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Le Canada et l’ONU > Newton Bowles Reports Ce document est disponible seulement en anglais.
ANNEX 4 Failing Currencies, Recriminations, Who's to
Blame? Netherlands Minister for Development Cooperation Five years ago I gave an address on whether development cooperation was out of date. My answer to that question was: No, development cooperation is not a thing of the past, but it is not a thing of the present either, because there exists neither unequivocal development nor a strong desire for international cooperation. After the decade of adjustment of the 1980s, and after the end of the Cold War in 1989, I said, the 90s would be a decade of transition: transition from adjustment to development, transition from authoritarian regimes to economic and political democracy, transition from post-colonial and post-cold war societies to new international configurations, better able to cope with the major problems of the forthcoming century. The transition period would be characterized more by international conflict management than by cooperation to guarantee a sustainable society. The main reason for my pessimism was that though a new spirit was emerging in favor of sustainable growth and development, and though there was a will to translate this new consciousness into concrete action, the world lacked the capacity to do so. Even if we were to agree that the new technological and ecological reality would require a new political agenda, the capacity to implement this agenda would have been eroded by that same reality. In my view the turn of the decade had been characterized by a crisis not only in development policies but also in the theory and the concept of development itself, because some fundamental questions had been side-stepped: questions of power and inequality and questions regarding ecological sustainability and the physical limits of economic growth. Addressing these questions would require a strong democratic public authority, but due to the prevailing market ideology such an authority was much less effective and much more contested than before. It was not only the widespread shift from the state to the market that had produced this result, but also the inherent erosion of nation-states themselves. Nation-states had been weakened by transnational economic forces on the one hand and by domestic conflicts on the other. These conflicts were rooted not only in economic inequalities but also in cultural differences between religious, ethnic or other identity groupings. Addressing these conflicts would require economic development policies to eliminate injustices, for which strong public authorities were needed. However, as I said, these capabilities were eroding. Moreover, the non-economic or cultural dimensions of these conflicts were only very dimly understood after a period during which the main ideological conflict had centered on questions regarding the relationship between the individual and the state or concerning economic welfare. The new questions focused on the role of tradition and on the relationship between the individual and self-defined social groups and their identities. The conflicts between such groups were often fought disregarding public norms and rules-- for instance human rights or the rule of law-- because the authority of the state itself was in dispute. |
