The changing faces of global discontent.

(Op ed for El Mercurio)
Lourdes Sola
President IPSA
Global discontent, like “globalization,” has many faces (economic, ecological, social and political) and also shifts greatly over time in character and scope. It manifests itself in a number of unique ways depending on what global processes we target, observe, or conceptualize. As a result, highlighting the impact of unregulated globalizing capital on the world system brings to light a form of global discontent, and a deficit in global governance, that is quite distinct from that manifested with regard to ecological challenges, drugs and arms trafficking, immigration, violence and collective security, or even the influenza pandemic.
Each process or set of processes brings to light dilemmas and analytical challenges that must be clearly specified at various levels. For one, the density of the interconnections and linkages that connect states, individual societies and regions varies according to the global process at stake. Second, increasing interdependence and cross-border relationships affect and are affected by the pace at which changes take place within individual societies and regions. Third, the distributive dimensions of global processes are often ambiguous, contradictory, and not easily identifiable through the lens of a changing global order.
The Congress’ Main Theme was chosen at the very beginning of 2007.
Before the 2008-09 global crisis hit, major changes in political geography and ongoing shifts in the axis of global economic power were already bringing two developments to our attention. On the one hand, the ways in which emerging countries were being integrated into the increasingly unstable world system suggested that there were important differences between them as winners and losers in the process of integration with world markets. Developments in countries as different as China, India, Brazil, Turkey , Chile as well as the greater resilience of Latin American countries in general, proved that the distributive dimension of the process of integration is far more complex than its critics would have it. On the other hand, such power shifts also highlighted the fact that the strategic decisions taken by individual countries such as China, for instance, did not necessarily follow the script anticipated by Western-style , Post-Cold War universalist optimism. Eighteen years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, evidence that pluralist democracy based on the rule of law does not necessarily go hand in hand with integration in the global market economy poses a clear challenge to scholars.
Other new challenges have arisen out of similar shifts over the last decade. How can we evaluate the unprecedented social inclusion of six hundred million consumers, in a process that is inseparable from the global process of integration of emerging economies into the world markets? Because countries like China, India, Brazil, Ireland, Turkey and Chile opened their economies at different paces, followed quite distinct political and economic strategies, and did so under different political regimes, a context-specific explanation is required but is insufficient by itself. A major paradox of the change that took place up until 2008 is that even as 50 million new people joined the global middle class annually (70% of which came from China and India), economic globalization coexisted with the persistence of a stubborn “bottom billion” of the global population below the poverty line.
The current global crisis is in many ways a new turning point. It highlights that the changing faces of global discontent tend to converge towards a quintessentially political question – that of global order. It poses two additional challenges to our community of political scientists. For one, the urgent need to identify the processes that favor and facilitate the political and legal mediation of conflicts of interests as well as of value-systems at the global level. Second, in this 20th Anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, it puts to test our moral capacity to cope analytically with the uncertainties of a world that is only partially globalized when seen through the lens of the existing global order – and of the international democratic legislator.
IPSA owes much to Ilter Turan, the Program Chair for the Congress, who devoted most of his time and of much-appreciated diplomatic skills to make the Congress happen and become an intellectual success. The engagement of the Local Organizing Committee, as well as the support of the Chilean authorities and of the national business community, deserve much credit and our gratitude for helping IPSA to establish ever-deeper and stouter roots in Latin America. They have become new partners in our long-standing effort to consolidate IPSA’s role as a global player in the profession.
I am honored and happy to welcome you to IPSA in Santiago, and wish you an intellectually fruitful interaction with our colleagues from all over the world, while enjoying your stay in Chile and the hospitality of our Chilean colleagues.

06-10-2009