GLOBALIZATION AND HUMAN SECURITY: A NEO-GRAMSCIAN PERSPECTIVE
Earl Conteh-Morgan
Abstract
This article utilizes a neo-Gramscian theoretical framework and interpretation of International Political Economy to argue that globalization as the dominant hegemonic order is generating multilevel (individual, group, and national) human insecurity especially in developing societies. The new processes, structures, discourses, and interaction networks associated with globalization produce (1) a cultural lag between the new values and deeply held traditional attitudes in many developing societies, (2) a lack of “inclusion” especially in the benefits of neoliberal economic expansion, and (3) an increasing “disorganization” of capitalism which spills over into economic, food, or health insecurity, among others. The solution would be to address issues of economic and technological exclusion if the problems of existential insecurity and human poverty are to be resolved.
Introduction
The end of the 20th Century and the transition to the
21st is characterized by two simultaneous trends: global political
and economic integration processes and national disintegration with
broad (in)security implications. Accordingly, the international relations
of the new millennium is impelling many analysts to broaden their conception
of security to include issues of human security broadly defined. In
other words, while internationalization is producing positive effects
in some states, it is also generating many negative results in others.
The well-documented and publicized ideological resistance towards globalization—Seattle,
Prague, the May Day Protests in London, Davos, and the recent World
Economic Forum in New York—demonstrate that the benefits of neoliberal
internationalism are not equally distributed among individuals, groups,
or states that make up the international system. The widening scope
and intensification of a global free market is beneficial to some states,
but in others it has eliminated a “social contract” between
state and society, accompanied by a strong perception that economic
globalization is largely a process of “disorganized capitalism.” The
pervasive nature of these transnational and global forces generate
dissatisfaction and multilevel (individual, group, and national) insecurity.
In this paper, I utilize the neo-Gramscian framework to transnational historical
materialism to examine this process and provide evidence of specific instances
of negative globalization, insecurity, and dissatisfaction within nations. A
theory of international relations based on the Gramscian conceptualization of
hegemony is useful for a better understanding of the inherently problematic nature
of internationalization (Cox, 1981; Robinson, 1996). Stated differently, the
aim of this analysis is to explore the relationship between the processes of
globalization and the changing nature of human security. Accordingly, the paper
will proceed in the following manner: 1) a brief discussion of the relevance
of a neo-Gramscian framework in an examination of the relationship between globalization
and human (in)security, 2) an analysis of the concept of globalization and its
uneven effects on societies in relation to human security, and 3) identify specific
instances of human insecurity related to globalization processes. In other words,
the analysis will focus on the following questions: What, so far, is the impact
of globalization processes on income and poverty in developing countries?; What
is human security and how is it affected by the new economics among nations?;
and Where and what are some of the specific instances of human insecurity?
Globalization is the widening scope and intensification of socio-economic, political,
and cultural activities and their worldwide effects (positive and negative) on
individuals, groups, and entire societies. The rapidity and profundity of this
interconnectedness is manifested in the expansion and internationalization of
financial markets, global corporate management, worldwide epistemic and interpretive
communities, newly emerging power relationships derived from changing global
investment patterns, and new social constructions of cognition, identity and
meaning built upon postmodern global conditions.
Liberalization Policies as Power Relations: the Neo-Gramscian Perspective
This paper utilized a neo-Gramscian perspective and interpretation
of International Relations (IR) and International Political Economy
(IPE) to critically examine the role of globalization in the human
security problematic, especially the increase in economic insecurity
in many states. Gramsci uses hegemony as a key concept to underscore
the power of material capabilities, ideas, institutions, and other
socio-economic and cultural forces in ensuring legitimacy for the ruling
class vis-à-vis the subordinate class. When a consensus, or
form of consent between the two is fully fashioned, a hegemonic order
is said to be in existence. When this hegemonic order is firmly in
place, it develops into a “historic bloc” which is the
solid structure that is produced by an existing hegemonic order (Gramsci,
1971). Its role is to cement or bind together all the other segments
of society into a relationship characterized by common political, economic,
and cultural practices.
