The diverse arguments and views that are expressed worldwide regarding globalization shed light on what path the increasingly converging world will follow and where it is headed. They also give us hints as to how we can grapple with the adverse effects of globalization. This section will explore these arguments and views.
Globalization As Modernization
When considering globalization, we tend to think about the economy. But American political scientist Francis Fukuyama tells us that globalization is a much larger issue in a lecture that he gave at Doshisha University in Kyoto on October 22, 2007. Fukuyama has offered macroscopic arguments to the post_Cold War world since publishing the book The End of History and the Last Man, and this lecture was another case in point.In it he gave the following insights, correcting along the way some common misunderstandings about the arguments set forth in his book.
Fukuyama believes that the fact of modernization as a broad and coherent process is "incontrovertible." There is no doubt that certain things, such as values that were once respected is traditional societies, are lost in the process. But although there are people who express nostalgia for the olden days while enjoying the benefits of modern society, few would actually choose to move to a developing country and take up a premodern way of life. Meanwhile, there are millions of people every year who try to leave developing countries to live in Europe, North America, Japan, and other developed societies.
Karl Marx believed that the end point of the inevitable process of modernization would be communism. Fukuyama, by contrast, reasoned that the end point would be liberal democracy, because a government system that is accountable to citizens is requisite to modernization.
According to Fukuyama, liberal democracy—including separation of religion and state and the freedom of speech and association—is a corollary of the modernization process. Citing the problem of tainted Chinese food products, which has had worldwide repercussions, he explained that it would not be effectively solved as long as the producers only feel a sense of upward accountability toward the Communist Party of China. It can be solved, however, if the producers feel a sense of downward accountability toward consumers and citizens, and China will then be able to move toward more modern ways of living—one factor of which is hygienic safety.
Societies around the globe will proceed along "a similar path of modernization," Fukuyama observed, because there are "universal values" that lead all societies to converge in their basic institutions. The modernization that he spoke of is none other than globalization, our current focus; it is the steady advance of industrialization and democratization, which first emerged in Western Europe and spread to the United States, Japan, and other parts of the world. That process dramatically gained speed as well as depth following the end of the Cold War and came to be called globalization. The issues that we now face are thus of the same nature as those of modernization.
In his lecture, Fukuyama noted that the globalized world would be facing four important problems: the rise of political Islam, the lack of democracy at an international level, poverty, and technology.
Radical Islam is a global manifestation of antimodernism, a formerly domestic movement that has met the process of modernization everywhere, including Western Europe, the United States, and Japan. The second and third challenges to the world as pointed out by Fukuyama—lack of democracy at an international level and poverty—are exemplars of globalized issues of modernization. While the interest-rate policy or the introduction of a new technology in one part of the world can alter the fates of people living half a world away, no effective mechanism is yet in place to regulate these forces. Economic globalization is not only weakening national sovereignty but also giving rising to many failed states. Some examples are countries in sub-Saharan Africa and Afghanistan, where drugs and weapons that pervade the globe are flowing in and further debilitating their governments. Moreover, brutal poverty is emerging in these places.
There are many more points of interest in Fukuyama's arguments—including why new technologies pose a future threat to the world—but we must move on, in keeping with our aim of discussing a variety of views in the media.
The Spreading Debate on Social Disparity
Let us now look at recent articles against the backdrop of Fukuyama's insights. Newsweek discusses the worldwide phenomenon of social disparity in a special report, "Split by Decision," which appeared in the November 12, 2007, issue of its Asia edition. China's Gini coefficient—a measure of income disparity with 1 representing the highest degree of inequality—is thought to be above 0.5, higher than the US figure of 0.46. In the global economy, "The top 10 or 20 percent [in terms of income] is pulling away from the rest because of education, job skills, and connections," economist Robert Reich is quoted as saying. Japan, where one-third of the workers are part-timers and income inequality is expanding, is mentioned as well.One point deserving notice is that former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan has commented on the severe income inequality with a critical eye. Widening inequality is building anxiety in people despite the extraordinary gains of capitalism, so that "capitalism has not yet gotten closure," he notes.
Greenspan is an avid libertarian who revered the novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand in his youth. Although his philosophy may have shifted somewhat since then, he has nevertheless been a strong believer in free markets, as evidenced by his open criticism in his Federal Reserve days of US antidumping actions that could hinder trade.
If social disparity is getting even Greenspan worried, the problem is grave indeed.
Turning to a slightly older article, "A New Deal for Globalization," Professor Kenneth Scheve of Yale University and Professor Matthew Slaughter of Dartmouth University wrote in the July_August 2007 issue of Foreign Affairs, "Less than four percent of workers were in educational groups that enjoyed increases in mean real money earnings from 2000 to 2005; mean real money earnings rose for workers with doctorates and professional graduate degrees and fell for all others." Inequality is growing in the world economy, they noted, and a new deal to redistribute income is needed to avert the rise in protectionism.
Social disparity has become a concern in a global dimension as well. Foreign Policy ran its annual country-by-country comparison of their degrees of globalization in its November_December 2007 issue. Measuring 72 countries accounting for 97 percent of the world's gross domestic products by political, personal, technological, and economic criteria, "The Globalization Index" ranked Singapore as the most globalized country in the world. The United States came in seventh overall, whereas Japan was twenty-eighth, after Bulgaria. Like the others, Foreign Policy worries that some regions are being left behind by the progressive forces of globalization. In the Indian Ocean region, for instance, a 2004 tsunami left at least 300,000 dead in the absence of a transnational network for emergency alerts. It also noted with concern a decrease in foreign investment in the United States—a phenomenon caused by an act encouraging companies to hire domestically—amid a protectionist mood in the country.
It would do us good to reflect on the words of former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan: "Globalization is a fact of life. But I believe we have underestimated its fragility."
