rich (when the income gap reaches a ratio of 1:50). This situation is fraught with social and political instability, and, most importantly, it absolutely falls out of the context of European democracy. Those phenomena that are considered to be an unfortunate results of economic liberalization in developed Western countries and its unavoidable costs, serve as the norm for the post-communist countries, almost as a brand name of democracy. In reality, such increased economic inequality (with a concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a small group of oligarchs) constitutes a menace to democratic development and is an attributive sign of third world countries. In accordance with a majority of sociological researches, globalization and informatization lead not only to the internationalization and intensify interaction between different countries and civilizations, but at the same time cause various kinds of crises in less developed countries and regions. (Jagdish Bhagwati 2004). These trends, previously outlined by Samuel Huntington in his article "The Clash of Civilizations", and related conflicts play an important part in the modern society, having significant impact on the processes of democratization, their progress and prospects. In this regard, despite the apparent progress of democratization processes and implementing the democratic institutions in countries of the “periphery” and “semi-periphery ", it is still impossible to assert that the democratic ideals are persecuted throughout the world. While discussing contemporary issues of democratic development, it is particularly important to remember that the processes of democratization are not monotonic and linear, they have so-called discontinuous character. Thus, one can refer to a certain conception of Samuel Huntington, which comes from the existence of original “wave of democratization”, as well as to Markov’s work, dedicated to the waves of democratic development and their relationship to political development (Huntington, 1993; Markov, 1994). Historical analysis of democratization processes in general, confirms the presence of successive "tides", occurring during the adoption and development of basic democratic institutions, and these “tides” are largely linked to global political and economic processes. In other words, when analyzing the global and in-country processes of adoption and development of democracy, it is possible to distinguish, in addition to present explicit progressive constituent, the fluctuate, wave-like constituent. The third wave of democratization that began, according to Samuel Huntington after 1974, spread over the larger territory than ever before - Latin America, Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe and the countries of former Soviet Union (Huntington, 1993). Due to globalization, almost all countries were involved in international political processes in the world's financial, technological, informational flows, and this, in turn, resulted in demand to increase the “transparency” of the boundaries between various national economic and political systems, as well as in providing more or less general rules for political and economic actors, using the common game rules in the world market. This is even more dangerous because lots of international political and economic organizations, as the events of recent years has showed, are not able to cope with a variety of problems, occurring under new and changing conditions. Nowadays the world community is in an unstable transition state, in which the former international organizations and institutions are largely inoperative, and the new relevant institutional structures, meeting the changed conditions and being recognized by the overwhelming number of "rules", do not exist. Moreover, not only "new democracies", but even some developed Western countries, belonging to the "center "of the capital- historical world-system, were incapable to avoid certain crises and destabilizing political events, which are generally do not contribute to the development of liberal democracy. Suffice it to recollect the results of parliamentary elections in Austria and Switzerland, held in 1999, when the radical right-wing parties, previously playing rather modest role in the political life of these countries, suddenly made success. The 1999 was generally marked by a number of events, which to some extent destabilized the system of international relations and political situation in some countries: the Balkan war of NATO against Yugoslavia, which resulted in growing tension between Russia and the West, and created the atmosphere of tension in Pakistan. Despite the different causes and different nature of these events, they, nevertheless, have common denominator, which lies in destabilization of the political situation, hindering the development of democracy in global terms and in some particular regions. This destabilization, if it happens, will have grave social and political consequences for the entire international community. These attempt of so-called “democracy export” by means of using arms as the main instrument, is regarded as antidemocratic by nature and even as manifestation of democracy extinction. Meanwhile the USA is undergoing some very significant process. People, who love America, notice with regret that the United States drift from the classical Western model of "welfare state" in the direction of liberal radicalism, when the government removes all obstacles for further enrichment of the rich. The huge disparity in wealth distribution contradicts the very essence and purpose of an open democratic society, reveals the possibility of power abuse by corporate bureaucracy and clan, and may