Strategic change of direction required towards social

advertisement
Strategic change of direction required towards social and sustainable
globalization
After far-reaching cutbacks and a major shift in the mandate in favour of the Netherlands’
economic interests, Dutch development aid seems to be on its last legs. The relief troops have lost
their way and are unable to mount a forceful counter-attack. Yet there is a dire need for a strategic
change of direction towards social and sustainable globalization.
In the past three decades, in the wake of economic globalization, income inequality in the world –
both within and between countries – has increased considerably. In that time, a series of crossborder problems have also become more urgent, problems that cry out for a resolute response from
the ‘international community’. They relate to environment and climate, the scarcity of resources,
energy and food, migration flows, transnational crime and terror, distribution issues, and a global
financial system that is eroding itself from within.
Politicians – not only in the Netherlands, but in general – still widely live in the blissful delusion of the
‘end of history’: the course of economic, political and social development is more or less fixed, it is
simply a matter of finding the right technical adjustments and applications to ease the road to
progress. Even when the disastrous financial crisis finally also made itself felt in the heart of Europe
and the US in 2008 (earlier crises had already struck hard in other parts of the world), that belief was
never seriously shaken. The tectonic fractures in the financial and economic system were patched up
with sticking plaster and disguised cosmetically, but there was no attempt to devise a well thought
out alternative ‘grand narrative’.
And yet, this is a time to think again about the how the ‘big issues’ are interconnected. The world is
changing at breakneck speed and no one knows in which direction it is moving. Every year, we parrot
all the talk around yet another hype, from the economic threat of emerging powers (Oh wait, their
growth is levelling out because it is partly related to money creation in the US), via hopeful
democratic movements in the Middle East and North Africa (Oh wait, they’ve turned out to be
conservative fundamentalists who have mobilized the masses behind them), to the internet as the
bringer of freedom, democracy and enlightenment (Oh wait, it has proved to be the perfect vehicle
for a wide variety of ‘Big Brothers’).
We have to be aware that we are in a global political and economic vacuum, a transition period in
which no one knows exactly where it will end. We should start to think profoundly about where we
have come from: what are the causes of the problems we are now facing? On the basis of what
promises have we signed up for the current architecture of globalization, and is it not time to
acknowledge that important promises have not been kept?
We also need to find a convincing answer to the question of how the Netherlands should relate to
the current architecture of globalization, to persistent need and scarcity. In the search for a new,
comprehensive political programme, a number of trends in current Dutch development policy can
offer points of entry, such as a more economic approach to poverty and inequality, increasing
attention for the political dimensions of development, and the first steps towards a policy focused on
global public goods.
First of all, Dutch politicians too seem to have finally become aware that international economic
relations and the opportunities available to the world’s poor are interconnected. The current
government has, after all, chosen to link aid and trade under a single ministry. That brings policy
coherence – so long advocated and so urgently necessary – closer but, for the time being at least, it
tends to lean more towards the Netherlands’ economic interests than serve the goals of
development cooperation. If you follow the flow of funding in development policy – mostly a better
indicator than white papers and speeches that simply churn out politically correct concepts – you will
see a shift of hundreds of millions of euros from civil society organizations to programmes that focus
on the private sector.
There are also a number of positive trends in social and economic debates in the Netherlands.
Greater attention is being paid to income inequality. And there is an embryonic awareness that
economic growth does not automatically ‘trickle down’, as neoliberal economic theory has been
promising us for several decades. The term ‘inclusive growth’ is a recurring theme in the policy
documents of foreign trade and development cooperation minister Lilianne Ploumen, implying that
we need to move towards another form of growth. Corporate social responsibility is still on the
agenda, but has run aground in voluntary codes of conduct and ‘covenants’, though the minister
continues to keep the issue alive by, for example, openly criticizing working conditions in countries
like Bangladesh. Although it is one of Ploumen’s goals, the badly needed promotion of small and
medium sized enterprises in poor countries is frustrated by a coalition partner that would rather see
the fund set up for this purpose being used to support Dutch SMEs.
