Global Democratisation and Capitalism: Discovering the Third World States in the Era of Limited State and Unlimited Quest
Lere Amusan[a],*; Samuel Oyewole[a]
[a] Department of Political Sciences, Osun State University, Osogbo, Nigeria.
* Corresponding author.
Received 7 August 2012; accepted 10 October 2012
Abstract
The complexity of democratisation has mystified the reality of the Third World States (TWS) democracy. Accountability inherent in market democracy is dual and the compliance of government in this spectrum is important on ideological and political grounds. This work intends to contribute to the argument around globalisation as related to state functions and the positions of democracies. The paper wishes to address ideological connotation of minimum state as forwarded by neo-liberalists and maximum quest as reflected by aspirations, needs and wants of people across the world. We therefore draw conclusion that state minimisation in the era of maximum quest is less fit in this complex interdependent epoch.
Key words: Democratisation; Third world states; Globalisation; Limited state; Unlimited quest
Lere Amusan, Samuel Oyewole (2012). Global Democratisation and Capitalism: Discovering the Third World States in the Era of Limited State and Unlimited Quest. Canadian Social Science, 8(5), 56-63. Available from http://www.cscanada.net/index.php/css/article/view/j.css.1923669720120805.1139
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3968/j.css.1923669720120805.1139.
INTRODUCTION
The increasing roles and values being attached to states around the world, among common people, have refused to accept propositional arrangement of state declining internationally. The wind of globalisation that dabbles into the international system, most especially the post-Cold War (pCW) wave has marked a new dawn in the international history. In its quest, it forges the collapse of the Eastern bloc that bred additional states across Eurasia. The enthusiasm receive from this, was described by Fukuyama (1989) thus:
What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalisation of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.
The traditional state-centric view of the international system has come under attack of which a large part is based on the identification of non-state actors and the analysis of their roles (Frankel, 1988, p.68). Part of the erosion of national policy-making capacity is due to the liberalisation of markets and developments in technology (Khor, 2000, p.5). This is based on the assumption that “government intervention also upsets the evolutionary balance of nature that perpetuates human species through competition and the survival of those most fit to survive” (Rodee et al., 1983, p.98). These partly explain why “successful development efforts require appropriate policies at both domestic and international levels” (Khor, 2003, p.1).
The pCW understanding has done little to distinguish political liberalism from economic liberalisation. The contradiction of westernly pressed system in many Third World States (TWSs) is located on how political liberalisation as focused on people and how disguised economic liberalisation is focusing on market freedom rather than people. The dichotomisation of politics and economics of the pCW experienced by many nations has witnessed minimum state economically and maximum quest politically. One may ask why it is necessary to minimise state in the face of global inequality and high poverty rate, most especially in the developing states. Can state successfully balance group interest in this globalised era? Can the fittest survive its contradiction? If yes, does the fittest need state cooperation? Does the fittest need bilateral and multilateral state consensus? On this background this paper is preoccupied with a discourse of current relationship between people and market and its implications for human security with special focus on the TWSs.
1. GLOBALISATION OR WESTERNISATION OF THE INTERNATIONAL SYSTEM?
Being a complex process attained by historical development, the world has been heavily rigged by the Western ideas and philosophy; this process has led to the misconception that pivoted the equalisation of globalisation with westernisation. This western hegemony, however, encourages populist politicians in non-western societies to denounce western cultural imperialism and to rally their public to preserve the survival and integrity of their indigenous culture (Huntington, 1997, p.59). Judging from what they are doing, as opposed to what they are saying, it turns out that their notion of emerging out of economic backwardness amount essentially to westernisation and industrialisation (Ake, 1981, p.139). To this effect the value of propaganda cannot be disputed.
The contradiction of imported liberal democracy has led to the major crisis between politics and economics in the recent time in many TWSs. The wider contradiction between politics and economic power still remains as a source of frustration to both sides (Ake, 1981, p.125). The market freedom led and manipulated by neo-liberal radicals in the West contradict the quest for consolidation of freedom that it intended to internalise in the developing areas. Their growing acceptance of market forces reduces the scope for democratic control over economic policy, and democratic choice in the TW is limited because social democratic alternatives are deemed to be ideologically incorrect (Pinkney, 2004, p.6).
