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Article Excerpt
The global condition is one of heightened vulnerability. National boundaries are increasingly porous. States are finding it harder and harder to run their economies and defend their borders. As the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington have demonstrated, wealth, power and nuclear arsenals offer little guarantee of protection.
The word global is now a cliche. So are such terms as global village, global economy and global culture. We are often told that we live in an era of globalisation. In the words of Roland Robertson, the world is fast becoming a 'single place' (1992). Others speak of an emerging global consciousness. Globalisation has become a subject of discussion among corporate managers, scholars, policymakers and citizens alike. Yet, there is no consensus on its meaning, its origins, or even its long-term implications.
Globalisation is in some ways as old as capitalism itself, yet it points to a new historical phase (Higgott and Payne, 2000). The contemporary world is one in which a number of seemingly distinct processes are occurring more or less simultaneously, and acquiring a global reach, often in highly interconnected fashion. To cite one example: the impact of global financial flows, the role of hedge funds, the onset of the East Asian financial crisis, the fall of the Suharto regime in Indonesia, and UN intervention were all part of the complex sequence of events which culminated in self-determination for East Timor.
In a rapidly globalising world 'high consequence risks' (Beck, 1992) have become integral to the functioning of society. The global condition is one of heightened vulnerability as much for states as for groups and individuals. One need only think of the effects of financial crises, nuclear accidents, oil spills, ozone depletion, global warming, or terrorist attacks. If there is one characteristic that distinguishes contemporary life it is the 'globalisation of insecurity'.
If this reading of events is at all accurate, then a number of difficult questions suggest themselves: What challenges does the globalisation of insecurity pose for the theory and practice of governance? And what might be appropriate normative and institutional responses? Before turning to these questions, it may be useful to probe a little more deeply into the dynamic of globalisation.
Global social change
One of the most important features of contemporary social change is its global character. The last three centuries are perhaps best described in terms of the closely interconnected transformations associated with secularisation, industrialisation, urbanisation, the geographical extension of market relations and, paradoxically enough, nationalism and bureaucratisation. All these trends have now assumed global dimensions.
In what sense is social change global? First and most obviously in the space it occupies. Boundaries, whether underpinned by law, culture, or physical force, have not withstood the tidal flow of change. National and other boundaries may persist, but territorially based authority has become increasingly problematic (Prakash and Hart 1999, p. 172). Indeed, globalisation is best understood as a codeword for the internationalisation or even transnationalisation of economic practice (technical innovation, production, trade, finance), security practice (understood in its hard or conventional sense as military or physical security) and cultural practice (understood primarily as transnational flows of people, ideas, images and messages).
Second, social change is global by virtue of the norms or principles (e.g. free trade, comparative advantage, modernisation, economic growth, universal human rights, global commons, collective security, humanitarian intervention) that states and non-state actors invoke to explain or justify their conduct. Third, the function of social change has been to create a global architecture of power, in which production, distribution, and communication are increasingly structured by international networks and strategies. Fourth, many of the agents of social change, including transnational corporations, professional associations, and social movements have developed objectives, structures, policies, and patterns of socialisation that are international in scope and ethos. This is now true of terrorist networks as it is of environmental organisations.
Though diverse actors are now integral to a rapidly globalising world, the transnational corporation (TNC) continues to play the most conspicuous role. By 1998, close to 70 per cent of global trade was controlled by just 500 TNCs, one-fifth of all foreign-owned assets in the world were in the hands of 100 TNCS, while a mere one per cent of TNCs accounted for half of the total foreign direct investment (FDI) in the world. Of the 100 largest economic actors in the world, only half were states; the rest were TNCS. UNCTAD's World Investment Report 2000 estimated that the number of TNCs in 1999 had risen to 63,000 parent firms with approximately 690,000 foreign affiliates. Though the huge global conglomerates are comparable in scale to national economies, most TNCs are much smaller, concentrating on one or two production lines or a small cluster of related products.
