Colin Crouch - The Globalization Backlash

Colin Crouch

polity

Copyright Colin Crouch 2019

The right of Colin Crouch to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in 2019 by Polity Press

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ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-3379-4

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Crouch, Colin, 1944- author.
Title: The globalization backlash / Colin Crouch.
Description: Cambridge, UK ; Medford, MA : Polity, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018019540 (print) | LCCN 2018028944 (ebook) | ISBN 9781509533794 (Epub) | ISBN 9781509533763 (hardback) | ISBN 9781509533770 (pbk.)
Subjects: LCSH: Globalization--Public opinion. | Globalization--Economic aspects. | Economic policy. | International economic relations.
Classification: LCC HF1365 (ebook) | LCC HF1365 .C78 2018 (print) | DDC 303.48/2--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018019540

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For Joan

An epic struggle between globalization and a resurgent nationalism is changing political identities and conflicts across the world. While the term globalization refers primarily to the development of relatively unrestricted economic relationships across most of the world, that process has wider social and political implications. People from diverse cultures are drawn together, and national systems of economic governance are challenged. Various kinds of upheaval economic, cultural and political accompany globalization, producing a backlash among those who feel negatively affected. From being a process that seemed simply to be bringing us both cheaper products from abroad and new export opportunities, globalization has come for many to mean the loss, not just of individual jobs, but of entire long-established industries and the communities and ways of life associated with them, spiralling into further disorientation as foreign customs and large numbers of persons from other cultures invade and obscure lifes familiar landmarks. The consequent unease is felt alike by American and French former steel workers who have seen their industries and local communities disappear; by Germans talking about Heimat and feeling that it represents something they have lost; by Russians, British and Austrians nostalgic for lost empires and resenting the fact that, in a globalizing world, sovereignty has to be shared; by people in Islamic societies feeling invaded by American and British warplanes as well as by western cultures and sexual mores; and by people across Europe and North America horrified by occasional acts of Islamic terrorism and disliking the presence in their streets of women wearing the hijab.

Globalization threatens some peoples desire to feel pride in the circumstances of their lives in their work, their cultural identity, their communities, the towns and cities where they live, that broad bundle of ideas implied in the German idea of Heimat. Many people are still able to feel this pride, as the areas in which they live and the sectors in which they work have been favoured by globalization; they have relaxed, optimistic and even eager approaches to the opportunities presented by the kaleidoscope of an ever more varied cultural universe. But others have a different experience. Even if they are prosperous in their own lives, they see a wider world of bewildering change, and yearn for the certainties that they, perhaps mistakenly, believe characterized an earlier one.

During the prolonged discussion that took place in the United Kingdom (UK) after the 2016 referendum on leaving the European Union (EU) (the so-called Brexit), the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) interviewed some people in Middlesbrough, a very depressed, former industrial city in the north-east of England that had voted heavily to leave the EU. A recurrent theme of the interviews was: we have lost everything; our young people leave to go elsewhere; we see no prospects for our future; but at least we know that we are British, and we feel pride in that. Therefore, they voted to leave the EU. There is no logic in the strict sense in that chain of argument, but there is a powerful emotional logic. It helps explain why a resurgent nationalism is becoming a dominant popular force in the early twenty-first century.

But the lack of strict logic has to be contested. We can only gain a measure of control over a world of increasing interdependence by growing identities, as well as institutions of democracy and governance, that can themselves reach beyond the nation state. This task is hard enough in itself; it becomes virtually impossible when large numbers of politicians, newspapers and intellectuals are telling people to do exactly the opposite and seal themselves behind national barriers, treating immigrants as a disease that pollutes their culture, relating to the rest of the world only through arms-length trade and therefore leaving transnational corporations and deregulated financial markets beyond control.

Although opposition to globalization comes from all recognizable parts of the political spectrum, its leadership has been firmly in the hands of the traditionalist, nationalistic right. This is interesting. Economic globalization is mainly a project of neoliberalism, which for several decades has been the dominant ideology of the modern right. Does this mean that politics has become a fight between different factions of the right, and that the left no longer has meaning? Or do differences between left and right have no relevance in the struggle over globalization? I shall argue here that left and right certainly retain meaning; that the social democratic left has a distinct contribution to make to this conflict; that it needs to stand on the side of globalization against the new nationalism; but that it must also insist on reforms to the shape that the process is taking. This in no way means indeed, must not mean abandoning national and more local identities. Rather, the multiple identities available to us in todays world become a series of concentric circles, enriching each other and rooted in a cooperative subsidiarity or a Russian matryoshka doll, with successive dolls of different sizes nested comfortably within each other. We need to be proud of our town or city, of the region within which it is located, of the country within which that is contained, of European institutions (for those fortunate enough to live in a country that is a member of the EU) and of wider global entities. This is only possible if constructive developments are occurring at each of these levels, and where their creative mutual interdependence is clear. We need political and social leaders who are willing to work at reinforcing the links across these levels, helping them to work positively together, leaders who cease insisting on absurd rivalries and an outdated search for sovereignty in a world where no individual person, region or country can stand alone without deep cooperation with others.