The works of Gramsci have been especially applied by the “Italian School” to
analyze global politics through an emphasis on concepts like hegemony and historic
bloc which are viewed as corresponding to political and economic internationalization.
Both concepts are equally manifested in global ‘norms’ and expectations
about political-economic interactions, which constitute a kind of global ‘common
sense,’ or popular beliefs, institutions, and assumptions. In particular,
Robert Cox (1993) argues that the global community is subject to impositions
about how the global and/or national political economy should operate . These
global hegemonic impositions often originate from forces within a powerful
state or from a crisis/challenge within the previous hegemonic order. Once
a hegemonic order is consolidated, its dominant mode of production coalesces
with other subordinate modes of production. The outcome is the establishment
of an international civil society characterized by adherence to homogenous
rules and regulations as well as the strengthening of links between the social
classes of the countries that comprise the historic bloc.
A Gramscian framework is relevant in the analysis of globalization’s
impact on human security because the benefits, or lack thereof, of international
economic liberalization is a question of power relations among states in the
international system. Moreover, while a Gramscian analysis underscores the
analytical relevance of power relations, it also emphasizes the pertinence
of culture to hegemonic contestations. In other words, for a hegemony to be
consolidated, religious and political values which include institutions must
be entrenched within an ideology or reflect both elite and mass values in order
for the institutions produced by that ideology to be successful. Ideology is
defined in Gramscian analysis as organic cement or social glue that integrates
institutions as well as societal and state apparatuses, as opposed to a system
of ideas. From a neo-Gramscian or transnational historical materialist perspective,
globalization and its human security impact on developing countries reflects
the cultural and moral as well as economic dominance of the hegemonic states
which constitute a ruling class within international society made up of developed
and developing states. The ongoing process of globalization, especially its
economic component, reflects a particular set of class interests (those of
the advanced industrial states) as the general interest.
In Gramscian analysis, hegemony is viewed as a negotiated process because dominant
groups must secure the consent of subordinate social forces in order to guarantee
the legitimate rule of the former. When challenges to the hegemonic order erupt
from the subordinate groups, the dominant groups attempt to accommodate such
challenges through material concessions, co-opting the discourse of challengers,
and integrating moderate groups into the coalition of the hegemonic bloc while
marginalizing more radical elements. All these methods ensure that no fundamental
changes in social relations occur between the dominant and subordinate groups.
In addition to hegemony being negotiated and therefore not completely stable,
it is also characterized by dynamism in the sense that changes in markets,
technologies, relative power positions, or ideologies can undermine the stability
of an historic bloc by introducing crisis triggered by challenges to the existing
alliances and arrangements. The organizational competence and political will
of subordinates determine whether the historic bloc maintains hegemony through “passive
revolution” (granting concessions, co-optation) or undergoes a more profound
social change from below in which subordinate groups replace existing cultural
expressions and social institutions with new ones which eventually undermine
the historic bloc (Gramsci, 1971). The Gramscian concept of hegemony thus suggests
that globalization does not translate into an unchallenged drive toward economic
and political internationalization where the nation state becomes a mere vehicle
for the transmission of global capital, but rather a highly contested process
in which nation states may experience disintegration due to the lack of a “social
contract” or increasing insecurity/misery on the part of individuals,
groups, and entire societies.
Transnational historical materialism underscores the role and functions of
international institutions such as the Organization for Economic Cooperation
and Development (OECD), the World Economic Forum, the Trilateral Commission,
the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Bank, among others, as
constituting a transnational hegemonic bloc which binds together both developed
and developing states and both elite and masses. In combination, they constitute
a global alliance of capitalists, state managers and intellectuals characterized
by common material and ideological structures. Their goal is unrestricted internationalization
of markets and trade interactions in general. While the role of transnational
capital is central in the construction of this transnational hegemonic bloc,
the national state is seen as playing a major mediating role. The dominance
of the transnational hegemonic bloc is ensured because the nation-state is
willing to or “coerced” into adopting the fiscal and monetary policy
necessary to maintain economic stability and social control. It is only through
the successful integration of the international and national realms can capitalist
internationalization be effected. However, in the alliance between the national
and the supranational, the national state clearly assumes and plays a subordinate
role.