While the post economic crisis is witnessing an infrastructural boom in the developed state, many developing states have been hand-tied down by different prescription that often neglects their peculiar problems. The nature of this new terrain implies that the survival of democracy in TWSs will depend on their ability to muster progress from stagnancy, riches from poverty and development from underdevelopment. Contrary to this, the westernly pressed system has alienated majority of the populace by saping them under the aggressively pursued Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP). This has turned states’ constitution to a glorified story book rather than the working paradigm that pilot people’s will.
While many developing states are losing out of the way to democratic consolidation, the market they intend to pursue is not yet responding to their call. This is compounded by the elite parochialism of how foreign direct investment (FDI) work and Western reluctance to transfer appropriate technological know-how. The neo-liberal apostles are credited with their romantic preaching that set developing state at minimal involvement while developed state are experiencing infrastructural boom. “This great infrastructure boom will create winners and losers. Losers will squander infrastructure spending on corruption and ineptitude. Winners will create powerful new engines of economic growth for generations to come based on the new energy, globally competitive health care, and strong educations” (Garritsen, 2009, p.4).
The crisis between people and market has inspired many anti-globalisation protest and injection of de-legitimisation of its institutions; it tributes to de-globalisation of the international economy. The popularity of this problem spelt out of politicians’ unwillingness to retreat from market. It confers on them Western legitimacy that is being rigged to mean international legitimacy; while it help them locally in their quest for consolidation of political power. Driving by limited state, internalised market freedom in the poor states does not seek to coexist with people’s freedom that is piloted by people’s will.
Democratisation has turned the pCW international democratic crusade to periodic, free, and fair and credible elections, while people’s will beyond this border may be tagged as terrorism and uprising that need to be curbed. In most cases, democratisation process has been reduced to the holding of multiparty elections at the expense of the intrinsic quality of electoral governance in terms of competition, representation, participation, and legitimacy (Omotola, 2008, p.53). “The crux of the matter is that as these garrisoned features are manifested, there is usually limited or no room for redress. Democratic avenues for redress or, better still, oversight institutions such as the legislature, civil society and the judiciary in particular, are also usually victims of the garrison democratic process” (Omotola, 2009b, pp.198-199). The great political sea change may superficially look like the spread of democracy, but it was actually the spread of elections (Collier, 2010:15). We thus have two degrees of gap, between liberal democracy and electoral democracy, and more radically, between liberal democracy and its pale (and in many countries barely discernible) shadow of pseudo-democracy (Diamond, 1997, p.32).
2. STATE IN THE SHADOW OF GLOBALISATION
Globalisation appears to be one of the leading issues often discussed in the 21st century. Its implication seems to be felt in every ramification of life. Its origin has persuaded many writers into historical antecedent of its famous occurrence which has always lay claim and counterclaim among scholars. It activities is unaccountable for in a single text and its expiring date is yet unknown despite many declarations of such. While it serves as the highest blessing that human species has ever sourced for from history, it also acts as the greatest challenge ever encountered, by posing maximum threat to the existence of all existences.
Definition of globalisation offered by any writer appeared to have been shaped by their contact with its elements and the benefit or cost secure under it. There exist four often recognised form of globalisation (cultural, political, technological and economical). The most widely reference is economic globalisation that integrate world finance, trade and allegedly development through growth. It is often taken to mean a process that is synonymous with liberalisation or the opening up of the national markets to the global market (Khor, 2006, p.14). Globalisation is about the universal process or set of processes, which generates a multiplicity of linkages and interconnectivity that transcends the state and the society which make up the modern world system (Ikotun, 2009, p.22). In effect, globalisation denotes a relative denationalisation of the world economy as significant part of economic life becomes organized increasingly on an interregional and multi-continental scale transcending bounded national economic space (McGrew, 2005, p.210). It is reshaping the fixed and firm boundary between domestic and international spheres and changing our conceptions of the proper domain of domestic and international politics and law (Jayasuriya, 1999, p.423). The pCW international economics and politics appear to subsume the neo-liberal ideology and democratisation into centre of the “last man’s” foreign policy. With the end of the CW in the early 1990s, human right diplomacy has become a strong foreign policy tools for victors of that war in spreading liberal democracy and market economy on a global scale (Odion-Akhaine, 2006/2007, p.21). It is brought with it a new phase in the globalisation phenomenon, with a renewed faith in global capitalism as the sine qua non for world poverty and related predicaments (Omotola, 2010, p.104).
