The author is a historian, sociologist, writer, teacher at the University of Quebec at Chicoutimi in the history, sociology, anthropology, political science and international cooperation programs, and holder of the Canada Research Chair on collective imaginations.
We now realize better the excess of optimism and even the utopia that accompanied the rise of globalization and neoliberalism a few decades ago. In the first case, it was a question of extending to the planet the governance of societies that had become too cramped within the supposedly outdated framework of the nation.
A great breath of planetary air would free them from this straitjacket and relaunch their development. He also urged the globalization of institutions that had hitherto operated on a “local” scale. They would find a breeding ground to flourish by possibly merging into a great alliance and, why not, solidarity. Finally, each society would be enriched by the very intense movement of humans and cultures across the planet.
The shock of reality
Today, what do we see? Instead of the premises of a world “order”, we see a great disorder. Just look at the United Nations (UN), an organization in constant loss of authority. Member countries ignore its resolutions, others use their right of veto as an instrument of obstruction. The most delinquent (Israel, for example) laugh at his repeated convictions.
Its mode of operation creates tragicomic situations: Syria accedes to the Human Rights Forum on the very day when the UN considers that this country could be guilty of genocide; Iran sits on the Commission on the Status of Women, and others. Observers denounce its chaotic management, its inability to reform itself and the corruption of its executives. It has also been called a “minefield”. Is this the institution that was to prefigure the world government?
A rat race
The global sphere is more like a basket of crabs than an august assembly of states. It was believed for a moment that the maximum opening of the markets would bring the actors together to make them partners, would establish a community of interests and a salutary interdependence, sources of discipline and peace. Many assured that this union would be the bridge through which the great universal values, including freedom and democracy, would spread.
The designers of this grandiose estimate had apparently reckoned without the cheaters, the ineradicable practices of corruption, the illegal trafficking, the flight of tax havens, the new forms of slavery, the age-old enmities between “partners”, the recent emergence of new dictatorships and so-called authoritarian democracies, the destruction of the environment, the growing nuclear danger, the hardening of old despotisms (they had to soften…). Add to this list the sinister circus of climate summits where everyone fakes for the gallery and, back home, forgets their promises. I know, this portrait could be taken from a CEGEP text. But who will dispute its accuracy?
How, then, can a global democracy be constituted? How to imagine the institution of the minimum of solidarity, identity and friendship that would be necessary for it? How to recreate the proximity that the nation-state perpetuates between the government and its constituents, from which comes the possibility of acting on decision-making centres? And how, on a planetary scale, can real and lasting consensus be built?
It took a pandemic to confront us with these realities. The pandemic and a few rather unfortunate episodes, such as the cavalier reconquest of Hong Kong and the barbaric invasion of Ukraine (soon Taiwan?). There is also the disturbing clash of covetousness around the Arctic, that other El Dorado about to be plundered.
Free cultural circulation
Here we are far from the vision of a mutual enrichment and a salutary compression of national cultures according to intense flows of noble ideas and encounters between sensitivities. Here again, the promising opening up to continental winds disappointed expectations. Almost everywhere we have seen mistrust, resistance and various forms of protectionism arise. These barriers and others have slowed the movement and integration of immigrants almost everywhere. Even the Scandinavian nations, reputed to be so virtuous, show their share of xenophobia.
The obstacles, however, are not found only on the side of the host societies. It happens that harmful fundamentalisms carried by newcomers compromise the hoped-for scenario.
These remarks do not mean to deny the share of success of cultural globalization, which remains substantial, particularly in terms of science, the arts and letters. They simply want to remind us that the dream of the fruitful interpenetration of cultures has a lot to do with reality. All in all, realism invites us to rediscover the strengths of the nation-state and to think afresh about its future. Because it seems that the national framework as a democratic place still has many years ahead of it. Resting on a background of dreams, memory and solidarity developed over a long period and hardened by hardship, it will be difficult to replace.
For all these reasons, the idea of a world government is more than premature.
The dark side of the nation-state
Let’s come back to the state, this time to highlight its failings. Because realism also invites to become aware of its softness, its withdrawals and its responsibility in the failures mentioned above. Because it is indeed the States themselves, as primary actors on the world stage, which are, ultimately, the main offenders. Would we therefore be in a cul-de-sac?
If there is a solution, it lies at the very basis of the nation: the growing awareness of citizens, firm and even aggressive pressure on decision-makers through persistent and combined commitments on a planetary scale, driven by growing impatience and worry — might I add: by a sense of exasperation, frustration, anger?
In short, and somewhat paradoxically: a global action but thought out and supported by the primary actors, ie a new form of globalization. Is this another utopia?