50mbuffalos.mono.net
Basic conclusions
1) Even non-democratic regimes depend on popular mandate and must achieve equilibrium through majority support one way or another. Globalized communication intensifies the demand.
2) The majority consists of both privileged members and enablers, where enablers are motivated either by personal safety concerns or promises of privilege, at least to some degree.
3) A certain element of corruption is unavoidable for any non-democratic regime. This may apply to democratic regimes as well.
4) Any system of governance expresses itself through repression and sanction. The question is here how just and reality-adequate the system is.
5) A government can respond in two ways to decreasing public support, whether democratic or non-democratic: Increased oppression of dissenters or increased alignment with the changes in public perception and demands.
1) Even non-democratic regimes depend on popular mandate and must achieve equilibrium through majority support one way or another. Globalized communication intensifies the demand.
2) The majority consists of both privileged members and enablers, where enablers are motivated either by personal safety concerns or promises of privilege, at least to some degree.
3) A certain element of corruption is unavoidable for any non-democratic regime. This may apply to democratic regimes as well.
4) Any system of governance expresses itself through repression and sanction. The question is here how just and reality-adequate the system is.
5) A government can respond in two ways to decreasing public support, whether democratic or non-democratic: Increased oppression of dissenters or increased alignment with the changes in public perception and demands.
Discussion
1) Is it reasonable to assume that mandate in non-democratic regimes is derived from the same basic mechanisms that seem to form the mandate in democratic regimes, or is it projection?
2) In this analysis I focus on fundamentalism, arguing that it sustains a political equilibrium based on a combination of paleo-conservative ideals and patriarchal privilege. Is the method applicable to other types of non-democratic regimes?
3) Class issues are often the basis of socio-political analysis. How does income levels and social status influence the equilibrium behind the fundamentalist regime as a dynamic structure, for instance in Saudi-Arabia?
4) What is the benefit for enablers, aside from a sense of security derived from alignment with the dominant force of society? Can enablers be said to be privileged, or do they act in a “sincere” manner, truly aligning themselves to the rationality of paleo-conservative ideals.
5) The emergence of radicalized fundamentalist interpretations on a transnational scene can be perceived as a conscientious response to inherent corruption of the fundamentalist ideal. How does Neo-Puritanism affect the more pragmatic implementations of fundamentalism?
1) Is it reasonable to assume that mandate in non-democratic regimes is derived from the same basic mechanisms that seem to form the mandate in democratic regimes, or is it projection?
2) In this analysis I focus on fundamentalism, arguing that it sustains a political equilibrium based on a combination of paleo-conservative ideals and patriarchal privilege. Is the method applicable to other types of non-democratic regimes?
3) Class issues are often the basis of socio-political analysis. How does income levels and social status influence the equilibrium behind the fundamentalist regime as a dynamic structure, for instance in Saudi-Arabia?
4) What is the benefit for enablers, aside from a sense of security derived from alignment with the dominant force of society? Can enablers be said to be privileged, or do they act in a “sincere” manner, truly aligning themselves to the rationality of paleo-conservative ideals.
5) The emergence of radicalized fundamentalist interpretations on a transnational scene can be perceived as a conscientious response to inherent corruption of the fundamentalist ideal. How does Neo-Puritanism affect the more pragmatic implementations of fundamentalism?
Important note
I am using “decadence” and “corruption” in two different contexts, where “decadence” is used to describe deviation from behavioural norms seen from the paleo-conservative point of view, while “corruption” is used to describe any systemic deviation from fundamental principles of governance.
Also, there is no correlation between the use of the term “fundamental” and the term “fundamentalism.” “Fundamental” only means “basic”, as in “core” or “foundational”, while “fundamentalism” describes actual complexes of cultural-religious beliefs and ideals. “Fundamentalism” may or may not be implemented in a governing structure, and it may be defended more or less vigorously by a government.
Finally, the term “regime” – often used popularly with negative connotations – is used in its objective meaning, referring to any formalized government in both democratic and non-democratic societies. When I allude to the formal structure beneath the government, I use phrases like “governing structure”, “system of governance” or simply “system”.
