The Inevitability and Desirability of Globalization
Host: Walter Anderson

Taking Positive Action Toward Productive Globalization

(Participant) I'm still having trouble figuring out what this profound and eloquent discussion about globalization leads us to do. I guess there isn't anything--single or multiple--to say we should do. I've been worried about overpopulation for many years. WBSI conducted a substantial discussions about abortion 10 years ago. We had a very powerful agreement that control of birth rates was in the general interest. And now we get an administration that is going against all science and rationality because they have a Christian bent. Aren't Christians able to think about the consequences of their acts and doctrines? (Some are, of course, but we haven't elected them.)

We should fix the behavior of the mass media. We should improve the curricula of the schools. We should adopt the kinds of regulations of capitalism that Dick has spoken for. We should organize our global activities to eliminate hunger and disease. We should do .. do.. do.. But can we? Can we fix even one of these major obstacles to a peaceful and controlled-development world? And who is "we"? Is there a "we" that can be assembled with sufficient intelligence and wisdom to fix these damaging situations?

I guess I'm just railing, but it happens from reading the entries in this conference.

(Participant) With so much cement, it's hard to see the flowers pushing up in the cracks. These days are particularly dark. I'm not one who is excited by the impending war, and I'm sure you're not either, Hallock. And when we look at every major system, as we have in this forum--health care, education, media, national security strategy, community, globalization, etc.--one can only conclude that no profession is even close to succeeding at doing what it should be doing, and the serious erosion of our values characterizes the other processes. So there is plenty of ammunition for pessimists, and plenty of cause for a feeling of impotence.

So what can we count on for hope? What can we do to make a difference? Those of us in this forum should realize that study and dialogue has led historically to positive change and can do so again. Think tanks are quite influential. Many people attribute the policy actions of this administration, and the general shift in the public's values to the right, to the work of these institutions. I believe that the top think tanks now are leading us in the wrong direction, but it is interesting to see how influential they are. If we can figure out how to tap the wisdom of our group, and communicate it powerfully through mass media, then we can have an influence too.

My guess is that we could notice dozens of flowers coming up through the cement if we put our minds to it.

(Walter Anderson) Let me point out a flower. It's not a big flower, and I make no predictions about how it will grow, but it's a theme I have been following for some time now, and believe is important. And I think it's worth pointing out in view of the pessimistic, even despairing, mood that seems to prevail in this conference.

One of the best books on globalization, Global Transformations by David Held and others (Held is at the London School of Economics), talks about an emerging concept of "cosmopolitan citizenship," in which people are aware of having a multitude of different allegiances and commitments ranging from the local to the global, as well as the national citizenship that has in recent centuries been the one that drowned out all the others. This theme is turning up more frequently in other writings and a web site I came across recently.

I don't want to make too much of this, because I'm quite aware of the power of factionalism and parochialism, but I believe it would be a serious mistake--certainly for any organization that professes to be a think tank--to make too little of it. I believe it's the voice of the future, and I also believe it is a quite workable basis for foreign policy, educational policy and probably other areas as well.

(Participant) Someone, somewhere must make a decision resulting in the harvesting of timber in Africa, the marketing of vehicles in Thailand, the sale of McNuggets in Paris. Most the of the world's economic output, as we all know, comes from powerful corporations in the United States, Western Europe, and Japan. The world has become, from their perspective, one huge marketplace. Poor nations become attractive as most of the world's population and resources are found within their borders. Now, do these corporate entities "look out for us or pick our pockets?"--or perhaps a bit of both? Granted those with "disproportionate power" may not fully understand this context, but they are involved in the design and implementation of the larger process. It's too late to influence Marconi or Bell, but I would truly hate to think I can't influence other members of the power elite. If that were true, then I would probably abandon this conversation, fix a fine martini, and watch the sun set over the Pacific. In fact, that is such a good idea.

(Walter Anderson) Just came from a meeting at which a journalist from Colombia talked about politics in South America. He says there is very strong anti-war sentiment there, and he also sees a general shift to the left in national elections--two kinds of left. There's the old left personified by Castro and Chavez, and what he calls the new left, personified by Lula in Brazil and Lagos in Chile, which is among other things much more globalist, interested in reconciling free trade and international institutions (including the IMF) with socialism. I thought it was an interesting perspective on some of the things we've been talking about here.

(Walter Anderson) Don's comment inspires me to try harder to articulate an alternative view, and as an effort in that direction I'm going to quote here from the descriptive material of a project we're now working on, a series of dialogues on global civil order, which will be launched this spring at a meeting in Vancouver.

Global civil order is an emerging vision of an achievable future which, as defined in this project, does not assume a complete end to conflict and violence--something humanity has never been able to achieve--but does recognize the universal demand for a reasonable measure of peace and stability on a global scale, guaranteed by institutions of governance and widely-upheld norms of civil society.

