Philosophy and Democracy
Review Article UDC 316: 321.7
Received December 21st, 2007
Pavo Barišić
Institut za filozofiju, Ul. Grada Vukovara 54, Hr-10000 Zagreb
pavo@ifzg.hr
Does Globalization Threaten Democracy?
Abstract
The topic of this article is the correlation between the modern process of globalization and
democracy. The agenda starts with the concept of globalization, its different meanings and
various layers, traps and paradoxes, consequences and effects, advantages and disadvantages
in the horizon of contemporary life. Following a brief theme introduction, the article
outlines a short historic philosophical review into the development of globalization from the
ancient times to the contemporary world. The focus of the philosophical view is that of two
significant authorities and opposite approaches in the process of developing ‘World Society’
– Immanuel Kant and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel wherein Kant explains the means
to the status of ‘World Civility’ as a ‘Natural Purpose’, and Hegel exposes the necessity
of the historic global development to the state of global freedom. The question: Does the
process of making global society threaten democracy in the modern world – is the key issue
nowadays. All agree that the globalization process diminishes the area of authentic political
acting. Democracy originates from the ‘polis’ or small town republic and is a symbol of
the government in the small political community. The step from the polis democracy to the
national state democracy was the result of change from the direct to the representative democracy.
The transition from the national to the supranational and global politics requires
new essential transformation of the being of democracy.
Key words
democracy, globalization, transformation, national, supranational, sovereignty
With the last cut in world history occurring in 1989 and throughout the destruction
of communist dictatorships and Soviet World Empire, a new stage
in the planetary process of globalization began in which most countries in the
world labelled themselves as – democratic states, ‘ruled by the people’. The
increasing trend of 40 in 1972 up to the current estimated 123 democratic
countries of the 192 states registered in the United Nations may continue in
the future. Speculation of various theories such as Francis Fukayama’s End of
History and the Last Man (1992)1 that liberal democratic nation states were
the universal standard form of human society has been disproved through the
1
In the famous book, The End of History and
the Last Man (1992), Francis Fukuyama
claims that the development of the western
liberal democracy may designate the final
phase of mankind’s political evolution and
the end of history: “What we may be witnessing
is not just the end of the Cold War or the
passing of a particular period of post-war history,
but the end of history as such: that is, the
end point of mankind’s ideological evolution
and the universalization of Western liberal
democracy as the final form of human government.”
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P. Barišić, Does Globalization Threaten De 298 mocracy?
globalization process which flattened the boundaries and led liberal democracies
over the state borders to a supranational world society. Transformation to
global democracy threatens the fundamental principles of the former liberal
nation state democracy.
The modern process of globalization was in fact conceived at the beginning
of the New Age with Columbus’ revelation of Western India in 1492 and
Magellan’s expedition which set sail from Sevilla in 1519 and returned to the
same port three years later after proving that the Earth was indeed a round
Globe. The past five centuries of connecting and netting the great watery
spheroid Globe by way of trade and warfare, technology and industry, science
and communications, satellites and Internet, global concerns and international
organizations showed only a different form, face and a reverse side of globalization.
Since the eighties and early nineties of the 20th century, following the pulling
down of the world’s bipolar structure, the unifying process of a single world
market and world society has been strongly accelerating. Thus the term ‘globalization’itself
has been significantly used in economical, philosophical, and
sociological discussions as a notion that refers to the economical, cultural and
political integration of the national economies and processes into the global
market and new world order.
After the founding of the first modern representative democracy inAmerica in
1776, the previous political epoch was symbolically delimited by two significant
democratic revolutions – the French in 1789 and the ‘Velvet’ revolution
1989. This era was dominated by the model of the national state and building
of the representative, constitutional, social, and liberal democracy under its
frame. In this epoch, we can distinguish three waves of democratization:
1. The transition from a non-democratic to a democratic form of government
– 1828–1926;
2. A gradual renewal of democratic regimes in Japan and in the Middle Europe
(West Germany, Austria, Italy) – 1943–63;
3. The foundation of democracy in Southern Europe (notably the Mediterranean
Area: Spain, Portugal, Greece), South America (Argentina, Uruguay,
Bolivia) – 1974–89.
After the fall of the Berlin wall, democratization spread to Middle and Eastern
Europe countries where the model of liberal democracy grew to a global form
of government. Aside from that, in the contemporary epoch of globalization,
the frame of the national is overstepped and the supranational and global area
is opened. Democracy has been designated as the ‘last form of government’.
However, some people are afraid that the globalization process would diminish
the area of authentic political acting and transform the public landscape.
Democracy is not only a distinctive set of political institutions or a social and
economic order but firstly a specific process of making collective and binding
decisions with equal and free citizens in the center. As well, the question “Is
the nature of democracy compatible with the global trend of society?” must
be observed. Proponents of democratic globalization, such as David Held2
claimed that it was necessary to create democratic global institutions. Their final
goal was the establishment of a democratic world government with world
services for citizens.