Notwithstanding the diversity of transnational economic actors, two generalisations are possible. First, the transnationalisation of business is accompanied mad sustained by the technological revolution, especially in transportation and communication. Freed by technology from territorial constraints, capital moves to those places wherever wage levels, rents, taxes, and government regulations and incentives offer the prospect of higher profits.
Secondly, within the global architecture of power and wealth the decisions of governments and intergovernmental organisations are increasingly reliant on the resources, expertise, ideas and strategic preferences of corporations, and on the think-tanks, forums and media outlets, which they control. A striking example of this trend is the rising influence of the World Economic Forum and its regional affiliates, which regularly bring together senior figures of the corporate world, political leaders and a sprinkling of international civil servants, economists and other experts.
The rise of transnational issues
States, even relatively powerful ones, seem less and less able to perform the various functions on which their legitimacy ultimately depends, namely physical security and economic well-being for their citizens. As a consequence, states have, since 1945 and particularly since the early 1970s, found it necessary to shed at least partial functions to a range of subnational, supranational, international, and transnational organisations. Nowhere is the contemporary predicament of the state more strikingly evident than in the areas of financial and environmental policy. The predicament becomes acute in circumstances where the state confronts ecological disorders that have their origins outside its domain (e.g. transboundary pollution); or where it is compelled to navigate powerful economic forces over which it has at best limited control (e.g. developing states beset by high and rising levels of foreign debt).
Environmental degradation in its various forms, the overt and covert proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and of the materials used in their manufacture, the licit and illicit international arms trade, the increasingly dangerous spread of light weapons, drug trafficking, piracy, large and often unforeseen population movements, including refugees, internally displaced people, guest workers and legal and illegal immigrants, all these are an integral part of the emerging 'macropolitical agenda" (Camilleri and Falk, 1992: 148-151). They have one common characteristic: they all in different ways and to different degrees exceed the institutional capacities and resources of states. They call into question the usefulness of traditional notions of 'national interest' and 'national security' in making sense of the contemporary human condition. In the last federal election Prime Minister John Howard used the rhetoric of 'border protection' to justify his government's handling of refugees and asylum seekers, only to have to confess within a matter of months that Australia had become a target of international terrorism.
Implications for human security
The erosion of national boundaries and national control is not, however, the only unsettling aspect of globalisation. It is now reasonably clear that the dominant neo-liberal growth paradigm, championed by the managerial classes, the G7 (G8 since Russia joined the group), governments and such international institutions as the IMF, World Bank and WTO, has not benefited most developing economies. Indeed, few societies, regardless of their size or technological sophistication, can claim to be able to deliver to the vast majority of their citizens choices and opportunities that lead to a long, healthy, creative life and to the enjoyment of a comfortable existence, freedom, self-esteem and the respect of others.
Disparities between rich and poor have grown starker as much within as between countries. In 1997, the wealthiest 20 per cent of the world's population accounted for 86 per cent of world GDP, 82 per cent of world exports, 68 per cent of FDI, and 93 per cent of Internet use. The poorest 20 per cent accounted for a mere 1 per cent of world GDP, 1 per cent of world exports, 1 per cent of FDI, and 0.2 per cent of Internet use (Human Development Report 1999, p. 2). During the 1990s the concentration of income, resources and wealth has become more pronounced both within nations and the corporate sector. The world's 200 richest people had more than doubled their net worth in the four years to 1998, to more than $1 trillion. The assets of the leading three billionaires exceeded the combined GDP of all least developed countries with a population of some 600 million. By 1998, following a wave of mergers and acquisitions, the top ten companies in pesticides controlled 85 per cent of the global market (estimated at $31 billion). The corresponding share of the top ten companies in the telecommunications industry was 86 per cent of a. $262 billion market (Human Development Report 1999, p.3).
Technological optimists have consistently argued that innovative technologies...
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