Democratizing the globalization process

Boutros Boutros-Ghali The Daily Star Asia News Network Dhaka

Democratizing globalization is one of the major challenges of the 21st century. If we fail to grasp the importance and urgency of the task, we arguably run the risk of seeing globalization pervert and distort what has been achieved at great cost down the centuries and what remains, even today, the goal towards which many peoples still aspire -- democracy at the national level.

It is clear that the democracies, even the most solidly grounded, constructed as they are around the nation-state, have been significantly weakened as a consequence of globalization. For, whereas international society consists of numerous political communities geared to a system of compartmentalisation between States, global society decompartmentalises the universal.

In the economic sphere, large firms are being globalised as a combined effect of technological progress, the rationalization of management methods and the democratization of productivity.

In the financial sphere, the world has been globalised in real terms as a result of deregulation of various kinds, the end of exchange controls, financial innovation and advances in telecommunications. In the sphere of information, the pattern of our lives is today shaped by the universal and instantaneous transmission of news and data.

These far-reaching changes mean that the major problems concerning the future of humanity are essentially transnational. It is clear that issues such as safeguarding the environment, fighting AIDS, controlling population growth, combating hunger or meeting the great technological and genetic challenges are all planetary in scale and can only be partially addressed at the level of the nation-state.

This anxiety-generating phenomenon of globalization heightens frustrations, undermines traditional bonds of solidarity and marginalises countries, not to say whole regions of the planet. This situation is not without risk. Wars, exclusion, hatred and ethnic or religious antagonism are invariably fostered in such a climate. And irrational and fanatical thinking is always on the look-out for an opportunity to offer false solutions to distraught peoples.

We therefore have a compelling duty today to reflect upon a project for living together that will offer States and men and women throughout the world material grounds for hope. For the countries of the South, the fact of being unable to play a part in the management of globalization amounts to being historically sidelined. It is in this context that the democratization of globalization takes on its full significance. Democracy, to be truly meaningful, must be capable of being exercised wherever power is concentrated -- at the local and national level, naturally, but also globally. Democracy should be the mode that governs the exercise of power in all its forms. In other words, the phenomenon of the globalization of the economy should be matched by a movement towards the globalization of democracy.

Global democracy involves more than simply transforming the structures of national democracy. It must embody a new and specific architecture, adapted to a constituency that is not directly one of citizens but rather of States, multinational firms, municipalities, political parties, etc. This will doubtless call for the creation of new political institutions as well as the reform of existing international organizations.

How then can we contribute to the democratization of globalization? I had the occasion to explore this question in detail in the Agenda for Democratization that I submitted to the United Nations General Assembly on Dec. 16, 1996, which has been largely ignored since I left that organization. Our action should be governed by four guiding principles.

Firstly, there is a need to broaden the scope of democracy within the United Nations system itself. This will naturally involve reforming the Security Council and strengthening the Economic and Social Council. In saying this, I am very conscious of raising a paradox at a time when the United Nations is experiencing one of its most serious crises.

Secondly, it is vital to implicate transnational firms in the process of democratization so that they appear not as predators playing upon the gaps in the international social order but rather as agents of democratic development.

Thirdly, we need to link the exercise of political and economic power to the aspirations of social and cultural stakeholders, NGOs, municipalities, universities, parliaments, political parties, religious groups, the media, etc. This will not be easy, but we have no choice. For, whether or not States wish to integrate non-State actors in the decision-making process and the management of democracy, the latter will continue to influence the development of the new international system. However, the example of the International Labor Organization, which was set up before the United Nations, in which each State is represented by employers, workers and governments, shows that technical solutions are possible, whether within the framework of the United Nations by establishing a second General Assembly or indeed through the creation of a new international organization.

Lastly, if we wish to avoid the prospect of yesterday's Cold War turning into cultural confrontation, into a war of civilizations fueled by large-scale international migratory movements and international terrorism, we must defend cultural diversity and plurilingualism, which is as important for planetary democracy as pluripartyism is for national democracy. It is moreover one of the raisons d'jtre of UNESCO.

Such a proposition may seem highly anticipatory, not to say utopian. But I wish to believe, and obstinately continue to believe, that peace between nations based on the democratization of globalization is one of those utopias that is both conceivable and attainable.

The article summarizes the statement of Boutros Boutros-Ghali, former UN Secretary General, during the 21st Century Talks session, recently organized at UNESCO on the theme: Should globalization be made more democratic?