May 21, 1998 | Read Time: 4 minutes
The growing temptation to see the world through a single lens is a crucial one for grant makers to resist.
Although eating Big Macs and using the World-Wide Web may be spreading like wildfire across the globe, it is facile to assume that such habits are being accompanied by underlying shifts in political behavior and cultural thinking. The dynamics that drive communications, technology, and economics differ sharply from those that characterize culture and politics. One cannot be sensibly derived from the other.
Yet through their increasing encouragement and support of cross-regional projects — and their growing indifference toward those that emphasize single countries or regions — many grant makers may be helping to generate attractive solutions to problems that ultimately may prove to be unworkable when applied to specific contexts.
Even looking at countries that are neighbors can be problematic. In the early 1990s, “community and convergence” were the watchwords among policy experts on Latin America. The notion was that the prevalence of market economies and electoral democracies would eventually yield a shared “modern” outlook of civilian democratic rule among the peoples in the Western Hemisphere.
As the decade ends, few would contend that this has happened — or, in fact, that most nations in this hemi sphere are moving ineluctably in such a direction. Markets have taken hold, to be sure, and elections are routine. But it is by no means clear that attitudes and behavior have changed correspondingly. Instead, the regional picture is decidedly mixed.
Chile most closely approximates the predicted paradigm, and Brazil appears ready to re-elect a quintessentially “modern” president, one with unrivaled democratic credentials. But a former military dictator of Bolivia was elected president a year ago, the most popular politicians in Venezuela and Paraguay are former military officials who once attempted to topple civilian governments, and the Peruvian and Ecuadoran armed forces exercise enormous power rarely associated with full, democratic rule. That is not what was meant by “convergence.”
History provides no shortage of similar lessons. As the sociologist Daniel Bell wrote two decades ago, in the middle of the 19th century almost every Enlightenment thinker expected religion to disappear by the 21st century. The power of rational thought that marked technology and economics would, the theory went, prevail.
That was, we should remember, the “long-term view.” But such a tidy, holistic conception was flawed then — and it remains so today.
Similarly, the current globalization juggernaut risks sweeping aside the peculiar, underlying dynamics of various countries and regions — and how they are influencing, both politically and culturally, the development of democratic institutions and market economies. Even the most indisputably global phenomenon — the flow of capital — has different regional and national repercussions, depending on such factors as democratic or authoritarian traditions, legal practices, property rules, and the like.
Before jumping on the globalization bandwagon, grant makers should pause for a moment and think through the tradeoffs involved. Broad thinking, programmatic tidiness, and institutional coherence may be gained — but at the cost of nuance, texture, and depth.
In trying to understand and anticipate contemporary political and cultural trends — the mission of many non-profit think tanks and public-policy institutions — it is worth asking whether there are perhaps just as many habits that are not changing in the face of globalizing forces as those that are. Indeed, it is vitally important to maintain some balance and to preserve the capacity to grasp the complex idiosyncrasies that global forces cannot erase.
For example, Tajikistan and Guatemala today are both societies that are facing challenges of democratization, political reconciliation, and free-market expansion after periods of intense civil strife. Given foundations’ current fascination with projects that emphasize global themes, a proposal that encompassed both nations would probably be looked on favorably.
Yet within Central America, El Salvador and Nicaragua are also struggling, along with Guatemala, to find their identities after years of civil strife. And despite substantial differences among those nations, devising a Central American framework for political reconciliation and economic development may be warranted because of the common cultural traditions of the region.
Bringing in Tajikistan, though, may be going too far.
Michael Shifter is a senior fellow at the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington and teaches Latin American politics at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service.
