Coca Cola, Identity, MNC, Multi-National Corporation, National Identity, Nike, social media, social networks, Sports

Social Networks, MNC Legitimacy, and Brand Power

I linked yesterday to Ann-Marie Slaughter‘s excellent presentation to PopTech on International Relations and the non-state actors that influence and even dictate so much development in the world.  Watching it again this morning (and it’s worth watching twice) a number of questions crossed my mind.  First, she talks about social actors and ad hoc networks, but never quite gets to social networks.  Just as ad-hoc supra-national organisations are bringing together strange bedfellows, and getting ahead of the State actors in driving change, people are developing connections and social networks beyond traditional family and even cultural groups; one could argue that technological change is facilitating the re-structuring of the DNA of culture.  Kin, geography, language, religion and race remain important, but they are no longer the exclusive determinants of social alignment.  People connect now through trade, sports, entertainment, hobbies, and other interests, forming close relationships.  People’s identity – closely tied to these relationships – is changing.  National identity is less relevant.

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Uncategorized

Liberty = Selfishness?

The tension between the collective and the indididual is probably one of the most important themes of modern political thought.  The isolationism that seems to inevitably follow from giving the individual, as it were, enough rope, is clearly something that society should seek to avoid.  But should society tell the individual what to do?  Kurt Anderson doesn’t take a view in today’s New York Times, though selfishness is a pejorative term, right?

international community

International Affairs is About Networks, Not States

Ann Marie Slaughter makes an intersting point – that the practice of International Relations is not a consideration of states, but of networks. Worth 22 minutes.

international community, internet, kissinger, MNC, Multi-National Corporation, south africa

Multi National Corporations (MNCs) and International Affairs

The role of the non-state actor can tell us much about the nature and power of the state.  While in the first instance the role of the MNC is seen as relevant in development and labour standards, for example, there are deeper more fundamental aspects of the MNC that help us to understand legitimacy.  Some countries that struggle for legitimacy – fledgling regimes, less democratic regimes, oppressive regimes – manage to sustain themselves in spite of a lack of popular support by enriching those who control the levers of power, such as the army generals, and the judiciary.  The wealth that flows to those regimes comes from multiple sources, including the sale of natural resources, and sovereign debt markets, both of which are essentially controlled by MNCs.

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Europe, international community

Europe and National Identity

As the European Football Champtionship closed this evening, Sunday talk shows across the continent were full of analysis of Super Mario, Monti’s Manouever or Merkel’s Mismanagement of the latest installment of the Euro Crisis.  Last Friday morning, news came that a deal had been done to directly capitalise Europe’s banks, rather than routing capital through the sovereign, thus imperilling sovereign credit and creating the confidence problem.  There was much rumination on the need for further integration, the federalist agenda, the United States of Europe.

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Euro, Europe, Fukuyama

Fukuyama – Homo Economicus and Perfidious Albion

I’m reading Fukuyama’s intriguing “The Origins of Political Order” at the moment, which is a little preachy and even excessively researched, but certainly worth the investment.  Two things caught my attention this morning.  First, in his discussion on legalism versus Confucian thought in China(p.119-120), he explains that Confucianism relied on family, kinship, and the patrimonial social order where the family was central.  Legalism rejected tht approach, seeing mankind as homo economicus, binding citizens to the state on an economic, self-interested basis.  It struck me that much of the socialist / capitalist, left-wing / right wing, US Democrat / US Republican, UK Labour / UK Conservative divide that we see today (and even Irish Labour / Irish Fine Gael, who are in coalition government together) mirrored that distinction from almost three thousand years ago.  There are no new ideas, it would appear.

The second thing that piqued my interest was a reference to perfidious albion – in his assessment of why Europe did not develop in the same way as China, he cites geography (mountains, seas etc.) but also the presence of a large and (it would appear) disproportionately influential Britain, who “acted for much of European history as a deliberate balancer that tried to break up hegemonic coalition.”  Plus ca change then.  I started writing about this today in an attempt to explain current Euro zone goings on, but it descended rather rapidly into polemic, so I posted it on my political / opinion / rant blog over here.

China, Egypt, Ukraine

Legitimate Expectation?