It is my opinion that globalization destroys the institutional anchors of the
previous democracy with the destruction of the fundamental marks of the
national state:
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● Sovereignty as an absolute power of decision making;
● Territorial government;
● State people and nation.
Furthermore, globalization points out the role of the citizen as a world citizen
in a new horizon. This is a utopian idea attempting to establish a global
democratic government. However, it is not Utopia to see the world order with
the most democratic elements allowing for the world citizen to participate at
numerous levels in the process of global democratic decisions making – from
local, provincial, regional and national to supranational and global levels as
well.
The 1990’s illustrated the increased crisis of citizenship in the world through
the loss of democratic civic values and participation, a decline of the sense of
political efficacy, and shift from interest on public good to privatized life and
prosperity which is an important influence on the democratic participation of
citizens in politics. The fundamental connection between modern democracy
and market economy had advantages for both in the era of nation states. However,
with the increase of financial power as the only authoritative truth acting
on global market and netting, the area of authentic political acting and justice
rational regulation of public needs and institutions was reduced.
Three Fundamental Transformations of Democracy
Democracy originated from the ‘polis’ or town republic and is a symbol of
government in the small political community where citizens regard one another
as political equals. Ancient Athenian democracy, which lasted nearly
two centuries between 507 and 321 B. C. E. is a prime example of citizen
participation or participatory direct democracy with developed institutions
needed by citizens in order to govern themselves. Robert A. Dahl calls the
step from the idea and practice of rule by the few (oligarchy/aristocracy) or
by a single person (tyranny/monarchy) to the idea and practice of rule by the
many (democracy/polity) in the city-state among the Greeks (Aristotle) the
“first democratic transformation”.3
The step from the polis democracy to the national state democracy was the
result of change from the direct participation to the representative democracy.
The so called second democratic transformation led to a radically new set of
political institutions to represent the political will of the equal citizens. The
representative democracy is a system which combines democracy at local levels
with a popularly elected parliament at the top level and secures the consent
of free citizens through election. Basic political institutions are representatives
elected in national parliament and popularly chosen local governments
that are subordinate to the national government.
2
British political theorist David Held from the
London School of Economics is one of the
leading authors and key figures in the development
of the modern cosmopolitanism and
globalization. He’s written several works on
that topic e.g. Democracy and the Global Order:
From the Modern State to Cosmopolitan
Governance (1995), Cosmopolitan Democracy:
An Agenda for a New World Order (with
Daniel Archibugi) (1995), Global Transformations:
Politics, Economics and Culture, coauthor
(1999), Globalization/Anti-Globalization,
co-author (2002), Cosmopolitanism: A
Defence (2003), Global Covenant: The Social
Democratic Alternative to the Washington
Consensus (2004).
3
Robert A. Dahl, Democracy and Its Critics,
p. 1, Yale University Press, New Haven &
London 1989.
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The system of modern representative democracy originates from Great Britain,
Scandinavia, Switzerland, and areas mainly north of the Mediterranean.
Modern democracy was perfected in North America with a system of checks
and balances among the country’s major social forces and the separation of
powers within the government. Developed from the American Founding Fathers
under the influence of ideas from Charles Montesquieu and John Locke,
the American democratic republic became in due course something of a model
for many other republics.
The third transformation from the national to the supranational and global politics
requires new essential changes of the being of democracy. Development
of liberal democracy in the national states was connected with the grounding
of human rights and freedoms and the shift in scale from the small, more
intimate, and more participatory city-state to the bigger, more representative
democratic governments. Today, the question of which changes democracy
needs to pass by en route to the supranational creations and world market,
global society and world republic is a key issue: from the complexity in the
democratic social order and cultural diversity to the difficulty of achieving
an adequate level of citizen competence for a global democracy. How can
today’s society in the conditions of global market establish democratic rule
at large scale and still retain the advantages and possibilities of small scale
democracy?
Critical views on the effects of globalization firstly observe the shortcomings
in the justice social distribution of goods between the states and areas of the
world. There also comes to light the crisis of the social wellbeing state which
was a status symbol of societies particularly in the Western European states
developed after the second world war. The merciless pressure of the global
market weakened the assurance of social security which was the product of
state activity. Wellbeing social state divided social goods on the principles of
non-market distributive justice. New forms of injustice appeared in the global
market under the label of commutative justice.
