Professor Samuel Huntington argued in his 1996 book The Clash of Civilisations that, after the cold war, world politics would be dominated not by conflicts between rival ideologies but by conflicts between civilisations and cultures. He wrote that the power of culture would trump the integrating forces of globalisation, and that people’s loyalties would ultimately be defined communally – based on ties of religion, ethnicity and shared history.

Huntington characterised the values of the western Enlightenment, democracy and individual rights prominent among them, as projections of the values of western Christianity, reasoning that other cultures with other values would create different types of institutions.

In the decade since it was published, many have argued that the clash of civilisations hypothesis has been proved right by events. There has been a broad rise in religious energies and identity, particularly notable in the Muslim world with the emergence of radical Islamism, but also evident in south Asia, Latin America, the United States and Russia.

The issues raised by the clash of civilisations thesis are clearly relevant because they raise a key question: Are natural political spaces of trust created by culture, or can we integrate on a more global, perhaps even universal, basis?

I both agree and disagree with the “clash of civilisations” thesis. I agree that cultural factors have become the prism through which many people see international affairs today. On the other hand, I believe that this point of view underestimates the integrating forces driving global development, and the way in which the modernisation process is forcing a convergence of institutions and approaches to governance on an increasingly world-wide scale.

Huntington is right that political identity based on shared culture is not going to disappear in the foreseeable future. It would be profoundly undemocratic if global economic forces stripped local communities of their ability to decide how to structure their common political life.

It is certainly true, too, that different countries must find their own routes to modernity. The specific paths that western Europe, the United States, Japan, Russia and other countries have taken are all different.

Modernisation and development arise from the efforts of the people who live in a given society, not from those of outsiders. Countries can learn from one another, but their ability to shape outcomes in foreign lands is usually very limited. This is something that the United States has painfully learnt over the past four years in Iraq.

The question we need to address, however, is whether we are taking different paths to the same endpoint – an endpoint of a single world civilisation – or whether different human cultures are heading to fundamentally different places.

My view, contrary to Professor Huntington’s, is that modernisation itself in the long run requires the convergence of many types of institutions, regardless of cultural starting points. And economic integration between states is most productive, and results in the most durable forms of trust, when it is based on transparent rule-bound institutions rather than the looser ties of cultural affinity.

The starting point of any country’s development is the state, which Max Weber, the German sociologist, defined as a monopoly of legitimate force over a defined territory. But while the state begins with coercion, the miracle of the modern state is its ability to solve the paradox of power – namely, that a state has to be strong enough to enforce laws and provide order, yet it must constrain its own exercise of power if there is to be long-term economic growth.

It is state weakness that explains anaemic economic growth in many parts of the developing world. All societies need order, rule of law, a government that provides basic public goods and a reasonably fair distribution of resources. If rulers cannot govern effectively, if they are highly corrupt and divert public resources to private ends, if they behave arbitrarily, then they will undercut the savings and investment needed for long-term growth. It is therefore no surprise that by the end of the 1990s, better governance and more competent states became the order of the day.

How does a modern state achieve good governance? Good governance is not a gift given by rulers to the ruled. It ultimately has to be based on accountability mechanisms which ensure that rulers truly serve the interests of the ruled, not just their own interests or those of their friends and families.

Governments can be held accountable in a number of ways. The most familiar are those vertical accountability mechanisms known as elections. But there are also mechanisms of horizontal accountability that work when different parts of a government monitor each other’s performance.

Parliaments and courts, independent of the executive, are of course crucial. Furthermore, there are mechanisms outside the formal political system. Accountability requires transparency regarding the behaviour of rulers, for bad governments seldom report on their own failures and transgressions. That is why good governance requires an independent media and the institutions of civil society to monitor the behaviour of the state.

Thus, effective modern states are as notable for the constraints they put on themselves as they are for their ability to concentrate power.

Whether within or among states, trust can arise from one of two sources. The first is cultural, where trust derives from shared values, traditions and history. In all societies, trust begins with family and kinship and then slowly radiates out to a broader range of social groups. The second form of trust is based on shared interests.

This kind of trust can exist between complete strangers with nothing in common culturally and who may operate in different parts of the world. This kind of trust is based on institutions.

Of the two forms of trust, the cultural version is clearly the most natural and widespread, but it is also more primitive. All human beings organise themselves into primary social groups or cultural communities and nearly all people fall back on such groups in times of trouble or crisis.

The second form of trust expands the potential radius of trust indefinitely. It is more durable because it is based on self-interest and it is the basis of modern economic interdependence. Trust becomes increasingly anchored in reciprocal self-inter-est rather than culture as countries modernise. Globalisation provides the opportunity to expand markets far beyond the limits of one’s own community, requiring development of an impersonal, structured institutional framework by which trust can emerge between complete strangers.

A case in point: businesses in China and in Chinese-speaking societies were traditionally structured around the family. It was difficult to trust strangers or enter into business relationships with someone to whom you were not related.

While this kinship-based form of social capital worked to a degree and for a while, it was limiting. It meant that family-owned businesses could not grow into large, professionally managed companies.

There are many political reasons for countries to decide to align with one another on grounds of cultural, ethnic or historical commonality. But economic rationality demands that trust be based on more impersonal criteria and here the degree to which a country’s institutions are law-governed and transparent takes pride of place.

Integration in the global economy will be more durable and productive of shared prosperity to the extent that it can be based on interests rather than passions, on institutions rather than culture. This is not a western perspective; it is a global one.

© American Interest/ Global Viewpoint 2007

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