Robert Cox (1987) describes the role of the state in the internationalization
of global capital this way:
First, there is a process of interstate formation regarding the need or requirements of the world economy that takes place within a common ideological framework — Second, participation in this consensus formation is hierarchically structured. Third, the internal structures of states are adjusted so that each can best transform the global consensus into national policy and practice.
However, where the “weak” developing state is concerned,
its role could more accurately be described as “coerced consent” rather
than willing participation. Whether willing or coerced, the nation
state is more or less an appendage or instrument of the global economic
consensus to implement the goals of dominant capital. In this era of
globalization, the nation state is, in varying degrees, being bypassed
by the hegemonic class through an array of international financial
institutions and a web of economic relationships. All are utilized
in the process of imposing and implementing the national agenda. The
weak, developing state especially acts on behalf of international financial
institutions like the IMF and the World Bank, who supply the funds
that guarantee the legitimacy of or ensure the neopatrimonial ties
of state leaders. The consequence is an emerging world culture glued
together by a common rhetoric focused on issues of economic liberalization,
democratization, the environment, human rights, and the like.
Globalization and Human Security
The transition to the 21st Century is characterized by glaring differences
in the levels of development among states along with the widening scope
and intensification of economic, political, and cultural interdependence.
This internationalization of politico-economic and socio-cultural processes
designated by the term “globalization” has two effects:
positive and negative (Heredia, 1997). In particular, the level of
economic globalization is moving at such a rapid pace that it is, in
many states, adversely affecting the status quo. The leading role in
this transnational flow of goods, services, and capital is played by
an elite group of countries (known as the G-7), who are in league with
international financial organizations and corporations. Under their
hegemony, the vast majority of the other states must acquiesce to politico-economic
prescriptions shaped almost entirely without their input.
Human insecurity (broadly defined as existential anxiety/ontological insecurity)
whether at the individual, group, or national level is a consequence of rapid
socio-economic and political changes inherent in globalization and accompanied,
in varying degrees, by a deepening of unequal power structures both at the
national and international levels. The eruption of violent conflicts is, at
times, an attempt to address human economic existential anxiety caused by globalization’s
destruction of the “social contract” between state and society
resulting in loss of economic support systems. According to the 1994
Human
Development Report
Human security is people-centered. It is concerned with how people live and breathe in a society, how freely they exercise their many choices, how much access they have to market and social opportunities—and whether they live in conflict or in peace (United Nations Development Programme, 1994: 24).
In other words, human insecurity broadly conceived affects not just economic security but other areas of existence as well. This is why the first major reference to human security in 1994 identified seven areas of concern. These are the following (United Nations Development Programme, 1994:32):
1. Economic security (e.g., assurance of a basic
income),
2. Food security (e.g., access to food),
3. Health security (e.g., access to health care and protection from diseases),
4. Environmental security (e.g., protection from harmful effects of environmental
degradation,
5. Personal security (e.g., freedom from threats by the state, groups, or
individuals),
6. Community security (e.g., freedom from harmful community practices, ),
7. Political security (e.g., enjoyment of human rights, and freedom from political
oppression).
As globalization increases the level of prosperity, so also is poverty
becoming globalized.
The developing nations are perennially at the receiving end of economic models
emanating from industrialized states and international financial institutions.
The transmitted models (classical and neo-classical development models) and
their elements of profit maximization, the invisible hand, rugged individualism,
and the like have often destabilized and confused many developing states (Williams,
1997). In other words, the impact of economic globalization on many developing
economies has often resulted in limited benefits to the majority of individuals,
groups, or society. For the developing world, transnational capital as well
as the acquiescence and/or “coerced consent” to adopt Western economic
models has exacerbated deeply-rooted structural problems. The outcome is very
slow or negative growth rates, markedly skewed distribution of income, and
widespread poverty.
