The Contemporary

World :
General Education 3

Jeson P. Donque, MA Philo

Department of Social Sciences and
Philosophy-College of Arts & Sciences
 Ideologies of
Globalization :
Manfred B. Steger
OBJECTIVES
 Discuss globalism’s morphology, centering on
its ideological status
Introduction
 System of ideas which is determined by economic
class conflict and which reflects and promotes the
interests of the dominant class

 ‘current fragmentation of established ideologies and

uncertainty whether ideology exists’ highlighted the
difficulty of capturing changing morphologies of
political belief system
Globalization: process,
condition, or ideology
 Globalization denotes not an ideology but ‘a
range of processes nesting under one
unwieldy epithet (Michael Freeden)
 Conceptual unwieldiness arises from the fact
that global flows occur in different physical
and mental dimension, divided by Arjun
Appadurai into ethnoscapes, technoscapes,
mediascapes, finanscapes, and ideoscapes
 Given these meanings (a process, condition, a
force, a system, an age) invite confusion
 ‘Globality’ means a future social condition
characterized by thick economic, political, and
cultural interconnections and global flows that
make existing political borders and economic
barriers irrelevant
 “ not to say it precludes further development but
rather points to a social condition destined to give
way to a new distinct constellations
 Globalization is a set of complex, sometimes
contradictory, social processes that are
changing current social condition based on
the modern system of independent nation-
state
 ‘a multidimensional set of social processes
that create, multiply, stretch, and intensify
worldwide social interdependencies and
exchanges
 It is about the unprecedented compression of
time and space as result of political, economic,
and cultural change
 The term suggests ‘development’ or ‘unfolding’,
and denotes alteration of present condition
 This focus on Change explains why scholars
pay attention to shifting temporal modes and
reconfiguration of social and geographical
space
 Though remained ‘unwieldy epithet’, but successfully
decontested in public discourse in 1980s-1990s
 ‘globalists’ constructed/disseminated
narratives/images that associated the concept of
globalization with expanding ‘free’ markets
 ‘globalism’ a rising political belief system with core
claims advocating:
 Deregulation of markets
 Liberalization of trade
 Privatization of state-owned enterprises
 Dissemination of ‘American values’
 Support of global war on terror
 Popular support for globalization was high in
poor countries of the global south
 19 countries surveyed in 2004 by the University
of Maryland,55% believed globalization was
positive for them, against 25% negative
 Globalism is a ‘strong discourse’, difficult to
resist as it relies on the power of common
sense – the widespread belief that its
prescriptive program derives from an objective
description of the ‘real world’.
Six core claims of globalism
 When does a political belief system warrant the
holistic designation ‘ideological family’?
 What criteria should be used to upgrade a
conceptual ‘module’ or ‘segment’ to the status
of ‘ideology’?
 Michael Freeden suggest mature ideologies or
thought systems exhibit a full spectrum of
responses to issues
 In addition, their morphologies broad enough to
encompass spread of conceptual
decontestation
 Freeden’s criteria for determining the status
of political belief system
 Degree of uniqueness and morphological
sophistication
 Its context-bound responsiveness to political
issues
 Its ability to produce effective conceptual
decontestation chains
With regard to the third criterion
 ‘decontestation’ is a crucial process in forming thought
systems because it specifies the meaning of the core
concepts by arranging them in a ‘pattern’ or
‘configuration that links them with other concepts in a
meaningful way
 Effective decontestation structures convey authoritative
meanings that facilitate collective decision-making
 Interconnected semantic and political roles suggest that
control over political language translates directly into
political power
1. Globalization is about the liberalization
and global integration of markets

 Claim one seeks to establish beyond dispute what

globalization means, that is, to offer authoritative definition
 ‘globalization is about the triumph of markets over
governments’ (Business Week 1990s)
 Thomas Friedman ‘The driving idea behind globalization
is free-market capitalism-the more you let market forces
rule and the more you open your economy to free trade
and competition, the more efficient your economy will be
 ‘seek to create impression that it represents primarily an
economic phenomenon’
 Notion ‘integrating markets’ means an all-
embracing liberty
 Decontested as an economic project advancing
human freedom in general, it must be applied to all
countries regardless of the political and cultural
preferences expressed by local citizens
 However, one might wonder how such ideological
efforts insisting on a single economic strategy for
all countries can be made compatible with a
process alleged to contribute to the spread of
freedom, choice and openness to the world.
Claim two: Globalization is inevitable

and irreversible

 US Pres. Clinton “Today we must embrace the

inexorable logic of globalization. Protectionism
will only make things worse.”
 Frederick Smith CEO FedEx “Globalization is
inevitable,.. is accelerating, ..is happening, going
to happen…whether you like it or not…
 Manny Villar “We cannot simply wish away the
process of globalization… a reality of the modern
world…irreversible.”
 Such determinist terms seems a poor strategy
for a rising thought system borrowing heavily
from neoliberalism and neoconservatism
 Marxist socialism been criticized for its
devaluation of human agency and contempt for
individualism
 Ulrich Beck …neoliberal globalism resembles
Marxism…is the rebirth of Marxism as a
management ideology
 Marxism: considers history as a teleological
process in accordance with ‘inexorable laws’

