Barber, Benjamin. 1995. "Jihad Vs McWorld" in Braving the New World: Readings in Contemporary Politics, pp. 17-27.

1995 Nelson Canada.

Jihad V s. McWorld
Benjamin Barber

Since World War II, up until the end of the comitant decline of state power, even as democratic or anti political character of both
1980s, two military superpowers dominated states still struggle to emerge and be rec- forces.
tile world scene. In addition, multinational ognized.
(or perhaps more descriptively "transna- This is a powerful and provocative piece: it
tional") corporations became major interna- In this widely read article, Benjamin Barber challenges the reader to think in global
tional actors, some having larger annual sets out the two principal forces of the post- terms. The reader's main task is to first ask,
sales than the entire gross domestic prod uct Cold War world: universalizing, globalizing as always, do I understand the relationships
of many state economies. Now there is only forces of technology, information, and trade; that Barber presents: the four imperatives of
one superpower left, and it exercises enor- and parochial, tribalizing forces of national- McWorld, the elements that make up the cim-
mous influence not only because of its mili- ism, ethnicity, and religious identity. The two trifugaJ forces of Jihad, and the antipoliticaJ
tary strength but also because of the cultural sets of forces combine to bring us together nature of both? Second, Barber uses a
and economic leverage it possesses. and drive us apart simUltaneously. Barber vocabulary that will be familiar to political
addresses a couple of themes worth noting scientists, but not necessarily to the general
State-to-state diplomacy now takes place at the outset. The first is the degree to which reader. He uses terms such as comity and
within a changed context, in which the old globalizing forces bear an American cultural community, sectarianism, ethnocentrism
rules of the game no longer apply, and in imprint Is technology noncultural or does it and,confederalism, which will have to be
which a key development is the "globaliza- inevitably carry with it American cultural discussed and thought abou~ not merely
lionn of national economies and a con- antecedents? The second theme is the anti- glossed over.

J
ust beyond the horizon of current events lie two ened Lebarionization of national states in which culture
possible political futures-botb bleak, neither is pitted against culture, people against people, tribe
democratic. The first is a rerribalization of large against tribe-a Jihad in the name of a hundred nar-
swaths of humankind by war and bloodshed: a tbreat- rowly conceived faiths against every kind of interdepen-
 III
denee, every kind of artificial social cooperation and and particularism, and not least of all over their most III
civic muwality. The second is being borne in on us by viruleI1t traditional form-nationalism. It is the realists
the onrush of economic and ecological forces that
demand integration and uniformity and rhat mcsmerize
who are now Europeans, the utopians who dream nos-
talgically of a resurgent England or Germany, perhaps I

the world with fast music, fast computers, and fast \ even a resurgent W:lles or Saxony. Yesterday's wishful
food-with MTV, Macintosh, and McDonald's, pressing cry for one world has yielded to the reality of McWorid.
n;Hions into one commercially homogeneous global net- The market ;mperatiz1e. Marxist and Leninist theo-
work: one Me-World tied wgether by tcchnology, ecol- ries of impc::ri<llismassumed that the quest for ever-
ogy, communications, and commercc. The planet is
tailing precipitanrly apart and coming reluctantly
together at the vcry same moment.
expanding markets would in time compel nation-based
capitalist economies to push ag3inst national boundaries
in search of an international economic imperium.
I
These two tendencies are sometimes visiblc in the Whatever else has happened to the scienristic predictions
same countries at the same instant: thus Yugoslavia,
clamoring just recently to join the New Europe, is
of Marxism, in this domain they have proved farsighted.
All national economics are now vulnt:r3ble to the
II
exploding inro fragments; India is trying to live up to its . inroads of larger, transnational markets within which
reputation as the world's largest integral democracy
while powerful new fundamentalist parties like the
trade is free, currencies are convertible, access to bank-
ing is open, and contracts are enforceable under law. In
II
Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Parry, along with Europe, Asia, Afric:l, the South Pacific, and the
nationalist assassins, are imperiling its hard-won unity. Americas such markets are eroding national sovereignty
States are breaking up or joining up: the Soviet Union and giving rise to entities-international banks, trade
has disappeared almost overnight, its parts forming new associations, transnational lobbies like OPEC and
unions with one another or with likeminded nationali- Greenpeace, world news services like CNN and the
ties in neighboring states. The old interwar national BBC, and multinational corporations that increasingly
state based on territory and political sovereignty looks lack a meaningful national identity-that neither reflect
to be a mere transitional development. nor respect nationhood as an organizing or regulative
The tendencies of what I am here calling the forces principle.
