Transcript Emerging Powers and the Changing Landscape of World Politics

Emerging Powers and the Changing
Landscape of World Politics
Overview
• Extent to which the 21st century will be shaped
by a global power shift
• Implications that such a restructuring of the
system might have for the pattern and dynamics
of world politics
Identifying the Current Trends in World
Politics
Transformation
Loss of confidence in Western states as a
result
of
ever-worsening
financial
meltdown, Global Financial Crisis 2008-9
and Eurocrisis.
Global Financial Crisis 2008-9
The worst global downturn in the economy since the
1930s.
Most often discussed causes of global financial crisis:
• Sophisticated financial innovations linked to rapid
changes in computer technologies and deregulation of
financial markets.
• Proliferation of computer technologies and unquestioned
faith in the wisdom of markets created a demand for and
acceptance of less regulation.
• Low interest rates.
• Subprime loans, especially mortgages. In an
environment that encourages consumption over savings,
easy credit fuelled the housing crisis.
• Speculation in general, especially on housing.
Eurocrisis(I)
• The global downturn in the global economy had revealed the
dreadful finances of many European states, most particularly
those who had joined the Euro.
• Since 2008, the member states, the euro area and the European
Union as a whole are suffering from serious economic and
financial problems.
• They need to ensure financial stability, support growth and
employment and improve economic governance.
• The global economic and financial crisis plus the public debt
crisis that followed exposed structural weaknesses in some
European economies(such as unsustainable levels of public or
private debt or declining competitiveness.)
• Crisis also revealed systematic shortcomings in the architecture
of the EMU itself.
Eurocrisis(II)
• The economic crisis has become a political crisis. In
Eurozone countries the crisis has provoked protests and
backlash against austerity measures.
• The economically stronger economies are providing
financial assistance to the weaker economies. This is
perceived as “bailing out” other countries that have failed
to implement “responsible” policy choices.
 Disagreements among key policymakers over the
appropriate crisis response
 Slow and complex EU policy-making process
Who can rescue Europe?
America?
IMF?
China?
Europe as a place which had given birth to
modern capitalism is now waiting the world
largest communist state China for a rescue.
China’s immense surpluses seemed to be the
only way out of Europe’s crisis.
The ongoing transformation of world
politics
• Transformation can be defined through evident
shifts in power and influence across the world
Europe; the club of wealthy European countries
brought low by underwhelming growth and even
worse macroeconomic policy
America; unable to fix the problem
China; confident enough in itself
Rise of BRIC’s
• China; world’s factory and a “Top 10” economy
• India; promising information technology
• Russia; commanded the World’s largest reserves
of fossil fuels
According to the 2001 report of Goldman Sachs by 2035 BRICs would
overtake the combined GDP of the G7(U.S., U.K., France, Germany, Italy,
Canada and Japan).
Asian Ascendancy or Multiple Centres of
Power and Influence?
Emerging Powers
• Creative and pragmatic diplomacy
• Economic success
• Confidence and a desire to take a place
on the world stage
• Growing investment in military
modernization
(e.g China’s growing capabilities to use
its military arsenal beyond its
borders—including notable
improvements in its navy, air force,
missile defense, cyberwarfare, and
space program—are causing concern
in the West)
Western World
• Long-term economic decline
compounded by the
catastrophic events of
Financial Crisis 2008-9
• Debts worth 100 per cent of
their GDP, while emerging
economies have around 35 per
cent.
Defining the North Atlantic Era
Macro Level
• A long phase of technological
advance, maritime exploration
and industrialization
Micro Level
• Better living standards
• Most powerful
• Long life expectancy
• Advantage in all technologies
• Reduced infant mortality
• Vast bulk of global GDP
• Control of many diseases
• Higher level of education
The Post-Cold War Period
Liberal model of politics
+
A capitalist vision of economics
+
Monopoly of Western ideas
Western understanding of how states and
societies should be run and how relations
between those entities ought to be organized
Are these circumstances coming
to an end?
Emerging Economies and Global
Powers
• Economic forces working to level out the very uneven
distribution of wealth across the world will be the most important
factors shaping the world in the coming century.
• Change as a result of redistribution of power across the system.
Flattening out of the economic discrepancies between the rich and
at least some of the less well-off.
“The rise of everyone else” (?)
Economic performances and growth rates of
BRICs
• In 2008, emerging powers grew by 6.1 per cent
, while wealthy economies could only manage
0.5 per cent. In 2010, emerging powers grew by
2.6 per cent and the advanced economies
shrank by 3.2 per cent.
(IMF, 2010:2 cited in Beeson and Bisley, 2013, p.
16)
China
• China launched a modernization programme in 1978.
• Between 1975-1999, the average annual GDP growth rate
was 8.1 per cent.
• Since 1979, the economic output of China has
quadrupled.
• China is now the second largest economy in the world,
world largest exporter, leads the world in manufacturing,
creates around two-thirds of the world’s electronic
goods, world largest producer of steel, cement and coal.
