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National Research University - Higher School of Economics Public Policy Department The Global actors course Essay «The Group of Twenty (G8/G20) as a global actor» Natalia Zvyagina, public policy department, HSE checked Galina Petrenko and Nina Belaeva public policy department, HSE Moscow 2011 Globalization of the economy has changed the political face of the world. There were trans-national corporations and structures among the leading decisionmakers on the global level. The modern world depend on economical system and financial bodies in any way. Their power was based on the interests of big business and global market (World Trade Organization, World Monetary Fund, International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, etc.). One of this institutions is G8/20. Activists of counter-summits, which held during the meetings of these organizations, evaluate skeptical legitimacy of this institutions. They asked: “Who authorized the informal club of few heads of economically developed countries to make decisions aboute lives of people in all the world each year?” Many nation-state and interstate associations often are less resources and influence than the new global players. Global public opinion community reacted to this change. Today, there is reason for to say that the old antagonistic pair (state and society) was replaced by new global triangle: state - society – business. General information about G8\G20: why global? The Group of Eight (or Group of Twenty) is a forum for the head of governments of major economies. Originally the group included seven countries: France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, United States (1975), and the Canada (1976). Russia joined the group in 1997, thus becoming the G8. During the financial and economic crisis that spread across the globe in 2008, the G8 transformes to G20. The following countries were added: Australia, Argentina, Brazil, India, Indonesia, China, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, South Africa, Republic of Korea. G20 members were called upon to further strengthen international cooperation. The scale of the organization became truly global. G20 declares that its goal “to balance membership of developed and developing countries helped the world deal effectively with the financial and economic crisis''. Collectively, the G8 nations comprised «53.0% of global nominal GDP and 42.5% of global GDP (PPP)»1 and G20 states contribute to «84.1% and 82.2% of the world's economic growth by nominal GDP and GDP (PPP)». G20 influent on the basis of the existing financial system and actually governs the world. Formally, the G20 is not so much an concrete actor as a format for regular meetings for presidents (who meet annually) and finance ministers and national Central Bank Governors (who meet four times a year), foreign ministers and environment ministers of member states. Priority issues for G20 are energy security, struggle against international terrorism, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, international trade, financing for development and other important topics for international community. The main questions on the G20 summit are financial questions. G8\G20 as a public policy actor G20 is one of the most important global actors, because only this global institution is a global political body. Other new global institutions focus on economical issue mostly. G20 is a platform for the connecting with the representatives of national governments. Government of G8 member-state have democratic regime. People in these countries can influent on the government at national level. And citizens would use this possibility in sphere of international relations to. G8\G20 must be transparent and accountable to citizens. Although This is not always possible in reality. If we presented the global community as a thre-esector model, than G20 we put in the governmental sector. Other international financial bodies is more closed structure. It is possible because the key stakeholders are businessman in it. They fink as businessman. Commercial secret is important values for them. To be opened is not effectively for them as in business. We can say the most part of international financial bodies is the organizations from business-sector. For examples, International Monetary 1 The official G-20 website - http://www.g20.org/about_what_is_g20.aspx — 2011 Fund (IMF), the World Bank (WB), the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the World Trade Organization (WTO) and free trade treaties like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) have probusiness goals in the first place. Business sector is most strong at the global level. But modern society study to influent on it. The best example of this is social reporting of transnational corporations and development of corporate citizenship. G20 as a global actor communicates with society too. For examples, changing of number of members-states is the result of influence of public opinion and antiglobalists's criticism as well . Global public sector Global civil society and G8\G20 As the twenty-first century begins, major new global political challenges changed the civil society. Different civil movement united for to observe and evaluate the new global institution. The international activists are especially opposed to "globalization abuse" and the international institutions that promote neoliberalism without regard to ethical standards. They opposed to reduction of public-sector regulation as well. J. Keane is one of best researchers of civil society phenomenon on the global level. He is founder of the Centre for the Study of Democracy and Professor of Politics at the University of Westminster. He said: "Global civil society is a neologism of the 1990s. It is a big idea with a radical difference. When used by its friends as an ethical standard, it champions the political vision of a world founded on non-violent, legally sanctioned power-sharing arrangements among many different and interconnected forms of socio-economic life that are distinct from governmental institutions. The pluralist ideal of a global civil society openly challenges previous big ideas"2 Many researchers often equate Global civil society and the anti-globalization movement. Anti-globalist is definition of different communities, united under a single and new for the world's slogans: "Against the power of corporations" and "Peace is not a commodity!". These slogans reflect the disagreement of many social movements with the power of the new financial elite. Anti-globalization movement transformed dramatically for the last 10 years. Big parts of it begun the climatic movement. Many organizations continue to work with its traditional topics but only on global levels. However a broad public debate on globalization created a new level of public spheres. Global public spheres have begun to influent on world d i p l o ma c y a n d g l o b a l b u s i n e s s . The authors of the review «Global Civil Society»3 providing 4 main groups within the global civil society: 1. "Supports" - supporters of the neo-liberal globalization scenario; 2. "Reformist" - a group for democratic improvement of the existing global system, this group often act through practical activities, and not through the instruments of pressure; 3. "Alternative" – this groups promote a another model of globalization designed to solve or provoked by the