of Jihad and the forces of McWorld operate with equal The market imperative has also reinforced the quest
strength in opposite directions, the one driven by for international peace and stability, requisites of an effi-
parochial hatreds, the other by universalizing markets, cient international economy. Markets are enemies of
the one re-creating ancient subnational and ethnic bor- parochialism, isolation, fractiousness, war. Market psy-
ders from within, the other making national borders chology attenuates the psychology of ideological and
porous from without. They ha ve one thing in common: religious cleavages and assumes a concord among pro-
neither offers much hope to citizens looking for practi- ducers and consumers--categories that ill fit narrowly
cal ways to govern themselves democratically. If the conceived national or religious cultures. Shopping has
global future is to pit Jihad's centrifugal whirlwind little tolerance for blue laws, whether dictated by pub-
against McWorld's centripetal black hole, the outcome is closing British paternalism, Sabbath-observing Jewish
unlikely to be democratic-<>r so I will argue. Orthodox fundamentalism, or no-Sunday-liquor-sales
Massachusetts puritanism. In the coorext of common
markets, international law ceases to be a vision of jusrice
and becomes a workaday framework for geuing things
MCWORLD, OR THE done-enforcing contracts, ensuring thar governments
abide by deals, regulating trade and currency relations,

GLOBALIZATION OF POLITICS and so forth.
Common markers demand a common language, as
Four imperatives make !.lp the dynamic of McWodd: a well as a common currency, and they produce common
market imperative, a resource imperative, an informa-
tion-technology imperative, and an ecological impera-
tive. By shrinking the world and diminishing the salience
behaviors of the kind bred by cosmopolitan city life
everywhere. Commercial pilots, computer programmers,
international bankers, media specialists, oil riggers,


of national borders, these imperatives have in combina- emertainment celebrities, ecology experts, demogra-
tion achieved a considerable victory Over factiousness phers, accounrams, professors, arhleres-these compose

 3 new breed of men and women for whom religion, cul- Scie~tifi~ progress embo~ies and depends on open
ture,and nationality can seem only marginal elements in commUOlcanon, a common discourse rooted in rational-
3 working idenrity. Although sociologists of everyday ity, collaboration, and an easy and regular flow and
jife will no doubt conrinue to distinguish a Japanese exchange of information. Such ideals can be hypocritical
froman American mode, shopping has a common sig- covers for power-mongering by elites, and they may be
narurethroughout the world. Cynics might even say that shown to be wanting in many other ways, but they are
someof rhe reccnr revolmions in E::Jsrcrn Europe have entailed by rhe very idea of science and rhey make sci-
.had as rheir true goal nor liberty anJ rhe eighr ro vote ence and globalization pracriC<11aJlies.
burwell-paying jobs ;md rhe right to shop (although the Business, banking, and commerce all depend on
is proving easier to al:quire rhan conslUncr goods). information How and are bcilirated by new communi-
market imper::Jtive is, then, plenty powerful; but, cation technologies. The hardware of these technologies
some of rhC'claims made for ~democra- rends to be sysremic and integrated--compurer, televi.
capitalism,~ It is not identical with the democratic sion, cable, satellite, laser, fiber-optic, and microchip
technologies combining to create a vast interacrive com-
TlJe resource imperative. Democr:lts once dreamed munications and information network rh~lf Cnn poten-
of societies whose political autonomy rested firmly on tially give every person on earth access to every other
economic independence. The Athenians idealized what person, and make every datum, every byte, available to
called autarky, and tried for a while to create a way every set of eyes. If the auromobile was~ as George Ball
life simple and austere enough to make the polis gen- once said (when he gave his blessing to a Fiat factory in
self-sufficient. To be free meant to be independent the Soviet Union during the Cold War), "an ideology on
of any other community or polis. Not even the four wheels," then electronic telecommunicarion and
were able to achieve autarky, however: information systems are an ideology at 186,000 miles
hwnan nature, it turns out, is dependency. By the time of per second-which makes for a very small planet in a
Pericles, Athenian politics was inextricably bound up very big hurry. Individual cultures speak parricular lan-
with a flowering empire held together by naval power guages; commerce and science increasingly speak
and commerce-an empire that, even as it appeared to English; the whole world speaks logarithms and binary
enhance Athenian might, ate away ar Athenian indepen- mathematics.