Global civil order in the 21st century will be based on the reality that societies, cultures, economies and even ecosystems have become interconnected to a degree never before experienced in human history. There is a high degree of interdependence and mutual vulnerability as a result. In this context we cannot satisfactorily resolve our differences either by armed conflict or by drawing apart behind boundaries. These need to be managed and facilitated through negotiation based on equality, accessibility, transparency and good communications.

The making of public policy in the emerging global civilization will involve the participation of many kinds of actors and stakeholders outside the traditional frameworks of government, and will also involve an enhanced recognition of the linkages among issues and concerns traditionally treated as separate and discrete.

Finally, global civil order in the decades ahead will not take the form of a final finished product--a world wide institutional status quo--but rather will be shaped by an open-ended and ongoing series of creative responses to conditions of rapid scientific, technological and cultural change.

(Participant) Walt, in the framework of your recent discussion, what was meant by "equality" as a condition of the negotiation?

(Walter Anderson) To me it would mean equality before the law, in the same way it is meant within the framework of constitutional governments that have guarantees of human rights. This is a draft document that will be worked over as the dialogues proceed.

(Participant) Walt:, you and I are misunderstanding each other by our (probably my) use of language. I agree with everything in your #96 and keep seeing phrases which seem to be picturing much of what I thought I inferred in my #95.

Your following words or phrases to me seem to be envisioning some new "global" forms of procedure for handling difficult decisions and needed agreements: "global civil order" "need to be managed and facilitated". I was careful in my message not to use the word "governance" as do you. Your words say it very well: "an ongoing series of creative responses to conditions of rapid scientific, technological and cultural change".

It seems to me that the semantic block that needs to be avoided is reference to something that smells like government, and yet has enough structure to make it work when the going gets difficult.

(Walter Anderson) Thanks, Don. Now if we can just get the rest of the world to try as hard to understand one another as you and I are doing, we may get somewhere.

Part of my position has to do as much with process as product. Institutions of governance that are something less than formal governments--don't have a capital and a central executive, for example--can be grown over time. Governments have to be created. People I have talked with who are of the world federalist persuasion often cite the Philadelphia example. I don't see much chance that anything of that sort is going to happen in the foreseeable future. But I do see that a lot of progress has been made since the end of World War II in growing a system of international governance sort of a piece at a time--the various human rights treaties, for example. And that leads me to hope that still more progress can be made, although it will undoubtedly be a sloppy and often unsatisfactory process.

(Participant) Walt, I found your 1:96 well articulated and very descriptive of reality. It's probably difficult to describe a process that is fluid and not rigidly institutionalized within a hierarchy. I get the taste of what you are describing and see within it Harlan's "nobody in charge" concept. What you have described seems to me to be as inevitable as globalization itself in that it seems to be the natural result (or structure, perhaps) of globalization.

I feel comfortable with such an approach and encouraged to know that it is evolving.

(Participant) I also found Walt's 1:96 a useful and usable description of an emerging reality. (Come to think about it, that's been Walt's intellectual contribution in a series of books, especially starting with Reality Isn't What It Used to Be. ) What I find persuasive about his description is its thoughtfully contrived fuzziness--which matches the reality we're discussing here, and avoids the oppressive clarity of the world-order ideologues of many ideologies.

I have been "lurking" and trying to figure out when it would be useful to write a comment about decision-making on global issues. I guess this is the moment, though as usual it's too late at night.

(Participant) Many moons ago, I mentioned that I was reading a book by J.F. Rischard, the World Bank's V.P. of Europe resident in Paris. The book, published in 2002, is HIGH NOON: 20 Global Issues, 20 Years to Solve Them.

I won't detain you tonight even by listing his 20 global issues (which is, like every such list, far from complete). They're all urgent, tough, "not that expensive to solve," and not now being decisively tackled. Why isn't "the current international setup" solving them? Because their solution has to minimize complexity and hierarchy, and also minimize booting-up and delivery times.

These "musts" rule out super-hierarchies of public authority, sometimes called world government. They also rule out much of the existing machinery of international relations, which depends too heavily on governments agreeing before anything is done, leaves out most of the people who know each issue best, takes too long to get anything decided--and often fails to induce cooperative behavior by those who need to do what's decided to be done, because they weren't really consulted ahead of time.

So what's the answer--or at least an answer? (See next comment.)

Rischard's suggestion, which is notably well thought through, is to tackle each of the world-scale problems with a made-for-that-issue Global Issues Network. The initiative would typically come from "a global multilateral whose specialty and capacity best correspond to the issue at hand." This convener would act as a "facilitator," not a problem-solver.

The convener would enlist individuals from three kinds of partners: (1) national governments concerned about the issue, experienced in thinking about it, and willing to lend some civil servants to the effort "for a long period of time;" (2) international civil society organizations or networks "able to lend individuals with deep knowledge of the issue" who might also be regarded as representing wider swaths of civil society; and (3) business firms with both knowledge of the issue and some ability to reach other businesses, who could lend "highly experienced business leaders" to the network.

Management of each network would be entrusted to three "facilitators"--one from the global multilateral in the lead, one from the civil society grouping, and one from the business contingent. The result, Rischard suggests, would be analogous to an Internet open-source project.