However, while the economies of the developing nations are adversely affected
by hegemonic economic impositions, those of the G-7 nations and their advanced
states have institutionalized important social welfare measures (homestead
acts, a common agricultural policy, price support mechanisms, tax holiday,
social security, and subsidies) to offset or forestall the most painful effects
of globalization. In addition to the absence of human security measures within
developing states, they are also constrained by several limitations such as
the institutionalized patron-client networks based on parochial and selfish
inclination, and the socio-cultural and political dilemmas that stem from the
transnational imposition of values inherent in economic liberalization. For
example, while the reduction in government expenditure, devaluation, and liberalization
of the national economy and international trade that accompany structural adjustment
programs are expected to tackle the problems of inflation and the balance of
payments deficit by changing the incentive structure, they also have a wider
impact on society, especially its immediate impact on the poor (Messkoub, 2001).
A reduction or elimination in food subsidies affect the nutritional intake
of children in poor households, in addition to destabilizing the opportunity
structure for the varied individuals, groups, and classes in society.
As a result of economic liberalization policies, in the general area of basic
needs (education, health, social security, and housing). The United Nations
International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) in 1990 reported that
in Tanzania real public expenditures in 1986 were less than half of 1975 expenditures.
In particular, economic adjustment programs affected, in varying degrees, individuals
and groups in relation to income distribution and basic needs. In the area
of education, a UNICEF (1990) report said
The number of children seen on the main roads and the streets of Dar es Salaam and in other towns has increased dramatically. Until recently, the phenomenon of street children was unknown in Tanzania. many of the children are selling bread and other commodities to make money for themselves and for their families.
In other words, the once respectable Tanzanian educational system
has been adversely affected by the economic crisis and adjustment policies
prescribed by the hegemonic state and non-state actors.
The human security experience of poor countries associated with economic globalization
underscores the limitations of the new historic bloc and its hegemonic order,
which seem, so far, to be meaningless to many individuals and groups in poor
countries. This experience in the developing world is pertinent with Warren
Robinson’s observation that
The relaxation of social controls over markets, the presence of even a handful of sharp, ruthless, essentially amoral operators, and normal competitive processes will inevitably lead to the worst, most unscrupulous practices becoming the norm (West Africa, 1997:671).
While liberalization policies are being diffused globally, they are
at the same time producing dissimilar effects depending on the socio-economic
and cultural context. The interactions of the local and the global
are having serious economic, food, health, community, and other security
concerns in many developing societies.
The decreasing involvement of government in citizens’ welfare is not
being replaced by other safeguards or means of alleviating insecurity in developing
countries. The vacuum created by the forces of liberalization contributes to
a process of atomization manifested in psychological uncertainty or a loss
of security attachment to government. This process in turn produces a resurgence
of primordial sentiments because of the ideological absence fostered by an
authoritarian vacuum. The consequence is inter-group tensions along ethnolinguistic,
ethnoreligious, ethnoregional, or class lines. Uncertainty/anxiety is produced
because the norms of privatization and personal responsibility for welfare
destroy old ways that, at least, guarantee a modicum of social welfare. In
the process, communal values are eliminated in favor of individualistic, impersonal
behavior patterns.
The intensification of group rivalries translates into competition even within
families, where before there was cooperation and community. The previous values
of free sharing are replaced by an emphasis on individuality and putting a
monetary value to everything, including relationships. In the end, the family
relationships are weakened. While the transition from primary allegiance to
the family unit, community, ethnic, or tribal group to primary allegiance to
the state may be beneficial in the long-run, in the short-run it causes a great
deal of psychological uncertainty, problems of material deprivation, and general
social dislocation.
Human security broadly defined is adversely affected when economic marginalization
of the general population is fueled by the rising militancy of local strongmen
who have forfeited an economically advantageous patron-client infrastructure
due to economic and political liberalization measures. Often armed warlords
or bandits fight against the government for control of natural resources. Such
control provides a substantial political base for these local strongmen as
various economically disadvantaged groups begin to regard them as better able
to support their economic needs (Foreign Systems Research Center, 1998). The
eruption of resource wars within a country severely destroys community security
because traditional practices are disrupted, ethnic groups are targeted, and
individual physical security is affected.