Globalisation’s conception in this era has nearly lost its meaning under the honeymoon of pCW’s New World Order (NWO) and the alacrity of uni-polarity that place the world under the “infuriate and fascinate eagle shadow”. But there is nothing inevitable about the continuation of Americanised globalisation; especially since the 9/11 attack altered the faith of some of its most prominent supporters (Hertsgaard, 2003, p.184). Today’s world differs in a fundamental way from one of the classical multipolarity (Haass, 2008, p.45).
State is responsible for the welfare provision and security of its citizens’ life, property, rights and aspirations. Inability to provide these marks its failure. Accordingly, the moral foundation of the state not only relates to its capability to express the common good but also its claim to legitimacy (Osaghae, 1995, p.63). Thus, government and the state are based on utility, on each citizen’s judgment of what is useful to his or her self interest at a particular time and place (Rodee et al., 1983, p.27). The relevance of social contract is premised on this, and state’s success and failure is also ranked in line with this.
For legitimacy purpose, maximum quest is the responsibility of state and its government. It is not equivalent to communism, socialism or any ideological stand, but it denotes a renaissance of human security, in which the intention is not to protect property of unprotected/vulnerable life. In the era of complex interdependency, ability of state to maximise quest, both domestic and international will serve the interest of protecting life and property in the world of increase global vulnerability. This is not in justification of scandalous invasion of Iraq by America all in the name of Homeland security (Gill, 2008, pp.225-7) or the invasion of Georgia by Russia for security and sphere of influence purposes.
Under Washington Consensus (WC) that institutionalised minimum state, states are urged to overlook some of her duties and to delegate much of these to private individuals who know how to manage it better for profit. Duties formerly performed by state were considered limiting the aspiration of its citizens by denying them liberal rights that ought to be universal. Henceforth, welfarism was considered as immoral and socialism as evil. On this note, WC that is recognised as the base of neo-liberal take off, championed privatisation, price liberalisation and removal of subsidies and its correlate.
Security issues continue to move to the hand of private individuals since the end of the CW. Privatising arm factory and emergence of Private Military Firms (PMF) were considered as welcome development (Gumedze, 2011, pp.xii-xv). The continuous depletion of state control of security and the proliferation of mercenaries and terrorists have dragged 21st century to unexpected war of massive scale. In line with Heather Deegan (2009, pp.157-8), these private military organisations (PMOs) “are unlikely to disappear in the near future.” The relevance of minimum state on security can also be read with the proliferation of arm gangs like militarise youths, armed robbers, militias, pirates, terrorists, war lords, drug traffickers and modernised slave trade. Minimal state and unlimited quest dicta have reduced state to a balancer of interests between investment (multinational capital), labour force and hosting community.
For debt reschedule, poor states religiously adhered to Washington controlled of financial directives to liberalise their economy. Instead, the debt has been rolled over and meagre amount of ‘debt relief’ have been ladled out to countries which continue to play by Washington’s rules (Bond, 2003, p.27).
The pCW reality for the “last man” is the globalisation that serves as a model and its mirror along the inconsistency in policy of minimum state with aspiration for maximum quest. The globalisation of the industrial state of the world translated to mean contraction of poor state in the international system under the capitalist revival that aimed at evangelising non-OECD member into mainstream capitalism. There is nothing logical about the shrinking world; while industrial countries are expanding, poor states are constricting. Japan fought World War II for imperial reason, living in a lesser territory now, she is more satisfactory because her control exceed her domestic territory to all part of the world that cherish her products. Concisely the world is not reducing or increasing; what we are having is increase in territory that is vulnerable to simple policy from the core (centre of the world), then we tend to forge false claim that the world is shrinking.
With the emergence of many weak, failed and incompetent states, international system is littered with massive humanitarian intervention with variegated interests (Onyanyo, 2005, pp.20-1). This is compounded by the relevance of states system when they have been sagged by various extra-territorial entities that aggressively challenge domestic and external sovereignty. The relevance of liberal concept of state was once being challenged in case of the TWSs in which pluralism is defined by religion and ethnic differences rather than economic and social grouping that liberal thinkers were familiar with. Sam Egwu (2006, p.415) put this as follow:
However, beyond this, the various accounts of the liberal state are hardly useful in coming to term with the nature of state in backward social formation... In the liberal tradition, the state is assumed to be neutral in relation to the plural groups that compete for power and influence in the political marketplace... The defining element of pluralism are not ethnic and cultural groups as such; rather, pluralism is define in term of social and economic groupings that shape public policy or seek to capture and control state power.