 How does globalism’s import of adjacent

concept causes ideological contradiction?
 1. philosophical inconsistencies and semantic
tensions are results of unavoidable logical and
cultural constraints
 2. claim of inevitability in market terms resembles to
conservative and religious narratives
 Christian stories of human origin/fall from grace as
well as doctrine of original sin and redemption find
contemporary expression in the creation of wealth,
the temptation of statism, captivity to economic
cycles, salvation through the advent of global free
market
 Both are determined by the unalterable will of a
transcendental force.
 ‘The Market’ been endowed divine attributes of
omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence
 3. globalization is some sort of natural force, like
weather or gravity, makes easier to convince people
that they have to adapt to the discipline of the market
if they have to survive and prosper
 Thus suppresses alternative discourses on
globalization, undermines formation of political
dissent
 Public policy based on globalist ideas appears above
politics, leaders do what is ordained by nature
 Emergence of world based on primacy of values
reflects the dictate of history making resistance
unnatural, irrational, dangerous
 Globalists attempt to align incompatible concepts drawn
from conventional ideologies around globalization has the
potential to produce an immense political payoff
 9-11 Al-Qaeda attacks as ‘dark side of globalization’, an
imminent ‘collapse of globalism’ like assassination of
Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo
 Cong. Christopher Shay argued that the ‘toxic zeal’ of the
terrorists would be defeated by the combination of military
and market forces
 Thus globalism’s ability to adapt to new realities of post-9-
11 world gives ample proof of its responsiveness to a broad
range of political issues
Claim three: nobody is in charge
of globalization
 Third mode of decontestation hinges on
the concept ‘self-regulating market’
 Workings of the market preordain a certain
course of history, therefore not reflect the
agenda of a particular social class
 Globalists merely carry out the unalterable
imperatives of transcendental force larger
than partisan interests
 For example, Robert Hormats, vice chair of
Goldman Sachs International said ‘The great
beauty of globalization is that no one is in
control…not controlled by any individual, any
government, any institution
 Thomas Friedman ‘most basic truth of
globalization is: No one is in charge…global
market is an Electronic Herd of anonymous
stock, bond and currency traders, multinational
investors, connected by screens and networks
 After 9-11, difficult to maintain this claim
 Survival of globalization seen to depend
on the political leadership of USA
 Many American globalists took off their
gloves after 9-11,exposing the iron fists if
an irate giant
 Advocacy of global leadership spawned
debates whether US actually constituted
an ‘empire’
 Replacement of claim three with global Anglo-
American leadership not a sign of ideological
weakness
 Rather, it reflected ideational flexibility and
growing ability to respond to new set of
political issues
 Globalism bears the mark of ‘ideational family’
broad enough to contain more economistic
variant of the 1990s as well as its militaristic
post-9-11 manifestation
Claim four: globalization benefits
everyone (…in the long run)
 Provides answer that globalization represents a
‘good’ phenomennon
 ‘benefits for everyone’ usually is unpacked in
material terms like ‘economic growth’ and
‘prosperity’
 ‘benefits for everyone’ also draws on socialist
vision of establishing economic paradise on earth
 Thus another example of combining elements
from incompatible ideologies under the master
concept globalization
 1996 G-7 Summit leaders issued a joint
communiqué that exemplifies the principal
meanings of globalization
 Economic growth in today’s interdependent world is
bound up with the process of globalization…provides
great opportunities for all others too. Its positive aspects
include unprecedented expansion of investment and
trade, opening up to international trade of world’s most
populous regions and opportunities for developing
countries to improve their standards of living;
increasingly rapid dissemination of information,
technological innovation, and proliferation of skilled jobs.
These….. have led to expansion of wealth and prosperity
in the world. Hence, we are convinced that …is a source
of hope for the future.
 Yet global income distributions are at sharply conflicting results.
 But globalists still insist that the market will eventually correct
these ‘irregularities’
 John Meehan, chairman of US Public Securities Association,
such episodic dislocations like mass unemployment, reduced
social services might be ‘necessary in the short run, but in the
long run will give way to quantum leaps in productivity
 Pres. Bush “Free trade and free markets have proven their
ability to lift whole societies out of poverty—so US will work with
nations and global trading community to build a world that
trades in freedom and grows in prosperity.’
Claim five: globalization furthers the
spread of democracy in the world
 Globalists treat freedom, free markets, free trade and
democracy as synonymous terms
 For example, Francis Fukuyama ‘there exists a ‘clear
correlation between a country’s level of economic
development and successful democracy
 ‘level of economic dev’t is conducive to the creation of
civil societies with powerful middle class. It is this
class/societal structure that facilitates democracy
 Hillary Clinton ‘emergence of new businesses and
shopping centers in former communist countries be seen
as the ‘backbone of democracy’.
 Fukuyama and Clinton both agree that globalization
strengthens affinity between democracy and free
market
 However, definition of democracy is limited which
emphasizes formal procedures such as voting at
the expense of the direct participation of broad
majorities in political and economic decision-making
 This ‘thin’ democracy is what William Robinson
identified as Anglo-American project of ‘promoting
polyarchy’ in the developing world
 ‘Popular democracy’ differs from polyarchy in that the
former posits both as a process and a means to an end
–a tool for devolving power form the hands of elite
minorities to the masses
 Polyarchy limits democratic participation to voting in
elections and also insulated those elected from popular
pressures, so they may ‘govern effectively’
 This focus on the act of voting obscure the conditions of
inequality reflected in assymetrical power relations in
society
 Formal elections provide function of legitimating the
rule of dominant elites, making it more difficult for
popular movements to challenge the rule of elites
 The claim that it furthers spread of democracy is
based on narrow formal-procedural understanding
of democracy
 Promotion of polyarchy allows globalists to advance
their project of economic restructuring in a language
that supports the ‘democratization’ of the world.
 After 9-11, Claim Five firmly linked to Bush
administration’s neoconservative security agenda
 ‘As we preserve the peace, US also has an
opportunity to extend the benefits of freedom and
progress to nations that lack them
 Global expansion of democracy as the ‘Third
Pillar’ of US ‘peace and security vision of the
world’
 The idea of securing global economic integration
through US-led military drive for ‘democratization’
became prominent in the corporate scramble for Iraq
 Robert McFarlane, NSA of Pres. Reagan, Chairman
of Energy and Communication Solutions, and
Michael Bleyzer, CEO and president of
SigmaBleyzer, equity fund management corporation,
opined that US must assert that it is the most
powerful military power and foremost market
economy in the world capable of leading developing
nations to a more prosperous and stable future
 Such globalist ideas translated into collective action
 Ambassador Paul Bremer, head of the Coalition
Provisional Authority, pressured Governing Council
to permit complete foreign ownership of Iraqui
companies and assets
 Sec.of State Colin Powell announced in the
economic conference the development of US-Middle
East Free Trade Area
 Also included programs to send Arab college
students to work as interns in American corporations
Claim six: globalization requires a
global war on terror