I am using “decadence” and “corruption” in two different contexts, where “decadence” is used to describe deviation from behavioural norms seen from the paleo-conservative point of view, while “corruption” is used to describe any systemic deviation from fundamental principles of governance.
Also, there is no correlation between the use of the term “fundamental” and the term “fundamentalism.” “Fundamental” only means “basic”, as in “core” or “foundational”, while “fundamentalism” describes actual complexes of cultural-religious beliefs and ideals. “Fundamentalism” may or may not be implemented in a governing structure, and it may be defended more or less vigorously by a government.
Finally, the term “regime” – often used popularly with negative connotations – is used in its objective meaning, referring to any formalized government in both democratic and non-democratic societies. When I allude to the formal structure beneath the government, I use phrases like “governing structure”, “system of governance” or simply “system”.
The Stock Market of Opinion
When attempting to rally support for the Western project of democracy, good governance and human rights, it is wise to observe the 51 Percent Rule. The Western political paradigm is merely one player on the field, argues Spencer in an essay presenting a rudimentary theory of public diplomacy in the age of globalized communication.
By Spencer, January 26, 2009
Subtle Power Transitions, part I: A rudimentary theory of power and public diplomacy
How realistic is it to alter the fundamental conceptions of power in a nation-state? It depends what you mean by “fundamental.”
If it is a term relating to the official or formal power structure, by definition it requires a revolution, usually associated with violent upheaval, or conquest.
If we use the term to describe the preferences of the general public we may experience a condition in which there is a discrepancy between public attitudes and the formal rules of governance.
We can call this a pre-revolutionary condition, relating to any kind of significant desire for a radical change of governing principles.
But when is it “significant”?
Stock Majority: The 51 Percent Rule
I was in a Skype call with a friend, who has studied philosophy and ethnology. We often discuss urgent political matters, including geopolitical issues. In the course of our conversation he repeatedly used the term “the stock market of public opinion.”
It was a loosely coined term used in the moment to express what he viewed as highly volatile public attitudes, often directly linked to majority responses to breaking news.
Meditating on the phrase it struck me that it would be interesting to use it deliberately for an analysis of how policy making comes about in parliamentary regimes.
Secondarily it may also apply to how non-democratic regimes are influenced by transnational parliamentary processes in the age of globalization.
“Significant” would then be any movement that involves the majority of the population in the most literary sense, meaning 51 percent of the “market share.”
Readiness: Pre-Revolutionary Conditions
You could also say that when more than 50 percent of the population has a more than 50 percent inclination to alter a regime, you have a bona fide pre-revolutionary condition.
Democracy can be defined as a system in which people can replace corrupt or inefficient leaders without violent upheaval and bloodshed.
The revolutionary process has been ritualized through the general elections.
Democracies exist in a constant pre-revolutionary condition, or at least a condition bordering on pre-revolutionary.
One may argue that democracies by embedding a ritualized version of the revolutionary process in its governing structure attempts to immunize itself against “fundamental” system change, away from democracy, and as such defies our the definitions of revolutionary and pre-revolutionary.
Fundamentalist Mandate: Rudimentary Democracy?
If we leave dictatorships and one-party hegemony aside for a moment, let’s apply the Stock Market theory to fundamentalist regimes:
In a fundamentalist society both government and public opinion are galvanized against change by way of clerical decrees. How the religious rule is implemented in detail is of less significance.
What matters is that we must assume that in a well functioning fundamentalist nation more than 50 percent of the population has more than 50 percent individual preference for maintaining status quo.
In other words: It’s our assumption that the particular form of government has a public mandate derived from majority support.
Otherwise the government would be caught in the pre-revolutionary complex of combating internal revolution as well as manifesting itself in the international competition for status and resources.
Some may claim that is the case, but in an analysis we need to be as objective as possible: Government clamp-downs on women seeking emancipation, on student protesters or sexual minorities does not necessarily signify an erosion of fundamental governing principles.
