The future of politics

Futures 31 (1999) 1005–1016www.elsevier.com/locate/futures

The future of politics

James N. RosenauGeorge Washington University, 2130 H Street, Washington, DC 20052, USA

Abstract

Humankind is undergoing subtle but vast transformations, from the impact of globalizationto the pull of local comforts, from the movement toward regional organizations to the demandsof transnational groups, from the ever more powerful consequences of microelectronic techno-logies to the ever deepening bonds of interdependence. These changes can fairly be describedas the emergence of a new epoch marked by altered global structures and driven by a skillrevolution, an organizational explosion, and a continuous flow of ideas, money, goods, andpeople that is rendering long-standing territorial boundaries increasingly obsolete and fosteringan extensive decentralization of authority. The future of politics is thus conceived to be per-vaded by contradictions, ambiguities, and uncertainties. 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. Allrights reserved.

To reflect seriously on the future of politics is to proceed from several basic prem-ises that we all hold but normally do not explicate, relative to the nature of changeand the capacity of human systems to undergo transformation; the location of caus-ation in human affairs (whether it originates and is sustained by agents or structures);and the role of individuals and their vulnerabilities to change, their readiness toengage in collective action, and their capacity for adapting to new conditions. Itfollows that—to the extent that we hold different premises—understandings of thefuture of politics are bound to be discrepant. Here I shall attempt to explicate mypremises as a means of suggesting what the long-term future of politics is likely tobe. I believe we are well into a period of profound transformations in which suchdeep changes are occurring in both the agents and structures and the relationshipbetween them that world affairs in the future will be substantially different thanthey are today. I argue that new technologies have facilitated four simultaneous andinterrelated revolutions—an organizational explosion, a skill revolution, a mobilityupheaval, and a major rearrangement of global structures—that are generating differ-ences in kind rather than simply differences in degree and that, as a result, we areentering a new epoch.

0016-3287/99/$ - see front matter. 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.PII: S0016 -3287(99 )00059-2

1006 J.N. Rosenau / Futures 31 (1999) 1005–1016

Before outlining and labeling this epoch, let me repeat that those who proceedfrom very different premises are likely to anticipate a different future. More thanthat, they are not subject to empirical proof. We can articulate the logic of our initialpremises and we can marshal evidence in support of them, but our conclusions arebound to be a function of our points of departure. Thus, even if we agree on theempirics of the human condition, we may still differ enormously on what they sig-nify. Accordingly, all I can do is articulate my basic premises and hope that theyserve to alert others to the need to explicate their underlying assumptions and theinterpretations to which they give rise.

1. An emergent epoch

A key to grasping the emergent epoch lies in its contradictions. Each day bringsword of a world inching slowly toward sanity even as it moves toward breakdown.And not only do these integrative and disintegrative events occur simultaneously,but more often than not they are causally related. The causal links cumulate andgenerate a momentum such that every integrative increment tends to give rise to adisintegrative increment, and vice versa. The simultaneity of the good and the bad,the global and local, the coherent and incoherent—to mention only a few of thepolarities—underlies the emergence of a new epoch in human affairs. The best wayto grasp world affairs today is to view them as an endless series of tensions in whichthe forces for globalization and those for localization interactively play themselvesout. To focus only on globalizing or localizing dynamics is to risk overlooking whatmakes events unfold as they do.

But it would be erroneous to view the emergent epoch as comprised of simpleinterrelationships, readily discernible, and easily understood. They encompass thetensions between core and periphery, national and transnational systems, commun-itarianism and cosmopolitanism, cultures and subcultures, states and markets, patriotsand urbanites, decentralization and centralization, universalism and particularism,pace and space,1 global and local—to note only the more conspicuous links betweenopposites. These tensions take different forms in different parts of the world, coun-tries, markets, communities, professions, and cyberspaces.

