---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 2 Apr 1998 17:41:00 -0500 (EST)
From: Gail Stewart <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Musings about the MAI
Some Musings about the MAI ... and a Proposal
1. Anti-MAI sentiment seems to be building at a grassroots
level in the industrialized world, even while the governments
of these nations seek to negotiate the agreement. Might this
sentiment be arising less in objection to a global agreement
on investment than in response to
a) the way the present draft agreement has been developed?
A thought: Democratic populations don't like secrecy. When
faced with it (the emergence of the MAI draft as a "leak")
they suspect conspiracy (Corry. Also Adam Smith: beware
vested interests meeting in secret conclave, they are
probably conspiring for their own advantage.) The citizenry
will support secret negotiations when the existence of the
negotiations is made public, the desirability of secrecy
persuasive, the negotiators publicly appointed, and the
purposes and limits of the exercise known?
b) the extreme character of certain provisions in the draft
agreement?
A thought: Like everyone else, negotiators are susceptible to
overkill. Lock them in a room, instruct them to focus on a
single objective, and they can become extremists in the
pursuit of that objective -- even to the disadvantage of the
interests that they represent. MAI (now postponed by the OECD
but metastasizing into various other international
organizations) and its proposed implementation procedures
(by-passing public discussion) may have an iatrogenic quality
- worsening the very situation it seeks to cure.
Designed to serve humankind by reducing the risks and hence
increasing the volume of international investment, MAI
demands of its participants that they disinvest in
significant assets -- some of the hard-won processes of
democratic self-governance through the established and
accountable institutions of their nation states. Under MAI,
no replacement of these assets is proposed. Indeed, not only
are nation states to be stripped of significant discretionary
power (as in any international agreement), but accountable
assets (national judicial institutions) are, in the event of
dispute, to be replaced by unaccountable international
panels. The negotiations are a case of good intentions gone
awry through over-enthusiastic application?
c) a suspicion that the negotiating parties (the industrial
nations) may not be freely representing the views of their
electorates?
A thought: Given the present design and costs of election
campaigns in Canada and the US (the countries that appear to
be driving the MAI process) and perhaps also in other
participating countries, there is continuing danger of
government co-optation by corporate interests that contribute
heavily to party warchests. Corporatist culture, insular and
competitive, provides fertile breeding ground for
fundamentalism, in the form of an almost fanatical belief in
the capacity of free markets to cure humanity of all that
ails it and a concommitant lack of interest, if not actual
hostility to, democratic processes. With deeper purses and
more tax write-offs for lobbying than the average citizen,
corporations and their interests play a large role in the
political process, thus reinforcing the hegemony of economic
issues over democratic issues and ultimately of corporate
interests over national interests?
d) a desire for open public discussion?
A thought: In Canada, for example, the prelude to NAFTA (a
US/ Canada/ Mexico free trade agreement) was not only openly
discussed but was an election issue, thoroughly discussed.
The MAI contains provisions equally worthy of public
discussion. Furthermore, governments in the participating
industrialized countries place increasing emphasis on the
need to have well-educated and self-motivated populations in
an era of globalization. Failing to encourage citizens to
learn about and discuss MAI, which provides an excellent
opportunity to become informed about the world, is to miss an
opportunity?
e) a concern for elements (e.g. environment, sustainability,
cultural protection, labour standards) beyond the MAI and
having no possibility of ever being adequately addressed
within it?
A thought: The economy exists within the environment. The
interests of the environment cannot be adequately addressed
within the economy. The economy exists within the society.
The interests of society cannot be adequately addressed
within the economy. It stands to reason?
f) a generalized anxiety about globalization?
A thought: Globalization, in both its good and bad aspects,
is bringing rapid changes in our lives. Globalization is
related as well to changing technologies -- such as those
that will let me share these musings on the internet
(canfutures list) and to hope they will encourage others to
muse too. Abetted by other forces (e.g. deficit-cutting),
globalization is currently outstripping our efforts to
mutually insure each other and our families, through a
variety of social arrangements, against the sometimes heavy
personal consequences of rapid change?
2. Beyond the persons and groups visibly opposing the MAI
there is an expanding penumbra of concerned citizens and
organizations, including churches, NGO's, corporations, and
non-OECD governments. In particular, legislators and citizens
are beginning to appreciate how the MAI and other
international and global trade treaties, simultaneously
abridge the sovereign powers of nation states. Is it, though,
an exaggeration to say this opposition has had much effect?
A representative of Friends of the Earth has recently said
that the current hiatus in MAI negotiations is "a defeat for
would-be corporate rulers and a victory for democracy. ...The
unraveling of MAI negotiations reveals the increasing power
of environmental, labor, development and other citizen
organizations to block pro-corporate, anti-democratic trade
and investment deals."
Is it not more likely that what has chiefly caused the delay
is intransigence among the negotiating blocs, with Canada and
the US pushing for a NAFTA-like agreement, Europe seeking
qualifications and Japan resisting opening its economy to the
world?
3. Is expanding trade through a multilateral agreement on
investment an urgent priority?
Few will dispute that an MAI might increase world output (the
comparative advantage argument for freer trade) but whether
people would be better off depends on its distribution. If I
remember my welfare economics correctly, it is not sufficient
to demonstrate that people would theoretically be better off
but that they will actually be better off, i.e. not only
COULD they be bribed but WOULD they be bribed (as economists
might say.) MAI doesn't address the question of the
distribution of the fruits of freer trade and investment.