It may simply be the natural response of any regimen to opposing paradigms.
Paleo-conservatism: The Patriarchal Equilibrium
In very simple terms: If the population of a nation is largely divided between female and male citizens, and the core belief system facilitates privileges for the males as in a patriarchal religious society, the stock market majority on public opinion is easily achieved for the fundamentalists.
Even with a significant number of male dissenters a similar or larger quota of women will even out the score. The ability of a fundamentalist system to mobilize women in favour of a system in which they are technically, by Western standards, subdued, may be crucial to the successful patriarchal equilibrium.
The compliant women serve as enablers.
Compliant women may, for their submission, be rewarded by relaxed sanctions and a more comfortable individual existence.
The same is be the case for male enablers, meaning male individuals who are less than 50 percent convinced about the rationale for the fundamentalist system, but choose to accommodate it in order to avoid sanctions.
Fundamentalis: Manipulating Decadence
It should be obvious that a certain amount of corruption is necessary for the patriarchal equilibrium to persevere: Fundamentalism is an idealist form of government striving for a social condition in which every man and woman adheres to a strict code of paleo-conservative Puritanism.
Most often we assume that any kind of idealism corresponds to certain archetypical social ideals while repressing basic instincts. The repression of individual instincts for the greater good of society is by no means an evil. It is a social mechanism at work in any kind of society.
In any paleo-conservative world view gross deviation from the norm constitutes decadence, whether it is an individual act that upsets the pattern by its particularly extreme nature, such as rape of children, or a numerical deviation of transgressions more common to man, such as a rapid growth of young people engaging in premarital sex.
In many cases we observe that punishment for female adulterers and male adulterers, for example, differ vastly in fundamentalist societies. I ascribe this to the dependency on the Patriarchal Equilibrium in which men must be granted certain favours, even the privilege of less rigid sanction of sexual immorality.
This discriminatory lenience, however, constitutes a corruption of the fundamentalist paradigm. It is a state of accepted injustice.
In other words: A more strict interpretation of, for instance, Islamic fundamentalism, as it is represented by Al Qaeda, would ideally enforce equal sanctions for male and female offenders. Knowing human nature, however, such a condition can only exist for a sustained period of time outside the scope of governance.
When subjected to the imperatives of governance even radical fundamentalism must likely adhere to the principles of stock market majority, offering privileges to one kind of ruling majority or another to secure the equilibrium.
Democracy: A Minority Report
It is important to understand that democracy does not equal good governance or even human rights. In the same way a fundamentalist regime does not equal bad governance or lack of public mandate.
Democracy is merely our preferred system of governance in the West, a highly complex order derived from a long tradition of philosophical and political speculation, as well as historical experiences with international conflicts and revolutions.
As a matter of governance a fundamentalist may offer reasonable conditions for a part of the population, depending on how well they are naturally inclined towards and equipped to comply with the fundamentalist codes of conduct.
It is reasonable to say, however, that democracy tends to offer better conditions for minorities, because the impetus to violently defend majority equilibrium is modified by the peaceful regime change.
It is also our observation that the inherent corruption in fundamentalist regimes rules out egalitarian principles of sanction, just as many fundamentalist beliefs are directly opposed to the core values of the UN Declaration of Human Rights.
Promoting Change: Carrots and sticks
What are the primary target groups and instruments for a peaceful system change? What lessons can we derive in the West, if any or all of the observations in this essay are reality-adequate?
First of all, the strict emphasis on female rights from democratic pundits in the West may not be very productive. Emancipation of women does not equate democratization or even a transition away from fundamentalist beliefs and political attitudes, particularly not if women act as enablers of fundamentalism. Emancipation of women has its own justification according to Western ideals and the UN Declaration of Human Rights – it is a matter of conscience. It is not, however, necessarily a matter of practicality.