If liberal state and global integration have been under such impression, it is necessary to consider its future and continuous survival in the eon that witness intensification of liberal critiques. While technology makes globalisation unavoidable, its cultural and economic deficit is alarming. On many ground, the death of globalisation has been announced suffocated around 2000. We then slipped into a vacuum -- a period of disorder in which the bus had stopped moving, but the elites hold contrary view (Saul, 2009, p.288).
3. VACUUM OF INGREDIENTS
The shifting attention of people from democratisation to its consolidation propels the very motion that recently attracts attention of political scientists. The experience of the TWSs disclosed the intensification of the new conflict that internationalism engendered without exclusion. The high level of support for democracy in Africa cannot be dismissed as deriving from a vacuous or specious understanding of democracy (Diamond, 2001, p.14).
The vacuum of ingredient propels the crises that reveal poor state inability to foster democratic consolidation in the era of Washington led ultra-liberalism. Democracy as it is presently practiced in the developing states exposed its weaknesses of people’s oriented government by alienating citizens from the real right they ought to enjoy. One can question the right to life in a country where the acclaimed best of their hospitals are not equipped and drugs are not affordable by the national per capital calculus. It seems as if minimum state is only relevant to developed state while developing states ought to pursue maximum quest. But the West appeared to be on the maximum track since the emergence of neo-liberal version of globalisation. The only basic theme of this call is to forge this maximum quest for human security rather than market security. While domestic quest is necessary for a state to secure its position in the international system, international quest is necessary to position and maintain the status quo.
Implementing minimum state in the face of democracy in the TWSs is subjected to academic interrogation. This is because the state incapacity will aid increase in criminal activities and escalation of conflict by furious youths who expect their government to quest for sustainable development. Even in the developed state, that could be considered as the fittest in the state-centric world conception and its private firms that are often referred to as the fittest in the 21st century, cannot survive their contradiction. The fittest bank are been bailed out to extend their survival, the fittest companies need protection from other fittest producers across the world, and the fittest farmer armed with updated inputs rather than mere tools and scientist to forecast the end before the beginning, cannot avoid subsidy (Gore, 2007, p.194). Sabirov (1987) one of the liberal critiques wrote thus: “laissez faire does not promote the survival of the fittest but only ensured the exploitation of the many by the few.”
Because of the unequal diplomatic paddle, developing states have to increase their international quest to secure favourable international environment that can house their security. In the era of minimum state, failed states littered the international system, while those that have managed to surpass their domestic siyasa politics, engage in external diplomatic aggression to dominate others. Coercive diplomacy tends to counteract their interest on the international scene. This has gained new momentum as the pendulum of 21st century swing America to the Middle-East through its War on Terror crusade. Multilateral diplomacy considered as an international avenue to conduct legitimate aggression, regularly witness maximum footing by both developed and modernising states. This left states with lighter diplomatic paddle to bend to the interest of those with ticker one in the international system.
States are more sensitive to their external environment, knowing that actions and occurrence in a distance location does not respect sovereignty and territoriality. Owing to high degree of interdependency in every facet of international relations, there are some elements of sensitivity among the states in the whole system where actions or inactions of a member states affects others (Amusan, 2010, pp.116-7). The international dimension of minimum state in an era of internationalism can be viewed as panorama of encroachment as akin to a man that stays in a closed door while fire is burning around his house. North Korea that is viewed by the West as a closed state is engaging itself with other anti-Western coalition to survive the contradiction of being alone.
The pCW ‘south’ conception is faced with intricacy of common goods provision in order to escape state failure. Under the revival of human security and human rights apostle engine by civil society, who rely on openness of the state borders and disempowerment of Westphalia concept of sovereignty for their security, states are obliged to respond to her citizens and global citizens call, otherwise, global alliance is form for her encroachment behind ‘non-governmental diplomacy’ (Islam & Azam, 2010, p.9).