Most significant, direct control of the revenue producing natural resources
also gives local strongmen the financial assets to buy weapons and build paramilitary
forces to protect their economic territory against government forces and other
warlords. Resource struggles which breed warlordism have produced conflicts
and established the basis for the irregular nature of subsequent warfare in
developing countries. In irregular warfare, combatants often perpetuate violence
and cruelty against not only each other but the civilian population as well
(White, 1996). Motivations of the combatants (most of whom have experienced
years of either political, economic and other deprivations) were often based
on factors other than politics. For them, instant economic gratification is
seen in their ability to pillage and loot the countryside. At times, in these
conflicts, the distinction between professional soldier and rebel fighter becomes
blurred. In the Sierra Leone conflict, for example, close to 50 per cent of
some 14,000 soldiers became soldier-rebels (“sobels”) who operated
on both sides of the conflict, motivated by their own economic self-interest
or personal gratification. Warlordism produces more misery because governments
are forced to spend an overwhelming amount of resources to contain warlords,
leaving insufficient amounts to provide government services to its constituents
(Reno, 1998). Second, by controlling substantial components of the country’s
economic resources, these groups deprive the government of significant sources
of revenue necessary to conduct counterinsurgency.
The globalization of democracy in developing countries has equally contributed
to human insecurity in some countries. While political rights and freedom from
political oppression, is desirable, the spread of democratic values has simultaneously
and quite ironically produced societal instability. As some states experience
an improvement in political or civil liberties, they shortly thereafter experience
civil strife (e.g. the former Yugoslavia and the conflict between Russia and
the ethnic separatist Chechens). In Burundi, a candidate from the long oppressed
Hutu majority won presidential elections in 1993, only to be overthrown in
a bloody Tutsi-led military coup that left some 50,000 dead. The increasing
press freedom in neighboring Rwanda preceded the 1994 Rwandan genocide that
left roughly 800,000 Tutsi dead along with some moderate Hutus (Steering Committee
on Rwanda, 1996).
As the old patterns of behavior are undermined by the new hegemony based on
liberalization of power relations, emotional anxieties at the personal, group,
or community levels increase. The transition from the previous political status
quo to the new one is often the initiative of the power elite who acquiesce
to the new hegemonic order and impose it on their citizens with little direct
and substantial participation from them.
In situations where violence does not occur as a result of political liberalization,
the state may respond to liberal political behavior by strengthening its internal
security apparatus and may resort to indiscriminate political repression. This
behavior of the state is likely to directly impact personal security because
it may produce state violence and terror in the form of torture,
arrests, incarceration,
and even executions.
The spread of economic and political liberalization policies and their human
security implications are producing a new form of social alienation. Societies
that were once traditional, community-oriented, informal, and personal are
now suddenly exposed to the formal, abstract character of modern institutions,
the economic detachment of the state, and a more competitive political economy.
According to Peter L. Berger (1998:3-11), this generates “homelessness”
The de-modernizing impulse, whether it looks backwards into the past or forward into the future, seeks a reversal of the modern trends that have left the individual ‘alienated’ and beset with the threats of meaninglessness.
For developing countries in particular, the new hegemony, because of its scope and intensity, has produced emotional stress in individuals, groups, and entire societies related to the breakdown of hierarchical structures that guaranteed a modicum of social welfare before the introduction of macrostructural changes associated with globalization. The psychological effect on individuals and groups is described thus by Anthony Giddens (1991:33)
Modernity, it might be said, breaks down the protective framework of the small community and of tradition replacing these with many larger, impersonal organizations. The individual feels bereft and alone in a world in which she or he lacks the psychological supports and the sense of security provided by more traditional settings.
In other words, globalization is in a way synonymous with Westernization
or modernization which generates economic, psychological, or cultural
deprivations in varying degrees.
The effects of globalization are oppressive to many individuals, groups, or
communities because of the steady increase in poverty, hunger (food insecurity),
disease (health insecurity), and violent conflicts (community insecurity),
among others. The developing state with its limited sovereignty has been further
reduced to a mere conformative politico-economic and cultural entity, since
it is merely a weak link in the new hegemonic structure. The new order is so
pervasive in its effect that there is no place for a different ideology.