The basic requirement to break the patriarchal equilibrium beneath fundamentalist structures, i.e. societies in which fundamentalism is implemented to some degree in policy, is a large scale betrayal of patriarchal ideals by male citizens. It should be noted that it is the betrayal of patriarchal ideals by heterosexual males, as sexual minorities are automatically exempt from broad scale influence in fundamentalist societies and do not constitute numbers significant enough to alter the equilibrium.
In the West we often consider the allure of democratic privileges combined with the potential for wealth in a society embracing free market principles as a significant motivation for political change in other regions of the world. It is important to acknowledge the limitations to this concept, which is in many ways a projection of our own sense of supremacy. In itself the attitude can be problematic, particularly when immigrants experience significantly reduced living conditions in the West, not only compared to Western counterparts, but also to conditions offered in other societies – particularly when comes to sustainable income, prospect of marriage and successful procreation (extending to securing improved living conditions for offspring), and personal safety.
The experience of immigrants in the West does not logically translate into a vision of living conditions in a fully functional democratic society in another cultural and ethnic region of the world. But on the subjective level it does serve as a standard by which some of the most communicative and influential members of transitional societies judge the Western project. Likewise, the societal problems of the West, enhanced in the individual mind by our hyper-mediated society, pose serious questions to the observer, who is not already a convinced reformist. Our records on such matters as street violence, youth crime, divorce, single motherhood, drug abuse, sexual abuse and government corruption are all issues that reflect on the perception of the greater good of democracy.
The Great Disruption: Perceptions of Westernization
In many ways relaxed standards of conduct in the West reinforces paleo-conservative attitudes and thus religious beliefs in both the West – namely Christian fundamentalism – and in the East. It is essential to understand that the concept of “Westernization” is a term in popular use in Confucian, Hindu and Islamic cultures alike, and it is largely a negative term associated with the concept of decadence. The perception of the West as vile is connected to the complex of societal issues described in Francis Fukuyama’s The Great Disruption. To get a realistic picture of how the West is viewed in other cultures, democratic and non-democratic alike, one need only consider how we in the West perceive non-Western societies through the lens of media communicated evils – and switch the perspective 180 degrees.
If perception is a powerful factor in motivation for societal change and political reform the new signals from Washington under President Barack Obama may signify a strengthened position. A conservative assessment would be that it brings us back from hopelessness to common misery. The fundamental issues between the West and the East are unsettled by this bold move. It offers promises, but also begs important questions:
If sticks and stones did not achieve anything but breaking bones and widening the gap, what can we accomplish with “soft power”?
If our image in the West is as profoundly tainted as it would appear, what incentive can we reasonably provide to make other societies adopt our principles of governance?
How far should we change our own societies to accommodate the need for other cultures to have a positive example closer to their own ideals?
Is it reasonable to perceive societal stability as not only an internal matter in Western societies, but also a selling point when comes to international security?
Selling Western stocks: Who benefits?
It is my belief that just as it is unnatural to love the hand that beats you it is unnatural for men to bite the hand that feeds you.
The stock market allusion may not be the most convenient in this particular day and age, but nevertheless: If you want to sell stocks, you must sell cheaply with a great promise of return. Ideally, but not always in reality, the stocks should reflect a production value.
Now, you cannot sell what you do not have. This means that the value must exist, unless you want to risk being exposed as a fraud, and it must be divided into shares.
In the case of international public diplomacy, however, the price of a share is not decided by the West. It is decided by whatever regime upholds restrictions against democratic reform using whatever means, from censorship and berufsverbot to imprisonment and torture to reduce the incentive to buy foreign paradigm.
The price of purchasing reformist ideals may, as we have all witnessed, be the highest possible. We should take time in the West to really grasp that fact. We may offer the stocks for free, but we may not be able to fulfil our promises of reward. Also, the perception is that offering the stocks is free for us, but holds the promise of great rewards in terms of global security: If democracy is adopted broad scale, we win a diplomatic victory of proportions.
Any sensible and pragmatic strategy for international public diplomacy should be targeted at the areas, where the purchase price is relatively low. Tales of martyrdom may turn on a Western audience, but it is not very good way to excite common people to rally behind a fundamentally secular vision.