Minimum state system has created unfavourable environment for democracy. This is more felt by the TWSs’ adjustment from cold to ultra-cold international order. Since the end of the CW, security for majority of the states have increased, while security for the many of the world peoples has declined (Hubert, 2001, p.160). It has shown disfavour for people, most especially the majority-minority. While majority in the developing countries are poor, the political minority that lack access to their government became poorer. Since politics remains the most profitable business, most especially for transiting states, mobilisation and conflict are mainly politicised.
Indeed, the increasing radicalisation and militarisation of the struggle for resource control and the unprecedented emergence of ethnic militias competing with the state over its monopoly on the instruments of force in the area captures the failure of these responses better (Omotola, 2006, pp.4-5). Conflicts of resources control in rural areas in the face of climate change and the environmental degradation that goes with it bring about face-off between herders and crop farmers. This, in most cases degenerated to religious and ethnic conflicts. Minimum states’ failure to nib such from bud aggravates its international dimension, all in the name of limited state paradigm.
In both domestic and international levels, states are expected to be practically involved in the adaptation and mitigation of climate change. While circumscribing green diplomacy; putting pressure on others whereas doing little to gain international economic advantage has become the rule of the game among aggressive capitalist oriented decision makers; whose activities engendered the climate change in the first place. This is why distributive justice is a necessary component of negotiation (Polack, 2008, p.17).
While poor states keep themselves busy with implementation of minimum state, the gap between the rich and the poor people and countries are increasingly widening. Donor states continue to define domestic reform in the south primarily in term of reducing corruption, strengthening the rule of law, and fostering an enabling environment for private sectors (Thomas, 2005, p.338). For a state to develop successfully, governments must provide public services for their citizens and ensure that they live safe from poverty, persecution, exclusion, crime and discrimination (Ibrahim, 2009). The increasing number of unemployed youths and increase urban congestion is alarming; the problem arising from this situation does not respect minimal government but require government to increase its quest.
The liberal assumption that supported the implementation of minimum state exaggerated the transparency incur in the de-politicisation of the economy, claiming that such will limit available resources in the jurisdiction of corrupt government. Walder (2003, p.899) also point this out that “Markets and privatisation have injected new value into public assets and create unprecedented opportunities for elite insiders.” There arises shifting opportunity for corrupt elite in the era of minimum state as they are short of manipulating public corporation for personal gain, they are open to converting such for their clique in the name of privatisation. Championing maximisation of state for the poor and for corrupt state to increase their quest toward public goods and centralise people interest in their pursuit is proper. All anti-human governments are umbrella of corruption and the creation of cynicism (Hertz, 2001, p.252).
The human rights implications of minimum state in the era of maximum quest stress the necessity to question the relevance of social contract. When a state is doing little to trim the interest of aggressive oil driller that turn ecosystem to survival laboratory; where minority are left out in the face of economic and political predominance of the majority; where domestic security policy is pursued in the trust of survival of the fittest; in a situation where unemployed youths are not dignify; and where isolation of foreign policy is embarked on, state tend to be minimum where maximum is require. It was within this global context that it became imperative to rethink the link between development and security concerns, between inter-state and intra-state conflicts, and between the international and domestic spheres (Adetula, 2006, p.387).
4. INTERNALISED BATTLES: DIVIDENDS OF DEMOCRACY VERSUS DIVIDENDS OF DEMOCRATISATION
It is important to know the meaning of concept usage. Dividends are desirable effects and benefits secure as compliment or end gains for policies and decisions. Prior to this, dividends of democratisation have been employed to describe the gains and privileges accrue by the last man from spreading democratic gospel. On the other hand, democratic dividends are gains and benefit expected from people’s government. People’s government is used here, but not as synonymous with people’s friendly government.
Democratisation in the “bottom billon” has been described as a wasted effort; contrarily, others claimed that it reflects future hope, though the present is uncertain. The reason is simple, despite the huge amount of money spent by donors; the result of democratic expectations appeared to be worst than liberal oriented and flexible autocratic regimes. While the hope of regaining democracy for some alleged democratic states in the “bottom billion” still remains tie with hope and faith, the relevance of new democratisation revival is far from expectation under gag competition arising in an awakening new international power bid among the leading world powers coupled with the recent economic recession.