At the core are new technologies and the uses made of them. The acceleration ofthe microelectronic revolution offers an obvious example. It has brought words andpictures, ideas and philosophies, statistical data and detailed scenarios, into mostplaces in the world from most other places in the world, and it has done so with aspeed that renders the transmission and reception of the messages virtually simul-taneous. Global television, the Internet, the fax machine, and the fiber optic cable

1 This reference is to “an increasingly pervasive and contentious political struggle between a ‘discourseof pace’ linked, on the one hand, to accelerating transitions, speeding flows, overcoming resistances,eliminating frictions, and engineering the kinematics of globalization, and, on the other hand, a ‘discourseof place’ centered upon solidifying porous borders, bolstering breached containments, arresting erodedidentities, and revitalizing faded essences” [1] (see p. 73).

1007J.N. Rosenau / Futures 31 (1999) 1005–1016

are among the many electronic technologies that have reduced communications dis-tances to milliseconds. Similarly, the jet aircraft has reduced geographic distances;every city in the world is less than a day away from any other city. Global spacesare moving into local places and local repercussions are occurring on a global scale.

By themselves, however, these innovations do not fully explain the advent of anew epoch. Neither globalizing nor localizing dynamics drive the course of events.They consist of processes as well as structures, processes that are initiated, expanded,contracted, disrupted, or otherwise sustained by human agency, by people actingindividually or collectively to cope with challenges and move toward goals. At timesit may seem as if the processes are structural and independent of agency—as whenreference is made to market forces or to the influence of American norms as sourcesof behavior elsewhere. But even the most all-encompassing of these processes arefounded on human agency, on huge multitudes of people concurrently acting in thesame way. It is a gross mistake to posit or imply an inevitablism at work in worldaffairs, to “reason that globalization ... refers to very large scale matters, in contrastto the ‘small-scale’ status of individuals”. Rather, “individuals are as much a partof the globalization process as any other basic category of social–theoretical dis-course”—or, more accurately perhaps, “globalization has involved and continues toinvolve the institutionalized constructionof the individual” (pp. 79–80, italics inoriginal) [2].

Among the major human transformations that can be traced to interactions withthe technological innovations, three have unfolded at the micro-level of individualsand a fourth pervades the macro-level of collectivities and global structures. Oneinvolves the transformation I call a “skill revolution” wherein the analytical,emotional, and imaginative skills of healthy adults everywhere have become increas-ingly refined and now exceed those possessed by earlier generations. Another is the“organizational explosion” wherein staggering numbers of new organizations havesprung up in and across all the world’s communities. Still another consists of the vastmovement of people which I call the “mobility upheaval”. The macro transformationinvolves the authority relationships between individuals and their collectivities,relationships that have led to the bifurcation of global structures into a state-centricworld of states and a multi-centric world of diverse other kinds of collective agents.

The emergent epoch derives from a multiplicity of causal factors, each reinforcingthe others in ways that defy reduction to an overarching theory. There can be noeasy answer to the question of what drives the course of events. Power is too disag-gregated, and feedback loops too pervasive, to assert that global affairs are nowdriven by the United States, or by globalization, or by capitalism, or by whatevergrand scheme may seem most compelling. No, what drives the emergent epoch con-sists of complex dynamics which spring from numerous sources and cannot be tracedto a singular origin. Each of these transformations is assessed briefly below; takentogether they have irrevocably altered the way in which world affairs are conducted.They underlie the globalization of national economies, the weakening of states, theerosion of sovereignty, the decentralization of governments, and the growing influ-ence of nongovernmental organization (NGOs)—to mention only a few of the fea-tures of the emergent epoch.


2. Labeling the emergent epoch

Attempts to summarize the many changes that have generated a new stage inhuman history have resulted in two labels. The two differ greatly—one pragmaticand framed by politicians and journalists while the other is philosophical and hasevolved among intellectuals—but they share a lack of specificity. The pragmatic lineof reasoning simply assumes that the end of the superpower rivalry between the USand the USSR unleashed processes that are altering the practices through whichpolitical, economical and social life are sustained. This approach tends to treat everydevelopment as expressive of the new historical epoch and thus it uses a label, the“post-Cold War” era, which hints at changes and differences without indicating whatthese might be. Indeed, by employing such a label, pragmatists conclude that thepresent is a congeries of unsystematic, even unrelated, forces that are propelling theworld into an uncertain future. In addition, by positing conditions as “post” an earlierera, the pragmatic perspective implies that it is a transition, as if new historicalpatterns have yet to generate new global structures before the world can settle onceagain into stable circumstances.