Also, we need to signal commitment with more than words. In a situation where you need to buy stocks of dubious value, increasing the promise of reward does not matter. It merely creates a bubble. Increasing the probability of a more limited reward is more important.
All this is, of course, perceived through the lens of a mechanical analysis. It does not factor in elements of heroism, idealism and death defiance, as it is manifested among reformist movements around the world. But where individuals who are thus equipped may be able to set aside mechanical analysis for the sake of a greater good, the popularization of a new ideal rests solely on making it approachable and easily adoptable for human beings with common selfish interests.
The next article in the Subtle Power Transition series will deal with the conceptual dissonance from translating between different cultural languages and how it affects global communication.
How realistic is it to alter the fundamental conceptions of power in a nation-state? It depends what you mean by “fundamental.”
If it is a term relating to the official or formal power structure, by definition it requires a revolution, usually associated with violent upheaval, or conquest.
If we use the term to describe the preferences of the general public we may experience a condition in which there is a discrepancy between public attitudes and the formal rules of governance.
We can call this a pre-revolutionary condition, relating to any kind of significant desire for a radical change of governing principles.
But when is it “significant”?
Stock Majority: The 51 Percent Rule
I was in a Skype call with a friend, who has studied philosophy and ethnology. We often discuss urgent political matters, including geopolitical issues. In the course of our conversation he repeatedly used the term “the stock market of public opinion.”
It was a loosely coined term used in the moment to express what he viewed as highly volatile public attitudes, often directly linked to majority responses to breaking news.
Meditating on the phrase it struck me that it would be interesting to use it deliberately for an analysis of how policy making comes about in parliamentary regimes.
Secondarily it may also apply to how non-democratic regimes are influenced by transnational parliamentary processes in the age of globalization.
“Significant” would then be any movement that involves the majority of the population in the most literary sense, meaning 51 percent of the “market share.”
Readiness: Pre-Revolutionary Conditions
You could also say that when more than 50 percent of the population has a more than 50 percent inclination to alter a regime, you have a bona fide pre-revolutionary condition.
Democracy can be defined as a system in which people can replace corrupt or inefficient leaders without violent upheaval and bloodshed.
The revolutionary process has been ritualized through the general elections.
Democracies exist in a constant pre-revolutionary condition, or at least a condition bordering on pre-revolutionary.
One may argue that democracies by embedding a ritualized version of the revolutionary process in its governing structure attempts to immunize itself against “fundamental” system change, away from democracy, and as such defies our the definitions of revolutionary and pre-revolutionary.
Fundamentalist Mandate: Rudimentary Democracy?
If we leave dictatorships and one-party hegemony aside for a moment, let’s apply the Stock Market theory to fundamentalist regimes:
In a fundamentalist society both government and public opinion are galvanized against change by way of clerical decrees. How the religious rule is implemented in detail is of less significance.
What matters is that we must assume that in a well functioning fundamentalist nation more than 50 percent of the population has more than 50 percent individual preference for maintaining status quo.
In other words: It’s our assumption that the particular form of government has a public mandate derived from majority support.
Otherwise the government would be caught in the pre-revolutionary complex of combating internal revolution as well as manifesting itself in the international competition for status and resources.
Some may claim that is the case, but in an analysis we need to be as objective as possible: Government clamp-downs on women seeking emancipation, on student protesters or sexual minorities does not necessarily signify an erosion of fundamental governing principles.
It may simply be the natural response of any regimen to opposing paradigms.
Paleo-conservatism: The Patriarchal Equilibrium
In very simple terms: If the population of a nation is largely divided between female and male citizens, and the core belief system facilitates privileges for the males as in a patriarchal religious society, the stock market majority on public opinion is easily achieved for the fundamentalists.
Even with a significant number of male dissenters a similar or larger quota of women will even out the score. The ability of a fundamentalist system to mobilize women in favour of a system in which they are technically, by Western standards, subdued, may be crucial to the successful patriarchal equilibrium.
The compliant women serve as enablers.