The elite role in balancing the international force and domestic pressure mark the real meaning of globalisation to be a process where everyone is vulnerable to a simple action, under the preponderance of fading distance and borders. This is an attempt that tries to understand the democratic and pCW’s “NWO” expectation and reality. The relevance of this section is press by dichotomy between donors and recipients. While the West led by America -- the predominant actors in the international system -- act as the world donor, many TWSs appear as recipient in the world democratic market. The democratisation crusade brought revival of cultural and political front for globalisation. Though this section looks like a critic of liberal democratisation crusade, it does not represent anti-democratic voice that may be equalised with mainstream critique from Russia, China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea and Venezuela.
The most attracting issue in the recent time is internalised battles that appears and are fought differently across time and space. The internationalisation of last man’s treatise propels and questions the compatibility of the CW dividends and democratic dividends. While the CW dividends brought a “NWO” under America, the hegemonic position is exploited to implement democratisation on the global scale, with reverberating effect of dual expectation measure by accountability. The New World (Dis)Order has made its liberal version to acquire a fairly standardised and universal connotation to the neglect of contextual variables that may impact on it for good or ill (Omotola, 2009a, pp.5-6). “Democracy has won the great ideological struggle of the CW. As a dynamic, coordinated, self-confident international movement, convinced of its moral superiority and inevitable triumph, Marxism-Leninism is, to quote Ken Jowitt, “extinct”” (Diamond, 1991). Then “democracy and its defenders are described as “hegemons” in the marketplace of ideas” (Gilley, 2009, p.114).
Dual accountability expected after the CW represents the belief in the West that state, most especially the TWSs must obey international prescription; while domestic force belief in increase in government accountability and consolidation of their freedom. In the international realm, obeying the last order from Washington and its correlates has been equivalent to accountability and diligent subscription to their rules is considered to be democratic at times. At many times Washington foreign policy are hijacked by economic and security interests and democratisation become second class with negative democratic effect on the TWSs. “In its present form and character, the concept of democracy does very little or nothing to illuminate our understanding of contemporary politics particularly in the African context. Its main attraction seems the advancement of the West in the consolidation of its CW victory, and that of opportunistic African leaders in their quest for power and accumulation of private capital” (Omotola, 2009a, p.6).
This discussion tends to question the suzerainty of the last man, not for question sake, but for the fact that its decline is obvious. The declining popularity of minimum state and the revival of maximum quest mark the general conceptual depletion of the “NWO” built on this foundation. Once again, the vulnerability of even the richest and most powerful civilization stood revealed, and survivors were engulfed by grief, fear, and bewilderment (Hertsgaard, 2003, p.190). Internalised battle arises because democratisation awaking democratic element in autocratic second and TWSs; but consolidation stage has been hindered by various arm-twisting diplomacy that dominate the larger face of the international system.
To understand this intention, it is necessary to consider motivation and intention behind democratisation. Why would a nation be interested in interfering in the domestic affairs of other state that are vibrant and coherent rather than fail, if not gear by her national interest that is conceptualized by personal gain? It is clear that democratisation is an effort that champion democratic internationalism; this is a bid for what was known to be soft power. “R. Keohane and J. Nye (Saddiki, 2006, p.98) state that “soft power can rest on appeal of one’s ideas or culture or the ability to set the agenda through standards and institutions that shape the references on others. It depends largely on the persuasiveness of the free information that an actor seeks to transmit.” This soft invasion of the international system under democratisation banner has been propelled by democratic peace dreamers. This is based on the assumption that democratic states tend to act peacefully toward each other due to their culture of peace, institutional and general domestic constrain that make war a case that need popular ratification by citizens rather than an obnoxious policy by some clique of dictators. The implication of this for consolidation of NWO is based on the notion that democracy will increase sense of belonging of people across the world. Revolution and civil war will become less appealing, since chance will be opened to influence government through periodic elections. Inter-state war will be checked, on the note which surviving superpower’s foreign policy will only focus on how to avoid shift in regional balance of power to avoid loss of her global position. The peace-promoting benefits of democracy have become one of the fundamental certainties of the world policy, indeed, perhaps one of the few unifying beliefs across the political spectrum (Collier, 2010, p.19).
In practical terms democratic peace theory provides the intellectual justification for the belief that spreading democracy abroad will perform the dual task of enhancing American national security and promoting world peace (Rosato, 2003, p.585). On this ground, the “last man”s’ system and the CW victory can be consolidated. The dividends of spreading democracy (democratisation) for the CW victor are the increase in her national security and subsequently the consolidation of their victory. This logic will be understood if one considers how maintenance of friendly authoritarian regimes is sustaining and how unfriendly democratic regimes are disposed to suit Washington decision makers. On this ground it is necessary to consider domestic motivation and implication of democracy that were internalised by democratisation effort.