denceand auta.rky. Master and slave, it turned out, were Moreover, the pursuit of science and technology
bound rogether by mutual insufficiency. asks for, even compels, open societies. Satellite foor-
The dream of autarky briefly engrossed nineteenth- prinrs do not respect national borders; telephone wires
America as well, for the underpopulated, end- penetrate the most dosed societies. With photocopying
lessly bountiful land, the cornucopia of natural and then fax machines having infiltrated Soviet universi-
and the natural barriers of a continent walled ties and samizdat literary circles in the eighties, and com-
in by two great seas led many to believe that America puter modems having multiplied like rabbits in
could be a world unto itself. Given this past, it has been communism's bureaucratic warrens thereafter, glasnost
harder for Americans than for most to accept the could not be far behind. In rheir social requisites; secrecy
inevitability of interdependence. But the rapid depletion and science are enernies_
resources even in a country like ours, where they once The new technology's software is perhaps even more
seemed inexhaustible, and the maldistriburion of arable globalizing than its hardware. The infotmarion arm of
and mineral resources on the planet, leave even the inremational commerce's sprawling body reaches out
wealthiest societies ever more resource-dependent and and touches distincr nations and parochial culrures, and
many other nations in permanenrIy desperare straits. gives rhem a common face chiseJed in HoUywood, on
Every nation, it turns out, needs something another Madison Avenue, and in Silicon Valley. Throughout the
nation has; some nations have almost nothing they need. 1980s one of the most-watched television programs in
The information-technology imperative. Enlighten- South Africa was The Cosby Show. The demise of
ment science and the technologies derived from it are apartheid was already in production. Exhibitors at the
inherently universalizing. They enraij a quest for descrip- 1991 Cannes film festival expressed growing anxiety
tive principles of general application, a search for uni- over the "homogenization" and "'Americanization" of
versal solutions to particul::Jr problems, and an the global film industry where for the third year eunning,
unswerving embrace of objectivity and impaniality. American films dominated rhe awards ceremonies.
America has dominated the world's popular culture for a little land to plough, and because Indonesians make a
much longer, ;Ind more decisively. In November of 1991 living out of converting their lush jungle into toothpicks
Switzerland's once insular culture boasted best-seller for fastidious Japanese diners, upsetting tht: delicate
lists featuring TeT11lil1utor 2 as the No.1 movie, SC.J1rlett oxygen b~llance and in effect puncruring our global
as the No.1 book, and Prince's Diamonds I.1nd Pearls as lungs. Yet this ecological consciousness has me:lOtnoc
the No. 1 record album. No wonder the Japanese are only greater awareness but also greacer inequality, as
buying Hollywood film studios even f::lsrcr than modernized nations try to slam the door behind them,
Americans are huying Japanese television sets. This kind saying to developing nacions, "The world cannot afford
of software supremacy may in the long term be far more your modernization; ours has wrung it dry!"
important th:Jn hardw:uc superiority, because culture Each of tht: four imperatives just cited is transna-
has beCOffil" more potent than armaments_ Wh:lt is the tional. transideolo~ical, and transwlrural. Each applies
POWl'C oj the I'l"ntagon compan:d with Disneyland's? impartially to Catholics, Jt:ws, Muslims, Hindus, and
Buddhists; to democrats and totalitarians; to capitalists
and socialists. The Enlightenment dream of a universal
... culture has become more potent ration;)l society has to a remark:Jble degree been real-
ized-but in a form that is commercialized, homoge-
than armaments. nized, depoliticized, bureaucratized, and, of course,
radically incomplete, for the movement toward
McWorld is in competition with forces of global break-
Can the Six"thFleet keep up with CNN? McDonald's in down, national dissolution, and centrifugal corruption.
Moscow and Coke in China will do more to create a These forces, working in the opposite direction, are the
global culture than military colonization ever could. It is essence of what I call Jihad.
less the goods than the brand names that do the work,
for they convey life-style images that alter perception
and challenge behavior. They make up the seductive JIHAD, OR THE LEBANONIZATION
software of McWorld's common (at times much too
common) soul.
