Globalization

New ways to look at the debate over globalization

Articles in the two magazines offer new ways to examine the debate over globalization. In “The American Prospect,” Benjamin R. Barber writes that discussions about globalization have focused on businesses and governments — excluding the role of citizen-led groups. Mr. Barber, a professor of political science at Rutgers University, cites numerous examples in which citizens have reshaped public debate worldwide, including the campaign against land mines, efforts to protect dolphins from the tuna industry, and the “microcredit” movement in which small loans are made to women in developing nations to help them start businesses. Such movements, Mr. Barber writes, are having a tremendous, positive impact, and deserve attention and support. At the same time, he cautions against overstating their import. “These transnational civic projects should not fool us into thinking that Amnesty International or Medecins are the equivalent in clout of AOL Time Warner” or the International Monetary Fund, he writes. In “Foreign Policy” meanwhile, Robert Wright, a visiting scholar at the University of Pennsylvania, asks whether globalization, in addition to creating wealth, is also creating happiness. Of course, he writes, Nike stockholders want their company to profit and the workers in Nike factories in developing nations want to put food on their tables. But “are those Nike stockholders really happier behind the wheel of a Mercedes-Benz S.U.V. than they would be driving a Hyundai Accent? Might some Indonesian factory workers be better off if they had never left the farm?” Mr. Wright asks. He cites evidence that globalization has indeed made people happier, both in some economically wealthy nations and some poor nations. In poor countries, he argues, greater economic wealth is not a zero-sum game because people “are attaining things — decent nutrition, health care — that raise their happiness level without reducing anyone else’s.” At the same time, Mr. Wright argues that a utilitarian approach to globalization might well slow it down a little while not trying to stop it or to seriously stall it — goals that he suggests are “beyond our mortal capacity.”