Conditional engagement was self-deception.
Figure 1.4 Share of authoritarian countries in total imports of EU and US (%, EU is extra-EU)
Note: Coding for authoritarianism based on World Governance Indicators (accountability and rule of law).
Sources: WGI and UNCTAD.
Figure 1.5 shows that economic openness advanced between 1990 and 2010. Afterwards, its advance slowed significantly and even tapered off. More remarkable is the fact that political openness hardly increased during these 30 years. Of all the countries in the world, at most 46 percent could be defined as free. Of all the people in the world, at most 40 percent lived in a liberal democracy. The peak of democratization was around 2008. Afterwards, not only did economic globalization stagnate, but democracy receded slowly as well. There is thus not much evidence that globalization promoted democracy in the world. Economic openness, if it ever truly existed, did not lead to political openness. Still, this tune was repeated by Western politicians again and again.
While the world was celebrating the high age of globalization, even physical walls returned. Altogether, over 13,000 kilometers of walls and border fences were built between 1990 and 2019 (figure 1.6). By comparison, the Berlin Wall was just 155 kilometers long; the whole Iron Curtain, the fault line between the Soviet Union and the West, was about 6,800 kilometers. Walls have emerged in every region: Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas. The idea that commerce would level out borders and barriers has thus not materialized. Nationalism never entirely vanished. Memories of previous wars and territorial disputes continued to hang as a dark shadow over trading states like China, South Korea, and Japan. In Europe, despite decades of integration, center politicians continued to struggle with nationalist parties and the vast majority of citizens still identified themselves more as national citizens than as European ones.
Figure 1.5 Economic and political globalization: economic globalization index, share of free countries, and share of world population living in liberal democracies (%)
Sources: KOF, Freedom House, Anna Lührmann, Sandra Grahn, Richard Morgan, Shreeya Pillai, and Staffan I. Lindberg, 2019. State of the world 2018: Democracy facing global challenges. Democratization, 26(6), 895–915.
China vs Global South
During the early post-Cold War period, there was enthusiasm about the rise of the Global South, about Africa, South Asia, and Latin America. But this area was eclipsed by China. China’s growth was the fruit of the hard work of hundreds of millions of citizens and a government that did a better job in attracting the foreign investment that came with technology and experience. This had important consequences.
Figure 1.6 Accumulated length of border fences and walls (km)
Source: Verified news sources. For instance: India building new “steel fence” along Pakistan, Bangla borders. Economic Times, January 10, 2020; Tom Head, 2020. SA’s new R37m border fence with Zimbabwe badly damaged. The South Africa, April 13, 2020; Ilan Greenberg, 2006. Kazakhstan: Fence for part of Uzbek border. The New York Times, October 20, 2006.
The Global South remained beset by poverty. The World Bank stressed that the $1.90 poverty threshold is too low to measure economic distress and proposed higher thresholds. Figure 1.7 shows the number of people below the threshold of US$5.2 per day. US$5.2 per day barely covers food purchases and basic needs. It is not extreme poverty, but it remains poverty. The number of people in the Global South, Africa, Latin America, and South Asia living below this threshold grew by about 500 million.
A critical problem for the Global South concerned the limited availability of jobs. Once more, the difference from China was striking. Between 1990 and 2019, China’s population between 15 and 64 years of age increased by 245 million. At the same time, it created 207 million additional jobs. Between 1990 and 2019, the combined population between 15 and 64 years of age in Africa and South Asia increased by 870 million. But the total number of jobs only increased by 170 million. In 2019, 16 percent of the South Asian population between 15 and 64 years was employed, 15 percent in Africa. Many thus remained dependent on self-employment in agriculture or informal employment in cities (figure 1.8). Yet, subsistence farming in the agricultural sector was threatened by climate change, water shortage, and cheap products exported by the West, and the informal sector in the cities by inflation, crime, and cheaper goods dumped from China.
Figure 1.7 People living below US$5.2 PPP per day (million)
Source: WDI.
Figure 1.8 People employed as share of people between 15 and 64 years old (%)
Source: WDI.
Figure 1.9 Deaths caused by homicide, armed conflicts, and terrorism (thousands)
Note: All data are approximate.
Sources: UCPD, WDI, GTD.
Security
Economic uncertainty is an incubator of insecurity. It is often argued that the world has never been safer than during the high age of globalization. This is correct. In many countries, the homicide rate, which is the number of murders compared to the total population, decreased. Compared to the brutally violent first half of the twentieth century, fewer people were killed in wars. In absolute terms, however, the number of people killed by violence slightly increased, particularly between 2010 and 2019 (figure 1.9). Organized crime, rebellion, and terrorism infested large parts of the world. There can be discussion about the degree to which, for instance, murders and terrorist incidents are now more frequently reported. The fact remains that over half a million people were killed by violence each year. In relation to the population, the death rate dropped. Yet still, many people lived in the dark shadow of endemic violence.
Figure 1.10 shows that