Note that each of the participants should be willing from the outset "to think and act as a global citizen." (Every committee or commission that gets anywhere has to go through this transition to ensure success: people selected to "represent" constituencies have to come to regard themselves as "situation-as-a-whole" leaders of a collective effort that becomes more than the sum of its parts.)

"Is it a pure dream to imagine people behaving as global citizens in such an environment?" Rischard asks himself, and answers yes from research on the subject. As one reader, without further research, I could from personal experience think of dozens of major examples--in UN relief and refugee operations, in the Marshall Plan, in multilateral diplomacy, in international scientific collaboration, in NATO military planning, in climate and weather analysis, in university governance, in collective scholarship--where such behavior was far from dreamy, it was the only way to get anything done.

Once they are set up and their members get used to each other, what would the GINs (Global Issues Networks} actually be doing? Rischard sketches a "norm-producing phase" of two or three years. It would start with the obvious questions (What is the problem? How much time do we have? Where do we want to be twenty years from now? How do we get there?) that are often not so obvious in real-life committees where the members are thinking mostly about pleasing their constituencies. Then they have to come to norms and standards, "the heart of a network's output."

This means "a highly specific, functional ethos for the entire global issue"--what national governments, multilateral agencies, relevant businesses, civil society organizations, and people-at-large should be doing, by when, how measured and monitored, to whom reported.

Finally an "implementation phase," lasting ten years or more, would mean increasing the network's members and mutating into a "rating vehicle." The model I have cited in earlier writings, and Rischard also suggests, is the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), which has been setting engineering standards (such as the exact dimensions of a screw) for nearly a century--using procedures that are remarkably uncentralized and consensual.

Norms and ratings depend on "reputational effects" for their clout. Enforcing a standard for an engineering device, mainly through market dynamics, may be less difficult than for a government policy (such as standards for clean air or drinkable water) or even a business practice (carbon dioxide emissions, for example). But modern openness, enhanced by information technology and typified by the Internet, can convert a norm (arrived at by a process that's well understood and respected) into a powerful force for change.

J.F. Rischard makes clear in his book that his way of thinking isn't the only way to think about the networked governance we'll be needing more and more. My judgment is that his is a mighty creative makeshift. In reviewing his book, I joined him in quoting Karl Polanyi for the defense: "Not for the first time in history may makeshifts contain the germs of great and permanent institutions."

(Walter Anderson) Harlan's a late-at-night person, I'm an early morning person. Just want to start the day by welcoming his input of the Rischard thesis. I haven't read the book, don't know whether I would agree with all parts of it--and that really doesn't matter in this context. What's important is that it offers a powerful example of the multicentric view of global governance I've been trying to articulate. And I want to stress that this view doesn't rule out all the traditional structures of diplomacy, international organizations, etc. It just helps to show that world politics in the 21st century is a richer brew, perhaps with different opportunities for change.

(Participant) Harlan, thanks so much for that. It's heartening to see that someone has worked out a promising design in that detail.

(Participant) Harlan: I echo Dick's feelings. You always have added a feeling of competence in these sessions. But my strong leaning to seeing the dark side, I can see how your optimistic forecasts have a chance if there were more like you with their hands on the directing levers. But I don't see clear enough signs of them in today's world. The future will need to be a fine balance between your NO ONE IN CHARGE and SOME STRONG BOUNDARIES to keep the rest of us in line!

(Walter Anderson) The theme of the World Academy's last general assembly, held in Vancouver in 1998, was "The Global Century." Which neatly brings us back to the theme of this conference, the inevitability and desirability of globalization--because I don't think it's going to be the Chinese century either, and that we need to think seriously about other ways that the world may organize itself.

(Participant) What do you think the status of the UN will be 1) if we go to war without Security Council approval, 2) if we go with a bare majority of small nations, 3) if we go with a large but grudging majority, against the will of their people? It seems to me that the UN is weakened by all three. And, of course, so is the US.

(Walter Anderson) I don't think any of the three will destroy the UN, as some fear, but I do think they will weaken it for some time to come. Obviously, the situation in which the US declares it is going to do what it wants to do, whether it gets UN approval or not, undermines the progress of the UN toward being a major player in resolving international conflict.

It's also a serious time for NATO, which I believe Harlan is going to reflect on in this conference.

And--to amplify my comment in 169 above--it seems to me that the wisest long-term policy for the US would be to take a lead role in building a world that is not dominated by any superpower: the global century.

CLOSING

(Participant) I have enjoyed this conference so much that I hate to see it coming to a close. Walt, you have been a steady and wise leader through all our travails. I have personally altered my views of globalization as a result of this conference (and I had even read your book before!). It was a perfect lead in to the next conference which we are titling "The Developing Conflict". It seems to me impossible for the ILF to deal with any other subject in the month of March, which is almost certain to see some explosive events, both diplomatic and military, and perhaps from terrorist attack. Walt, you have given us a useful perspective from which to view such events, and we thank you.

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