OF THE WORLD
Yet in aU this high-tech commercial world there is
nothing that looks particularly democratic. It lends itself OPEC, the World Bank, the United Nations, the
to surveillance as well as liberty, to new forms of manip- International Red Cross, the multinational corpora-
ulation and covert control as well as new kinds of par- tion ... chere are scores of institutions that reflect global-
ticipation, to skewed, unjust market outcomes as wellas ization. But they often appear as ineffective reactors to
greater productivity. The consumer society and the open the world's real actors: national states and, to an ever
society are not quite synonymous. Capitalism and greater degree, subna(ional factions in permanent rebel-
democracy have a relationship, but it is something less lion against uniformity and integration-even the kind
than a marriage. An efficient free market after all represented bY'universal law and justice. The headlines
requires that consumers be free to vote their dollars on feature these players regularly: they are cultures, nor
competing goods, not (hat citizens be free to vore their countries; parts, not wholes; sects, nor religions; rebel-
values and beliefs on compe(ing political candidates and lious factions and dissenting minorities at war not just
programs. The free market tloucished in junta-run Chile, with globalism but with the traditional nation-state.
in military-governed Taiwan and Korea, and, earlier, in Kurds, Basques, Puerto Ricans, Ossetians, East
a variety of autocratic European empires as well as their Timoreans, Quebecois, the Catholics of Northern
colonial possessions. Ireland, Abkhasians, Kurile Islander Japanese, the Zulus
The ecological imperatiz e_ The impact of globaliza-
l of Inkatha, Catalonians, Tamils, and, of course,
ti~n on ecology is a cliche even to world leaders who Palestinians-people without countries, inhabiting
ignore it. We know well enough that the German forests narions not their own, seeking smaller worlds wirhin
can be destroyed by Swiss and Italians driving gas-guz- borders that will seal them off from modernity.
zlers fueled by leaded gas. We also know that the planet A powerful irony is at work here. Nationalism was
can be asphyxiated by greenhouse gases because once a force of integration and unificacion, a movement
Brazilian farmers want to be part of the twentieth cen- aimed at bringing together disparate clans, tribes, and
rury and are burning down tropical rain forests to dear cultural fr:Jgmenrsunder new, assimilarionist tlags. Bur
 as Ortega y Gasset noted more than sixty years ago, hav- ened to replace Europeans' racism with an ind.oe
'. ano~
ing won its victories, nationalism changed its strategy. In trIbal war. After thlrry years of attempted integration
rhe 1920s, and again mday, ir is more often a reac- using the colonial language (English) as a unifier, Nigeria
tionary and divisive force, pulverizing the very narions it is now playing with the idea of linguistic multicultural_
once helped cement together. The force that creates ism-which could mean the cultural bre:lkup of the
narions is "inclusive, - Ortega wrote in The Revolt of the nation imo hundreds of tribal fragments. Even Saddam
ML1:iSes. "Tn perioJs of consolidation, nationalism has a Hussein has benefired from the threat of imernal Jihad,
positive value, and is ::I lofty srandard. But in Europe having used rcncweJ tribal and religious warf:lre [0 turn
everyrhing is more rhan consolidated, and nario1l31ism is last se:lson's mortal enemies into relucrant allies of an
nothing bur a m:mia .... " Iraqi nationhood thar he nearly destroyed.
This mania has lefr the posr-Cold War world smol- The passing of communism has torn away [he thin
dering with hot wars; rhe international scene is lirtle veneer of internarionalism (workers of the world unire!)
more unified than ir was at rhe end of rhe Gn:ar War, in to reveal ethnic prejudices that are not only ugly and
Ortega's own rime. There were more than rhirty wars in
progress lasr year, most of rhem erhflic, racial, tribal, or
religious in char:lCter, and rhe list of unsafe regions doesn't This is religious as the Crusaders
seem to be getring any shorrer. Some new world order!
The aim of many of rhese small-scale wars is to
knew it: a battle to the death
redraw boundaries, ro implode stares and resecure for souls that if not saved will be
parochial identiries: ro escape McWorld's dully insistent
imperirives. The mood is thar of Jihad: war noc as an forever lost.
insreumenr of policy bur as an emblem of identity, an
expression of community, an end in irsdf. Even where
rhere is a shooring war, rhere is fractiousness, secession, deep-seated but increasingly murderous. Europe's old
and a qucsr for ever smaJler communities. Add to rhe lisr scourge, anti-Semitism, is back with a vengeance, but it
of dangerous countries those ac risk: In Switzerland and is only one of many antagonisms. It appears all too easy
Spain, Jurassian and Basque separatists still argue the to throw the historical gears into reverse and pass fcom
virtues of ancient identities, sometimes in the language a Communist dictatorship back into a tribal state.
of bombs. Hyperdisimegration in the former Soviet Among the tribes, religion is also a battlefield.
