37.6.4: Globalization and Democracy

Cultural globalization refers to the transmission of ideas, meanings, and values around the world to extend and intensify social relations. This process is marked by the common consumption of cultures that have been diffused by the Internet, popular culture media, and international travel. This has added to processes of commodity exchange and colonization, which have a longer history of carrying cultural meaning around the globe. The circulation of cultures enables individuals to partake in extended social relations that cross national and regional borders. The creation and expansion of such social relations is not merely observed on a material level. Cultural globalization involves the formation of shared norms and knowledge with which people associate their individual and collective cultural identities. It brings increasing interconnection among different populations and cultures.

Historical Background

One way in which shared norms have reshaped the global landscape around the turn of the 21st century is the liberalization of global society via the spread of democratic norms. This trend began in the 1980s as economic malaise and resentment of Soviet oppression contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union, paving the way for democratization across the Iron Curtain. The most successful of the new democracies were those geographically and culturally closest to western Europe, many of which are now members or candidate members of the European Union. The liberal trend spread to some nations in Africa in the 1990s, most prominently in South Africa. Some recent examples of attempts at liberalization include the Indonesian Revolution of 1998, the Bulldozer Revolution in Yugoslavia, the Rose Revolution in Georgia, the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, the Cedar Revolution in Lebanon, the Tulip Revolution in Kyrgyzstan, and the Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia.

Number of nations scoring 8+ on Polity IV scale (1800-2003):   Data source: The Polity IV project. (http://www.systemicpeace.org/polity/polity4.htm) The y axis is the number of nations scoring 8 or higher on the combined Polity score. Note that the Polity IV project only scores nations with greater than 500,000 total population.

Additionally, with the ascendancy of the United States of America as sole global superpower in the aftermath of the Cold War, liberal democratic norms were spread further throughout the world via U.S. ability to attract and co-opt other countries using soft power. Both Europe and the U.S. have promoted human rights and international law throughout the world based on the strength of their international reputations, influence, and culture. For example, the U.S. is one of the most popular destinations for international students, who in turn transmit ideas about and enthusiasm about liberal democracy back to their home countries. Additionally, American films, among other pieces of easily transmittable culture, have contributed to the Americanization of other cultures around the world. The information age has also led to the rise of soft power resources for non-state actors and advocacy groups. Through the use of global media, and to a greater extent the Internet, non-state actors have been able to increase their soft power and put pressure on governments that can ultimately affect policy outcomes.

Democratic and Capitalist Peace Theories

Democratic peace theory posits that democracies are hesitant to engage in armed conflict with other identified democracies, thus making the liberalization of global society in the aftermath of the Cold War a positive trend towards worldwide pacifism. The state of peace is not considered to be singularly associated with democratic states, although there is recognition that it is more easily sustained between democratic nations. Among proponents of the democratic peace theory, several factors are held as motivating peace between democratic states:

• Democratic leaders are forced to accept culpability for war losses to a voting public;
• Publicly accountable states are inclined to establish diplomatic institutions for resolving international tensions;
• Democracies are not inclined to view countries with adjacent policy and governing doctrine as hostile;
• Democracies tend to possess greater public wealth than other states, and therefore eschew war to preserve infrastructure and resources.

Those who dispute this theory often do so on grounds that it conflates correlation with causation, and that the academic definitions of democracy and war can be manipulated so as to manufacture an artificial trend.

Capitalist peace theory was developed in response to criticisms of democratic peace theory. The capitalist peace theory posits that once states reach certain criterion for capitalist economic development, they are less likely to engage in war with each other and rarely enter into even low-level disputes. There are five primary theories that have attempted to explain the capitalist peace.

