Thinking at Cross-Purposes About Globalization
Philip Bowring International Herald Tribune
Thursday, February 1, 2001
DAVOS, Switzerland Days of speeches at the World Economic Forum here and at the counter-gathering in Porto Alegre, Brazil, about the benefits and evils of globalization benumb the brain. Has globalization triumphed? Is it threatened by a backlash of which demonstrations and their suppression are the precursors? Or is everyone thinking at cross-purposes?
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Is the globalization divide just a replay of the North-South debate of two decades ago? Or perhaps yet another divide is emerging, with most of Asia opting out of what it sees as an acrimonious ideological debate that slows progress on pragmatic trade issues.
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In one corner are those who seem to believe that globalization is an ideology to be preached rather than the consequence of other, mostly beneficial forces - technological change plus the efforts of major countries to reduce barriers to movement of goods, money and ideas. They are under the illusion that it is new, but globalization has been proceeding in fits and starts, with occasional major setbacks, for centuries. Nor is it measured by Internet penetration.
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Many assume that globalization represents the triumph of the market, without stopping to think of how every nation, not least America, in practice views the market as a tool, not an ideology, which domestically is submitted to a moral and income distribution framework determined by society.
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In the other corner are those who complain bitterly about all manner of evils that they attribute to globalization. These critics are divided between those in rich countries who fear its impact on them and those who attack it because it is, sometimes with good reason, passing them by. If they get beyond anger they often end up proposing solutions in line with the liberalization that contributes to globalization.
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Both sides fall into the trap of assuming that human forces or policies can be detached from geography. No set of people or policies will turn Rwanda into Singapore. It may be "unfair" that countries with easy sea communications, such as those in East Asia and coastal China, can take advantage of specialization of production more easily than inland ones.
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How much effort should be made to redistribute so as to compensate for disadvantage is a matter discussed at the national level but seldom at the global one. But in the absence of global government, to throw around emotive words like "immoral" to describe the gap resulting from progress in some countries and lack of it in others is insulting to those who progress.
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What most of the world needs now is not more emotional hand-wringing by the West or empty threats from the poor. It needs developing nations to press much harder on specifics: for the abolition of iniquitous agricultural export subsidies that are costing billions, for freer market access for items like textiles, for a rethink of intellectual property rights, and for more freedom of movement of people.
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Western advocates of developing countries' interests tend to focus not on these domestically sensitive issues but on easy ones like debt write-offs for some of the poorest countries. The debt relief campaign waged by the British group Jubilee 2000 has been remarkably successful, with bishops and pop singers eager to support this show of concern for the poor. There was no domestic lobby against it, as no one wants to be against write-offs when debts are unpayable. But in practice the write-off means diverting scarce aid resources away from poor countries which have used aid effectively to those which have not.
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Likewise, many, especially in the developing countries of the East, view Western attacks on multinationals and globalization as manifestations of a new protectionism emerging under the banners of Western advocacy groups such as Amnesty International, which criticize foreign investments in countries which fail to meet their values.
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Those civil society groups in the West which push for the inclusion of environmental, labor and human rights issues in decisions of the World Trade Organization are viewed in the East as protectionists. They will get shorter shrift once China is inside that body.
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The annual Davos meeting may have become too glitzy and too Western oriented for the good of the world that it is trying to improve. If fewer subjects and more countries were represented and the gathering concentrated on hard core economic and geopolitical issues, there would be less cause for resentment. There might also be less posturing and more progress toward the global utilitarian goal of bringing the greatest good to the greatest number.

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