The second trend can be summed up as the ‘politicization of development’. In her policy, the minister
places greater emphasis on the ‘watchdog’ function of development organizations. They should focus
less on direct service provision in the South and more on lobby and advocacy: critically monitoring
governments and businesses and ensuring that they ‘deliver’ to their citizens and customers. A
promising trend which emphasizes the inherent political character of development is that it is not
about technical progress and money, or capacity development to improve governance, but about
power issues and distribution. Increased attention to a number of issues – including the functioning
of tax systems (and the related legitimacy of the tax collector), an independent and critical media,
respect for human rights, support for social and democratic movements and internet freedom – all fit
within this trend. A separate category is greater attention to the empowerment of women, in which
minister Ploumen is playing a prominent role.
This policy agenda seems, for the time being at least, to focus on democratization and influencing
policy in the South and on monitoring incompetent and corrupt elites. But we need a social
opposition here, too, to force political change: after all, income inequality is also increasing in Europe
and, even more so, in the United States, and the reasons for that lie equally in the architecture of
globalization that we have created. They are the consequence of an economic model that has not
just ‘happened’ to us because of some unavoidable law of economics, but has been intentionally
chosen as a basic principle of policy. In the past three decades, economic power has become
enormously concentrated worldwide. There is an urgent need for watchdogs here, too; in The Hague,
Brussels and Washington, a relatively small financial, economic and political elite has a
disproportionate influence in the setting the rules of globalization.
A third, less explored and therefore more difficult to navigate (but also innovative and promising)
area in that of global public goods. Traditional GPGs refer to climate, the oceans and other issues
that cannot be understood or regulated within national borders and where long-term, shared public
interests can sometimes clash with the pursuit of short-term private gain by economic or political
actors. This would also appear to apply to the architecture of the global economic system, with
growing wealth– together with rising inequality within and between countries – and increasing
scarcity in the face of a swelling world population. Another policy area that is acquiring an
increasingly cross-border nature is security: the most recent example of Mali shows once again that
conflicts can no longer be solved with a limited (military) focus on a single country, but are closely
related to developments elsewhere, in this case in the Sahel as a whole, West and North Africa, and
further afield.
Global public goods, the global financial and economic system and international security can only be
served by a principled shift towards social and sustainable globalization, and by operating
strategically in a complex world in which a wide variety of economic and geopolitical interests are
intermeshed. This requires accurate analysis of mutual interrelationships, independent and critical
exchange of knowledge, a political standpoint on the architecture of globalization, and systematic
monitoring of the various positions in that international game in order to identify like-minded players
and potential allies. We simply do not possess the capacity for such strategic analyses – which go
further than merely military intelligence – in the Netherlands and the need for it is hardly recognized.
In the coming period, steps will have to be taken towards social and sustainable globalization, in a
form that combines all the ingredients described above in a logical whole. If that is successful, it can
and must go far beyond development cooperation: it must be the foreign affairs component of a
government-wide policy that makes the Netherlands, Europe and the rest of the world more just and
sustainable and which is explicitly aimed at the strategic promotion of global arrangements which
include the international economic and financial system. That means not more, but different,
globalization, in other words globalization that makes it possible to regain ground on the ‘markets’,
with more national policy space to offer not only an upper layer, but the population as a whole, the
possibility of a life of human dignity.
Such a fundamental policy change can only be achieved by a visionary policy. You cannot expect a
ministry of foreign affairs to reform itself to the far-reaching extent that is required. What can help is
if there is pressure to pursue these reforms from wider Dutch society. Whether the development
sector – together with environmental and human rights organizations that have also lost their way –
succeeds in reinventing itself and initiating an intellectual and political offensive will quickly become
clear. They will only achieve that if they can develop an integrated narrative together with more civil
society organizations and sectors that operate on the domestic front. But let us above all give them
the benefit of the doubt – who else can we expect to devote attention to those who are defenceless
beyond our national borders?
Download