of Local-Global Relations
A Spatial
Representation
of Local-Global Relations
Krzysztof Ostrowski, Center for Comparative Research, Warsaw
Henry Teune, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia
Paper prepared for Study Group #35,
Politics of Local-Global Relations, 17th World Congress of the International Political Science Association, Seoul, August
17-21, 1997.
The concept of global can be used as containing only logical-relational
or both logical and empirical referents. One logical meaning of global would
be the most inclusive in a hierarchy of levels, a higher one always including all of
the lower ones, plus something more; the empirical does not have to be hierarchical,
indeed could be flat, as is the case of the reference to the earth as a physical sphere,
defined as some fuzzy notion of the physical world as a surface, but perhaps including
some depth below and space above.
The logical concept applied empirically to contemporary social science in the conventions of economists makes nation-states global, the macro, for industries and labor forces within them, which would be the micro. In the political science of countries, levels almost always refer to hierarchical tiers of national territorial governance, although in international relations global usually implies some international system and nation-states and regions within them. The logical-empirical meaning of the concept of global-local, however, can be simple aggregates of entities at the same level. A group of proximate localities that make up a region without any structure of super-ordination and subordination is a familiar example. They are "near" and may share other characteristics, making them different from other groups or aggregates of localities that are more "distant".
Most examples of the spatial dimensions of the concept of global and global use territorial referents. There are, of course, non-territorial referents containing the spatial concepts of distance/proximity, direction, and inclusivity, core, primitive concepts that are defined by direct "encounter" or experience. These defining operations are observations connected to such statements as "to the left and right of", "up and down", "near and far", "expansive and limited". One individual can be more global, cosmopolitan; another more local, parochial. Global and local, however, always requires specification of with regard to what, not simply one entity being inclusive of another.
Hierarchies, networks, circuits are logical concepts that can refer to relations among "things" that may or may not refer to physical space. Global and local, as a spatial concept, is relational referring to direction and distance/proximity, but necessarily also to inclusion. As it refers to physical space, it points to the world as a whole and places within it, but not necessary in a hierarchy of levels of inclusion. It does refer to more encompassing inclusions of things at the same level without specifying the nature of the relationships, other than as aggregates.
One of the most important changes of our time is that the human system has enveloped the whole physical world socially, economically, and politically. Human societies have always been extensive, at least those that survived long enough for us to know something about them. There is strong evidence that certain strains of human species and about three-fourths of identifiable societies did not extend very far geographically and died out or were absorbed by others. But what we are certain of is that our human race has survived and has nearly totally encapsulated the world as a physical system. That happened relatively recently. Although it is possible, that is, we can imagine it, that the human race or individual humans can be freed of the restraints of physical space that is still not true except in mental exercises.
The study of human societies and their physical environments has progressed from simple ideas of geography to ecology in the middle of the 19th century, when the very essence of what it meant to be human was defined by Darwin, Haeckel, and others as processes of survival in relation to near physical environments. This paradigm was modified to fit the great urban transformation as human ecology by the Chicago School of sociologists in the 1920s. It then was applied in the 1960s to social ecology, an amalgam of geopolitics, demography, and cultural diffusion and learning. 1 Today, "ecology" has again become bio-physical but has been extended to the world as a whole rather than any "near" environments or ecological "niches".
The challenge is to study processes of globalization and to explain them theoretically as well as to predict their consequences. Globalization, as a general process of relating human systems to the world as a whole physical space, has to be studied somewhere, some place, at some time. All observations take place at some discrete place and time and are described with spatial and temporal coordinates, even those on Mars seen though mediating electronic systems. Global, with physical referents, must have, by definition, a local and must be observed locally.
Not everything human is global, even what is universally true of human nature. All people die, but that is a universal, not a global phenomenon. Clearly, more of what more people are doing now has involves more that is global than before. What is global does not mean uniformity, indeed what is similar can be seen as a "fall-out" from the global human system rather as an integral part of it.
But just as one cannot observe Korea but can observe things Korean and make inferences about some entity called Korea, so one cannot observe the global human system, although it is now practical to observe from space about half of the world as a physical entity at any one point in time. To know the human system as a global one, it is, therefore, necessary to make inferences about it from observing the local.