• In the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis, it
became the key engine of growth for the world economy
with a remarkable political clout.
India
• As a result of series of liberalization reforms in
the early 1990s, the Indian economy has been
transformed.
• Since the adoption of the reform programme the
Indian economy has grown at an average annual
rate of just over 6 per cent.
• India has become linked into the global economy
through a vast IT industry, it is an attractive
venue for foreign direct investment and its
productivity is growing.
Russia
• Russia has capitalized on its huge hydrocarbon
deposits and the sustained high prices for the
commodities including diamonds and gold.
• Russia’s annual GDP growth has averaged 6.8
per cent since 2000.
• Russia will enjoy prosperity so long as
commodity prices remain buoyant.
Brazil
• Brazil experienced striking economic prosperity
but not at the levels of China or India.
• Brazil’s commodity endowments, strong labour
market and excellent returns on Foreign Direct
Investment seem promising.
Factors Behind their Success
Their physicality; geographically substantial,
located in strategically significant parts of the
world and they have large populations
+
Will
Western Decline
US growing dependence on credit from emerging
economies
It seems like West relies on two things;
(1)Credit of the rest of the world
(2)Importing cheap manufactured goods and
energy
• Shifting productive processes to low labour cost
countries has helped Western countries to
maintain their economic well-being at relatively
low cost
• As a result, they maintained lower consumer
good prices, this in turn allow speculation in
property markets that led to the bubbles in the
US and UK
• They relied on low energy prices
Consequences of emerging powers
prosperity
• Price increase in commodity and food
• Price increase in commodities such as iron,
aluminium, coal, copper and zinc to record high.
• More energy consumption led to higher price of
oil, gas and coal.
What Pertains
Changes
• Basic features of the
international system
• Distribution of power within
the system
• Number of states with
influence
• The way they advance their
interests
• Content of the norms and
principles underpinning the
system
BRICS launch new bank and
monetary fund
• At a summit in Fortaleza, Brazil, BRICS
countries launched a slew of initiatives,
including two new international financial
institutions: A new development bank and a
joint monetary fund.
«For the first time in the modern era, the
dominant country in the world -- what China will
become probably-- will be not from the West and
from very, very different civilizational roots.»
«It's a widespread assumption in the West that as
countries modernize, they also westernize. This is an
illusion. It's an assumption that modernity is a product
simply of competition, markets and technology. It is not. It
is also shaped equally by history and culture. China is not
like the West, and it will not become like the West. It will
remain in very fundamental respects very different. Now
the big question here is obviously, how do we make sense
of China? How do we try to understand what China is?
And the problem we have in the West at the moment, by
and large, is that the conventional approach is that we
understand it really in Western terms, using Western
ideas. We can't.»
Building blocks for trying to
understand what China is like
China is not really a nation-state!
«What is extraordinary about this is, what gives China
its sense of being China, what gives the Chinese the
sense of what it is to be Chinese, comes not from the
last hundred years, not from the nation-state period,
which is what happened in the West, but from the
period, if you like, of the civilization-state.In other
words, China, unlike the Western states and most
countries in the world, is shaped by its sense of
civilization, its existence as a civilization-state, rather
than as a nation-state.»
«we know China's big, huge, demographically and
geographically, with a population of 1.3 billion
people. What we often aren't really aware of is the
fact that China is extremely diverse and very
pluralistic,
and
in
many
ways
very
decentralized. You can't run a place on this
scale simply from Beijing, even though we think
this to be the case. It's never been the case. «
«The Chinese have a very, very different
conception of race to most other countries. Do you
know, of the 1.3 billion Chinese, over 90 percent of
them think they belong to the same race, the Han?
Now, this is completely different from the world's
[other] most populous countries. India, the United
States, Indonesia, Brazil -- all of them are
multiracial.»
«Now the relationship between the state and
society in China is very different from that in the
West. state in China is given a very special -- it
enjoys a very special significance as the
representative, the embodiment and the guardian
of Chinese civilization, of the civilization-state.
This is as close as China gets to a kind of spiritual
role.»
«what we are dealing with here, in the Chinese
context, is a new kind of paradigm, which is
different from anything we've had to think about
in the past.»
«What is happening is that, very rapidly in historical
terms, the world is being driven and shaped, not by
the old developed countries, but by the developing
world. We've seen this in terms of the G20 usurping
very rapidly the position of the G7, or the G8. And
there are two consequences of this. First, the West is
rapidly losing its influence in the world. There was a
dramatic illustration of this actually a year ago -Copenhagen, climate change conference. Europe was
not at the final negotiating table. When did that last
happen? I would wager it was probably about 200
years ago. And that is what is going to happen in the
future.»
References
• Beeson, M. and Bisley, N., 2013, 2nd ed., Issues
in 21st Century World Politics, Palgrave Mac
Millan, Chapter 2