Union may well conrinue unabated-not just a Ukraine ("Jihad" is a rich word whose generic meaning is "strug-
independenr from the Soviet Union but a Bessarab gle"-usually the struggle of the soul to avert evil.
Ukraine independent from the Ukrainian republic; just Strictly applied to religious war, it is used only in refec-
Russia severed from the defunct union but Tat:lcsa sev- ence to battles where the faith is under assault, or battles
ered from Russia. Yugoslavia makes even the disured, against a government that denies the practice of Islam.
ex-Soviet, nonsocialist republics that were once the My use here is rhetorical, but does follow both journal-
Soviet Union look integrated, its sectarian fatherland istic practice and history.) Remember the Thirty Years
springing up within factional motherlands like weeds War? Whatever forms of Enlightenment universalism
within weeds within weeds. Kurdish independence might once have come to grace such historically related
would threaten the territorial incegriry of four Mid- forms of monotheism as Judaism, Christianity, and
Eastern nations. Well before the current c:ltaclysm Soviet Islam, in many of their modem incarnations they are
Georgia made a claim for autonomy from rhe Soviet parochial rather than cosmopolitan, angry rather than
Union, only to be faced with its Ossetians (164,000 in a loving, proselytizing rather than ecumenical, zealous
republic of 5.5 million) demanding their own self-deter- rather rhan rationalist, sectarian rather then deistic, eth-
mination within Georgia. The Abkhasian minority of nocentric rather than universalizing. As a cesult, like the
Georgia has followed suit. Even the good wiU estab- new forms of hypemationalism, rhe new expressions of
lished by Canada's once promising Meech Lake proto- religious fundamentalism ace fractious and pulverizing,
cols is in danger, with Francophone Quebec again never integrating. This is religious as the Crusaders
thre:ltening dissolution of the federation. In South Africa knew it: a battle to the death for souls that if not saved
the emergence from apartheid was hardly achieved when will be forever lost.
friction between Inkatha's Zulus and the African The atmospherics of Jihad have resulted in a break-
National Congress's tribally identified members threat- down of civility in the name of identiry, of comiry in the
name of community. Incernational relations have some- are the new rulers of Eastern Europe and whatever enti-
I
~.'

rimes taken on the aspects of gang war--<:ultural turf ties are forged from the residues of the Soviet Union to
barrles featuring tribal factions t~t were supposed to be
sublimated as integral parts oi large national, economic,
gain access to credit and markets and technology-:
McWorld's flourishing new currencies-that they have I
postcolonial, and constitutional emities. shown themselves willing ro trade away democratic
prospecrs in pursuit of them: not just old totalitarian ide-
ologies and conunand-economy production models but
some possible indigenous experiments with a third way
between c~lpiralism and socialism, such as economic
cooperatives and employee srock-ownership plans, both
These rather melodramatic tahleaux vivants do nor tell of which have their ardent supporters in the East.
the whole story, however. For all their deiccts. Jihad and Jihad delivers a different set of virtues: a vibrant
McWorid have 'their anracrions. Yet, to repeat and local iJt>nrity,a sense of community, solidarity among II
-,
~",' -'i' -,. :.~

insist, the attractions are unrelared to democracy. kinsmen, neighbors, and countrymen. narrowly con-
Neither McWorid nor Jihad is remorely democr:Hic in ceived. But it also guarantees parochialism and is
impulse. Neither needs democracy; neirher promotes grounded in exclusion. Solidarity is secured rhrough war
democracy. against outsiders. And solidariry ofrcn means obedience
McWorid does manage to look pretty seductive in a to a hierarchy in govcrnance. fanaticism in beliefs,and
world obsessed witb Jihad. It delivers peace, prosperity, the obliteration of individual selves in the name of the
and relative unity-if at the cosr of independence, com- group. Deference to leaders and iorolerance toward out-
ffilUlity,and identity (which is generally based on differ- siders (and toward "enemies within") are hallmarks of
ence). The primary political values required by the tribalism-hardly the anitudes required for rhe cultiva-
global market are order and tranquillity, and freedom- rion of new democratic women and men capable of gov-
as in the phrases "'free reade," "free press," and "free erning themselves. Wbere new democratic experiments
love." Hwnan rights are needed to a degree, but not cit- have been conducted in retribalizing societies. in both
izenship or participation~and no more social jusrice Europe and the Third World, the result has often been
and equality than are necessary to promote efficient eco- anarchy. repression. persecution, and the coming of new,
nomic production and conswnption. Multinational cor- noncommunist forms of very old kinds of despotism.
porations sometimes seem to prefer doing business with During the past year, Havel's velvet revolution in
local oligarchs, inasmuch as they can take confidence Czechoslovakia was imperiled by partisans of
from dealing with the boss on all crucial maners. "Czechland" and of Slovakia as independent entities.