The World as a Global Human System: The Research Design of the Democracy and Local Governance Program
The Democracy and Local Governance research program has as its guiding hypotheses that globalization is linked to the democratization, diversity, and autonomy of localities. As a point of departure in the research, globalization is assumed to have as its leading sector, its cutting edge, economic and communication exchanges and diffusion. This process, which has to be explained by some general theory of social development or some kind of massive, episodic shock or ecological/learning theory, frees up individuals and localities to choose among a greater variety of avenues to interact and exchange with others. 2 Greater degrees of freedom, or choice, of individuals and their localities of production, consumption, and social life promotes democratic values and institutions. For various reasons, however, all localities will not be impacted by these hypothesized global processes at once and equally, because of various conditions, such as being "remote" or having effective closure of political boundaries. But at some point of democratic development in a global economic system not only will it continue but also "take-off", and, insofar as the locality is a part of the global system, economic prosperity will follow. The rapid democratic transformations of formerly anti- and undemocratic national governments have radically shifted economic growth from the national to the global level which becomes manifest at the local level. Thus economic and social inequalities among localities within countries should increase, even if the national "averages" of economic growth is rising. From economic change sparking democratic development, democratic political developments will drive economic growth with, of course, severe problematic consequences, at least initially, for its distribution.
The design of the Democracy and Local Governance research program targeted democratic values and practices of local political leaders in several world regions and countries at the beginning of the cascading spread of democracy in 1990, after national barriers were loosened, democratic elections instituted, free exchange of ideas in the media tolerated, and at least one election was held, the first step in establishing democratic processes. A second point in time was researched for nine "new" democracies after at least one other election of local officials.
. The general design is sketched below in
Diagram 1. The change between Time l and Time 2 represents globalization as process,
known to have impacted local leaders in countries that had changed their political system,
either by central government initiatives or as response to pressures from
"below" from political movements and organizations. There are seven
possible levels of aggregations, indicated in the Diagram, five of which will be discussed
with data. The first is an aggregation of all political leaders regardless of
locality, region, or nation. The second is a defined local political unit, a city or
commune, generally ranging in size from 25,000 to 250,000, adjusted upward (Korea and
Japan) or downward (Hungary and Lithuania), depending on the shape of urbanization in the
country. The third level is traditional regions within countries. The
fourth, is the country as an entity. Finally, there is the aggregation of countries
or parts of them into regions defined by historical events, such as hose dividing the
Church into east and west, one well known sets of defining historic watersheds,
described by Stein Rokkan and others or the impact of Asian invasion and influence.
3
The "field" research that entered observations about the
local, regional, national, and global were aggregations of the observations of individual
local political leaders, about 15 in each of about 30 localities randomly sampled within
each of the 26 countries, from which the other levels and were made by aggregation. The
global is also "observed from change over time of local political leaders in
the localities of nine former communist countries. Thus the structure of the design
is a political and economic map linking the global and the local through territorial
coordinates.
DIAGRAM I: THE RESEARCH DESIGN
The data base is composed
of approximately 15,000 local political leaders, holding political
positions in about 700 localities which form part of about 65 identifiable regions
in 26 countries of Eurasia, including the United States. The nine former
communist countries studied for two points in time in the same communities had an enhanced
sample of Russia to include five autonomous republics and the Pacific region. These
localities are not included in the analysis of change over time. Although the
time periods for the new democracies were 1991-96 and 1995-96, those for the
established democracies were at a single point in time during the years 1991-96. The
political leaders were interviewed face-to-face for more than an hour in their localities
in most (15) of these countries. The data are coded internationally.
