Africare- NewPublications <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Date: Sun, 12 Aug 2007
08:20:09 -0700 (PDT)
From: Africare- NewPublications <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Fwd: Big business will pacify the clash of cultures.
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>From The Sunday TimesAugust 12, 2007
Big business will pacify the clash of cultures
The world will move together as it builds the bodies through which we
can all trust each other moreFrancis Fukuyama
Professor Samuel Huntington argued in his 1996 book The Clash of
Civilisations that, after the cold war, world politics would be
dominated not by conflicts between rival ideologies but by conflicts
between civilisations and cultures. He wrote that the power of
culture would trump the integrating forces of globalisation, and that
people's loyalties would ultimately be defined communally based on
ties of religion, ethnicity and shared history.
Huntington characterised the values of the western Enlightenment,
democracy and individual rights prominent among them, as projections
of the values of western Christianity, reasoning that other cultures
with other values would create different types of institutions.
In the decade since it was published, many have argued that the clash
of civilisations hypothesis has been proved right by events. There
has been a broad rise in religious energies and identity,
particularly notable in the Muslim world with the emergence of
radical Islamism, but also evident in south Asia, Latin America, the
United States and Russia.
The issues raised by the clash of civilisations thesis are clearly
relevant because they raise a key question: Are natural political
spaces of trust created by culture, or can we integrate on a more
global, perhaps even universal, basis?
I both agree and disagree with the "clash of civilisations" thesis. I
agree that cultural factors have become the prism through which many
people see international affairs today. On the other hand, I believe
that this point of view underestimates the integrating forces driving
global development, and the way in which the modernisation process is
forcing a convergence of institutions and approaches to governance on
an increasingly world-wide scale.
Huntington is right that political identity based on shared culture
is not going to disappear in the foreseeable future. It would be
profoundly undemocratic if global economic forces stripped local
communities of their ability to decide how to structure their common
political life.
It is certainly true, too, that different countries must find their
own routes to modernity. The specific paths that western Europe, the
United States, Japan, Russia and other countries have taken are all
different.
Modernisation and development arise from the efforts of the people
who live in a given society, not from those of outsiders. Countries
can learn from one another, but their ability to shape outcomes in
foreign lands is usually very limited. This is something that the
United States has painfully learnt over the past four years in Iraq.
The question we need to address, however, is whether we are taking
different paths to the same endpoint an endpoint of a single world
civilisation or whether different human cultures are heading to
fundamentally different places.
My view, contrary to Professor Huntington's, is that modernisation
itself in the long run requires the convergence of many types of
institutions, regardless of cultural starting points. And economic
integration between states is most productive, and results in the
most durable forms of trust, when it is based on transparent rule-
bound institutions rather than the looser ties of cultural affinity.
The starting point of any country's development is the state, which
Max Weber, the German sociologist, defined as a monopoly of
legitimate force over a defined territory. But while the state begins
with coercion, the miracle of the modern state is its ability to
solve the paradox of power namely, that a state has to be strong
enough to enforce laws and provide order, yet it must constrain its
own exercise of power if there is to be long-term economic growth.
It is state weakness that explains anaemic economic growth in many
parts of the developing world. All societies need order, rule of law,
a government that provides basic public goods and a reasonably fair
distribution of resources. If rulers cannot govern effectively, if
they are highly corrupt and divert public resources to private ends,
if they behave arbitrarily, then they will undercut the savings and
investment needed for long-term growth. It is therefore no surprise
that by the end of the 1990s, better governance and more competent
states became the order of the day.
How does a modern state achieve good governance? Good governance is
not a gift given by rulers to the ruled. It ultimately has to be
based on accountability mechanisms which ensure that rulers truly
serve the interests of the ruled, not just their own interests or
those of their friends and families.
Governments can be held accountable in a number of ways. The most
familiar are those vertical accountability mechanisms known as
elections. But there are also mechanisms of horizontal accountability
that work when different parts of a government monitor each other's
performance.
Parliaments and courts, independent of the executive, are of course
crucial. Furthermore, there are mechanisms outside the formal
political system. Accountability requires transparency regarding the
behaviour of rulers, for bad governments seldom report on their own
failures and transgressions. That is why good governance requires an
independent media and the institutions of civil society to monitor
the behaviour of the state.
Thus, effective modern states are as notable for the constraints they
put on themselves as they are for their ability to concentrate power.
Whether within or among states, trust can arise from one of two
sources. The first is cultural, where trust derives from shared
values, traditions and history. In all societies, trust begins with
family and kinship and then slowly radiates out to a broader range of
social groups. The second form of trust is based on shared interests.
This kind of trust can exist between complete strangers with nothing
in common culturally and who may operate in different parts of the
world. This kind of trust is based on institutions.
Of the two forms of trust, the cultural version is clearly the most
natural and widespread, but it is also more primitive. All human
beings organise themselves into primary social groups or cultural
communities and nearly all people fall back on such groups in times
of trouble or crisis.
The second form of trust expands the potential radius of trust
indefinitely. It is more durable because it is based on self-interest
and it is the basis of modern economic interdependence. Trust becomes
increasingly anchored in reciprocal self-inter-est rather than
culture as countries modernise. Globalisation provides the
opportunity to expand markets far beyond the limits of one's own
community, requiring development of an impersonal, structured
institutional framework by which trust can emerge between complete
strangers.
A case in point: businesses in China and in Chinese-speaking
societies were traditionally structured around the family. It was
difficult to trust strangers or enter into business relationships
with someone to whom you were not related.
While this kinship-based form of social capital worked to a degree
and for a while, it was limiting. It meant that family-owned
businesses could not grow into large, professionally managed
companies.
There are many political reasons for countries to decide to align
with one another on grounds of cultural, ethnic or historical
commonality. But economic rationality demands that trust be based on
more impersonal criteria and here the degree to which a country's
institutions are law-governed and transparent takes pride of place.
Integration in the global economy will be more durable and productive
of shared prosperity to the extent that it can be based on interests
rather than passions, on institutions rather than culture. This is
not a western perspective; it is a global one.
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