Philosophical Roots
of Globalization and Democracy
On the horizon of the philosophical idea of the universal mind, the globalization
process has been developing through millennia. Minerva’s owl of western
metaphysics started its flight from the coast of the Mediterranean Sea in
Eastern Asia and over Athens and Rome, and alongside it, Christianity spread
globally. It was the aim of Heraclitus, later Anaxagoras to talk about the world
order which was to be the same for all. Plato’s and Aristotle’s ideas had conquered
and unified the spiritual global spheres long before the start of globalization’s
process of economic and financial market, machine technology
and/or computer and global information netting. The word ‘World Citizen’
first appeared in the cynical philosophical school. Asked where he came from,
Diogenes from Synope answered that he was a ‘cosmopolites’ – citizen of the
world.
Parallel to the process of universal thinking and the citizen of the world, the
idea of democracy was established, practiced, debated, supported, attacked
and ignored for more than twenty-five hundred years. At the peak of the creation
of national states politics in 18th and 19th centuries, Immanuel Kant and
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, two noted philosophers, endeavoured to offer
their views on the founding of the ‘World Society’ and ‘World History’. Kant,
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regarded as one of the most influential philosophers in the history of Western
philosophy and the last major philosopher of the Enlightenment explained the
means to the status of “World Civility” as a “Natural Purpose”. His opinion
was that the status of “World Civility” could be developed through the origin
presumptions of the human genus. He declared the perfect citizen uniting into
the World Society as an act of Providence and the purpose of history. Therefore
he proposed the founding of a “World Republic” as a guarantee for world
peace and global free trade.
Hegel exposed the necessity of developing world history to the state of global
freedom. However, unlike Kant, he wasn’t inclined to the idea of a universal
world civil community. He accepted the idea of cosmopolitism and tried to
confirm and legitimize world citizenship through national state life and not
opposite them. Hegel viewed the whole history under the aspect of universal
world process which evolved on the principles of freedom, mind and law. Hegel’s
metaphysical realism confirms that until national sovereignty continued,
there couldn’t be a judge (‘pretor’) between the states. It is possible only to
talk about one kind of arbitrator or mediator between the sovereign wills. In
Hegel’s categories, globalization is the product of the widening of civil society
over political borders.
Globalization and Democracy
In the contemporary process of globalization, we can observe the collision of
forces which show marks of both philosophical approaches. There is a tendency
to a peaceable world republic of united people through an international
law, human rights, and international institutions similar to the United Nations.
It is very interesting when you consider the idea of the founding of the League
or Concert of Democracies with “more than 100 democracies”,4 which deems
the new ‘global system’ as a means to protect human rights, enforce peace,
and achieve global prosperity. This idea can be seen as a continuation of
Kant’s League of People with universal republican state forms.
Conversely, we can see clashes and conflicts of sovereign wills in the global
economical and political world market in the way Hegel described it. It is remarkable
that democracies do not fight wars with one another. Robert A. Dahl
claimed that “of thirty-four international wars between 1945 and 1989, none
occurred among democratic countries”.5 But democratic countries fight wars
with non-democratic countries and interfere sometimes in the political life of
authoritarian states like China and Russia in
the United Nations Security Council. The
belief is that the ‘League of Democracies’
could respond to global humanitarian crisis.
In the past decade, the idea of the league of
democracies had been promoted mostly
by Democrats, including such figures as
President Obama’s foreign policy adviser,
Anthony Lake, and Ivo Daalder, of the
Clinton Administration. Cf. Stephen
Schlesinger, “Can Democracies be
Organized?”, Maxim News Network,
11/6/2008. [Footnote amended afterwards.]
5
Robert A. Dahl, On Democracy, p. 57, Yale
University Press, New Haven & London
1998.
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other countries. For my part, this is an incorrect means to spread democracy in
the world by way of tanks and air forces. Thus, did Athens with its war ships
under the frame Demokratia. Alexis de Tocqueville dedicated a big part of his
Democracy in America to prove that it is not possible to transplant the model
of democracy to the areas where there weren’t sufficient legal and moral circumstances
and factors in civic tradition. For world democracy, it is necessary
to make appropriate world democratic institutions which respect different cultural
and national heritages and develop citizens to carry democratic ideals.
Globalization threatens liberal nation state democracy at its core. The idea of
a liberal representative democracy is connected with territory and borders.
The definition of a modern state is based on the notion of an organisation
or political association which has effective sovereignty over a specific geographic
area. Max Weber6 laced definition of state up to the ‘monopoly on
the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory’. Globalization
loosens the border frames and shifts the main emphasis from state territory
to global institutions and processes. Therefore, global democracy should shift
the stress again on the citizen and find the way to establish democracy as a
process of making collective and binding decisions through the free will of
equal citizens.
Last but not least, globalization can favour and harm democracy. Wild and
uncontrolled globalization threatens democracy and may bring again mankind
into the natural status of bellum omnium contra omnes. Therefore it is
important to bring the process of globalization into the frame of democratic
ideals and justice to preserve and advance democracy and its practices
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