The Variables and Their Political and Cultural Contexts
The data to be used in this presentation are a selection from about 500 variables constructed from the questionnaire. The basic one ordered as the dependent variable for this discussion is the democratic values of local political leaders, called "demscore". It is made up of nine value items, three selected from three value scales, each of which are composed of five "agree-disagree" items: pluralism (conflict), minority vs. majority rights, and political equality. This scale is the simplest and most powerful "cut" for comparing these political leaders. Several alternatives were tried, but these nine items, taken together, provide not only cross-national variance but also conceptual and scaling coherence. 4
Other analyses of the 45 value items covering political participation, economic equality, truthfulness in public affairs, localism show that the two most global political values among local political leaders are those of democracy, including participation, and governmental intervention in the economy vs. the market primarily for economic equality. The items in the first factor in a pooled analysis, putting together all leaders regardless of locality, region, or country confirm the choice of the demscore variable to be used here.
In addition, two other "democratic" measures of democracy at the local level are used here. First, in all countries, local political leaders were asked to respond to a list of 16 local political groups, including political parties, the media, ethnic leaders with the question of which of them they turned to when seeking political support. The number of groups selected, and a few of them on each list of 16, were specific to a particular country, is aggregated into the variable, support groups. Second, leaders were asked about the ways in which people can influence local political decisions. A list of six means, including assembly, petition, political parties, were given to the leaders. The number of groups selected is referred to as ways of influence. Together they are measures of what is called the local democratic political infrastructure and are part of the conceptual domain in current discussions of "civic society".
The global or international orientation of the locality and local political leaders was assessed in several ways, two of which are reported here. First, leaders were asked with what the identified, local community, region, country, or Europe, Asia, or the World. Leaders could pick more than one and anything above the country level is score as international identification. Second, leaders were asked to assess the impact of foreign exports, imports, investments, workers, tourists, pollution, and pollution. Although this was made into an overall measure, only the perception of exports is reported here.
A Macro Eurasian-Asian Perspective on the Political Cultures of Democratic Values
As political science remains a country oriented discipline, the first question is national comparisons. These are provided in Chart 1 in a comparison of countries by the demscore. As can be easily seen, there are wide variations among countries, in the ordering of them from the highest to the lowest. But these country differences mask differences among macro regions, without regard to country boundaries as well as those within countries.
A picture of the distribution by locality of leaders’ democratic values is given in Map 1. This map does not cover the spread of Eurasia either to the east or the south. It does, however, show the geographic pattern of democratic values and the mix in Central Europe. Leaders are simply divided into those agreeing or disagreeing with most of the nine items in the demscore.. It is a simple, crude cut, but it reflects regional differences, local variations, and geographical fault lines.
Map 2 moves the picture father east to show the distribution of democratic values by regions within countries, some countries being defined as single countries. The regions are more sharply delineated in terms the democratic values than the communities both reflecting real differences and the artifacts of aggregation. The pattern of globalization and democratic processes is more readily seen in the more macroscopic sweep of regions.
This pattern of the distribution of
democratic values, demscore, is reinforced by other ways of measuring democratic
values. In Central Europe, there is a clear east-west mix, which has been discussed
elsewhere as a distinctive political culture. 5 Moving from
Central Asia to the Far East, a democratic pattern returns after diminishing in Central
Asia. If one had to know one thing about democracy in the world, geography would
tell a lot. Over time, the hold the democratic values in Eastern Europe and Central
Asia has diminished slightly.
Another, related dimension of global change in values, freedom to pursue
economic interests in markets, has a similar east-west dimension. The value of
capitalism and the acceptance of economic inequality follows the pattern presented, but
there are more country differences in Europe, mostly easily interpreted by their recent
political histories. Globally, democratic values are associated with pluralistic
values, including the acceptance of economic differences, but that is shaped by the actual
level of economic wealth of the region and country.
Democratic Values And Globalization at the Individual, Local, Regional, and Country Levels
Implicit in all empirical studies in the social sciences is that some level of human organization, short of that, aggregation, has some relevance to what is observed to be general. Hence, the core logic of social science is that some form of human aggregation will "reduce" the variance in what is being explained, whether family, ethnic group, community, or country. The strict behavioral hypotheses is that contexts or systems are mostly confounding matters.
