Globalization and the social fabric

Globalization and the Social Fabric

R.F.M. Lubbers and Jolanda Koorevaar, Castel Gandolfo,
5 August 1998

Time and space

The title of this conference is 'At the end of a millennium: Time and modernities'. I'm here to talk about globalization, one of the 'modernities' of our time, one of the social developments that will influence our communities in the next millennium, that much is clear. Less clear is the relation between Globalization and time. At first sight the concept seems to be related to 'space' rather than 'time'. Globalization has been defined as 'the process by which the world becomes smaller'. The famous McLuhan actually spoke about 'the global village': a world in which everyone communicates with everyone else. He envisioned the world of the next millennium as 'one big here'.

However, in the process of globalization the earth does not shrink. I still can not walk from Rotterdam to Castel Gandolfo. The world only seems to be smaller, because we can send people, materials and symbols within less time from point a to point b. So when in globalization studies people talk about 'the shrinking earth' or 'the defeat of distance', we immediately have to relate this to the notion of time: it takes less time to bridge distances and therefore it seems as if we have defeated distance. The process of globalization has to do with both time and space.

These two notions are the very basic categories of our mind: we structure both our personal experiences, our communal memories and our socio-political order on basis of time and space. If the contemporary process of globalization alters these basic notions, we can sense that globalization will have a great impact on both the individual, the community and the polity. Since the process of globalization has only just begun its real take-off, we can expect it to influence our world-community and the still distinguishable societies enormously in the millennium to come.

The changing times of globalization

The impact of globalization can be compared with the impact of the industrial revolution. The industrial revolution not only marks the take-off phase of mechanical production within a fabric, it signals the altering of a whole socio-political order and of notions of time and space. First of all the regular working hours in the fabric accentuated the importance of 'clock time' contrary to natural/biological time. Not the change of seasons and the signals from the human body determined what one was doing (working on the land, eating, sleeping or drinking), but the indicators of the clock did. Thanks to the mechanical engines, notions of space also changed: it was much easier then ever before to travel or to send goods and information to some distant location: steamship or train and later the car could take care of that. The horizon of people extended far beyond what was before considered to be 'ones home region'. Also power relations shifted. Power became less based on property of land and more based on the property of capital. And of course, production changed from agriculture to industrial goods.

Now with globalization, I believe we await once more such a revolutionary societal change concerning the way we experience time, space and power. The digital revolution makes it possible to run our economies 24 hours a day through the coordination of economic activities on a global scale. The digital revolution also made it possible for us to move people, goods and especially symbols faster through space, than has been possible before. This widens our horizon even further. In this new era of digitalization and globalization we can already see that production is changing from industrial goods to production of knowledge, information and services. This change will promote that next to capital, knowledge will become of a growing importance as a basis of power.

Good times for the market and bad times for the nation-state

We find ourselves in a transition phase. We are on our way from the national industrial to the global digital society. The questions that confront us are: how can we realize quality of life and a just and participatory society in this era of globalization? What can we do to make this new global structure a humane place to live in? To answer these questions we will first have to find out where we stand now. Two characteristics of the emerging world-society stand out. The first is the economization of life, the second is the decay of the nation-state and democratic government.

To begin with the first: the world today is captured by the ideology of the free market. A market economy based on free enterprise has become an important value in itself. The market cannot provide for everything though. Free enterprise stimulates creativity and generates prosperity. However, the market mechanism itself does not do more than matching supply and demand in a creative way, at the lowest possible costs. Values like security, equity and sustainability only will be taken into account by business if they are forced to do so by non-market actors. Besides, the maintenance of a free market, with meaningful competition, has to be guarded also by external regulations and regimes. A globalized world constructed only according to the ideology of the market will therefore be neither just, nor sustainable.

The second threat to quality of life in our globalizing society is the decay of democratic government. Today, we live in a world of states. In 1648 the Peace of Westphalia marked the beginning of the era of nation-states. It developed into the Trias Politica (Montesquieu); a balanced power-system within a defined territory. Later constitutions paved the way to democracy defining the substance of political values as well as the relation between citizens and (the different levels of ) government. Democracies started to mature. In the industrial era it was believed, and partly rightly so, that democratic government would correct market failure in a way the population wanted it to. The societal model of 'market plus democracy' now faces huge problems. The state, as quality-manager of our society has lost its capability to govern the economy and society within its borders. In many countries the state has lost credibility because of corruption and electoral short-sightedness of politicians. Causes for the decay can be found in the vanishing of communism, which diminishes the need for a strong, protective state. Another cause is the failure of the state in for example balancing its budget, providing and distributing jobs and income and the like.