Implications of Globalization as Westernization
Some researchers may disagree with the argument that globalization
has not improved human security for most of the developing world. They
would instead contend that it is misrule, inefficiency or misdirected
state policies that prevent the positive effects of glocalization to
reach most segments of the population in developing states. However,
in terms of globalization effects, it makes more sense to argue that
the human security failures linked to corruption and inefficiency in
poor nations are due more to the detrimental aspects of the cultural-attitudinal
lag between the introduction of globalization (westernization) models
and changes in elite and mass attitudes. For example, Westernization
(formerly colonization), and now globalization with its neo-colonial
overtones, contributes to clientele networks in developing countries
based on ethnicity and corruption. The cultural values associated with
globalization are seen as foreign to many developing nations which
are deeply attached to more traditional cultural values (Seligson,
1998). While hard work is an attribute in many developing nations,
the values of punctuality, achievement-orientation, and other “industrial” characteristics
are ingredients to ensure the effective results of economic liberalization
in poor countries.
Many analysts equally argue that “modern” values will emerge naturally
as the result of a global process of diffusion of values conducive for holistic
development. The question is how long do developing societies have to wait
before these value changes occur? In the meantime, their populations are being
inundated by globalization processes from the advanced industrial countries.
Attitudes and value changes that underlie collective and individual modernity
correspond to behavioral changes at the institutional and general societal
levels. The problem of institutionalized clientele networks linked to rampant
corruption and misrule, for example, are a symptom of the existence of psychic,
mental, and other barriers to effective modernization in many countries (Inkeles
and Smith, 1974). Transplanted institutions, models, and strategies take time
to be internalized, if ever. The development literature is replete with examples
of the failure of such transplantation, such as import-substitution industrialization.
The external introduction of globalization trends by the international power
elite with the support of internal elites will be tantamount to wasted efforts
unless there are “modernized,” active and informed citizens to
ensure a close correspondence between societal values and new processes. The
realization of such a modern situation often involves freedom based on the
absence of constraints from external actors and forces. Freedom from constraining
external models plus attitudes and values conducive to globalization (westernization/modernization)
are necessary conditions to growth in (GNP) Gross National Product (economic
efficiency) and good governance (distributional efficiency and political liberalization).
Furthermore, apart from the cultural lag between globalization and attitudinal
change in developing countries, there is also the relations produced by the
global market that are at the expense of the poor markets. This institutionalized
economic and political inequality that is part of the international political
economy reinforces dependence, limits the development of poor markets, and
constrains their cultural and technical capacity, which then affects the overall
human security dimension of their societies. The limitations imposed on the
markets of poor countries is particularly reflected in the transfer of their
resources to the advanced and dominant countries. The consequence is deepening
inequality, institutionalized inefficiency, and at times violence in developing
countries.
Global inequality produced by globalization processes have had a long-term
effect starting with colonial dependence which permanently relegated developing
countries to a subordinate status in the global economy. What began as colonial
dependence has now expanded to include financial-industrial dependence characterized
by ever deepening foreign-oriented development and technological-industrial
dependence (Dos Santos, 1970). Both the international relations and the internal
structures of developing countries have been conditioned to serve the markets
of the dominant nations in the areas of production, capital accumulation, the
reproduction of the economy, and in social and political behavior.
Globalization and Human Insecurity: Some Evidence
The rapid pace of globalization has not alleviated the scope and
rate of poverty in developing regions. If anything, poverty and its
adverse human security effects is becoming more pervasive. According
to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), approximately 1
billion go hungry every day, and about 1 billion are illiterate. Well
over a billion people lack access to safe water, and nearly a third
of people in least developed countries are not expected to live to
the age of 40. Women constitute 70 percent of the world’s poor
(United Nations Development Programme, 1997).
In other words, almost one-third of the developing world’s population
(about 1.3 billion people) lives in a state of what the UNDP describes as a
state of income poverty, or subsisting on the equivalent of less than one U.S.
dollar a day. One-fourth lives in human poverty, lacking the basics for a decent
life. Asia and Africa have most of the people who are either income poor or
characterized by human poverty, or both. In Latin America, income poverty is
growing at a rapid pace. According to 1997 data, in the transition economies
of Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States, the number of
people living below the poverty line (estimated at four U.S. dollars per day)
increased from four million to 120 million—or one-fourth of the total
population—in less than 10 years. The intense globalization of the late
20th Century and early 21st Century is characterized by growing income disparity
and rising poverty. Even in industrialized countries, in 1994 more than 100
million people were estimated to live in poverty, with an estimated 37 million
jobless.
