Globalization :
Old Solutions for New Problems

In an early day of may Prof. Fukuyama declared :

"For any advanced industrialised society, there has been a kind of convergence. There is no higher stage of history (as the Marxist socialists used to argue) that will transcend the kind of bourgeois, capitalist, democratic civilisation that we know in the modern world"

Smith, Ricardo, Marx,... and many other trembled. We all agreed, but it made us think for a while.Eight months later while this idea was still running throw my mind when a letter from Germany stopped in my hands. Some crazy students were organising a conference on Globalization. I wanted to be there but... what could I say about such a difficult topic, would my thoughts be relevant in such a contest. I was hesitating to begin my essay when suddenly an idea came to my mind. My essay would be exactly what the organisation committee was asking for, I would just try to begin from ideal solutions to adapt them and make them possible. And here I am...

The global situation at a glance

Every few hundred years throughout western history, a sharp transformation has occurred and it might be possible that in cultural and social terms more changes have occurred in the last 10 years than in the whole century. But it has probably been the fall of the Berlin wall the one that has made humankind reconsider the global order and the interaction of the different actors. If I had to make an exercise of abstraction in order to describe the current global arena my list of actors would only include a few relevant names like :

• Financial Markets : Societies have recently noticed that this two words have been increasingly used by politicians when they speak or justify any decision taken.
• Media : In the digital information society, the media has become one of the main instruments to manage the world. Now it is even more than ever : The fourth power.
• Politicians : The first class who got a social status in Greece has just lost it. The lack of ethic and efficiency has lead to a general distrust in politicians.
• Diplomats : Diplomats have been trained to give solutions only in the "sphere of the diplomatic solutions".
• Army : The pillar of non-democratic states do not find a place in the global order. International military organisations have difficulties to define its role once the cold war is over.
• State : The global economy has altered relations between sovereign nations, between national and sub-national governments, and between regions in different countries.
• Companies : As Henry Kissinger wrote in Years of Upheaval, global companies have become "voracious in its collection of information, impervious to pressure, and implacable in execution". The French concept of Entreprise Citoyenne is just one more marketing issue.
• NGO: These organisations try to fulfil "no one's land". The idea is to manage multiple gaps in social fields with a business mentality. This is implemented in terms of quick reaction and ROI.
• Citizens : And the citizens, as always, are just spectators of a real motion. The paralysis of the analysis is caused by a mix of indifference and inactivity.All those actors do relate to the Globalization process, this concept evokes the power of transnational corporations and the integration of international finance and the diffusion of technological innovations towards a commonality. Almost everyone everywhere wants al the thinks they have heard about, seen, or experienced via the new technologies. Waters summarizes the primary processes of globalization as follows :
• • • Economies trend toward liberalisation
    • Polities trend towards democratization
    • Culture towards universalizationIn order to determine the role of each institution I will take two dimensions and I will try to plot the current position of each element of the previous list regarding its spirit (National or International) and its economic orientation (Profitable or non-profit).

We can easily identify three groups of actors that would be associated :

Market approach

It is formed by the organisations with a pure economic mentality (of course, banks and media are all definitely included). Most corporations have forgotten Adam Smith's premise of social responsibility, instead, profitability is the name of the game. In this environment they feel comfortable because they have been the drivers of the Globalization process.

Active elements

Diplomats (mainly international organisations) and NGO have the responsibility to be operative. Flexibility, innovation, creativity and agility are main requirements for these organisations. NGOs like Medecins Sans Frontiers, Amnesty International, etc... are taking part of UN's missions who sees how its own inefficiencies diminish their operativity. They have taken the traditional role of the religions who also lack in means and resources.

Contemplators

The passive elements group, would be leaded by citizens and the combination of the state and the politicians that do not have especial interest in supranational problems.

An on-going process

This global arena just described could be more illustrative including the path that each actor has described in the last fifty years. In a matter of decades, society altogether rearranges itself -its world view, its basic values, its social and political structures, its arts and also its key institutions. Then we would notice the evolution towards an adaptation of some actors like businesses (banking, consumer goods, even agriculture) but we could also see a lack of mobility and adaptation in more important actors like supra-national institutions and particularly United Nations.Globalization, as any social-change, has forced a discrimination between adapted and unchangeable organisations. Most governments have realised that international economic drivers are modelling national economic policies. Even more developed societies like the Nordics are reviewing the generosity of their welfare systems. Until we find a feasible "common accepted" alternative to the capitalism of modern democracies we will depend on the classical triad (land - labour - capital) and therefore be exposed to find solutions for problems such as :

• Unemployment
• Inflation
• Lack of alternatives in disadvantaged urban areas
• Social Security system inefficiency
• Wider social differencesWhat current governments do is...

Whenever a new problem appears and old solution is given ?

Since these problems are global each actor is concerned but it is nobody's responsibility. The outcome is a assortment of solutions that are imperfect in nature due to the lack of co-ordination between actors. Each one gives a partial solution of his domain. Politicians do not know how to handle the situation and pass-on the problem to diplomats ; those come out with diplomatic solutions. NGO do not have the resources to solve problems because companies do not trust them and if they do donations are so insignificant that can patch the problem.If we adopt a classical business solution based on "synergy" we would realise that we do not need to re-invent any new solution. The previous chart showed three different groups, each one acting by its own. It might seem too simple to propose a sort of co-ordination between the three groups. The eternal divorce between active elements (labour) and market approach elements (capital) seem to discourage the third group (contemplators) of any type of action.The more proactive group leaded by NGO is trying to implement a marketing approach to obtain support from both potential financiers and political support.The to-do list for NGO would include efforts to:

• Cooperate with politicians
• Rely on competitiveness as the key factor of succes
• Increasing public involvement
• International co-ordination with different organizations and institutions.
• Collect Funds
• National and International role to defend specific rights
• Optimise use of unemployed resourcesAs a conclusion I would say that we are not at the end of the history that Prof. Fukuyama foresaw , at least modern history. Hirst and Thompson note that international coordination, governance by co-operation between the major trade blocs, and national-level mobilisation in favour of such international objectives offer possibilities for creating a newly ordered and prosperous world economy with a whole new set of priorities to work on, like I have tried to do in this paper.

Bibliography