The state is also loosing out because the economy and society within its borders are no longer more or less independent systems within closed borders. On the contrary: due to globalization processes national society and economy are very much dependent of and intertwined with the entire global network of societies and economies. National borders are not closed but permeable, so people, goods and symbols can cross borders easily. States and governments however have to act territorially. Therefore states become less effective in achieving governmental goals.

Thus a worldwide system of constitutional democracies developed, but now we enter the era of Globalization, the era of a more and more borderless world. At the very same time constitutional democracies are based on 'territory'. Ruggie in 'Territoriality and beyond' makes the paradox clear:

That is, having established territorially fixed state formations, having insisted that these territorial domains were disjoint and mutually exclusive, and having accepted these conditions as the constitutive base of international society, what means were left to the new territorial rulers for dealing with problems of that society that could not be reduced to territorial solutions?

Solutions have to be found transboundary but there is not such a thing as a transboundary democracy. At the same time because of a more borderless world governments are less effective also within their own territory and become therefore less credible. And, if governments or international organizations agree what to do, it is by their own parliaments considered not to be democratic

Responding to this, states associate in intergovernmental organizations. Since especially the end of the Second World War we have seen a long march to connect the concept of territorial fixed state formations on the one hand and the wish for international treaties and conventions on the other hand to deal with the diminishing effectiveness of nation-states. Transboundary law started to emerge as international courts and tribunals did. We learned to live not only with 'shared sovereignty' in the form of federations (examples are the United States of America and the Federal Republic Germany) and 'pluralistic sovereignty' in the form of substantial space and room for different political, economic, social and religious groups (there is in each nation-state a specific footprint of these groups and their relation to political parties), but also to a 'functional concept of sovereignty' in which sovereignty is shared by nations in certain areas, like NATO and Europe's single market and single currency. They represent a mixed form of independence and interdependence. The problem in these institutions is that they suffer from a democratic deficit, because parliaments are either non-existent in those organizations, or they have a very limited role.

In conclusion there are three problems with the concept of the nation-state within our contemporary, globalizing society:

state-failures have become more persistent and more visible to the public;

in a more borderless world governments have a tougher job to be effective;

and to the extent that states succeed by achieving international cooperation, they have to face a lack of democracy.

Given the fact that states are too small to counterbalance the deficiencies of the market and given the fact that a global democracy is not conceivable, one might see regionalization as an answer to globalization. But even the most advanced regional integration, like for example the European Union, is seriously flawed by the democratic deficit.

Better times are ahead

The rise of the market and decay of the democratic nation-state are the two basic problems facing us. However, there are also hopeful developments. The state is loosing out, but it seems that civil society is gaining strength. A strong and lively civil society, in which people are active and act not on basis of economic gain, but on basis of values can generate 'societal self-regulation'. This self-regulating capacity would diminish the need for state-action. In the social-science literature this self-regulating capacity is named 'governance'. Governance, although it includes sometimes also government, points to the capability to get things done without legal pressure and without the law enforcing institutions. In a system of governance the role of government shifts from captain to broker.

It is not without reason that the concern about nature and environment have played and will play an enormous role on the way to the global civil society. Thinking in terms of environment and nature invites to long-term thinking; the larger the space of concern the longer the time-frame. Nearby problems as dust and smell are noticed immediately. Global environmental problems present themselves only after one or more generations. The earth and the oceans have an enormous reserve capacity but at the same time the 'sunk problem' (accumulated waste and damage) means that it takes a long period to restore and to re-balance.

Already we can see some signals that point to the revival of civil society:

on a global scale, non-governmental organizations (NGO's), like Amnesty International and Greenpeace, have begun to fulfill an important role. They give shape and substance to ethical demands, partly by putting pressure on governments and enterprises, partly by increasing awareness on all levels of the society;

religious movements counterbalance the forces of market, relativism and liberalism;

it seems to be 'in the air' that people want to belong to more to 'we' instead of just 'me') and want to be more than only an economic subject, let alone just an economic object.

These signals show that a strategy of moral and social reform of society is developing. The moral reform aims at restoring moral values in a situation dominated by materialistic motives, thus enabling citizens to live in truth. The social reform aims at creating spheres of life in which people can regain responsibility for their social and physical environment. In this respect, the concept of civil society is meant to enable citizens to live in dignity.

