Lack of Trust in the Global Jungle (Intro)

Working to understand and improve political economy has never been easy, and even now, with all the positive effects of globalization, there are a number of difficult hurdles to overcome – improving living standards in the developing countries, transcending the political barriers in favor of open markets (if that is the current goal for further development) – and many others that also depend on the perspective of the speaker. Defining the priorities is surely the key to successful globalization process, but who do you identify as the “leading actors” in the process? This is probably the more important question, because it affects the answers to all others. For example, if G8 are those “actors” then perhaps the challenge is to overcome the global financial crisis, and to establish the accepted free-market system in the developing part of the world. If, however, we take a different perspective and choose the developing countries as the defining element (be it the BRIC countries, or even the less-developed Africa), the challenges may be different, if not directly opposite, like to win back the freedom to decide how the economical and political system should work, or how to establish symmetric beneficial relationships with the bigger economic and political powers. All of these are, however, but examples of specific problems; a general question like this should have a more general answer. That answer would be the lack of trust between the players in the international relations.

Whether one takes a “pro-globalization” view that there is too little of it, or the “anti-globalization” view that it is poorly managed, the lack of trust and constant verbal skirmishes between different thinkers and governments. If anything, Stiglitz is the most correct out of them all, at least in that it is political mismanagement and not economic miscalculations that can and will cause problems. Poor decisions come from violent disagreements, and people tend to disagree when there is lack of trust – the developed countries patronizing the developing ones because the first don’t trust the second to make the right decisions, and create unstable, unfitting systems as a result (some African countries, CEE, Middle East all serve as great examples); EU facing its ‘fatigue’ period because it is crumbling under the weight of all the lengthy, incomprehensible laws and provisions that arise because the politicians cannot find a common ground; millions spent on military and security rather than used towards well-being and development of the people because governments do not trust each other, etc. One could write a book just listing all the examples, but these few are enough to show that promoting open dialogue and increasing transparency in the international relationships still stands as the biggest challenge, as well as a key to success of globalization or any other program. As the recent economic crisis has proven, the “rich” countries are not always right, and perhaps need to learn to listen to other opinions, not only preach their own doctrine for world development and prosperity. The problem is that most political actors like to avoid the topic, and much less do anything to solve the problem. I am sure the world could only get better when we start cutting down the political “jungle” of IR, and many will be surprised about how much we can improve.