 Globalism combines idea of economic

globalization with militaristic ideas of US-led global
War on Terror
 Decontesting globalization through a necessary
‘global War onTerror’ created logical
contradictions:
 Reliance on coercive powers of the state to secure
globalists project undermined ‘self-regulating market’
and historical ‘inevitability’
 Vision of enforcing ‘democracy’ and ‘freedom’ at
gunpoint conflicted with common understanding of
liberty as absence of coercion
 Anglo-American nationalists undertones emanating from
‘War onTerror’ contradicts the cosmopolitan, universal
spirit associated with the concept ‘globalization’
 In short, claim six runs a considerable risk of causing
irreparable damage to the conceptual coherence of
globalism
 Example of logical inconsistencies in claim six is
Thomas Barnett argument in an article ‘The
Pentagon’s New Map’ published in Esquire
magazine in 2003
 ‘Iraq War marks the moment when Washington
takes real ownership of strategic security’
 Divides the globe in three distinct regions
 ‘Functioning Core’ (North America, most of Europe,
Australia, New Zealand and small part of Latin
America)thick with network connectivity, financial
transactions, liberal media flows, collective security
 ‘Non-integrating Gap’ (Carribean Rim, Africa, the
Balkans, the Caucasus, Central Asia, China, the Middle
East, and Latin America) globalization is thinning or
absent, plagued by repressive political regimes,
regulated markets, mass murder, widespread poverty
and disease, breeding ground of ‘global terrorists’
 ‘Seam states’ lie along Gap’s bloody boundaries
(Mexico, Brazil, South Africa, Morocco, Algeria, Greece,
Turkey, Pakistan, Thailand, Malaysia, Philippines,
Indonesia
 For Barnett, 9-11 attack forced US and its allies to
make a long term military commitment to ‘deal with
the entire Gap as a strategic threat environment’
 In short, spread of globalization requires a War on
Terror with three objectives:
 Increase core’s immune system capabilities for
responding 9-11 like system perturbations
 Work on the seam states to firewall the Core from the
Gap’s worst export terror,drugs, and pandemics
 Shrink the Gap..Middle East is the perfect place to
start..real battleground is still over there’
 ‘We ignore the Gap’s existence at our own peril,
because it will not go away until we respond to the
challenge of making globalization truly global’
 This invites conceptual contradiction that may
prove fatal to globalism
 Other competing thought systems (Islamism,
nationalist populism, global egalitarianism) appear
to make the hegemonic prospect of globalism
unlikely and relentless countering highlights
globalism’s semantic and political power