The more philosophical response is more precise in terms of specifying what haschanged, but it too is murky about what sustains the changes and where they maybe taking the world. And thus it too uses the “post” prefix as part of its label, therebyalso suggesting that a multiplicity of forces are at work which offer no hint as to whatthe world’s future may be like. In this case the label is that of “post-modernism”, aschool of thought that has different meanings but a shared conviction that basicchanges have moved the world beyond modernity or, at least, into “late modernity”.Adherents of the various post-modernisms also share the belief that modernity hasrun its course because the notions of science and rationality that distinguish it haveproven to be ill-founded. After all, many post-modernists assert, two devastatingworld wars, a deep economic depression, and the hydrogen bomb mark the age ofscience and rationality—hardly a compelling perspective. For all their criticisms ofmodernity, however, post-modernists do not offer an understanding of where theworld is today and where it is likely to be tomorrow. Indeed, many of them arguethat speculation about the future is wasted, that any scenarios are hidden politicalmoves designed to advance the agendas of the scenarioist. If the insight that globaliz-ing–localizing tensions have come to dominate world affairs is essentially correct,then the absence of specificity about the nature, processes, and structure of the emerg-ent epoch on the part of both the post-Cold War and post-modern perspectives isespecially glaring. The tensions can be framed in a number of ways and variouslylabeled, but they do consist of substantive phenomena that lie at the heart of theemergent epoch.

In order to indicate the dynamism of these tensions, it seems appropriate to usea label more suggestive than one that relies on the “post” prefix. For this purposea label concocted out of the tensions between those processes promoting the fragmen-tation of societies and those conducive to their integration conveys the essentialnature of the transformation. The label is “fragmegration”—admittedly a bit awkwardand grating, but at the same time a constant reminder that the world has moved


beyond the condition of being “post” its predecessor to an era in which the foun-dations of daily life have settled into new and unique rhythms. Equally important,the label captures in a single phrase the large degree to which these rhythms consistof localizing, decentralizing, or fragmenting dynamics that are interactively and caus-ally linked to globalizing, centralizing, and integrating dynamics.

The concept of fragmegration has antecedents. The label is new and succinct, butthe contradictions it subsumes have been a concern of diverse analysts. While onesociologist, for example, elaborates on how people are participants in “a massive,twofold process involvingthe interpenetration of the universalization of particular-ism and the particularization of universalism”, (p. 73, italics in the original) [2] apolitical scientist notes that the world now faces two conflicting trends: “On the onehand, a need for collective action; and on the other, a search for closed communi-ties” [3].

Any such formulation is subject to simplification and misinterpretation. It couldbe misleadingly seen as treating localizing and decentralizing processes as forms offragmentation and as equating globalizing and centralizing dynamics with integrativeprocesses. Such a conflation of the two pairs of three processes is indeed a simplifi-cation. Localizing and decentralizing dynamics need not be the same as fragmentingprocesses even though all three share a movement away from whole systems andtoward less encompassing subsystems. To decentralize, for example, may be to calcu-late that advantages can be enjoyed by voluntarily breaking up into smaller units,whereas to fragment is to imply that breakups derive from irresolvable tensions andconflicts. Similarly, globalizing and centralizing processes may not be the equivalentof those that serve to integrate; they can provoke reactions that are part and parcelof the ambiguities and contradictions of the emergent epoch. If these dangers ofoversimplification are recognized, however, the fragmegration label does have thevirtue of sensitizing us to the contradictory tensions wherein the world is simul-taneously moving in opposite directions.