Compliant women may, for their submission, be rewarded by relaxed sanctions and a more comfortable individual existence.
The same is be the case for male enablers, meaning male individuals who are less than 50 percent convinced about the rationale for the fundamentalist system, but choose to accommodate it in order to avoid sanctions.
Fundamentalis: Manipulating Decadence
It should be obvious that a certain amount of corruption is necessary for the patriarchal equilibrium to persevere: Fundamentalism is an idealist form of government striving for a social condition in which every man and woman adheres to a strict code of paleo-conservative Puritanism.
Most often we assume that any kind of idealism corresponds to certain archetypical social ideals while repressing basic instincts. The repression of individual instincts for the greater good of society is by no means an evil. It is a social mechanism at work in any kind of society.
In any paleo-conservative world view gross deviation from the norm constitutes decadence, whether it is an individual act that upsets the pattern by its particularly extreme nature, such as rape of children, or a numerical deviation of transgressions more common to man, such as a rapid growth of young people engaging in premarital sex.
In many cases we observe that punishment for female adulterers and male adulterers, for example, differ vastly in fundamentalist societies. I ascribe this to the dependency on the Patriarchal Equilibrium in which men must be granted certain favours, even the privilege of less rigid sanction of sexual immorality.
This discriminatory lenience, however, constitutes a corruption of the fundamentalist paradigm. It is a state of accepted injustice.
In other words: A more strict interpretation of, for instance, Islamic fundamentalism, as it is represented by Al Qaeda, would ideally enforce equal sanctions for male and female offenders. Knowing human nature, however, such a condition can only exist for a sustained period of time outside the scope of governance.
When subjected to the imperatives of governance even radical fundamentalism must likely adhere to the principles of stock market majority, offering privileges to one kind of ruling majority or another to secure the equilibrium.
Democracy: A Minority Report
It is important to understand that democracy does not equal good governance or even human rights. In the same way a fundamentalist regime does not equal bad governance or lack of public mandate.
Democracy is merely our preferred system of governance in the West, a highly complex order derived from a long tradition of philosophical and political speculation, as well as historical experiences with international conflicts and revolutions.
As a matter of governance a fundamentalist may offer reasonable conditions for a part of the population, depending on how well they are naturally inclined towards and equipped to comply with the fundamentalist codes of conduct.
It is reasonable to say, however, that democracy tends to offer better conditions for minorities, because the impetus to violently defend majority equilibrium is modified by the peaceful regime change.
It is also our observation that the inherent corruption in fundamentalist regimes rules out egalitarian principles of sanction, just as many fundamentalist beliefs are directly opposed to the core values of the UN Declaration of Human Rights.
Promoting Change: Carrots and sticks
What are the primary target groups and instruments for a peaceful system change? What lessons can we derive in the West, if any or all of the observations in this essay are reality-adequate?
First of all, the strict emphasis on female rights from democratic pundits in the West may not be very productive. Emancipation of women does not equate democratization or even a transition away from fundamentalist beliefs and political attitudes, particularly not if women act as enablers of fundamentalism. Emancipation of women has its own justification according to Western ideals and the UN Declaration of Human Rights – it is a matter of conscience. It is not, however, necessarily a matter of practicality.
The basic requirement to break the patriarchal equilibrium beneath fundamentalist structures, i.e. societies in which fundamentalism is implemented to some degree in policy, is a large scale betrayal of patriarchal ideals by male citizens. It should be noted that it is the betrayal of patriarchal ideals by heterosexual males, as sexual minorities are automatically exempt from broad scale influence in fundamentalist societies and do not constitute numbers significant enough to alter the equilibrium.
In the West we often consider the allure of democratic privileges combined with the potential for wealth in a society embracing free market principles as a significant motivation for political change in other regions of the world. It is important to acknowledge the limitations to this concept, which is in many ways a projection of our own sense of supremacy. In itself the attitude can be problematic, particularly when immigrants experience significantly reduced living conditions in the West, not only compared to Western counterparts, but also to conditions offered in other societies – particularly when comes to sustainable income, prospect of marriage and successful procreation (extending to securing improved living conditions for offspring), and personal safety.