Despots wbo s1c:lughtertbeir own populations are no India seemed linle lessrent by Sikh, Hindu, Muslim, and
problem, as long as they leave markets in place and Tamil infighting than it was immedia tely afrer the British
refrain from making war on their neighbors (Saddam pulled out, more than forty years ago.
Hussein's falal mistake). In trading partners, predictabil- To the extenr that either McWorid or Jihad has a
ity is of more value than justice. natural politics; it has turned out to be more of an
The Eastern European revolutions that seemed to anripolitics. For McWorld, it is the amipolitics of glob-
arise out of concern for global democratic values quickly alism: bureaucratic, technocratic, and meritocratic,
deteriorated into astampede in the general direction of focused (as Marx predicted ir would be) on the adminis-
free markets and their ubiquitous, television-promoted tration of things-with people, however, among the
shopping malls. East Germany's Neues Forwn. that chief things to be administered. In its politico-economic
courageous gathering of intellectuals, students, and imperatives McWorid has been guided by laissez-faire
workers which overturned the Stalinist regime in Berlin market principles that privilege efficiency, producrivity,
in 1989. lasted only six months in Germany's mini-ver-
sion of McWorld. Then it gave way to money and mar-
and beneficence at the expense of civic liberty and self-
government.
II
kets and monopolies from the West. By rhe time of the For Jihad, the anripolitics of tribalization has been
first all-German elections. it could scarcely manage to explicitly antidemocratic: one-parry dictatorship, gov-
secure three percent of the vote. 8sewhere there is grow- ernmenr by military junta, theocratic fundamentalism-
ing evidence th:lt glasnost will go and perestroika-
defined 3S priv:Hization and an opening of markets to
Western bidders-will stay. So understandably anxious
often associated wirh a version of the Fiihrerprin:::.ip that
empowers an individual to rule on behalf of a people.
Even the government of ndia, struggling for decadesto


 model d~mocracy for a peopl~ who will soon number a term only as confederations that afford local re!!ions
b
billion, longs tor great leaders; and for every Mahatma smaller .than "'nations" extensive jurisdiction.
Gandhi, Indir;) Gandhi, or Rajiv Gandhi taken from Recommended reading for democrats of the twenty-first
them by zealous assassins, the Indians appear to seek a century is not the U.S. Constitution or the French
repJacemenr who will deliver them from the lengthy tra- Declararion of Rights of Man and Citizen but the
v3il of their freedom. Articles of Confederation, that suddenly pertinent docu-
ment rhat stitched rogether the thirteen American
colonies inro what then seemed a roo loose confedera-
tion of independent states but now appears a new form
of politic:l1 realism, as veterans of Ydtsins"s new Russia
-+
and the new Europe created at Maastricht will attest.
How can democracy be secured and spread in a world By the same token, rhe participarory and direct form
whose primary ,tendencies are 3t best indifferent to it of democracy that engages citizens in civic acrivity and
(J\-kWorld) and ar worst deeply antirhetical to it Uihad)? civic judgment and goes well beyond just voting and
My guess is that globalization wil) evenrually vanquish accountability-rhe system I have calkd "strong democ-
rerribaliz:uion. lbe ethos of m:lterial "'civilization" has racy"-suits the polirical needs of decencraliz;ed commu-
nor yet encountered an obstacle it has been unable to nities as weH as theocratic and nationalist party
thrust aside. Ortega may have grasped in rhe 19205 a dictatorships have done. Local neighborhoods need not
due to oue own future in the coming millennium. be democratic, but rhey can be. Real democracy has
tlourished in diminutive settings: the spirit of liberty,
Everyone sees. the need of a new principle of life. But
as always happens in similar crises--some people Tocqueville said, is local. Participarory democracy, if not
naturally apposite to tribalism, has an undeniable attrac-
attempt to save the situation by an artificial intensi-
tiveness under conditions of parochialism.
fication of the very principJe which has led to decay.