Globalization has serious human security implications for some members of the
world community. While it creates opportunities for some, it exposes others
to the detrimental effects of its liberalization policies. In the last two
decades of the 20th century gaps in economic development among countries has
widened. While the 20 percent of the earth’s population who live in advanced
industrial countries account for 86 percent of the world’s Gross Domestic
Product (GDP), the 20 percent who live in the poor countries account for a
mere one percent (Bogomolov, 2000). Even in the so-called Newly Industrialized
Countries (NICs), designated as such because of their rapid economic growth
in the 1980s, globalization is not enhancing human security for most. In Thailand,
for example, according to the Human Development Report (United Nations Development
Programme, 1996), the income gap is getting wider. In 1960, the average income
of agricultural households was about one-sixth the average income of other
sectors. By the 1990s, the difference had grown to one twelfth. In 1988, the
top 20 percent of the population enjoyed 54.2 percent of national income while
the bottom 20% owned 4.6 percent. In 1996, the gap had further widened (Ekachai,
2000a).
Even in the environmental security area, in 1994 a study of water resources
in Thailand found 81 percent of all reservoir water to be contaminated by DDT
(Bangkok Post, October 8, p. 5). This is because the country was engaged in
the green revolution to increase farm productivity, and this entailed the extensive
use of farm chemicals. The heavy reliance on pesticides in Thailand and other
countries is linked to globalization and its emphasis on free trade. The consequence
is that MNCs have been given carte blanche in the fragile economies of developing
countries. Most of the 40 major pesticide and herbicide producers in Thailand
are multinationals.
In many countries, the majority of workers employed by multinationals as a
result of globalization processes are low paid and have little job security.
Whilst the multinationals gain in terms of profits, locals are overworked,
tainted with pesticides, and have produced fruits full of pesticide residue.
According to the Public Health Ministry in Thailand, pesticide-related illnesses
increased seventeen-fold in the period 1988-1993 (Ekachai, 2000b).
Developing countries lose a great deal of revenue from tax exemptions for multinationals.
The loss of revenue from tax exemptions grew from an estimated $45.4 million
in 1991 to $340 million in 1995(Kolko, 2001). While the world GNP may be increasing,
it is not being equitably distributed. The former head of the International
Monetary Fund (IMF), Michael Camdessus, emphasized in the keynote address to
the 10th United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) that:
The greatest concern of our time is poverty... It is the ultimate systematic threat facing humanity. The widening gaps between rich and poor within nations... is morally outrageous, economically wasteful, and potentially socially explosive. If the poor are left hopeless, poverty will undermine the fabric of our societies through confrontation, violence, and civil disorders (Bangkok Post, 2000).
In other words, globalization and its adverse effects on individuals,
groups, and entire societies threaten human security in all its ramifications,
since any outbreak of civil strife affects not just physical security
but environmental, political, and other securities as well.
Ethnopolitical conflicts and other types of organized violence by rebel groups
could often be interpreted as efforts by, and an alliance of, the deprived,
dissatisfied, and other groups supportive of revolutionary change. Such struggles
for hegemonic control underscores the relationship of civil society to the
state and the relationship of politics, ethics, and ideology to production.
In neo-Gramscian terms, the developing society is today an internationalized
entity in the sense that the administrative, executive, and coercive apparatus
of developing state governments are in effect constrained by the hegemony of
advanced industrial countries, and the leading classes (beneficiaries of globalization)
within them.
Most of the human insecurity that continues to affect developing countries
is, in fact, related to the dual nature of power (consent and coercion) in
both national and international politics. Hegemony is prevalent to the extent
that the consensual aspect of power binds together both state and external
actors. Coercion as an aspect of power is often used as a last resort and is
often applied only to deviant entities, or rogue states. Relations of dominance
an subordination thus persist because hegemony is often sufficient to ensure
political, economic, and social conformity of behavior in most nation-states
and population groups, most of the time. Hegemony thus cements unequal actors
at all levels: local, national, and global.
