open Democracy News Analysis - The next global agenda, Andre Wilkens - Comments

Andrew B on "The global financial crisis: opportunities for change"

Andrew B — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 18:31:33 +0000

Will the EU start thinking more globally and more towards global governance, or will it start acting more insularly, as Professor Andrew Kakabadse suggests might be the case?

I hope that the coming energy revolution is based on renewables and not on a new dependence on Russia.

Val on "The global financial crisis: opportunities for change"

Val — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 16:49:54 +0000

I liked the ideas but the way things are put risk to seem simplistic and each and there ambiguous. I think it should be developed into a better argumented essay . I would be particularly interested in the points 6 and 7 and your views on Woodrow Wilson ideas of a global government and the French 1920ties ideas of EU which failed or succeeded depending on the angle you look at them a number of times already.

Fouad Hamdan on "The global financial crisis: opportunities for change"

Fouad Hamdan — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 15:20:30 +0000

A tenth thoughts could be that massive funds should go into strengthening civic society groups in emerging economies. The logic is that no development of democratic institutions and no rule of law mean that these countries will always be unreliable partners in the world's most pressing issues: climate change, poverty, regulating global economy, peace.

And by unreliable I also mean that undemocratic countries are politically unstable and are a danger to their own people and their neighbors.

Funding civic society groups in emerging economies is the best strategy to democratize societies from within. As a long-term antidote against all sorts of violent extremism it should also take place in regions like the Middle East.

Not logged in Lawrence Efana on "The global financial crisis: opportunities for change"

Not logged in Lawrence Efana — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 12:52:20 +0000

On win/win you are right Tony, but as you are aware of in politics the options will always be many. They do not need to frustrate win/win if the choice of approach is coordinated and that also means some form of political consensus - whatever the level.

The global financial crisis and its opportunity to among others induce a sustainable approach to climate problems: alias wise sector investment choices and policies, remains however one of the major sources of challenge for win/win as we increasingly see that rational choice approach has its disadvantage.

The 9 brief headings driven in Wilkens' paper, with individual stream of arguments though, make in the aggregate a comprehensive sense. There is room to worry as the shifts we are seeing tend to call on America even for the commonest of things indeed needing collective inputs and commitments. We might agree it is about asking for a convincing leadership role!

Win/win in above context has to embrace real idea of change -not superficial by way of still putting old win into a new bottle. Financial crisis is at the brink of demolishing the idea of global system. It should mean that in win/win sense what we need is a 'fundamental' national and global sytems reform. That is not going to mean fighting global recession and climate change only, but a totality of [all] the other associated factors: including mindsets. Thus for the new US president it could mean a dynamic and yet a mundane start, because even though there is a convincing mandate to act, the reality of differentiated mindsets continues to tax the necessity for a consensus to service win/win within and beyond.

Lawrence Efana [Finland]

opendemocracy on "The global financial crisis: opportunities for change"

opendemocracy — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 09:42:00 +0000

The logic of combining government spending increases and investment in renewable energies seems like an obvious win/win. But we should take seriously the argument in the The Economist's leader last week: that having governments politicising the picking of which technlogies to back does not often lead to good outcomes.

The right policy for climate, as has been established (painfully) over years of envrionmental activism, is either cap-and-trade or a comprehensive carbon tax. With these in place, let decentralised ingenuity look for winners. But the right solution to the economic troubles is the opposite -- an increase in government spending.

Of course, it may be that the "best" -- to implement a market mechansim for climate and to reduce taxes or increase government spending by a more than compensating amount elsewhere -- is not actually on offer. It won't happen. We need to be realistic, etc.
But I am not sure we should fall for the realism argument just yet -- these are extraordinary times. So why not try to reach for the right solution?
Tony

The next global agenda, Andre Wilkens

Mon, 10 Nov 2008 14:03:00 +0000

The global financial crisis has implications that go far beyond the financial and economic sectors. Below are nine thoughts in an attempt to see the opportunities in what currently looks like a pretty grim picture.

Andre Wilkens is the director of the Open Society Institute Brussels (OSI-Brussels) and a founding member of the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) Thought 1: The west is in trouble and has become a potential source of instability for the world

During the eight years of the George W Bush administration, the west's political leadership has been squandered. But now the economic fundamentals of the western way of life are also being squandered. This is serious. Barack Obama's election will re-establish the credibility of the United States in the world but it will not reverse the trend of decline. The challenge ahead is to manage a peaceful decline of the west while rescuing as many of the west's liberal political and economic values as possible. This will only work if the multipolar world is accepted as a reality and as an opportunity for a new style of global cooperation and governance.

