4.3: Theories and Concepts - Competing Visions of the Global Order

 

Learning Objectives

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

• Analyze frameworks that highlight various political trends in the globalizing world

Competing Visions of the Globalizing World

Politics in our globalizing world are as unruly as ever. Scholars continue to debate the directions that political winds are blowing, with different sides of the debate highlighting different aspects of a complex world. These scholarly conversations help to identify the political forces which might be most important to understand and monitor in order to make sense of overall global trends. Debates focus on differing visions for the globalizing world, and these fall along two major axes. The first axis focuses on the nature of political forces and whether globalization should be viewed as ultimately benign or threatening. A second axis explores the direction of global political forces, specifically whether they are pushing the world towards greater conformity (convergence) or heterogeneity (divergence). Combining these axes in a two-by-two table, four different visions for the political future of a globalizing world emerge.

One argument holds that global political forces are ultimately benign and pushing toward convergence. Fukuyama’s “end of history” is one prominent example of this view. The extraordinary economic and political influence of many liberal democracies would seem to support this vision. Many countries hope to join the EU and liberal democratic alliances such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which supports the argument that the global tide has turned in favor of convergence on democratic institutions within countries and internationally. Pushing against this are decidedly illiberal expansionist powers. As mentioned previously, these include Russia, which invaded neighboring Ukraine in 2022 as part of an effort to reclaim territory that Russian President Vladimir Putin believes is part of historical Russia. Russia's rigged elections have ensured Putin's leadership for decades, and the government's muzzling of a free press and free association are all markers that liberal ideas have not taken root in all in major post-communist countries. China is also an important case to watch as a test of the claim that liberalism might be universally embraced. Since its violent crackdown on peaceful pro-democracy protesters in 1989, the Chinese Communist Party has brooked no opposition to its rule and has actively contained any hint of political liberalization through the construction of a comprehensive surveillance state. Significant regions of the world are also far from a liberal end of history: many countries of the Middle East remain stubbornly authoritarian, along with vast swaths of Africa and Central Asia.

Some might see globalization as a benign process but argue that divergence, rather than convergence, is the most salient trendline. Such arguments focus on the variety of political systems that persist in the international system, with no indication that any single political form has emerged triumphant. This is a refutation of the “end of history” argument in some ways, but there is agreement that globalization on balance is a desirable process and shouldn’t be rolled back. Proponents of this view might support the current United Nations system, where countries of the world gather in general assemblies and convene to address major global challenges such as climate change and poverty alleviation. This view is also echoed in the efforts of intercultural exchange organizations such as People To People and in the work of diplomatic corps worldwide. One critique of this position is that the UN system is toothless and lacks the resources to make meaningful progress in a fractious international system.

A third position sees globalization as much more threatening and oppressive. This view focuses on how globalization is the latest version of the expansionary and conquering impulses underlying colonialism and imperial projects of the past. Globalization from this perspective is a euphemism for political and cultural imperialism by the most powerful players on the global stage, notably the countries of North America and Western Europe. Globalization threatens to wipe out local practices and replace them with a common capitalist consumerist culture. National governments in this narrative tend to be too weak or captured by external interests to protect domestic constituents. Some labels for this view of the world include “McWorld” and “Coca-Colonization” in reference to major global brands originating from a too-dominant United States (Barber, 1992; Wagnleitner, 1994). One argument against this view is that it treats the end consumers of global goods as passive victims succumbing to broader structural forces. Critics would rather draw attention to individual and collective agency in the face of these forces.

Figure 4.3.1: A Coca-Cola sign in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco (CC BY 2.0; ciukes via wikipedia)

A fourth view holds that the dominant trend in our globalizing world is divergence and fragmentation; different societal groups will react violently to globalizing forces. For many people around the world, globalization threatens their “traditional” way of life, and their response is to fight back to assert their identity and territorial claims. Political scientist Samuel Huntington invoked such an argument with his concept of a “clash of civilizations” (Huntington, 1993). According to this view, global convergence is unattainable. Instead, the world will remain fragmented across civilizational divides and, even more, continue to be conflict prone. Many have critiqued Huntington’s concept of a civilization, which he defines as a population united by common cultural practices and beliefs. Civilizations of any kind are dynamic and evolving; whether the world might evolve into a more harmonious civilization, or civilizations, and whether that civilization (or those civilizations) will move in the direction of greater assimilation versus diversity remain outstanding questions. 

Though scholars continue to debate these various aspects of globalization, ultimately, these debates have framed globalization as benign rather than threatening and contend that the globalizing world is moving in the direction of convergence versus divergence.