The author claims that the globe was discovered by courageous adventurers & visionaries who had trust in geographical utopia that the Earth was round so they plunged into the unknown in their wretched sailboats. This stage ended in the foundation of huge colonial empires, but, eventually, this kind of violent colonization failed. What has been left from the first discovery of the globe? The most important reminder is discovery of identities of the former colonized peoples as well as the identity of their colonizers, the Europeans. In that way, globalization begins where the revelation of other nations' identities results in becoming cognizant of one's own identity. Due to it, Western political theory as a precondition for the organization of a multicultural global community has to answer three vital questions: How are nonviolent changes in the global community to be carried out? How can power-holders be controlled by the check & balance system & there be verification that they have not been abusing their power? How can citizens of the world participate in power sharing? Western rationalism brought into the new world, first of all, the Western individualism of both individuals & states. This abstract concept or structure gradually destroyed traditional collectivism of new nations, the one that was based on their historical experience. Such experience-based communities disappeared in Europe as early as the Plato & Aristotle era, & were replaced by abstract political communities such as polis, state or empire that were constituted upon written constitutions. Such a constructive rationalism in the field of politics made possible such universal organizations as the United Nations. Globalization has also been derived from the same constructivism. As has been shown by Aristotle, experience-based communities only divide people & nations because experience is not capable of abstractions; we cannot feel other people's toothache however experienced we may be. 17 References. Adapted from the source document.
The author looks into the structure & explanation of the socioeconomic expectations of young people regarding Croatia's future drawing on the theoretical framework & operational model of historical consciousness & on findings of a 1995 international study of 27 European countries & a replication of the study in Croatia in 2000. The findings show that the structure of such expectations may be explained by a universal factor of sociopolitical pessimistic/optimistic expectations of Croatia's future. This structure is in line with the expectations of young people from other European states concerning the future of their respective countries. Unlike in other European states, the Croatian youth in 1995 were optimistic in their socioeconomic assessments. The same conclusion was reached in 2000, the only exception being the pupils of Serbian extraction from the Danube region; this group represents the most pessimistic group at both levels of comparison. The perceptions of the present can account for 8%-20% of the variance of the variable of the expectations of young people. There is a significant decrease in the predictive power of the ethnic-religious value orientation, while the influence of attributing material differences to injustice in the society is constant. Concerning interethnic differences in the Danube region, it seems that the opposite expectations are partly due to the identical ideological ethnocentric pattern, indicative of the perpetuation of the attitudes generated during the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia. The notions of the past can explain 12%-13% of the variant of the criterion variable. In most samples, the best single predictor is the critical attitude toward democracy as a historical product, with the exception of the pupils of Serbian extraction in the Danube region; together with other predictors, this indicates that the expectations about Croatia's future of these youth are not based on the perception of democratic processes. Also, they reflect a lower level of confidence in the democratic institutions of the Republic of Croatia. 4 Tables, 2 Figures, 16 References. Adapted from the source document.
A review essay on books by (1) Korwa Gombe Adar & Rok Ajulu (Eds), Globalization and Emerging Trends in African States' Foreign Policymaking Processes: A Comparative Perspective of Southern Africa (London: Ashgate, 2002); (2) Patrick Bond, Against Global Apartheid: South Africa Meets the World Bank, IMF and International Finance (Cape Town, South Africa: U Cape Town Press, 2001); (3) Greg Mills, The Wired World: South Africa, Foreign Policy and Globalization (Cape Town, South Africa: Tafelberg for the South African Institute for International Affairs, 2000); (4) Philip Nel, Ian Taylor, & Janis Van Der Westhuizen (Eds), South Africa's Multilateral Diplomacy and Global Change: The Limits of Reformism (London: Ashgate, 2001); & (5) Ian Taylor, Stuck in Middle GEAR: South Africa's Post-Apartheid Foreign Relations (London: Praeger, 2001). The author makes the point that much writing about South Africa is still couched in an outdated theoretical framework, as reflected in these books, & the point that a single "homogenizing idea can set the limits of scholarly imagination" -- in this case, globalization. Mills, who is decidedly pro-globalization, is said to use a narrow conceptual range in discussing South Africa within that context. Further, his book is said to be little more than an updating of his "earlier polemic." Bond has an opposite perspective, as he believes that the dispossessed are agents for social change, & that globalization "brazenly contradicts society's strong motivation for more equitable development to redress the massive disparities of apartheid." Adair & Ajulu's book explores the creation of foreign policy, in different African states, in the context of the effects of globalization. The coverage is reportedly uneven, & there is no chapter on Tanzania, which was so active in the liberation movement. The essays edited by Nel et al explore multilateralism as the focus of foreign policy in post-apartheid South Africa. The editors make the point that South Africa has used its high profile to affect multilateral institutions on behalf of more vulnerable countries in areas such as environmental diplomacy, human rights, debt relief, the reform of international trade, & the global campaign to ban land mines. Taylor explains why the new South Africa has embraced globalization but focuses particularly on why multilateralism is embraced so enthusiastically. He demonstrates the emergence of a neoliberal policy, GEAR (for Growth & Economic Recovery Programme), & asks who is benefiting from South Africa's foreign policy, in a work of "genuine contemporary scholarship." These books are said to represent South Africa's unhappy past, & the reviewer also offers comments about works by Rodney Davenport & Christopher Saunders, Jacqueline A. Kalley, Steven D. Gish, Thomas Koelbe, & A. J. Christopher, which are said to represent more conceptual daring. M. S. Northcutt