Thought 2: The troubles of the west are contagious

Even in decline, the west will weather the financial crisis and a recession better than emerging and developing countries. It can be hoped that solid democracies should be better equipped to deal with economic instability. But how will Russia and China behave in a recession? Despite systemic differences, there is no room for complacency if Russia, China and other emerging economies suffer economically, as instability there will have huge political (and economic) repercussions for the west. Economically stable times are usually better for settling differences.

openDemocracy writers dissect the global financial crisis of 2008:

Willem Buiter, "The end of American capitalism (as we knew it)" (17 September 2008)

Ann Pettifor, "The week that changed everything" (22 September 2008)

Fred Halliday, "The revenge of ideas: Karl Polanyi and Susan Strange" (24 September 2008)

Godfrey Hodgson, "The week that democracy won" (29 September 2008)

Tony Curzon Price, "Unprincipled madness" (1 October 2008)

Grahame Thompson, "Deglobalising the crisis" (3 October 2008)

Will Hutton, "Wanted: a fairer capitalism" (6 October 2008)

Avinash Persaud, "Europe's financial crisis: the integration lesson" (7 October 2008)

Paul Rogers, "A world in flux: crisis to agency" (16 October 2008)

Andrew Dobson & David Hayes, "A politics of crisis: low-energy cosmopolitanism" (22 October 2008)

Mike Hulme, "Amid the financial storm: redirecting climate change" (30 October 2008)

Mary Kaldor, "Crisis as prelude to a new Golden Age" (31 October 2008)Thought 3: Leverage requires sound and credible resources

The world is still celebrating the Obama revolution in the US. But the hard times ahead will require hard decisions from the new US president. He has a large bank of goodwill from people around the world and he should use this credit wisely and responsibly. The financial crisis has also taught a useful lesson: in international politics, it is possible to leverage support and resources successfully only if your resources are sound and credible; for example, leveraging support from others on human rights and democracy only works if your own house is in order. Otherwise, playing with other people's credit can and will backfire.

Thought 4: Global issues have to come to a boiling-point before global action is taken

But if they boil over and a global interdependent system is close to a standstill, global leaders can and do act. Who would have thought that trillions of euros would be found within a matter of weeks to deal with the global financial crisis? This should be a lesson for other global issues such as climate change and poverty. How much would the recommendations in Nicholas Stern's review of climate change cost to implement? How many G8 summits were spent talking about "making poverty history", without the required follow-through? The question is whether we will have to come to boiling- (or drowning-) point before such dramatic government action will be taken on climate change and poverty-reduction. On climate change, global leaders cannot afford to wait until the system comes to a standstill, because it will then - even with all the money in the world - be too late to get it going again.

Thought 5: Globalisation is here to stay

We are interdependent, no question. Naomi Klein's No Logo was fun; No Lehman Brothers is the hard reality of globalisation. On the opportunities side, the attempts of major countries to work together shows that hardcore globalisation can force global government action. Will history books mark the collapse of Lehman Brothers as the start of building a 21st-century global-governance system?

Thought 6: Global governance has made a comeback

A new opening for global governance in the 21st century has emerged, and it is created by awareness that "it's the economy, stupid". We need new global governance which can both manage the ascent of China, India, Russia, Brazil as well as the relative decline of the United States and Europe. Europe and the US must concentrate on shaping this new global governance and enshrine its progressive values within it, while they still have some power to do so.

Thought 7: The early European Union: a model for 21st century global governance

The EU started as a coal-and-steel community, not as the value community of today. While the architects of the EU had a value-driven vision of Europe in mind, they started pragmatically with coal and steel. This can be a lesson for global governance. Can we rebuild global governance based on global financial governance and then move ahead in ways that echo the EU's evolution? Could this be an example for building a global open society? This would certainly be in line with the EU's founding father Jean Monnet, who thought that "the community we have created is not an end in itself. The community itself is only a stage on the way to the organised world of tomorrow". The conclusions of the EU financial summit of 7 November 2008 are a step - albeit timid - in this direction.

Thought 8: Yes we can create a new energy revolution

While we are still in the midst of the financial crisis, global leaders are already turning to the fast approaching recession in the real economy. After major bailout packages for the banks, major economic stimulus packages are now in preparation. This is the right approach. But these packages should be targeted and used to stimulate the new, renewable-energy growth sector and help to initiate an energy revolution which creates sustainable growth now and in the future. The trillions of euros which will likely be spent on fighting the global recession should be spent on fighting climate change at the same time. It's a question of efficiency and forward thinking. And it combines the urgent with the important. The European Union's structural-funds model, based on EU co-funding of up to 80%, can be used to disburse the EU's new energy-stimulation package, making it attractive also for east-central European member-states to join the new energy revolution.

Thought 9: A tightening of funds in the development and non-profit sector makes reforms essential

Development money will be scarce, at the least in the short term. This will apply to governments' development aid but also the non-profit sector in general. The outcome may be a consolidation in this sector - but also lots of broken promises. However, rather than competing for scarce resources, the development community should use the crunch in development aid to assess approaches and structures, to reform in a way that allows letting go of ineffective models. Competition for creativity should result in doing things better with less.

Undoubtedly there are many more sophisticated angles to the global financial crisis. The importance is to understand the crisis as an opportunity which should not be wasted.

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