highlighted its environmental, political and cultural issues; 4. "Isolationist" - mainly anti-capitalist groups and left-radical and anarchist, these groups promote a global model of its political system, for examples, anarchists or trockists. Different public groups from this classification work with the G8\G20. Supporters can participate in the CivilG8. The consultations with NGOs have become a tradition of the preparatory stage of G8 summits. The main aim of such 2 3 Keane J. Global Civil Society? – in: Global Civil Society 2001, Oxford, 2003. Global Civil Society - 2003, p.69. consultations is to clarify the civil society position on priority issues determined by the presiding country. For examples, this event was organized during summit in Russia in 2006. At the NGO initiative there was created National Working Group with Ella Pamfilova as its coordinator. “The main aim of the nongovernmental organizations who launched this "Civil G8-2006" project is to preserve the most positive, achieved during the previous years in the sphere of interaction with the Group of Eight (G8) and to try to put this interaction to a new level. The "Civil G82006" is meant for discussion of the issues on the agenda of the G8 Summit by the civil society organizations' representatives from various countries as well as by those interested from business and governmental spheres”4. Alternative and isolationist groups participate in contra summit annual. Opponents of the G20 G8\20 summits is a cause for the most massive and most radical protests in many countries. The government made a political decision to spend millions of dollars to security of a meeting of leaders of member countries. The conflict between the G8\20 and the society reflects the division of spheres of public and private law, public policy and the commercial world and commercial decision-making practice. G20 is a political institute that should control the business as citizens believe. Today, business corporations have opportunities comparable with the power of the state (private research centers, private armies, internal corporate intelligence etc.). «Amnesty International» says in its annual reports that multinational corporations are the source of human rights violations as well as the state. Regular dependence is the raise of demands of the citizens to the business organization. This political demands: "Transparency and accountability!". There are 3 main reasons for active protest again G8\G20 summit. Each reason are is the concrete problem. 4 http://civilg8.ru/ Anti-globalists activists protest against illegitimacy of the new global political institutions. G20 is illegitimacy. Presidents do not agree on solutions before G20. The social movements can not influence on the agenda of the G8 rapidly. For example, activists required including the problem of renewable energy to the G8 agenda during 10 years; at the same time the oil lobby blocked this topic. Presidents of member-state countries are not accountable before citizens for their decisions taken at the Summits. This is the first problem. The second problem is the high cost of summits. Summits was organized in expensive resorts. German summit passed in the Hailigendamme Resort in 2007 on the Baltic Sea. During the Italian summit-2009 presidents lived on Sardinia. All island was closed for them. Many activists think that the summit is a holiday for Presidents paid from the budget. The cost of the russian summit-2006 was more in 400% then budget for social sphere in the Sankt-Petersburg where summit hald. One of the goals of anti-summit participators to show for people and for authority that G8\G20 events is not profit for them. German activists blocked the summit at all. It was a grate victory of the anti-G8 movement. Protection and security measures are expensive to. Police represses the political activists from the radical organizations. The kinds of violence that protesters have experienced, such as the pre-dawn raids, the strip-searches, the surveillance, and pre-sentence incarceration happen all the time. This is a political prosecution. In 2010 the Canadian state's strategy after the G20 has been to cast a wide net over those who mobilized against the summit (over 1, 000 detained and over 300 charged in Toronto, for examples) and then to single out those they perceived to be leaders. Police repressions provoke new protests. And It is a third problem. Protest movement has powerful not from the legal system, but from making decisions collectively. It reflect the goals of activists. And new actions prove it. . The continuation of development of resistance to corporate power and is a movement occupy Wall Street. It (#OCCUPYWALLSTREET) is a leaderless people powered «movement for democracy that began in America on September with an encampment in the financial district of New York City. Inspired by the Egyptian Tahrir Square uprising and the Spanish acampadas, we vow to end the monied corruption of our democracy»5. This movement was coordinated throw social networks (facebook and twitter). One of the causes of this protest is a low level of publicity of financial institutions. This is a logical continuation of the activities initiated by anti-globalists. Conclusions G20 is a global actor. It is the institution of global public spheres. G20 include inter-sectoral communication. This is the most perspective platform for interaction between global business, global society and the global authorities at the international level. Global civil society support for democratic principles and values of public participation in decision making. Global civil society requires publicity of new global players - trans-national corporations and their institutions. Global civil society makes public what have existed and developed under the cover of Private Law. Tools of the global transparency help to develop the global civil control for this: the Internet, the resources for to collect data such as maps, "Ushahidi", etc. Global civil society are ready for the dialog. And global public claims it. I fink, if G20 will not work as a place for global public discussions between business, society and the authorities, It should be closed. The Liberal strategy to free business from government restrictions loses relevance, if the global business becomes stronger states. Now the society claims the need for restrictions. This can be seen as a revival the social-democratic model in the new global level. Equal actors have national and international public authority, global business institutions and civil society in the global model. 5 http://occupywallst.org Sourses: 1) The official G-20 website - http://www.g20.org/about_what_is_g20.aspx — 2011 2) The official website of CivilG8 - http://civilg8.ru/ 3) The website - http://occupywallst.org Literature: 4) Keane J. Global Civil Society? – in: Global Civil Society 2001, Oxford, 2003. 5) Global Civil Society - 2003, p.69. 6) Бек У. Что такое глобализация? Ошибки глобализма - ответы на глобализацию - М.: Прогресс-Традиция, 2001. - 304 с. 7) Богуславский А. Первый кризис «антиглобализма» // http://www.perspektivy.info/print.php?ID=43852 — 2009 г. 8) Бузгалин А.В. Кризис: альтернативы будущего (глобальный контекст и российская специфика). – М., 2009 г. 9) Бузгалин А.В., Колганов А.И. Социальная экономика: теория и практика. - М., 2009 г. 10) Перегудов С.П., Семененко И.С. Корпоративное гражданство: концепции, мировая практика и российские реалии — М., 2007 г.