By Peadar Kirby*
Irish TimesAugust 4, 2001
If protests at summits in Seattle, Prague and Gothenburg in recent years marked the emergence of a new form of politics for a globalised world, events at the G8 summit in Genoa may mark its coming of age.
This is true not only because the death of a protester, the destruction wrought and the reaction of the police showed that something serious is at stake, but also because the protests obviously influenced the deliberations of the summit. Concrete initiatives like the $ 1.3 billion Global Fund for AIDS and the ongoing programme of debt relief for heavily indebted developing countries initiated at earlier G8 summits illustrate this. But perhaps more significant was the rhetoric about their determination "to make globalisation work for all our citizens and especially the world's poor" which peppered the leaders' final communique.
Yet, it is the very inadequacy of these gestures, as seen by leaders of the protest movement, which look set to deepen this form of international politics. Action taken by G8 leaders on world debt over recent years has been widely dismissed by non-governmental organisations (NGOs) as insufficient and grudging; the Global Fund for AIDS announced at Genoa was similarly criticised. The response of NGOs is obviously to pile on even more pressure.
Furthermore, the determination of the G8 leaders to press ahead with further trade liberalisation, "drawing the poorest countries into the global economy" as they put it, indicates they are failing to understand the concerns that motivate much of the protest movement. Far more than individual issues like debt relief, AIDS or environmental destruction, what unites the wide range of disparate groups that come together to protest is a sharp critique of the form of globalisation being promoted by the G8 leaders.
The practice of the media in labelling the protesters as "antiglobalisation" illustrates the dangerous misunderstanding of what they espouse that seems to be shared by political leaders. To be sure, there are among the protesters those who wish to turn the clock back to the era of state-subsidised and relatively protected national economies that proved so successful in the post-war period. But these seem a minority.
Most of the NGOs and other citizens' groups that make up the bulk of the protesters realise that era is over; indeed, with their flexible practices of cross-national networking they are largely the creation of a globalised world. It would be paradoxical therefore if they were anti-globalisation. Instead, what they stand for is a different form of globalisation, and this is the potential of the political movement they are creating.
In his book, Ideologies of Globalization, US academic Mark Rupert undertakes a careful examination of the platforms of social movements contesting globalisation, including a statement endorsed by 1,400 NGOs in at least 89 countries prior to the protests in Seattle in December 1999.
He shows they are not against globalisation as such; what they oppose is the present form of neo-liberal globalisation which favours the interests of corporate capital over those of the poor and marginalised. Indeed, they see the present form of globalisation as worsening the plight of the poor and as lacking any democratic accountability.
Their likely response to the G8 leaders' pledge to make globalisation work for the poor is to ask how they propose to do this. Overwhelming evidence shows that greater liberalisation of trade, financial flows and services within the present inequitable world order is serving to increase the yawning gap between rich and poor. Offering even more of the same, which is what the G8 leaders seem to be doing, is almost certain to exacerbate rather than lessen problems of world poverty and inequality.
Rather than seeing this as a debate between globalisers and anti-globalisers, therefore, what distinguishes both sides are diametrically opposed views of globalisation. On the one side are those who espouse further globalisation which favours the interests of transnational capital and the elites that benefit from it; on the other side are those who are proposing that global liberalisation needs to be regulated so that it can be made to serve the interests of the majority of humankind. Among the means often proposed are the transnational regulation and taxation of global capital and the democratisation of bodies like the World Bank and the World Trade Organisation so that they respond more to social needs.
The attempt to move from a corporate and neo-liberal globalisation to a more socially responsible and democratic globalisation obviously raises vast and complex issues. Yet, as the Genoa communique showed, there is little evidence to date that this is even understood, much less shared, by those who run our world. In such a situation there is little option but to continue mobilising those who do understand the need for a new form of globalisation, and taking every opportunity to press the issue through mass action.
The anger witnessed on the streets of Genoa, most of it expressed non-violently, showed the passion that motivates these protests. But behind the gripping sights and sounds of the weekend, a deeper and longer-term significance can be glimpsed. For what seems to be emerging is a transnational social space with its own transnational civil society, akin to the emergence of our national societies from the late 18th century onwards. If so, this marks the birth of a transnational politics which is beginning to challenge the dominance of powerful global economic forces.
This, therefore, gives the lie to the oft-repeated assertion that we live in an apolitical age. Rather, what it shows is that the ways we have institutionalised politics, at both national level and through such multinational organisations as the European Union, are inadequate to deal effectively with the concerns being raised by transnational civil society. It is far from easy to see how this new form of politics can be institutionalised, but the Genoa events show the urgency of the task.
Neither is it surprising that as economic and, increasingly, social decision-making is ringfenced against influence by political groups at national level (through, for example, mechanisms like our own social partnership), that politics takes to the streets. In an eloquent article a few years ago, Prof Seamus Cinneide of NUI Maynooth, drew attention to the increasing democratic deficit of Irish politics. Events like those in Genoa provide a wake-up call to those who choose to ignore such concerns.
What we are increasingly seeing then is a return to a more classic practice of politics as the contest of competing visions for the future of society. Only this time what is being contested is the future of global society, not just of our national societies. Instead of protecting themselves from the protesters, our leaders need to realise there is a real contest of visions here and to begin to engage with the critique rather than seeking to silence it through tokenistic gestures.
*Dr Peadar Kirby is a senior lecturer on the MA course in International Relations at Dublin City University. His latest book, Celtic Tiger in Distress: Growth with Inequality in Ireland, will be published by Palgrave early next year.
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