Liberalism’s all-inclusive promise of freedom and its illiberal effects: A critique of the concept of globalization

Abstract

The narrative of globalization is twofold: it refers to the hope for the export of democratic state forms and values from the Western world to the states of the so-called global south; it also refers to the aim of worldwide economic growth and extension of capitalist ways of production and consumption. But paradigmatic cases of action of democratic liberal states in international politics throw a twilight on this double hope. In certain cases, aggressive interventions of Western democratic states are legitimized using precisely the norms of non-intervention that claim universal validity, but turn out to follow an agenda of particular interests of economy and power. This article argues that these universal norms are not contingently transgressed, but in light of the second paradigm of globalization—of the economic spread of market relations—the process of self-constitution of democratic states here takes not a self-limiting, but an aggressive and exclusive turn. In addition, the so-called ‘new wars’ and ‘failed states’ (apparently opposing phenomena to the international agency of democratic and liberal Western states) show surprising parallels to late modern democratic liberal society. The ‘management of fear’ typical of these political situations aims at a regularization, through internalized habits and attitudes, of the population—including their agreement to the terror regime. In light of these considerations, the relationship between the aims of global growth and global democratization seems highly ambiguous.