result in new totalitarianism. Unfortunately, such caution of western gurus seem to be very speculative to the citizens of post-communist countries: the asceticism of the Bolshevik ideology obliged them to long-term self-restraint, but now they rush to catch up. Aggressive consumption becomes the basic form of self-realization for many citizens, a way of life, its main purpose. Such revelry of consumer democracy (the loss of socially important goals, social solidarity, the construction of excessive individual consumption and the cult of greed) becomes widespread and remains a primary concern of European analysts, who tend to regard it as signs of decadence, a kind of collapse in post-industrial society. In the countries with transition economies, ill-conceived privatization and liberalization generate a sharp conflict of interests between different social groups, which can not be resolved by the victory of one over the other. Even if this victory is achieved legitimately. For, as the European experience demonstrates, social solidarity can serve as the only reliable basis for the development of new democracies, achieved through a compromise of all political forces. Still, the real problem of democracy is not in the absence of interactive mechanisms between government and citizens, but the in alienation of society from politics and people’s dissatisfaction with political institutions because of their inability to respond to public inquiries adequately. The level of political participation can be elevated by means of changing the content of the policy itself, rather than by changes in the field of communications. All the above does not confirm the thesis of e-democracy supporters about the upcoming era of direct governance in result of the development of information and communication technologies. Crises of 1997-1998, which occurred in Southeast Asia, Russia and Latin America, no matter how different their causes could be, were the forerunners of a much larger global crisis of 2008 that destabilized the system of international economic and political relations. No need to prove that such situation was not favorable for democracy and democratization development. It should be noted that such global processes as the criminalization of political and economic spheres, the rise of terrorism, nuclear technology and nuclear weapons distribution, and even such thing as "information war" caused by globalization and informatization, will continue challenging the democratic institutions, functioning in various countries. In other words, if initially (1970 - 1995) globalization processes in various fields contributed to the development of democracy broadwise, nowadays the negative effects of globalization processes may prevent the deep development of democracy. And the main problem does not seem to lie in quantity of formulated formal criteria of a democratic political system, and in how many countries will meet these criteria, but in how efficient the democratic institutions in different countries will be how they will meet changing conditions and withstand the test of strength. The main argument of authoritarianism supporters is their insistence on the principal failure of democratic institutions, allegedly failed to comply with national traditions and peculiarities of a given state or civilization. It is important to prove the effectiveness of democratic institution work, as simple asserting this fact can not be taken by most of population for granted, and inefficiency of authoritarian or totalitarian regimes. This problem is acute in some countries of Latin America, South and South-East Asia, Middle East, including such large states as China, Pakistan, Indonesia and Iran. In accordance with theory of modernization, our modern society, as well as our modern political system, appears to be the most effective, dynamic and adaptable to modern progress. But effective modernization can be accomplished only by relying on traditions and traditional institutions, existing in the community, otherwise modernization leads to a society split and increases the social and the political tensions. Under the conditions of global competition, aggravated by some countries’ striving to play a key role in the international arena, the democratic future of other countries largely depends on the modernization of all spheres - economic, political, military, and others. It is necessary to optimize not only the economic mechanism, but also the political process, increasing the range of democratic institutions. References Bilton, T., K. Bonnett and P. Jones 1987. Introductory Sociology, 2nd edition. London: MacMillan. Bhagwati, Jagdish 2004, In Defense of Globalization. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press. Croucher, Sheila 2004, Globalization and Belonging: The Politics of Identity in a Changing World. Rowman & Littlefield. Globalization shakes the world". BBC News. January 21, 2007. Haralambos, M 1995, Sociology: Themes and Perspectives, 3rd edition. London: Bell and Hyman. Huntington, Samuel 1993, The Clash of Civilizations, Foreign Affairs. London: the John M. Olin Institute for Strategic Studies at Harvard University. Longworth, Richard 2007, Caught in the Middle: America's the Age of Globalism. New York: Bloomsbury. Scherer, J. 2007, "Globalization, promotional culture and the production/consumption of online games: Engaging Adidas's "Beat Rugby" campaign". New Media & Society 9: 475–496. Steger, Manfred 2009, Globalization. New York: Sterling Publishing. The Impact of Globalization on Infectious Disease Emergence and Control: Exploring the Consequences and Opportunities, Workshop Summary – Forum on Microbial Threats". Nap.edu. 2003-06-01 Read More