One might say that in a globalizing world the realization of societal values (quality of life) cannot be achieved only by a productive symbiosis of the democracy in terms of nation-states and of companies in a market economy, but that societal institutions are as important. The capacity to change with an eye on the future and on quality of life will be served the better if those who are in charge in respectively (large) companies, governments (including intergovernmental organizations) and 'civil society institutions' exert leadership and are prepared to combine their own mission with a common mission. This is the way to overcome fear and stagnation and to realize the perspective of a better world.

Parallel to the mentioned developments within the society, there is a development going on within enterprises. It can be described as an increasing awareness of their social responsibility concerning human rights, environment and other aspects of importance for the surrounding area. This awareness is stimulated both from inside, by the employees, as well as from outside, by consumers, action groups and other stakeholders. These internal and external forces demand that companies behave like a citizen as well. As a result companies cannot restrict themselves to just producing goods or services. They have to realize societal values just as well. This development supports the vision that care for the common good does not necessarily have to be left solely to government.

In companies this process is only in its beginning, but already 'enhancers' understand that there might be 'win-win', and thus a better sustainability, if they enlarge the horizon of their company. The degree to which transnational corporations will take not only into account the short term share-holders value perspective, but also go for sustainable development and internalize societal values, depends very much on their judgment about the strength of civil society initiatives. One should not be too romantic about this, but the combination of the factor shame, the possible consequences for their purse (penalties by judges) and sometimes the needed cooperation to realize new investments, can prove to be effective.

Timely investment is necessary

If we reflect on the deficiencies of the market as a world of efficiency, we realize that efficiency alone cannot bring harmony, quality of life, desirable security, equity and sustainable human development. The answer to this problem is neither a global romanticism, nor the traditional League of Nations, nor a form of world government. The only real answer to the deficiencies of the market lies in investing in values and social fabric within and between societies. If we are able to promote value systems as strong as the efficiency of the market, then we will be able to cope with a number of problems which are related to globalization such as corruption, transboundary crime, tax evasion, lack of integrity, refugees and the management of cultural diversity. However, promoting value systems will succeed only if every single person involved has a consciousness and notion of values and a willingness to be educated and trained permanently in this field. Of course all this should be a basis for practice.

Natural places for breeding and feeding the consciousness of values are families, neighborhoods and communities. Needless to say that the churches should play a significant role here too. They should be able to inspire and strengthen parents and other responsible women and men in society in being good examples for the younger generation. 'Churches' should not be restricted to the Christian churches as these churches can not claim a position of monopoly in the field of social values. The Spirit of the Creator transgresses all cultural boundaries and can be effective through other religions and ideologies as well. In this respect the spiritual and cultural diversity can even be seen as a source for mutual enrichment and mutual trust, although it can also contribute to prevent aggressive fundamentalism and narrow minded destructive nationalism. There should be an oecumene of religions all geared to values near home and global, values basically summarized as fundamental human rights, social cohesion and sustainability.

Only when the global strive for productivity and efficiency based on the global spreading of technology and economics and value systems and everybody's consciousness of the importance of values flourish to the same extent, there will be progress. Progress in the sense of a growing moral awareness and togetherness of people as they are linked to each other in generations, across borders and a search for the common good. Therefore dialogue and trust building is needed. Dialogue to promote common goals, a common vision overarching the specific goals and missions of the differentiated societal institutions. Trust building is about the systematic to achieve 'change' step by step.

Change, needed by the constant flow of new technology, expanding economies, new generations and demographic development, is always painful. Therefore for the different groups in society there has to be a balance between sacrifices and rewards. The process of change has to be understood to be fair. Only then governance for the future can succeed. Dialogue and trust building demands a holistic and inclusive climate of governance. Holistic to overcome the thinking only in terms of separated disciplines. Indeed it is useful to focus to see clearer but at the same time there is merit in seeing the context, to widen the perspective of observations. 'Inclusive' is to balance the efforts of human beings primarily going after their own interest, their own mission. The outcome of this system focusing primarily on your own mission is creative and productive. At the same time it has to be balanced by a vision for the bonum commune, the common good. That requires inclusive thinking.

Let us make time for the future

Long term, broad participation, holistic and inclusive, that sounds rather theoretical. It does, but at the same time it reflects what is needed to realize human dignity in an era in which people around the globe and generations to come begin really to be connected. In such a world the different aspects of human dignity are very interrelated; human rights, development, environment and nature. The history of mankind as world history of mankind has only begun. Let us lay the foundation for the sovereignty of the peoples; all over the globe, for generations to come.