Many recipient nations have been motivated to liberalise under the twin political and economic wave that were aggressively pursued but selectively implemented (most especially political liberalisation). Underdeveloped states that have not been crowned like the Asian Tiger that confidently boost of their movement from “third world to the first”; under their aspiration to increase their country’s fortune stiffly implement adjustment package and find less option when crisis befall them. The universal-particular dichotomy is also a reflection of internalised battle. Internally, democratic recipient are ideologically perceived by the West to be corded by its institution that are copied from the two dominant modellers, the American presidential system and British parliamentary system of governments. As it has been widely celebrated at a reception, it appears that many democratic recipients are losing out of their way to what they once considered as the holy land. Democracy once a hot-cake appears to be sundered from the expectation.
Democratic consolidation is the process by which democracy becomes so broadly and profoundly legitimate among its citizens and that it is very unlikely to breakdown. Dividend of democracy is the sum total gains that democratic citizens can directly attribute to the process of governance in their state. If democracy is sensitive to poverty and riches, peace and war, stability and instability, it is imperative to recall that democratic survival is based on its ability to turn war zone to market attracting area. Poverty, war and instability are antithetical to democratic consolidation. Democracy should thus deliver a double whammy against political violence: there is less objective base for grievance, and for any given grievance it should be harder to persuade people to result to violence against the government (Collier, 2010, p.19).
Struggle for democratic consolidation in the recipient domain has been frustrated by domestic force which is also been externally frustrated. Western powers that always appears as messiah for the TW freedom is not trustworthy under their international economic relations that are aggressively pursued. Permitting the citizens of one country to violate the laws of another on the ground that it is “how they do business there,” corrodes international legal standard that otherwise benefit multinational corporations (Wrage & Vega, 2008). Western powers continue to proclaim their belief in democracy, yet their own practice of democracy has not always provided a model that is conducive to democratic consolidation in the TWSs (Pinkney, 2004, p.6).
On these bases, democratic peace theory can be questioned if democratic process in the developed democracy can translate to mean democratic crisis for developing state. Then one could guess two possibilities. It is either democratic foundation in developed democracy is faulty or there is clash of democracy. In a contradiction of the world mystery and uncertainty, where all things appear to be variable rather than constant, how can we fit in?
5. CONCLUSION: FIT INTO THE GLOBALISED WORLD
In the era that witness rapid border brokenness, in which distance are shortened and problems become increasingly common, possible solution for some part of the world may translate to possible problem for some others. The “need to gain awareness and control over multi-level sources of vulnerability and insecurity led to the development of institutions geared towards comprehensive resource management. The global commons increasingly unfolded to be seen as public spaces to be monitored, measured, administrated, and regulated” (Mika et al., 2011, p.11).
The panorama of globalised world is confusing, the fitness of an actor cannot be globally prescribed though it can be globally determined and measured. While there is possibility for all to be fitted, it is not possible for all to be the fittest. Then if the rule of ‘survival of the fittest’ is to be applied, few are bound to survive at extinction or peril of many. Then this game will be played in total or partial neglect of human security cost and the humanitarian effect will continue to be toiling. On this note it becomes necessary to arrange and rearrange the world to be accommodative and complimentary in order to fit into it. While at the domestic level, “the responsibility lies squarely with governments to properly align the states with the values of the people which retain a high moral content (Osaghae, 1995, p.76).
States is not designed to champion individual aspiration neither does it existence stand to eliminate such. State is by nature born to balance society against individual and the vice versa. While it is claimed that in the very first stage in human life id is selfishly use, ego is diluted with some morality and super-ego, the embodiment of morality; human organisation is different depending on the nature and the business realm, it forever remain selfish. In a state dominated by the selfish class, the state will be selfish and the capability of such state to balance will be compromised and subverted. Then democracy arises, as pendulum of measuring the balance between selfish dominator and helpless dominion. They are helpless rather than selfless because their capability to be selfish is only weak rather than absent. Fitting into globalised world implies increase in poor state share of the global booty, which is indirectly calling for decrease in fittest share. Thinking that proportional increase could be achieved will not fully satisfy unfit side that intends to close the gap between her and the fit.
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