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Runaway globalization without governance.

Article Excerpt
Globalization has been with us since the dawn of history, but the notion of trying to govern the interconnections that it has produced is a more recent phenomenon. Governance has thus developed slowly, lagging far behind the trade, travel, and interaction wrought by globalization. Although the gap between globalization and governance has caused problems and resulted in conflict, it was less serious a problem than it is now. As the world has become intimately integrated, the failure of globalization's major players, especially the United States, to develop global rules risks turning globalization in a harmfull direction.

In a longue duree historical perspective, globalization has been growing ever since homo sapiens settled into sedentary cultures in river valleys. Connections that began as short forays for trading, exploration, evangelism, and imperial expansion have accelerated over the millennia. As I argue in my book Bound Together, traders, preachers, adventurers, and warriors have continually connected dispersed human communities and civilizations, gradually creating the interconnected society we now label globalized.

The rules and regulations governing these communities have evolved over the millennia of interaction. But the rules always lagged behind the growing connections across continents. Traders from different lands developed rules of transaction as trade expanded. Rulers and warriors introduced taxes to earn revenue from commercial transactions and forbade certain products to protect their own. To protect the exclusivity of their valuable trading goods, countries often barred the export of certain seeds or eggs. Those rules and regulations spread as empires expanded and covered ever widening territories. Preachers and adventurers (including immigrants) walked the earth and were subjected to local rules and traditions as diverse as the lands they encountered. In some places, preachers were welcomed, but in others they were put to death. Travelers and immigrants too faced varying receptions on different shores. Warriors made their own rules as they trampled on other territories, killing and subjugating those who resisted. Although rules of behavior in war between countries have existed in some fashion for a long time, it was not until the nineteenth century that thefirst body of written rules appeared. However, that did not help diminish the butchery of the two world wars.

In the thousands of years that humans have been leaving home to connect with fellow humans in distant lands, the basic impetus has not changed, though the means of transaction have. So too have the consequences of large-scale exchanges. The major factor motivating traders, preachers, adventurers, and warriors to traverse rivers, mountains,...

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