DEMOCRATISE GLOBALISATION BEFORE GLOBALISATION DENATURES DEMOCRACY

By Boutros-Ghali Boutros and - - Reprint | | Print |

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PARIS, Jan 1 2004 (IPS) - While globalisation has generated great hope for much of the world, it has also given rise to numerous threats, writes Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Secretary-General of the United Nations from 1992-1996. The author writes that we must democratise globalisation before globalisation denatures democracy. To begin with, the UN system itself needs to be more thoroughly democratised, specifically the Security Council, which remains Eurocentric and does not take into account the emergence of new major powers over the last 50 years. The push to democratise risks undermining the logic that drives it if it results in the location of global power beyond the reach of the states, and if the new sites of power do not operate according to democratic principles. Only a new conception of solidarity can prevent or at least attenuate the inevitable exclusions that global society carries within itself. But solidarity cannot be decreed. It must arise out of a collective engagement, that is, the participation of states as well as the non-state actors of contemporary international society.

While globalisation has generated great hope for much of the world, it has also given rise to numerous threats.

To begin with, it threatens the nation state, as more and more of the problems facing the world today –and the solutions to them- – exist on a global scale. In the medium term this could give rise to a crisis of political representation and a weakening of the nature of citizenship within democracies — whether because people feel more like consumers than citizens or, even more serious, they feel they are no longer represented and thus excluded from the political process.

The second threat directly affects those individuals who find themselves in the jaws of a process of cultural colonisation and standardisation. There is reason to fear that these people, who feel they are no longer citizens of their village yet not yet citizens of the world, are tempted to take refuge in communities that have aggressively folded in on themselves in an attempt to assert their existence and their difference.

The third threat regards the developing world and the fact that inequalities between rich and poor countries –and within rich countries– have never been as extreme and are growing steadily worse.

It is against this background of a globalised world, a world that was unable to find a new equilibrium upon emerging from the Cold War, that the attacks of September 11 took place, catapulting us into a new phase of international relations with their brutal revelation of processes long in gestation.

To begin with, we have realised that violence is no longer the exclusive domain of states but can be wielded by any actor eluding state control in the name of any possible cause. In addition, the developed world has been brutally awakened to the fact that violence is not limited to certain zones of ”barbarism” from which it had hitherto felt excluded, but that all of us –the hyperpower included– were all equally vulnerable to the danger.

Finally the international community has taken notice of the fact that American power is accompanied very naturally by the desire to use it, whether or not it is in violation of international law and the United Nations Charter.

There is thus an abundance of factors that should spur us to subdue, regulate, and ”civilise” as fast as possible the great mutations at work in the world, and to democratise globalisation before globalisation denatures democracy. This will take time, and it is likely that there will be fierce resistance.

Where to begin? The UN system needs to be more thoroughly democratised, particularly the Security Council, the only part of the organisation with the power to authorise military force and impose sanctions yet not a truly democratic organ. Mirroring the balance of power of the time of its formation at the end of World War II, the council remains Eurocentric and does not reflect the emergence of new major powers over the last 50 years. In contrast, the General Assembly, the most democratic UN body, which operates by majority vote, is the least powerful and least able to insure the enactment of its decisions.

The second necessity is to carry forward the processes of decentralisation and regionalisation that were implemented under the aegis of the UN in recent years, since the regional organisations –such as the European Union, the Commonwealth, the League of Arab States, the African Union, to name a few– are susceptible to operating as counter-powers to globalisation.

The push to democratise risks undermining its own underlying logic if it results in the location of global power beyond the reach of the states, and if the new sites of power do not operate according to democratic principles.

In this regard, only a new conception of solidarity can prevent or at least attenuate the inevitable exclusions that global society carries within itself. But solidarity cannot be decreed. It must arise out of a collective engagement, that is, the participation of states as well as the non-state actors of contemporary international society.

In the last analysis, nothing will be possible unless the vast majority of states decide to engage themselves in the affairs of the world. Today only a small proportion of states do. In contrast, non-state actors — non-governmental organisations (NGOs), municipalities, parliaments, universities, unions, religious groups, and the media — have an increasing desire to involve themselves in the affairs of the world and should be able to play a role in the democratisation of international politics, much as businesses do.

Indeed, multinational business has become a fundamental site of global power and as such must become more closely associated with international decisions. At the same time, however, it must accept the inclusion of perspectives of the general interest and collective well-being into its economic strategies. Today it is no longer acceptable to hold forth on this or that form of general planning or to allow the law of profit to determine the economic future of the world and future generations. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)