Versión español

Cover of Puerto Rico en el mundo

It is evident that globalization is a required topic of contempo­rary debate. Literature on the development of the supranation­al economy is now widespread, with definitions and conflicting interpretations that bring out diverging ideological and meth­odological approaches. This lit­erature is divided mostly among those who insist that globaliza­tion reinforces and develops de­mocracy and those who sustain that it restricts or inhibits it.

There are right wing and left wing optimists. Conservative defenders of capitalist democ­racy such as Francis Fukuyama (The End of History and the Last Man, 1992) sustain that the world hegemony of the United States represents the definitive victory of global democracy, bringing an "end of history." Thomas Fried­man (The Lexus and the Olive Tree, 2000) echoes this theory, also claiming that the globaliza­tion of capital in itself represents the globalization of democracy.

Nevertheless, there are also defenders of globalization that come from the progressive wing. David Held (Democracy and Glob­al Order, 1996) and Ulrich Beck, (What is globalization?, 1998) provide a humanist vision and agree that globalization, crossed and organized by a transnational State with world government institutions, has the potential for extending human rights and fa­cilitating a global civil society and a just and righteous world.

Skeptics or pessimists come from both fields of the worldwide ideological spectrum. Some con­servative sectors regret the lack of control of the nation-state against the forces of the global market, adducing that it inexo­rably drives to anarchy and un­certainty (John Gray, False Dawn, 1998). Pat Buchanan, a well-known conservative commentator in the United States, insists that in his country, globalization has resulted in a mixture values that may lead to the decadence of national culture and institutions. This thesis is also adopted by Samuel Huntington, first in his popular book The Clash of Civilizations (1996) and, most recently, in his notorious essay Who are we? (2004). Here, he attacks multi­cultural claims and alerts of the dangers of hybridism that immi­gration, particularly from Mexico, poses for his country.