The Democracy and Local Governance research program, approaching a global study of political systems and taking as its point of departure countries and localities, major components in political science since the ascendence and consolidation of the nation-state system, especially during this century, provides an unprecedented opportunity to examine relationships at several levels across many systems, and at two points in time, if only on a limited basis. This analysis is the first general presentation of analyses based on the logic of cross-system, cross-level, and cross-time comparisons, essential as an empirical foundation for macro-political theory. Because of the scope of the research, answers to some of the enduring issues in comparative research, the small n-problem, relationships changing at different levels of aggregation, or temporal analysis for causal inference, can begin to be addressed.
The first hypothesis is that the global reach
of democratic ideas or the political development of the global human system is such
that it is possible to observe the relationship between democratic values and global
process at the individual level. A second is that globalization is largely matter of
what happens to people and their organized political life locally. The third is that
regions, shaped historically, and accessible differentially to the influence of others,
will create regional variations within countries on the order of that observed in the
early stages of economic development in poor counties, exemplified in India today where
prosperity is the possession of a few regions and states. Finally, there is the
country, although disguising vast internal differences have a political culture which
shapes political change, indeed, if any kinds of basic changes are even possible.
The relationships among these four variables and the demscore is presented in Table
I. The data are n the latest for those countries in which data were gathered at two
points in time.
TABLE I: DEMSCORE BY LEVELS
Support groups Ways-Influence Intern’tion Ident Export
All Leaders
n=11,336
.21
.23
.18
-.09
Localities
n=500+
.40
.36
.32
.18
Regions
n=65+
.40
.45
.35
.27
Countries
n=26
.49
.45
.36~
.29~
Note: ~ not significant at .05 or higher
What is better than "expected" is that the relationships are in the same direction at all levels, consistent with a global hypothesis, lending some support to the time-bound proposition that the relationship between globalization and democratization at least has the beginnings of making the Second Democratic Revolution global rather than confined to certain cultures of the First one.
If one had to pick the "level" that predicts the "best", it probably would be the local. That being said and in the light of the major national differences reported, country level variables do predict a lot. Whether countries have greater predictive power than localities remains to be seen. Analysis of localities within countries is not presented here. But looking at individuals, radical differences in the relationship between democratic values, democratic infrastructure, international identification, and foreign exports can be seen in Table II below, where the correlations are presented for individual leaders by country.
These differences may however be due to the time lag among the variables. It is relatively easy for ideas to spread, more difficult for civic groups to form and establish linkages with political leaders, and legitimate means developed for citizens to influence local politics. This can be inferred from Table II where the relationships among democratic values and the other variables generally obtain in the established democracies but not in the democratic aspirants.
In addition, not only have the new countries
changed their political system they also are "in transition" to market
economies. Not only is that a slow process involving opening up to the world but
also it has dis-located workers and their employment. What is especially the case
for localities and the democratic values of their political leaders is that those leaders
who perceive unemployment to be a severe problem are significantly less disposed to
democratic values, indeed, seeking out support from local groups in their communities.
Globalization and the Stabilization and Expansion of Democratic Values and Practices
For this, it is necessary to turn to those countries that radically opened their borders and instituted democratic processes, the nine former communist countries for which data were gathered at two points in time. Although it can be expected that the established democracies also responded to globalization with some expansion of democratic practices at the local level, they probably did so by down playing the traditional representative political institutions in favor of new kinds of communications and paths to public accountability.
If changes in the democratic values, demscore, of local political leaders are compared by countries across the 1991-92 and 1995-96 time periods, there are no significant national changes in the averages (means) in democratic values, demscore, except for a dramatic drop in the Ukraine, and a significant one in Lithuania. The value of capitalism, as has been reported in other studies, dropped during this time in all the countries, except in Slovakia, a late-comer in market reforms. There are no cross-time data for the value of political participation for the Ukraine, but in every other country it increased substantially, and in six of those countries, significantly so. There were substantial increases in the leaders’ perception of problems with employment in Belarus, Lithuania, and Ukraine. That tells the story across several variables in the study that are plausible indicators of the stabilization of democratic values and practices: employment dislocations dampens, or, indeed, reverses processes of democratization at the local level.