The experience of immigrants in the West does not logically translate into a vision of living conditions in a fully functional democratic society in another cultural and ethnic region of the world. But on the subjective level it does serve as a standard by which some of the most communicative and influential members of transitional societies judge the Western project. Likewise, the societal problems of the West, enhanced in the individual mind by our hyper-mediated society, pose serious questions to the observer, who is not already a convinced reformist. Our records on such matters as street violence, youth crime, divorce, single motherhood, drug abuse, sexual abuse and government corruption are all issues that reflect on the perception of the greater good of democracy.
The Great Disruption: Perceptions of Westernization
In many ways relaxed standards of conduct in the West reinforces paleo-conservative attitudes and thus religious beliefs in both the West – namely Christian fundamentalism – and in the East. It is essential to understand that the concept of “Westernization” is a term in popular use in Confucian, Hindu and Islamic cultures alike, and it is largely a negative term associated with the concept of decadence. The perception of the West as vile is connected to the complex of societal issues described in Francis Fukuyama’s The Great Disruption. To get a realistic picture of how the West is viewed in other cultures, democratic and non-democratic alike, one need only consider how we in the West perceive non-Western societies through the lens of media communicated evils – and switch the perspective 180 degrees.
If perception is a powerful factor in motivation for societal change and political reform the new signals from Washington under President Barack Obama may signify a strengthened position. A conservative assessment would be that it brings us back from hopelessness to common misery. The fundamental issues between the West and the East are unsettled by this bold move. It offers promises, but also begs important questions:
If sticks and stones did not achieve anything but breaking bones and widening the gap, what can we accomplish with “soft power”?
If our image in the West is as profoundly tainted as it would appear, what incentive can we reasonably provide to make other societies adopt our principles of governance?
How far should we change our own societies to accommodate the need for other cultures to have a positive example closer to their own ideals?
Is it reasonable to perceive societal stability as not only an internal matter in Western societies, but also a selling point when comes to international security?
Selling Western stocks: Who benefits?
It is my belief that just as it is unnatural to love the hand that beats you it is unnatural for men to bite the hand that feeds you.
The stock market allusion may not be the most convenient in this particular day and age, but nevertheless: If you want to sell stocks, you must sell cheaply with a great promise of return. Ideally, but not always in reality, the stocks should reflect a production value.
Now, you cannot sell what you do not have. This means that the value must exist, unless you want to risk being exposed as a fraud, and it must be divided into shares.
In the case of international public diplomacy, however, the price of a share is not decided by the West. It is decided by whatever regime upholds restrictions against democratic reform using whatever means, from censorship and berufsverbot to imprisonment and torture to reduce the incentive to buy foreign paradigm.
The price of purchasing reformist ideals may, as we have all witnessed, be the highest possible. We should take time in the West to really grasp that fact. We may offer the stocks for free, but we may not be able to fulfil our promises of reward. Also, the perception is that offering the stocks is free for us, but holds the promise of great rewards in terms of global security: If democracy is adopted broad scale, we win a diplomatic victory of proportions.
Any sensible and pragmatic strategy for international public diplomacy should be targeted at the areas, where the purchase price is relatively low. Tales of martyrdom may turn on a Western audience, but it is not very good way to excite common people to rally behind a fundamentally secular vision.
Also, we need to signal commitment with more than words. In a situation where you need to buy stocks of dubious value, increasing the promise of reward does not matter. It merely creates a bubble. Increasing the probability of a more limited reward is more important.
All this is, of course, perceived through the lens of a mechanical analysis. It does not factor in elements of heroism, idealism and death defiance, as it is manifested among reformist movements around the world. But where individuals who are thus equipped may be able to set aside mechanical analysis for the sake of a greater good, the popularization of a new ideal rests solely on making it approachable and easily adoptable for human beings with common selfish interests.
The next article in the Subtle Power Transition series will deal with the conceptual dissonance from translating between different cultural languages and how it affects global communication.