Human insecurity is likely to continue in most developing countries because
of the lack of any effective civil society that, in Gramscian military analogies,
can initiate wars of movement and of position. In many developing states a
weak civil society, coupled with a lack of bourgeois hegemony, results in incapacity
for meaningful adaptation and effective resolution of human security problems.
In many developing countries, in other words, the state and its external sponsors,
are still very powerful vis-à-vis a weak civil society. In the West,
where globalization processes and developments emanate, the state often confronts
a sturdy and powerful civil society. The many civil wars that erupt in the
developing world end up causing more misery and disrupting entire societies.
These wars (Sri Lanka, Chechnya, Angola, and Democratic Republic of Congo)
are often ethnic based and premature attacks on the state and the new historic
bloc, and therefore end up being defeated and entrenching state hegemony vis-à-vis
weak civil society.
The developing nations are societies which have either imposed on themselves
and/or had a new order thrust on them from abroad, without the old order having
been displaced. These societies are at times caught up in a dialectic of revolution-restoration
which tend to become blocked as neither the new forces nor the old could triumph.
The introduction and effect of globalization as changes have had a passive
effect on developing societies. The consequence is an historic bloc characterized
by more individualism and competition, less government, existential insecurity
and anxiety on the part of individuals, groups and entire societies.
The equality, exclusion, and rampant globalization unfolding in developing
societies is a result of the political and economic acquiescence of developing
state governments to external impositions. In the maquiladoras of Mexico, many
of the impoverished workers blame their economic and health struggles on the
Mexican state which has crushed union movements and allowed companies to violate
national and international laws (Stackhouse, 1999). The state thus becomes
an instrument of transnational capital and the local implementation of the
new hegemonic order. In Ciudad Juarez the adverse effects of globalization
are seen in the dusty and smog-shrouded shantytowns, and people living in squalor
and abject poverty. The standard of living is progressively degenerating as
poverty increases. For example, in 1995 one day’s minimum wage in Mexico
could purchase 44.9 pounds of tortillas or 2.24 gallons of milk. In 1999 the
new minimum wage could buy only 16.9 pounds of tortillas or 1.4 gallons of
milk (Stackhouse, 1999).
In sum, the evidence from other regions and countries of the developing world
indicates that globalization is associated with a serious maldistribution of
wealth generated by global markets. So far, the evidence shows increasing inequality
and growing poverty and a widespread lack in the basics for a decent life.
Conclusion
The indicators of poverty and inequality reveal that the neoliberal
theory of globalization is aggravating issues of food, health, personal,
and other insecurities in developing nations. The adverse effects produced
by the end of the “social welfare contract” between state
and society sharply reduced the controlling role of government institutions
and thereby produced individual and group insecurities that in turn
degenerate into ethnoregional, class, and other tensions. The consequence
in some states has been civil strife, state collapse, or multiple sovereignties.
The new hegemonic order (with its structure and ideology) primarily
benefits the interests of developed countries and the profit motive
of multinationals. What is therefore needed is “responsible globalization” and “inclusion,” or
the political and economic will to bring into the globalization order
and the new international political economy those now excluded. The
new economics is causing misery even in industrialized countries where
income inequality and job insecurity are increasing at a steady pace.
While the developing state is increasingly being integrated into the
world economy through the policies of external hegemony, it is at the
same time being marginalized in terms of the benefits of globalization.
The economic marginalization of the developing state may be responsible
for the assertion of ethnic, religious, and other identities that produce
civil strife in some countries.
The nature of the global political economy and the relative power of actors
that compete within it must be significant components of any judgements concerning
the efficacy of any globalization processes, or distortions engendered by them.
Inegalitarian economies yield inegalitarian social structures and human security
dilemmas. Hegemonic interests control the globalization-related growth centric
approaches that are very resistant to redistribution. Such tendency creates
greater long-term inequalities and at the same time the lack of political and
economic will to reduce them. The consequence is resistance in developing countries
that further affect human security.
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