12.3: Fragmentation

Learning Objectives

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

• Define fragmentation.
• Discuss the differences between economic, political, and cultural fragmentation.
• Reflect on how fragmentation affects individuals and influences government policy.

Introduction

While the forces of globalization strengthen worldwide connections, the forces of fragmentation simultaneously threaten to tear apart existing global structures. Fragmentation is the fracturing of established orders, including economic, political, and cultural. Fracturing can take place at several levels, including the individual level, the domestic level, and the global level.

Individually, people have become less trustworthy of the world around them. Steger and James (2019) refer to this as the "Great Unsettling," a period in which earlier ways of acting and knowing were upended by globalization, causing uneasiness. The post-Cold War era saw rapid changes in the way individuals work, communicate, buy, learn, and in some cases, physically survive. These changes tend to unsettle relations between "people, machines, regimes, objects, [and] nature," and there is a desire by many to return to a "simpler," more settled, past.

Domestically, fragmentation appears both in election outcomes and in devolution policies. Voters around the world demonstrate less faith in established political parties, offering support to fringe or extremist political parties that had little support in the past. In an effort to better respond to voters' needs, particularly in states with significant ethnic or religious minorities, states use policies of devolution to deliberately transfer some power to subnational governments (for a review of devolution, see Chapter 1).  

Globally, we see fragmentation through the resurgence of economic nationalism, attempts by states to protect or bolster their economies for nationalist goals (for a review of economic nationalism, see Chapter 8). We also see fragmentation through growing geopolitical tension between major powers, such as China, Russia, and the United States (U.S.).

In what follows, we will discuss fragmentation on the same three dimensions as we did for globalization: economic, political, and cultural. 

Economic Fragmentation

Economic fragmentation links closely with a backlash against globalization, as processes of globalization do not provide equal economic benefits to all individuals within all states. Milanovic's (2016) analysis of global growth illustrates a curvilinear relationship between income growth and income group by percentile. Over the past four decades, the bottom 50 percent saw a total increase in wealth, yet a smaller capitalist elite gained the most. The top one percent saw their wealth grow by 27 percent, and they now control over 40 percent of the world's total wealth.

Globalization has therefore left many behind, with middle and working-class populations in developed economies seeing little to no benefit. This trend started in the 1990s and accelerated with the 2008 global financial crisis. For example, in the U.S., the wages of less-skilled workers, those without a college education, stagnated or declined, and the U.S. median household income remains below its peak in 1999.

Cumbers (2017) suggests that workers in these economies are "economically marginalized," suffering from low levels of social protection, employment rights, and democratic participation in economic decision-making. The deregulation inherent in neoliberalism produces environments where workers experience economic marginalization, fostering fragmentation.

Political Fragmentation

Processes of globalization and economic fragmentation have a direct effect on domestic politics in democracies. In particular, there is a correlation between economic misfortune among citizens and the rise of populism. Populism is a political approach that aims to appeal to ordinary people who feel that their concerns go unheard by established political leaders. Populism exists on both ends of the ideological spectrum.

Left-wing populism (social populism) combines populism with socialism, viewing the worker as needing protection from the effects of globalization. Left-wing populists see capitalists as greedy and express a desire to prioritize class allegiance over national attachment. This movement views immigration as a weapon used by global capitalists to pit working class people against each other. This movement has had political success in Latin America in the 2000s.

Right-wing populism (national populism) combines populism with nationalism, viewing the nation as needing protection from the effects of globalization. Right-wing populists see globalists as an enemy that cares nothing about the states they fleece, and they tend to use nationalistic slogans such as "Take our country back!" or "Make our country great again!" Right-wing populist discourse generally centers on three threats: threats to employment, threats to cultural or national identity, and threats to personal security or physical safety. In the aggregate, right-wing populists oppose globalization, immigration, and Washington Consensus policies. Right-wing populists instead promise to give voice to those who feel neglected, if not held in contempt, by increasingly distant political elites (Steger and James, 2019). This movement has had political success in states such as the U.S., United Kingdom (U.K.), and Brazil.

Cultural Fragmentation

Processes of globalization also have impacts on cultural fragmentation. The 2008 global financial crisis exposed cracks in global civil society, causing unemployment levels to spike in highly-developed states and worsen already difficult situations in less-developed states. Since the financial crisis, protest movements erupted worldwide for numerous reasons. Anti-government protests occurred in Hong Kong, India, Iraq, Lebanon, and most of Latin America; so many demonstrations occurred in 2019 that it became widely-referred to as "a year of protests." Reactions to the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated protest culture. Even though most states shut down during the early phases of the pandemic, according to the The Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), protests actually increased by 7 percent in 2020. All of these protests illustrate cultural fragmentation.

Beyond protest, cultural fragmentation can manifest through policy, as it did in "Brexit," the U.K.'s formal withdrawal from the European Union (EU) in 2020.

The EU is a supranational organization, where member-states agree to give up or share sovereignty on particular issue areas. The U.K. joined the EU in 1973 (called the European Economic Community at the time), with the intent of benefiting from closer economic ties. However, as the EU progressively became more political, successive U.K. governments balked. The U.K. opted not to enter into three major EU projects: the Schengen Agreement, where citizens of the EU can move freely without a passport; the European Monetary Union, where states adopted the Euro, a shared currency; and the EU's Charter of Fundamental Rights.

Traditionally, the U.K. was a global leader in the promotion of neoliberal policies, but the government's response to the global financial crisis led to general discontent. The Conservative Party adopted a policy of austerity, where the government preferred not to run large budget deficits to strengthen the economy. Austerity measures, such as spending cuts and tax increases, are generally painful for citizens, and they led voters to seek alternative parties, such as the right-wing populist UK Independence Party (UKIP). UKIP campaigned on an explicit anti-immigrant, anti-EU message. Worried about how UKIP's popularity would affect the Conservative Party, Prime Minister David Cameron called a referendum. On June 23, 2016, the U.K. held a referendum to gauge public support for continued British membership in the EU. The majority of voters chose to leave the EU, a radical departure from over 40 years of British involvement in European integration.

The U.K.'s decision to leave the EU resembled a vote of no confidence in the entire European project. Voters who voted to leave the EU frequently cited a greater need for U.K. sovereignty and deep anti-immigration attitudes, showing cultural fragmentation through a resurgence of national identity (and a decrease in commitment to a shared European identity).