Different globalizations

I have found some support in the empirical analysis for H1a. Having a high level of overall globalization has a pacifying influence on internal conflict in general, i.e., it decreases the risk of violent riots and civil war. But, ‘globalization’ covers a broad spectrum of developments, and some of these may affect risk of internal conflicts; others may not. Some may increase the risk, some may decrease it, and opposing effects may balance each other out.

The empirical analyses confirm that there is indeed a difference between economic globalization, social globalization, and political globalization in terms of their relationship with several types of internal conflict. At first glance, only the social/cultural branch of globalization seems to have a strong statistical relationship with internal conflict, while economic and political forms of globalization are both close to inconsequential. However, when studying individually the components that make up the index of economic globalization I find that the component that concerns policies matter, while the actual international flows of goods and finances is not a statistically significant predictor of internal conflicts.

A lower level of restrictions on the economy is linked with a lower risk of spontaneous conflict. Riots seem to occur less in countries with more globalization friendly economic policies than in more economically protectionist countries. This result supports H3b.

However, although the long-term effect may be pacifying, shock treatments of economically globalizing policies – rapid removal of restrictions – is not a good way of avoiding riots.

Decreasing restrictions in shocks seems to increase the risk of riots quite considerably. This is in line with the expectation of globalization’s critics that economic globalization affects people negatively, by increasing inequality both globally and nationally, causing insecurity for workers, etcetera. If economic globalization has such consequences, it should be expected to increase individual motivation for conflict, and therefore be particularly important to the risk of riots, and this is just what the results of the empirical analyses are indicating. And so, I find support for both H3a and H3b, but on different conditions.

Although it works the other way than economic globalization, social globalization is perhaps a significant influence on risk of internal conflict because it, too, affects large parts of the population directly. But although it appears as a pacifying factor, there are some issues to consider before taking this as confirmation of H5b. When divided into its three components, there is a distinct difference between their individual effects. Increase in cultural proximity is related to lower risk of civil war, and a high level is associated with less riots. However, the cultural proximity variable is somewhat questionable as it relies on counting the number of IKEAs and McDonalds’ in a country (although book trade is also a factor), and could be a proxy for capitalism or westernization rather than global integration. Still, the theory is that they represent a certain common cultural base. We eat the same food and sit on the same chairs. We have a common culture of eating fast food and buying cheap furniture, representing not only American and Swedish culture, but commercial culture more generally.

Whether this commercialism is an expression of westernization or globalization is debatable.

As for information flows, it is connected with lower risk of spontaneous and internal conflict.

A high level of information flows means high use of international newspapers, Internet, and other media and information technology. Integration across borders is perhaps in that way felt inside the borders through promotion of knowledge and tolerance of other cultures and identities, and generally a broader perspective. But note that it could partly be a spurious relationship. There may be factors that are not part of social globalization as such, but that are related, causing the pacifying effect we see in the results. Both cultural proximity and information flow might represent development rather than globalization. For instance, cable TV use and consumption of international media suggests that there is a certain level of wealth and resources available to people, which is likely to be associated with a peaceful society. As we have seen, level of social globalization is correlated with GDP per capita and appears to

capture some of its pacifying effects. The part of the index of social globalization that measures personal contacts across borders is not a statistically significant effect. This element includes e.g. international tourism to the country and number of immigrants in a country, and it is not as likely to be a proxy for development, capitalism, etcetera as cultural proximity and information flows. Its statistical insignificance suggests that it might not be the increase of global interaction in itself that leads to a lower risk of internal conflict, but that there is something to the suspicion that the relationship is in fact a spurious one.

Political globalization has a minor relationship with lower risk of riots, but the results are just barely statistically significant and the coefficient is small. Why? Perhaps international political integration is a factor that does not affect people’s daily lives directly or dramatically. Whatever goes on in the political elite circles is not necessarily felt acutely in the general population and, apparently, does not create either sparks or harmony. Still, it is surprising that neither the level nor the process of political globalization act as a proxy for other developments in a country that could be related to the likelihood of internal conflict. As mentioned in the theory, one might expect politically globalized countries to be more stable, more adhering to human rights, etcetera, thereby reducing conflict risk, but no such effect turns up in my results, and I cannot confirm nor discard either H7a or H7b.

There are, however, some quite interesting findings in how the control variables are affected by the addition of different globalization forms to the regression models. Oil does not matter to risk of civil war when level of social globalization is added to the analysis. As described above, in theories of civil war, oil is expected to be a contributing factor because of either its consequences for a country’s economic development – having high-value natural resources reduces the incentive to develop other industry and an economy based on human resources – or because it is a proxy for the strength of the government. In my analyses, oil is a significant explanatory factor for civil war even when economic and political globalization are added to the models, but when level of social globalization is included in the explanatory model, the effect of oil is obscured. What is it about social globalization that suddenly explains what oil used to explain? Perhaps level of social globalization says something about the social capital in a society, not just economic capital, and the stability of the social institutions, not just state institutions. Perhaps, when such factors, or the lack of them, are captured by another variable, the importance of oil as an explanatory factor is diminished.