Globalization and the Spread of Democracy:

In the post-cold War political discourse, the notion of democracy has been the spearhead in the American foreign policy agenda. For many of the Washington based think tanks, globalization through its corporate, economic, monetary, technological, and cultural elements has been the primary assertion of policies to promote democracy and liberal economic ideals throughout the world, hence establishing and imposing a post Cold War Pax- Americana through political and economic hegemony. However, to better understand this intertwined relationship between globalization and democracy it is important to breakdown the dynamics of liberal economics and political capitalism in parallels with the enforcement of the international market system.

Globalization, “described as the increasing global integration of economies, information technology, the spread of global popular culture, and other forms of human interaction”, (Lieber and Weisberg 274) has been an unprecedented force in our modern history and has influenced and shaped new economic and political trends throughout the world with the defeat of the Soviet Union and the establishment of multi-polar world that replaced a bi-polar Soviet versus Western block and has brought new meaning in the function of an internationally oriented market in the perception of today’s political ideology and economics. According to Sanjoy Chakravorty, author of Urban Development in the global periphery: The consequences of economic and ideological Globalization, globalization in reality have two essential elements. First Chakravorty refers to the notion of economic globalization as part of the “integration of global markets”. (Chakravorty 357) According to Chakravorty, “economic globalization, whether measured by trade or capital flows, is primarily a First World phenomenon; and just as significant, this is increasingly true.

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“Economic globalization has successfully been achieved in integrating the world through the establishment of an economic symbiosis between different regions and parts of the world. On the other hand, globalization can also been described as an ideological forces that refers to the political ideas that underlie the spread of markets, trade, and democracy.” (Chakravorty 357) Ultimately, these ideological tools manifested in the creation of internationalized institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund largely supported via capital flows from the United States and the West. Conditions set by the institutions often insisted on economic and political reforms as an incentive for funding for projects, ultimately influencing democratic changes in an LDC given its underperforming economy. According to Samuel Huntington, a prominent contemporary political scholar and author of The Third Wave of Democratization, “In the 1990s the International Monetary Fund (IIMF) and the World Bank conceivably become much more forceful than they have heretofore been in making political democratization as well as economic liberalization a precondition for economic assistance.”(Huntington 8)

In a further breakdown of the constituents of economic globalization spread by Western sponsored international institutions and its correlation to democracy, social spending policies channeled through World Bank and IMF funds and socio-economic reforms are considered to be pivotal in the push of the democratic progress in developing or less developed nations. According to Nita Rudra, author of Globalization and the Strengthening of Democracy in the Developing World, “An interesting pattern emerges from the results. Openness in both trade and capital markets has a robust and indirect effect on democratization via

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social spending. Capital flows, like trade, demonstrate a positive relationship with democracy if and only if increases in social spending accompany increasing levels of globalization. In other words, as trade and financial market integration deepens, significant levels of welfare spending are required before democracy improves.” (Rudra 706) In its relationship to democracy and how the these ideological and economic globalization forces have influenced winds for democracy throughout the world, it has been widely suggested that globalization is merely but a tool to effectively establish an American economic, political, and cultural hegemony throughout the world through the export of an internationalized dynamic for economic integration and political interaction accompanied by cultural undertones. In effect, the very values of democracy i.e. liberty, freedom amplified by the United States are merely the façade behind America’s agenda on domination and control. In fact, President Bill Clinton, shortly before the end of his presidency was cited saying, “In the new century, liberty will be spread by cell phone and cable modem."(Lieber and Weisberg 274)

In Huntington’s analysis of the democratization process in the world, he asserts the cultural variable in determining whether a country can pass the democracy litmus test. Huntington attests that “the world's great historic cultural traditions vary significantly in the extent to which their attitudes, values, beliefs, and related behavior patterns are conducive to the development of democracy.” (Huntington 13) Globalization, in fact, can be considered the international manifestation as the end product of the “Western Christianity’s” progress from feudalism, the Renaissance, the Reformation, the

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