The growing disparity in distribution not only within the
industrial countries but between them and the rest of the
world could mean that it is increasingly respectable, in
terms of economic welfare, to have serious doubts about the
priority that its advocates urge for the MAI at this
juncture? (Such a stance could find reinforcement from
experts within the OECD itself, according to comments made in
recent presentations in Ottawa by the Canadian Ambassador to
the OECD.)
If material abundance is upon us globally and if where
poverty remains it is in "pockets," then the world is faced
with what is primarily a distributional rather than a
production issue. This being the case, it might be time to be
addressing the issue of world governance, including social,
democratic, environmental and sustainability considerations
as well as trade and investment?
4. At a deeper level, does the MAI derive from what is now
outmoded thinking about what constitutes appropriate
procedure in an world of increasing interdependence? Doesn't
contemporary thought in almost all fields now reject the
reductionist science on which the MAI and other "economy-
first" approaches are based?
The notion that it makes sense to single out one element in
complex situations and give it priority goes against
contemporary understandings of how personal, social,
juridical, economic, or environmental processes work. One-
thing-at-a-time approaches are being replaced by more
wholistic thinking across a whole variety of fields, e.g.
wellness theory, ecosystem approaches. Whether through
theoretical developments or simply life experience, both
experts and citizens know, or increasingly sense, that
complex sets of interacting processes determine human well-
being.
The monetized economy to which MAI addresses itself can no
longer hold its standing as the taken-for-granted context of
society: it processes are now understood as simply some
among the many processes important to human life. Indeed,
singling out one process for dominance can adversely affect
the integrated functioning of the whole. Singling out trade
and investment independently of justice and health and
sustainability and governance simply no longer has resonance
with democratic populations. A deep feeling of unease arises
from attempts to impose agreements like the MAI without
imbedding them in related agreements. A concern for
shareholder equity needs to be replaced by a concern for
stakeholder equity. Wellness is a function of the whole, not
merely of one part?
5. The current situation with respect to the MAI presents a
remarkable opportunity?
The Canadian Prime Minister, the Minister of Foreign Affairs
and the Canadian government could play a useful international
role by developing and advancing a new proposal: a way
forward that brings both proponents and adversaries of the
MAI together in a more successful successor enterprise toward
global wellness.
Such an enterprise might lie along the lines of the Padbury
proposal for a Magna Carta for the new Millennium, outlining
the rights -- and the responsibilities -- of all the major
players:
"I do think a document like the MAI could be useful. There is
a lot of anxiety about globalization. I think the anxiety is
quite justified - there are many important consequences of
globalization and no way to deal with them, or even talk
about them. I think part of the solution is a document (like
the Magna Carta) that recognizes the rights and
responsibilities of all of the actors who are currently on
the stage. This could be the beginning of our efforts to
build a system of governance that links local, national and
global fora in a way that recognizes that all interconnected
and interdependent."
Peter Padbury, Ottawa, March 24, 1998
Private correspondence with the writer
Some process of this sort -- that recognizes in a far more
sophisticated way the interconnectedness of human affairs,
that is as concerned with the limits and responsibilities of
our collective inventions (such as governments and
corporations) as it is with their privileges and rights, and
that recognizes there is a global realm as well as an
international realm -- seems likely to form a more practical
context for human affairs in the coming years than does an
MAI pressed forward by itself?
6. Assured that some such process was firmly underway, Canada
and the world might get on with the business of international
investment even more successfully than with the proposed MAI?
The Canadian people, for example, might greatly welcome such
a creative but practical proposal for a set of openly
negotiated interlocking agreements. They would serve to
protect the unique cultural and other assets that Canada uses
to sustain itself as an "intentional community" and that it
brings to the world. Many of these assets would be in
jeopardy under the proposed MAI.
Knowing as much as we now do about spillover effects and
their costs, we should be comfortable in asserting that
international investment that is not sensitive to other
concerns, and negotiated with and constrained within broader
agreements that reflect these concerns, is almost certainly
too costly to contemplate. Under the circumstances it would
not be shameful for the Canadian government, even without the
present setback to the MAI negotiations, to rethink Canada's
participation?
Such a move on Canada's part could be to everyone's benefit.
The win/lose world that would emerge from an unreconstructed
MAI, a world where some become well (wealthy?) at other's
expense needs to become a win/win world where together we are
all well and yes, even prosperous -- in a sustainable way, of
course! This is the lesson of the new science, the new
humanity, the new century? This might be why the MAI feels
like out-dated politics to growing numbers of people?
7. The MAI issue needs to be redrawn?
The issue is surely not "MAI vs. MAI-not." We need to secure
the conditions for international investment, which was the
purpose of the MAI. At the same time it is important that we
not accomplish this at the expense of other things we need.
This calls for a fresh approach to multilateral agreement in
which trade and investment arrangements do not have hegemony
over the environment, national sovereignty, international
social and distributive justice, the maintenance of a
diversity of cultures, sustainability and all the other
conditions for human well-being. All are important, including
trade and investment arrangements.
It is time not merely to support or resist what the
industrial countries, negotiating in secret at the OECD, were
hoping to accomplish with the MAI, but to rethink what they
were doing?
Gail Ward Stewart
Ottawa
April 2, 1998
--
Gail Stewart
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
