Pro globalisation

The major multilateral institutions acknowledge the need to improve the transparency of their decision making and each has programs to make themselves more open to outside contributions and develop better information flows. However they are all organisations composed of governments. In the case of the World Trade Organisation, the practice has been that no decisions are made unless a consensus of governments is achieved. This guarantees that the WTO reflects the will of its member nation states.

As the work of the United Nations has demonstrated, globalisation is more effective when there are strong governments, with sound domestic institutions.

Globalisation benefits both big and small business, together with the citizens of those countries that embrace international trade. There are no grounds for asserting, however, that large companies are bent on subverting governments. Large corporations generate employment, tax revenue and wealth for the nations in which they operate. They invest in proportionately more research and development than smaller businesses.

Capitalism has brought unprecedented advances in living standards. As the economist, Brad De Long, notes, at the end of the 19th century, average life expectancy in the world was 40 years, a quarter of all babies died in their first year and barely a quarter of adults could read and write. Today, the world population’s average life expectancy is 67, only 6% of babies die in the first year, and more than 80% of the world’s adults can read and write.

Links

Liberal author John Gray and Michael Lind of the New America Foundation debate the question "Are there global political values?" in the December 2001 edition of Prospect Magazine. See http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/

The Commission on Global Governance - an independent group of 28 public figures - presents proposals for improving world governance and managing the United Nations.
http://www.cgg.ch/millenium.htm

Samuel Makinda in argues, in a paper entitled "Recasting Global Governance", that the exigencies of global governance in this millennium require the UN to rethink its norms, structures, procedures and practices - www.unu.edu/millennium/makinda.pdf

Papers from a workshop on globalization and public policy held at the University of Toronto can be downloaded at http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/tamapp/index.html

The official site of the G-8 meeting in Genoa is http://www.g8italia.it/_en/index.html The G8 Research Group at the University of Toronto provides the most extensive set of resources - http://www.g7.utoronto.ca/ William Antholis also addresses concerns about the meetings in an article "Pragmatic Engagement or Photo Op: What Will the G-8 Become?" in the Washington Quarterly - http://www.twq.com/01summer/antholis.pdf

The World Trade Organisation presents a response to those who believe it dictates government policies in an account of ten common misudnerstandings about its function. http://www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/whatis_e/10mis_e/10m00_e.htm

The economist Brad De Long’s account of 20th century prosperity can be downloaded from his website, http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/

A speech by the head of the IMF’s European office, Fleming Larson, outlines the case for closer dialogue between the IMF and non-government organisations. http://www.imf.org/external/np/vc/2000/091900.htm

Former Thai Prime Minister, Anand Panyarachun, argues that free markets are consistent with the development of democracy in Asia.
http://www.arts.monash.edu.au/ausapec/anand.pdf

Anti-globalisation

There are two strands to the argument that globalisation is undermining nation states. First, it is that it is empowering corporations at the expense of the nation state, and secondly, that the international institutions such as the WTO and World Bank are not democratic.

There is an issue of sheer size. It is noted that many corporations are larger than nation states – more than half the 100 largest economies in the world are corporations. The sales of Ford and General Motors combined are greater than the combined GDP of sub-Saharan Africa while those of the six largest Japanese trading companies are almost as big as all the nations of Latin America combined.

Critics of capitalism say the problem starts with laws of the early 19th century, which meant individual managers, and directors could not be held liable for the actions of the corporation. It is argued that globalisation was not a democrat choice but was pursued by corporations to suit their own ends of maximising profit by playing one nation off against another.

The international organisations, such as the World Trade Organisation, the World Bank and the IMF are make it their mission to open the world to the influence of transnational corporations. The IMF rules make it hard for nations to legislate to stop currency speculators from attacking their economy. The World Bank insists that nations to which it makes structural adjustment loans privatise government enterprises, often handing them to transnationals. The World Trade Organisation’s effort to break down trade barriers is designed to open markets to transnational corporations.

None of these supranational organisations are democratically constituted, and they make their decisions behind closed doors.

Links:

The Open Democracy website lists "gloablisation now?" as one of its main topics. Provocative essays such as "The accidental internationalists" and the interview "Governing Globalisation" rank this site amongst the most informative. http://www.opendemocracy.net/forum/strand_home.asp?CatID=99

It includes contributions from 'players' as varied as George Soros, Chairman of Soros Fund Management, and Dr. Owens Wiwa, an Ogoni activist whose brother, Ken Saro-Wiwa, a renowned writer, was executed by the Nigerian government.

Globalization and human rights is the topic of a documentary broadcast by U.S. public broadcaster PBS which has made transcripts and additional resources available at:
www.pbs.org/globalization/home.html

Nicholas Bayne of the London School of Economics investigates whether public protests dramatise the political salience of trade policy available on this well resourced page -
http://qsilver.queensu.ca/sps/WorkingPapers/

The Corporate Watch website, related to Ralph Nader’s organisation, has one article on the erosion of democratic control of corporations http://www.corporatewatch.org/pages/dan_corp.html

Edward Herman, Professor of Finance at Wharton School, outlines his view of why globalisation subverts democracy in an article written for the journal, New Politics. http://www.wpunj.edu/~newpol/issue26/herman26.htm#r6

A lecture presenting globalisation as an assault on democratic and human rights by Noam Chomsky is published online in zmagazine. http://www.zmag.org/chomskyalbaq.htm