History, however, is not Phillips's strong suit. Moreover, his peculiar take on the country's cyclical experience with wealth and democracy is a telling commentary on his own oddly inflected populism. His is the populism of the 'silent majority,' which first made his reputation back in the days of Richard Nixon's 'southern strategy.' Phillips's lingering Republican past leads him to fantasize about some underground tradition of progressive middle-class Republicanism, which in Phillips's quirky narrative confection embraces the governments of William McKinley, Richard Nixon, and Abraham Lincoln. Phillips imagines these regimes as all suspicious of unsupervised wealth and mildly friendly to labor, while nonetheless operating under the dominating influence of the economic elites of their day. The characterization might loosely apply to Lincoln's new party, although the great merchant bankers of the antebellum North were the Great Emancipator's loyal opposition, not his natural constituency. When applied to McKinley and Nixon the notion verges on the preposterous--industrial workers in 1896 were terrorized into voting for the Ohio governor or staying away from the polls, while the whole tenor of the Republican campaign and the McKinley presidency that followed entailed an explicit repudiation of any suggestion of wealth redistribution or government regulation of big business. The evidence for Nixon's labor sympathies seems to consist of presidential invitations extended to the ossified leadership of the AFL-CIO to visit the White House. Phillips himself acknowledges that in every case--even in the one that most robustly supports his argument, namely Teddy Roosevelt's reign--the Republicans soon gave themselves over to the most self-interested, money-mad, socially irresponsible fat cats who always peopled the party's inner sanctums. As the author demonstrates, only during the Progressive Era, which was half Democratic, and during the New Deal order did the apportionment of national income and wealth swing the other way and were the commanding institutions of the private sector subject to some serious public surveillance and discipline. The Clinton interregnum, conversely, was the outcome of what Phillips calls the first white-collar recession of the early nineties-itself a fitting epitaph to the extreme 'financialization' of the Gordon Gekko years--conjoined to the rapidly inflating Internet bubble. The atmosphere of sixties' cultural liberation that hovered over the Clinton administration had more to do with the borrowed anti-hierarchical argot and upscale designer egalitarianism of the new dot-com billionaires than it did with any sixties-era political engagement with the lower orders. While the New Deal welfare state was wrapping up its affairs, the new information-age elites were busy putting in place a global corporate welfare system of 'financial mercantilism.' Wall Street quickly acclimated itself to the new environment. It became heavily invested not only financially and not only because the microprocessor transformed the way it conducted its own high-velocity speculations. Psychologically and culturally as well, the Street became vested in new-era hype. Phillips talks about 'grinds and globalists' supplanting the old skull-and-bones elites, committed to a relentless, de-regulated 'securitization' of the universe, transforming customary signs of distress into market-cheering acts of 'downsizing,' deepening the chasm between the haves and the have-nots at home and abroad.
The protests at the 1999 World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle marked a turning point in trade politics. The size and depth of the international coalition that came together to protest the WTO was striking. And then there were the television images and the stunning denouement: Teamsters marching with 'turtles,' tear gas and police charges in the darkness, the collapse of the negotiations. The author of one of the books reviewed here, Jagdish Bhagwati, was in Seattle as an adviser to the WTO's director. While trying to get to the meeting, he found himself 'confronting a tough Chinese Red Guards-style female demonstrator who was blocking my way illegally.' A colleague then 'drew me away from a confrontation that would surely have left me bloodied, saying, `You are the foremost free trader today; we cannot afford to lose you!" Bhagwati's story speaks to several things, including his considerable ego. Most important, though, it captures the embattled state in which mainstream trade economists loyal to free trade doctrines now believe they exist: 'there are not too many out there, fighting the fight for free trade,' Bhagwati worries, 'We need to change that.' Do Irwin and Bhagwati understand that this is what most of the critics believe? I'm afraid not. Both authors characterize the critics as 'anti-globalization.' Although this accurately describes some, it is not true for the majority. Both authors seem to think that the main reason critics are against globalization is that they are anticapitalist and antimarket. Irwin, for example, tells us that for many of these groups, 'Free markets and capitalism are seen as embodying and furthering environmental destruction, male dominance, class oppression, racial intolerance and colonial exploitation.' To characterize most environmental organizations, or most contemporary trade unions, as 'anticapitalist' is absurd, if that means that they are committed to the abolition of capitalism. If the term means that they are critical of the way that capitalism currently operates, the characterization is accurate, but then the authors' summary dismissal of that position becomes puzzling. The critics insist that there are better and worse forms of market economy, that the neoliberal model of regulation toward which we are currently moving (one that expands property rights while ignoring human rights) is worse than feasible alternatives, and therefore, that the current model of global economic regulation can and ought to be changed. Unfortunately, Irwin and Bhagwati, by tilting at anticapitalist windmills, fail to join the real argument. IN THEIR EFFORT to extract free trade from the wider matrix of economic globalization, the authors downplay the degree to which trade deals such as NAFTA and the WTO shape the character of the larger economic system. For example, some of the most novel and important provisions in NAFTA and the WTO--pertaining to investor property rights and the deregulation of financial services--undoubtedly increase international capital mobility. Dani Rodrik has argued that increased international capital mobility could significantly increase the 'price elasticity of the demand for labor.' That is, firms will shift production to other countries in response to smaller and smaller differences in labor costs, other things being equal. This could dampen wage growth not only in the North, but in the South as well. Bhagwati and Irwin both devote considerable effort to exploring how free trade affects wages, yet neither so much as mentions Rodrik's well-known argument. Why not? Free capital mobility is one thing, Bhagwati says, free trade is another. He favors considerably less of the former than we have today, and much more of the latter. But while conceptually distinct, the fact is that both principles are promoted in NAFTA and the WTO. If we want to assess the impacts of these international agreements, we must consider how they affect capital mobility, and how it in turn affects workers, the environment, and so on. Slippage in the way the concept of 'free trade' is employed permits Bhagwati and Irwin to evade this challenge.