This is the meaning of the "nationalist" outburst of Democracy in any of these variations will, however,
recent years ... things have always gone that way. The continue to be obstructed by the undemocratic and anti-
dem"acratic trends toward uniformitarian globalism and
last flare, the longest; the last sigh, the deepest. On
intolerant retribalization which I have portrayed here.
the very eve of their disappearance rhere is an inten-
For democracy to persist in our brave new McWodd, we
sification of frontiers-military and economic.
wiJl have to commit acts of conscious political will-a
Jihad may be a last deep sigh before the eternal yawn of possibility, but hardly a probability, under these condi-
McWorld. On the other hand, Ortega was not exacdy tions. Political will requires much more than the quick
prescient; his prophecy of peace and internalism came fix of the transfer of institutions. Like technology trans-
just before blitzkrieg, world war, and the Holocaust tore fer, institution transfer rests on foolish assumptions
the old order to bits. Yet democracy is how we remon- about a uniform world of the kind that once fired the
strate with reality, the rebuke our aspirations offer to imagination of colonial administrators. Spread English
history. And if retribalization is inhospitable to democ~ justice to the colonies by exporting wigs. Let an Easr
racy, there is nonetheless a form of democratic govern- Indian trading company act as the vanguard to Britain's
ment that can accommodate parochialism and free parliamentary institutions. Today's well-intentioned
communitarianism, one that can even save them from quick-fixers in the National Endowment for Democracy
their defects and make rhem more roler:mt and partici- and the Kennedy School of Government, in the unions
patory: decentralized participatory democracy. And if and foundations and universities zealously nurtUring
McWorld is indifferent to democracy, there is nonethe- contacts in Eastern Europe and the Third World, are
less a form of democratic government that suits global hoping to democratize by long distance. Post Bulgaria a
markets passably well-representative government in its parliament by first-class mail. Fed Ex the Bill of Rights
federal or, bener still, confederal variation. to Sri Lanka. Cable Cambodia some common law.
With itS concern for accountability, the protection of Yet Eastern Europe has already demonstrated that
minorities, and the universal rule of law, a confederal- importing free political parties, parliaments, and presses
ized representative system would serve the political cannot establish a democratic civil society; imposing a
needs of McWorid as well as oligarchic bureaucratism or free market may even have the opposite effect.
meritocr:ltic e1irism is currently doing. As we are already Democracy grows from the bonom up and cannot be
beginning to see, many nations may survive in the long imposed from the top down. Civil sociery has to be built
 from the inside out. The institutional superstructure hurry often looks something like France in 1794 or
comes last. Poland may become democratic, but then China in 1989.
again it may heed the Pope, and prefer to found its pol- It certainly seems possible that the most attractive
itics on its Catholicism, with uncecrain consequences for democratic ideal in the face of the brutal realities of
democracy. Bulgari3 may become democratic, but it may Jihad and the dull realities of McWorld will be a con-
prefer trib~ll war. The former Soviet Union may become federal union of semi-auLOnomous communities smaller
a democratic confederation, or it may just grow into an than nation-states, tied together into regional economic
anarchic and weak conglomeration of nmrkets for other associations and markets larger th:m n:ltion-states-par-
n~ltions' goods a nd services. ricipatory and sdf-derermining in local maners at the
Democr:)[s need to seek out indigenous democratic bottom, repn."sentative and accountable at the top. The
nation-state would play a diminished role, and sover-
impulses. There is always a desire for self-govemmenr,
eignty would lose some of its political potency. The
always some expression of parricipation, accouncability,
Green movement adage uTbink globally, act locally"
consent, and represenration, even in traditional hierar-
would actually come to describe the conduct of politics.
chical societies. These need to ~e identified, rapped,
This vision retlects only an ideal, however--{)ne that
modified, and incorporated inco new democratic prac-
is not terribly likely to be realized. Freedom, Jean-
tices with an indigenous fl3vor. The tortoises among the
Jacques Rousseau once wrote, is a food easy to eat but
democratizers may ultimately outlive or outpace the
bard to digest. Srill, democracy has always played itself
hares, for they will have the time and patience to explore
conditions along the way, and to adapt their gait to
changing circumstances. Tragically, democracy in a
our against the odds. And democracy remains both a
form of coherence as binding as McWorld and a secular
faith potentially as inspiriting as Jihad.
I
II
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