(Page 1 of 26) - Economic Inequality, Environmental Quality, and International Development authored by Bryner, Gary.

Economic Inequality, Environmental Quality, and Globalization

Gary Bryner

Paper to be presented at the Annual Meeting of the

American Political Science Association, Chicago, September 2004

DRAFT

Introduction

The globalization of markets and trade has been widely heralded for producing a host of

benefits, including dramatic economic growth, the spread of new technologies, the expansion of
individual freedom and recognition of human rights, increased flow of information, and an
increase in democratic politics and government. Globalization is defined many different ways,
but a simple working definition is the process of integrating more and more of the world’s
population in a network of economic, information, and cultural exchange. Globalization
confirms Adam Smith’s promise that an economy, if left alone, will produce the greatest wealth
of nations. But globalization also suggests that Karl Marx was right as well: every system of
power develops its own ideology to guide and rationalize the governmental policies that sustain
the system.

At the beginning of the 19

century, Alexis de Tocqueville argued that a new

science of politics is needed for the new world that he saw unfolding in America. Progressives
early in the 20

century struggled to define a new politics to counter the growth of national

economic power.

The globalization of the early 21

century poses a similar challenge: as

economic power grows globally, what kinds of political ideas and institutions are required to
deal with the consequences of that growth?

While globalization is a profoundly powerful movement, it is not inevitable. Proponents

of globalization champion the idea of the end of ideology to promote an uncritical embrace of
markets, “free” trade, powerful multinational corporations largely unregulated by public
authority, and unrestrained technological innovation. Nations are no longer divided into the first,
second, third worlds and beyond, but are described in a continuum of developing to developed
countries. Globalization advocates suggest that consensus has replaced debate over the nature
and distribution of economic and political power that is at the heart of ideology. The result is,
proponents claim, the end of ideology. For Francis Fukuyama in the 1990s, it meant total
victory for liberal democracy, markets, consumerism, technological progress, and limited
government regulation. Globalization is trumpeted as signaling the end of ideological debate,
replaced by universal values of rational self-interest.

But the end of ideology is not a new

claim. For Daniel Bell in the 1950s, the end of ideology meant the rise of rational, moderate,
pragmatic synthesis of capitalism and socialism.

As powerful a movement as globalization is, globalization is nevertheless a contested

ideology, contested by protesters who believe global trade accords favor the interests of wealthy
nations and multinational corporations, challenged by those who believe that it is not an
objective, natural, inevitable result of evolutionary forces beyond human control but is the
consequence of the exercise of political power. The ability of critics to keep their challenge to
globalization alive is uncertain, given the power of the interests benefiting from globalization.
Historically, globalization has not been an irreversible force. The late 18

and early 19

century