|
| |
Globalisation and Sovereignty
From: London School of Economics and Political Science
| By:
Fred Halliday |
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION |
 Fred Halliday, a leading figure in international relations, provides his take on
the globalisation debate. According to Halliday, the future of globalisation balances on the agreement between states. The success of factors such as the euro, the World Trade Organization (WTO) and perhaps more crucially the threat of interstate war, all rest on the relationship between states. One of the negative aspects of globalisation is the rise in inequality. Halliday discusses the significance of excluding more than 100 countries in the world from the global flow of investment. |
Anecdote
In the spring, I had the great pleasure of travelling to Kuwait with Anthony Giddens, where he lectured on globalisation. His visit was a good example of one aspect of globalisation, because whilst the first question from the audience concerned the WTO and trade liberalisation, the second concerned Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur. Close to half of his visit was taken up with discussing the various successes of British football teams with Kuwaiti audiences and governors--curiously, one area where Americanisation is not equal to globalisation. |
Change
 | |
| Fred Halliday provides his opinion on the Globalisation debate. | |
There are some boring things to say concerning globalisation. First, that nothing has changed. Here I agree with Anthony. The historical perspective is important and we should examine the degrees of trade, investment and movement of peoples before World War I. A point Lord Meghnad Desai, from the LSE, has often made is that we should also look at why it failed. It failed because of the inability of states to agree. Thus, the past is relevant. To say that some of the things that globalisation promotes and people discuss have happened before is also relevant. When people say ideas are crossing the world rapidly today, it is true to also say that 50, 500 or 1,000 years ago, whilst people did not have the microchip or CNN, the ideas of Jesus Christ, the Prophet Mohammed, Martin Luther King, Karl Marx and the American Revolution also spread across frontiers in a very dramatic way. |
Therefore, to say that nothing has changed or that everything has changed is boring, inaccurate and leaves out the intellectual challenge, which is to say exactly what has changed. In some sense, we do not know, because we are all flying blind. For example, I do not think that any of us know how important the 10 percent of the US economy constituted by e-commerce will be in the next 10 or 15 years. Maybe it will remain 10 or 15 percent, maybe it will become much more. I do not think any of us know. This is an intellectual question, and also a personal and even trade union question. What will the effects of this be upon teaching in universities? Will we really see such a profound change in universities in the next few years? We do not know. However, I think we should try to keep some measure as to what is new and what is not. |
In the back of our minds, we should also keep what is perhaps the most old-fashioned, though ever relevant, question which the British educational system poses: What exactly do you mean? Often, in globalisation, one loses sight of what exactly is being claimed, not least for the reason that not everything is related to everything else. Changes in technology, growth in interest in religion, decline in secularism in societies and changes in family, trade and employment patterns may or may not be related to each other. However, I think it is an illusion to think that they do. I want to look at four issues which fall under the globalisation rubric. |
Inequality
The world is becoming an increasingly unequal place in terms of income, life opportunities and technological change. The gap in terms of income is striking. As the UN Development Programme has emphasised in its recent reports, the gap between the richest and the poorest 20 percent of the world has increased to 86:1 and widens every day. When examining the latest UN World Investment Report, if you are gung ho on globalisation you will say foreign direct investment has increased from approximately $300 billion or $400 billion a year in the early 1990s to almost $900 billion in the last year. That is an enormous increase in transfer of capital. However, 80 percent of that goes to OECD countries, and over 50 percent of the remaining 20 percent, which goes to emerging markets, or Third World countries, goes to just 10 countries, of which China is an obvious recipient. In other words, by all practical measures, there are well over 100 countries in the world which are excluded from the global flow of investment. Thus, there is income and investment inequality. |
Then there is the question of employment, which could be the most explosive of all, because of the enormous political consequences. The gap between technology change in contemporary society and job creation is getting wider and wider. According to the International Labour Organisation, for the next 50 years, worldwide, we will have to create 30 million new jobs every year to employ those who are coming in to the labour market. That is just not happening. President-elect Vicente Fox of Mexico was here only last week. He provided the figures for Mexico. Mexico needs to grow 7 percent per year to find employment for the 1.4 million people who are coming into the labour market. Additionally, nearly 400,000 people are trying to get into the US every year. Failing to address that within countries has enormous consequences for migration and economic and political stability. As we see it, I do not believe globalisation is addressing that. Unless, and until, states and corporations address the inequalities and the consequent instabilities in globalisation in a long-term manner, globalisation will neither deliver prosperity or stability for most of humanity. |
States
We all know that there is a huge debate over whether states matter or not. Why do people invest in one country as opposed to another? Not because of the natural resources. There are no natural resources in Singapore, and few in Ireland. People invest because of the educational system, which is a function of states, and the stability and good governance of states. Where there is not good governance--which you may not be able to define, but you know when you do not have it--people do not invest. If states did not matter in elections, nobody would be spending all this money on Bush and Gore. However, they are spending a lot of money. Indeed, the question of campaign finance throughout the developed world--look at Germany, France, the UK, the US and Japan--is a central one. That is because states still matter. The point that Lord Meghnad Desai has made before is crucial. The future of globalisation rests upon agreement between states. If the Europeans make a mess of the euro--which I hope they do not but fear they may well--it will be because of a failure of states. If the WTO fails, it will not, with all respect, be because of the tree-huggers, environmentalists and trade unions on the streets of Seattle but because of the disagreement of states. |
The question of interstate security is more important than the question of globalisation. Though we live in a world mercifully free of the threat of interstate nuclear war, we do not live in a world where the threat of interstate war has disappeared. We will be lucky to get through the next 25 years without a nuclear exchange in East Asia involving China and its rivals, or in South Asia involving India and Pakistan, or in the Persian Gulf involving Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Iran and other states. We may do it, but it will not happen automatically. That issue, the issue of 1914, is still with us. |
Human rights
This term, the LSE is launching a human-rights centre, of which I am the current director. A new course on human rights has just begun. On balance, I am not at all convinced that globalisation is helping to promote human rights. Globalisation is bad for labour rights. In multiple forms, globalisation is bad for gender rights. Globalisation stokes up all sorts of nationalism and communalism, which is bad for the rights of individuals. I think we need to pay much more attention to the ways in which globalisation, whilst promoting universal norms, also serves to undermine human rights. |
Choice
We face choices. Currently, there is a type of zeitgeist, a spirit that these processes are inevitable and just happen. We have three fetishes of our age--the market, the microchip and the genome. The market, the microchip and the genome can deliver those things. However, they may also create greater inequality and be driven by short-term concerns of profit. If they do, the world will end up as a more unstable and, at least, a more unequal place. Therefore, unless we subject them to democratic control and interstate co-operation, assisted by responsible protests from below, these processes will in fact not lead to greater prosperity or greater stability. |
We have moved a long way from the nineteenth-century view of globalisation as the world becoming one homogenous place. There are 10,000 languages in the world. Some may disappear, but let us hope the diversity remains. There is diversity in gastronomies in the world. Let us hope we do not end up eating the same food all over the world, whether it is mal boeuf or anything else. Neither do I look forward to a world where all universities are the same. I think the homogenisation of universities is also a mistake. They should learn from each other and maintain their distant cultures. That too involves a question of choice. If there is anything beyond the question of inequality that concerns me about the globalisation issue, it is this issue of reasserting the possibilities of choice--democratic, intellectual and cultural choice--and not merely accepting this as an inevitable process. |
|
| |
