A recent Rockefeller
foundation survey pointed out, perhaps surprisingly so in the
current environment, that across countries, people’s instinct is still to
cooperate. Moreover, a majority (55%) globally agree their country should
cooperate on global challenges even if it means compromising on national
interests. A tiny majority, yes, but still – a majority.
While the
report then argues – correctly, I guess- that people back cooperation more when
it delivers on issues they care about, improves lives at home, and doesn’t come
at their expense, here I would like to tackle the current lack of global
solidarity (even of the 'enlightened interest' kind) from a slightly different angle: a social contract one.
As let’s face
it, even the ones who now want to reframe global solidarity (into ‘shared
solidarity’, with an increased focus on ‘global public goods’, 'global public investment', as ‘global resilience’,
…. ) face an uphill battle in the current environment. Given my own vantage point (Belgian citizen),
here I’ll focus on the picture in so called ‘western countries’ – acknowledging
though that even among these, differences can be huge (eg: Scandinavia vs UK,
Belgium vs US). As for the Global South/Majority world, that’s for others to
take up 😊.
“National”
interest?
My starting
point: nowadays, there’s plenty of talk of increased ‘polarization’ in our
countries. While no doubt tech bro-owned social media play a role in this, I also
think it tells you something that it seems harder and harder to get to a
national compromise among parties who want to govern, even after elections. Including in countries with proportional representation. The ‘national interest’ is more
and more replaced by ‘party-specific’ (or other faction/vested) interests. There
are many reasons for this, but a key one in my opinion is the fact that ‘social
contracts’ are under huge pressure in many western countries now, and in some cases
have imploded altogether. From various angles the perception is increasingly
that “the system is rigged” (whether on inequality, migration, increased resentment
of generations towards each other (eg on housing, climate), corporate interests
routinely prevailing over public interests…). And they’re not wrong, to a certain extent,
though in some countries the situation is clearly worse than elsewhere.
However, if
people already can’t agree on the national interest (after elections), why
would you expect them to agree on a global interest (and contribute to it in a
fair way)?
“Making
the system fair again”
From that follows: if we want people to live up to what a majority of citizens still claims in this Rockefeller survey, one potential avenue is by trying to fix the social contract within countries. It’ll never be perfect, of course (it’s always a work in progress), but it would certainly help if policy makers from the centre started saying “yes, we want to try fix the broken social contract’. And that, I’m afraid, you can only do by “making the system fair again”. True, the global system was never “fair” in the first place, for the reasons you know, but at least in western/northern countries some decades ago, I have a sense more citizens still agreed on a ‘common, national interest’ (and probably had a more positive view on the social contract in their countries). So if we want to tackle so called ‘increased polarization’ in our societies, that’s where I would start. Perhaps together with safeguarding public interest media (see a recent report by the High-Level Panel on Public Interest Media) as clearly you can try fix the social contract all you want, if citizens live in vastly different (media) bubbles, it won't make much difference. (I praise myself lucky to still live in a country where public interest media are still sufficiently strong).
Coming back on the social contract though, of course, it’s not simple, as many of the levers to try fix this national social contract are actually situated at the global level (where a global government is lacking as you know, and the previous hegemon has gone “missing” (or worse) moreover). So there’s a bit of ‘catch 22’ here. Yet the opposite is also true -the more countries move - nationally - in this direction (towards making their countries fairer again), the easier it becomes for ‘coalitions of the willing’ to move in that direction too (at global level), and vice versa. So this could trigger a virtuous circle of sorts – much needed in the current polycrisis era.
I’m quite
convinced that the more people reckon ‘the system in my country is less rigged
than before’ (or at least ‘we’re moving in the right direction’), the more they’ll
be willing to support – at the global level - ‘global resilience’, global
public goods, global public investment, ... heck, even ‘global solidarity’ if you want. Not the least as many realize, deep down, it’s
in their interests too. There's something intuitive to 'pay now for GPGs, or pay much more later'.
A few quick
wins (not talking about ‘political will’ here 😊) for social contracts:
- Target the billionaire class (on taxation, their outrageous climate
behaviour, …) - both at national and
global levels (eg: Solidarity levies task force, Zucman’s G20 tax, …) (including a whopping special tax for
billionaires aiming to explore space or organize tourism in space)
-
Tackle our own double standards (see
Gaza) – as these make people deeply cynical about the (international) ‘rules of
the game’ (eg: why on earth would tax payers support EU humanitarian aid for
Gaza if at the same time some EU countries continue to arm Israel?)
-
In the current 3.5 %(/5 %) debate on NATO targets, we should claim right
away 1 % of GDP (out of this amount) for ‘global resilience’ (/support for Global Public Goods). It’s just “common sense” in my opinion (and I bet a
majority of citizens in the world would agree) - regardless of whether you agree with the 3.5%/5% NATO target in the first place. Yet, this one percent target would be all the more
convincing to public opinion if you go on to say explicitly “this money for
GPGs obviously has to come from the winners of globalization (and contributors to Global Public Bads)”. I have a hunch most people know who they are
by now.
But the opposite is true too. If centre parties fail to fix social contracts sufficiently in the coming years, only the radical-right will prosper. ( as history has taught us that the radical-left tends to be shot down by the establishment sooner rather than later (or else collapse due to infighting)… ) And yes, in some countries it’s probably already too late, at least for now (thinking of one in particular).
But in many others, it’s not. Time is running out though.
With that, I end my humble contribution to ‘re-imagining’ the new era 😊.