• Trade interdependence: Capitalist countries that have deeply interconnected trade networks with one another are hesitant to engage in hostilities that might threaten the health of the existing trade relationship and thereby threaten benefits derived from that relationship.
• Economic norms theory: In contract-intensive societies, individuals have a loyalty towards the state that enforces the contracts between strangers. As a consequence, individuals in these societies expect that their states enforce contracts reliably and impartially, protect individual rights, and make efforts to enhance the general welfare. Moreover, with the assumption of bounded rationality, individuals routinely dependent on trusting strangers in contracts will develop the habits of trusting strangers and preferring universal rights, impartial law, and liberal democratic government. In contrast, individuals in contract-poor societies will develop the habits of abiding by the commands of group leaders and distrusting those from out-groups. As a result, theorists link causation of peace with liberal economies rather than liberal political systems, with the proliferation of democratic norms occurring only secondarily to the establishment of contract-intensive economies.
• Free capital markets/capital openness: This theory, originally introduced by Eric Gartzke, Quan Li, and Charles Boehmer, argues that nations with a high level of capital openness are able to avoid conflict with each other and maintain lasting peace. In particular, nations with freer capital markets are more dependent on international investors because those investors are likely to withdraw if the country is engaged in a war or interstate conflict. As a result, leaders of states give greater credibility to threats made by countries with higher levels of capital openness, causing the aforementioned countries to be more peaceful than others by avoiding the possibility of misrepresentation of information.
• Size of government: This explanation of capitalist peace relies on a definition of capitalism that assumes capitalist states will also have limited governments, and in turn, large private sectors. Given this definition, the idea is that smaller governments are more dependent than larger or socialist governments on raising taxes for fighting wars. This makes the commitments of nations with smaller governments more credible than those with larger ones, allowing for nations with smaller governments, and thus “capitalist” economies, to be better positioned for avoiding conflicts.
• Ruling others by force: This theory adduces that if men want to oppose war, they must oppose statism. So long as they hold the tribal notion that the individual is sacrificial fodder for the collective, that some men have the right to rule others by force, and that some (any) alleged “good” can justify it, there can be no peace within a nation and no peace among nations. Most definitions of capitalism are opposed to the strictures of statism and therefore, capitalist societies must tend towards peace.

Golden Arches Theory

In Thomas L. Friedman’s 1999 book The Lexus and the Olive Tree, Friedman observed that no two countries with established McDonald’s franchises had fought a war against each other since those franchises were established in both countries. He supported that observation as a theory by stating that when a country has reached an economic development where it has a middle class strong enough to support a McDonald’s network, it would become a “McDonald’s country” and will not be interested in fighting wars anymore. Shortly after the book was published, NATO bombed Yugoslavia. On the first day of the bombing, McDonald’s restaurants in Belgrade were demolished by angry protesters and were rebuilt only after the bombing ended. In the 2000 edition of the book, Friedman argued that this exception proved the rule because the war ended quickly as a result of the Serbian peoples’ desire to not lose their place in a global system “symbolized by McDonald’s” (Friedman 2000: 252–253).

Critics have pointed to two other conflicts fought before 2000 as counterexamples, depending on what one considers a war:

1. The 1989 United States invasion of Panama; and
2. The 1999 Indian-Pakistani war over Kashmir, known as the Kargil War. Both countries had (and continue to have) McDonald’s restaurants. Although the war was not fought in all possible theaters (such as Rajasthan and Punjab borders), both countries mobilized their military along common borders and both countries made threats involving their nuclear capabilities.

In a 2005 interview with The Guardian, Friedman said that he framed his theory “with tongue slightly in cheek.”

Attributions

• Globalization and Democracy
  • “Democracy: 20th and 21st centuries.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy#20th_and_21st_centuries. Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0.
  • “Capitalist peace.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalist_peace. Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0.
  • “Cultural globalization.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_globalization. Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0.
  • “Democratic peace theory.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_peace_theory. Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0.
  • “Soft power.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_power. Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0.
  • “Number_of_nations_1800-2003_scoring_8_or_higher_on_Polity_IV_scale.png.” https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Number_of_nations_1800-2003_scoring_8_or_higher_on_Polity_IV_scale.png. Wikimedia Commons Public domain.