What is the role of expectation in determining legitimacy?  Is legitimacy a relative concept?  Tonight Egypt is again in the throws of more demonstrations, while rumours fly about the health of former President Mubarak.  Some suggest this is the end of the revolution, much as Ukraine went through a cycle of demonstration against Viktor Yanukovych‘s allegedly rigged victory in 2004, only to return to him after several years of failed ambition in 2010.  So Egypt may also revert to its previous state – most likely sans Mubarak, though age waits for no man, and his demise was inevitable anyway.  Why does this happen?  Is there an unreasonableness to the ambition of crowds?

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measuring legitimacy

Foreign Policy’s Failed State Index

Great resource from Foreign Policy on failed states, and the extent to which states are ‘failed’.  On the one hand, this is an index made up of some good and probably some less good – or at best subjective – numbers.  Therefore it’s of limited scientific value, in the sense that we could use it to make some impirical judgements.  However, it does a useful job of identifying key categories for considering whether states are failed or not.  The categories include ‘Delegitimization of the State’ which I intend to investigate further; rather than describing it as an absolute number, or value (such as legitimacy, relative legitimacy, or legitimacy perception) it describes it as a process.  Curious.

One other interesting aspect is the extent to which “State Failure” as a metric can be inverted and measured as “State Success”.  On that measure, Ireland is more successful (or “less failed”) than the UK, France or the USA.  Which is kind of fun…just don’t tell the IMF, because they think they own the place 😀

internet, social media

The Internet as an unfettered good? Or Complex bad?!

Quick post – interesting guardian article.

Two-sided freedom is an interesting concept. Isn’t that just freedom? Do we have less privacy online than we do offline? Anyone can snoop on us offline…right? People can be nosey…people can be earwigging. Is it really all that different? And how does it change our notions of identity if we craft it online?

africa, south africa

Letter from Johannesburg

ImageSouth Africa is a country of almost 50m people, rebuilding itself.  It has serious challenges with crime, and corruption, but it is doing much better than any other country in Africa.  Like so many African countries, it is extremely rich in natural resources; as we flew into Johannesburg, the South African in the seat beside me pointed out the point in the high veld where at least 80% of the world’s platinum is buried.  The uranium is further south, and gold and diamonds are everywhere.

For all that, my security briefings were frequent and stark.  Johannesburg is not a safe city.  Don’t drive anywhere.  Don’t go for a walk.  And so on and so forth.  Nairobi – coming later this week – was admittedly reported as being more dangerous, but South Africa has its issues.  One of my colleagues was “held up” as he describes it last year – thieves with guns and cable ties broke into his house, tied him and his partner up, and pushed the nose of the gun into the backs of their heads demanding money and valuables.  It lasted for an hour, and it’s not unusual.  Thankfully neither of them were hurt.

In 2010, South Africa successfully hosted the Soccer World Cup.  It was a significant investment for the country, but an important statement to the world – the New South Africa has arrived!  The Rugby World Cup in 1995 was more of a symbolic statement, coming so soon after the ending of Apartheid, and didn’t have the same caché as hosting the soccer equivalent (it was, after all, only the third time the Rugby World Cup was held at all!).

There are internal and external factors in calculating legitimacy.  For South Africa, its crime rate, and by extension the capacity of the government to secure its citizens, impacts negatively.  Similarly, corruption, and the extent to which it impacts on individual freedom to trade, establish businesses, and generally engage in commerce, is a negative.  These are both internal factors.  The extent to which the infrastructure of the state is recognised as legitimate by the international community – locally, regionally, and globally – is important.  States need both.  Syria’s Al-Assad maintains a tenuous grip on legitimacy internally – it would appear that a significant minority oppose him within Syria, but he retains control over the military.  Externally, he retains strong support from Russia and China in particular, which is sufficient to maintain a non-interventionist policy in the UN, a position that frankly suits the US in all likelihood.  Hilary Clinton declared recently that Al-Assad had lost his legitimacy.  But of course he hasn’t – not yet, in any case.

Back here in South Africa, there are large swathes of the population who are disenfranchised, who by extension offer no support for the legitimacy of the state (which does nothing for them anyway).  Queuing for passport control this morning with hundreds of passengers who had flown in from Europe, I noticed that the vast, vast majority of those queuing with South African passports were white.  Generally speaking, the wealth remains very unequally distributed.  But the state itself retains its integrity, it remains better than what went before.  Still, twenty years on, there are voters now in South Africa who were born after the end of apartheid, and who will be demanding more.