Inequality between countries constitutes one of the principal bases of dominance and subordination in contemporary globalisation. Governments of subordinated countries have fewer opportunities for involvement and influence in global regulatory processes.
One of the inescapable consequences of globalisation is a massive concentration of wealth and power in the remote bodies beyond the reach of political accountability, making it problematic for nation-states and local communities to shape their economic, social, and environmental developments. Effective operation of democracy requires suitable education, institutions and social structure.
Its education relates to citizen awareness and mobilization, institutions permit public participation and accountability, and social structure admits equal opportunity of involvement for everyone. All the three are closely interconnected and mutually determining. The former two depend on social structures of equality. Social inequalities present a major barrier to full democracy. They all throw major challenges to democracy in globalisation.
North America and Western Europe have greater say in the governance of global affairs. In comparison to G8, the Southern groups of G24, or G77 exercise negligible influence. Only five states have the arbitrary privilege of permanent membership and veto power in the UN Security Council. Innumerable proposals for more democratisation of the UN have not gone beyond the commission report.
Besides WTO and IMF, structural inequality of countries also extends to civil society activities. Even the best resourced civil society actors of the South do not match the North based academic, business, labour, NGO professional and religious bodies.
Northern elements generally hold positions in trans-world civil society organisations. Critics dismiss so-called ‘global civil society’ as neocolonial affair. Class inequalities also place major structural impediments in the way of democratic governance of global relations. Financiers, industrialists, professionals and people with inherited wealth have more chances to shape the governance of globalisation than their fellow citizens.
There is ‘corporate rule’: rule by the elite or the business people. Small number of trans-border enterprises dominate most sectors of global economy. There is no market-democracy. Only a minority has the opportunity to own big shares. The main shareholders have been large trusts, pension funds and insurance companies who usually have little contact with the everyday lives of the common man.
Even governance agencies are more concerned about business interests and investor confidence many states happen to reduce the capacities of organised labour to promote worker interests. Large majorities of elected officeholders and top bureaucrats come from advantaged classes who, adept in English, dominate global and regional civil services. This managerial class moves within closed social networks of education, recreation, status, past background and aspiration.
Civil society associations too involve only university-educated, computer-literate and propertied persons. Many NGOs draw their personnel and members from elite quarters. In poor countries, NGO jobs are highly coveted where only the privileged people obtain large share of the NGO funds. The underclass people lack the funds, language frequency and organisational capacities required for effective participation in global civil society. Opportunities for them are severely limited.
Many other cultural, gender and age inequalities also prevail to obstruct democratic working in the global governance. Most of the rules of global governance reflect norms of the dominant civilisation. They are secularism, anthropocentrism, instrumentalism, and techno-scientist rationalism.
No place is given to non-Western, non-modern and native ways of being and believing. Regulators of contemporary globalisation have neither understood nor have time to understand them. Usually aboriginals and indigenous peoples are sidelined. No non-Western religion or civilisation, Hindu, Sikh, Islam, or Bauddha, their spirituality or appeal to transcendent forces, is given opportunity to influence or guide globalisation.
Native peoples have only marginal involvement in global civil society activities. As trans-planetary and supra-territorial connections threaten their values, they look for ways to express their concerns and protect their way of life. Contemporary globalisation leaves very limited possibilities for cultural pluralism and intercultural negotiation. Hierarchies also prevail on gender lines. Globalisation has largely a masculine agenda.
A large number of women is participating in the ranks of NGOs and social movements. Males at the top often dominate them. Women provide the bulk of administrative support. Social hierarchies based on age, race, urbanniral location, disability and the aged also prevail. Structural inequalities have produced far more dominance than democracy. Contemporary globalisation has no time or mood to deal with them.
In sum, contemporary globalisation has very weak democratic credentials. Its polycentric governance of global affairs has very low level of participation from and accountability to the people at large. The people on the whole have been uninformed and uinvolved, particularly, when it comes to life and death questions like global climatic change, global financial crises, global militarisation, or global terrorism. Global governance has come down to a kind of minority rule without rights to majority.
Regulation of trans-planetary and supra-territorial connectivity lacks democratic legitimacy. Its authority can be legitimate only when the governed acknowledge that the reign holders of global governance have a right to rule over them. They conduct global affairs more on the basis of ignorance, apathy, neglect, exploitation, and coercion of the large proportions of the global population, and less and less on consent. To render globalisation more humane, Scholte has proposed to enhance human security, social equality, and democracy by exploiting all the available possibilities.
” These possibilities pertain to enabling technological and organisational development, greater public awareness of global problems, larger trans-world solidarities among people, popular mobilisation on global issues, and increased receptiveness among elites to reform policies on globalisation. All this has to be done in view of challenges posed by intensely rising globalisation.