But there is another side to the globalization and democratization story even during these four to five years. At the local level there appears to be a "lock" forming on increasing global identity of the leaders, their seeking support from more groups in their communities, seeing more ways people can influence local decisions and, to go back to early statements taking responsibility for local problems. To introduce the latter variable, leader were asked to respond to a question of who should have responsibility for a variety of "public" problems and activities, ranging from safety to education and jobs.
These relationships are given in Table III. The correlations are for changes in the scores of leaders within the localities for which identities have been kept (individual leaders names are not retained). The correlations are among changes in the variables.
TABLE III: CORRELATIONS OF CHANGE IN LOCALITIES, 1991-2--1995-6
Ways-Influence Intern’tion Ident Local Responsibility
Support Groups .60 .24 .40
Ways-Influence .37 .42
Intern’tion Ident -.03
Local Responsibility
Note: All correlations are significant at .001 level, except .03. N=125+
Conclusions
Several conclusions are possible. On a substantive level, the most important piece of information to know about the spread and penetration of democratic values is history, spatially arranged. Much can be learned from knowing regional histories, perhaps going back a long time. From an analytical perceptive, knowing how involved a locality is in external economic activities, especially trade, but not only, will provide a good basis for knowing how "open" and democratic its local political leaders are.
Countries matter, but perhaps this is a function of longer, more established regional histories. What is notable is that the Czech and Slovak leaders are not so different, even though living in different political systems. The East and West German did live in radically different systems, but the values of their local political leaders are no so different. Countries do demonstrate different patterns of leaders' values and practices, but this may be a function of the rapidity of the spread of ideas and the lag of their institutional foundings.
Regarding change in the "new" democracies, there is a "correlation of forces" among globalization of the leaders in localities and the democratic infrastructure general referred to as "civic society" in support groups and avenues of participatory influence. This is remarkable because they have taken hold in such a short period of time in most countries. The exceptions are well known cases, two of which have not been "political systems" for a long time, Belarus and Ukraine, and one of which has experienced political volatility. What is clear is that economic problems confound, indeed abort, processes of democratization. In some cases this is a consequence of a country becoming an inhospitable region for globalization.
Although there are many stories of the
analysis of relevance to theories of change and political development, several issues
concerning a global political science can be drawn. There does not seem to be
radical discontinuities across levels: local, regional, national, and trans-national
regional. There are, nonetheless, differences in the general explanatory power of these
levels. The general hypothesis, found in many other contexts, is that the global and
the local are strong candidates for explaining democratic, perhaps economic,
development. Nonetheless, other levels matter and will most likely continue to do
so, countries and world regions. This complicates the task of research, moving away
from country and regional level explanation with the addition of the local and the global
as well as intermediary regions. How is a country doing increasingly will require
answers using, "depending on where you are". To this is added the
generally expected increase in the rate of change at the global level. Change is not
only occurring among more complex forms of human aggregation and organization, it is also
accelerating and expanding and must be studied locally, globally, and frequently.
Footnotes
1. Ecology has been an important part of sociology. See M. Dogan and S. Rokkan (eds.), Social Ecology (Cambridge: MA.: MIT Press, 1969), especially the Introduction.
2. There are many general developmental theories. See, for example, H. Teune and Z. Mlinar, The Developmental Logic of Social Systems (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications, 1978). For a more learning/adaptation approach, see K. Boulding, Ecodynamics (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications, 1978).
3. Rokkan's research has to be pieced together from several sources. One is S. Rokkan, "Dimensions of State Formation and Nation Building: A Possible Paradigm on Variations Within Europe" in C. Tilly (ed.), The Formation of Nation States in Western Europe (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975).
4. For this and other analyses, see B. Jacob, K. Ostrowski, and H. Teune (eds.) Democracy and Local Governance: Ten Empirical Studies (Honolulu: HA: Matsunaga Institute for Peace, 1993).
5. The "three" or "two" political cultures of Europe is again a topic for general discussion. Addressing this question with empirical data is K. Ostrowski and H. Teune, "Three Political Cultures of Europe: Interpretations, Evidence, and Theories", paper given at the Theory Confrontation Symposium, Moscow, June, 1996.