Thus, to assert that we live in a fragmegrative epoch is to say that we are becomingaccustomed to the contradictions, ambiguities, and uncertainties which have replacedthe regularities of prior epochs. Comprised of nonlinear processes in which everyeffect is a cause of yet another outcome in a complex and endless array of feedbackloops, these are the regularities of our age. And they are a continuing source ofvulnerability and insecurity for those recent generations whose lives have been freeof war and marked by high degrees of comfort and affluence. Paradoxically, themore risk-free the world seems, the more risky it feels. In the words of one observer,

Now, is our world more dangerous? ... It is. We are asking more of it, morecomfort and therefore we are more vulnerable. The more secure we are, the morewe feel the danger of losing our security. There are easy ways to inflict majorpain with no major effort. People can intrude on our financial and national-securitysystems in much easier ways. This is because of the interconnectedness of theworld and its infrastructures [4].

It is not difficult to demonstrate the large extent to which the regularities of the


fragmegrative epoch have been institutionalized as a multiplicity of opposites: terri-tory and boundaries are still important, but attachments to them are weakening. Dom-estic and foreign affairs still seem like separate domains, but the line between themis transgressed with increasing frequency (this is the central theme of work byRosenau [5]). The international system is less commanding, but still powerful. Statesare changing, but not disappearing. State sovereignty has eroded, but it is vigorouslyasserted. Governments are weaker, but they can still throw their weight around. Com-pany profits are soaring and wages are stagnant. Scenes of unspeakable horror andgenocide flicker on our TV screens even as humanitarian organizations mobilize.The United Nations is asked to take on more assignments and not supplied with thefunds to carry them out. Defense establishments acknowledge that their roles havedrastically altered and continue to adhere to traditional strategies. At times the publicare more demanding, but at other times they are also more pliable. Citizens are bothmore active and more cynical. Borders still keep out intruders, but they are alsoincreasingly porous. In sum, we have come to know that we live in a world that isdeteriorating in some areas, remaining fixed in others, and thriving in still others—which is another way of concluding that both order and disorder simultaneouslysustain global structures.

Where people came to expect the Soviet–American rivalry to shape the course ofevents in the Cold War era, and where they became used to the ways in which UShegemony shaped outcomes in the brief post-Cold War period, today they haveadjusted to the realization that outcomes stem from multiple sources, that they aretransitory and ever subject to reversal, and that what happens at one level can rapidlyand unexpectedly cascade across other levels. Officials and public alike have cometo understand that their lives are intertwined in crazy-quilt ways which may oftenbe enhancing and just as often denigrating. And they intuitively know, too, that thefeatures of the emergent fragmegrative epoch are sources of new opportunities aswell as serious threats.

3. The skill revolution

Among the premises from which I proceed is one that attaches considerable impor-tance to individuals as agents of change. Increasingly, and for a variety of reasons,everywhere in the world they appear to have refined and extended their skills inrecent decades. Their scenarios have become lengthier and more elaborate. Theirjudgments have become sharper and more incisive. Their imaginations have becomemore wide-ranging and less inhibited. Such trends are as old as human history, butthe pace at which they operate has accelerated substantially since the onset of frag-megration.

One major reason for this is the microelectronic revolution and the swift flow ofinformation—words, pictures, and statistics—from distant places to local sites. Fromhigh in the Andes to the lowlands of Bangladesh, from the rural areas of Greece tothe crowded cities of China, skylines have been pervaded by satellite dishes andantennae that enable people to receive accounts and images of events. While there


is a widespread tendency to filter out unwanted information, there is always a residuethat enlarges the recipient’s grasp of how the world works. And to the electroniccontacts must be added the impact of education: for every country in the worldbetween 1965 and the late 1980s, the number and proportion of persons, both menand women, with primary, secondary, and university education rose steadily (see thedata on these trends given by Rosenau, pp. 358–60 [6]). In addition, the mobilityupheaval has contributed to the refinement of individual skills.

No less relevant is the growing complexity of large urban communities. Peoplehave learned to adapt to the massive traffic jams, the paralyzing strikes, the crime,the electrical brownouts, the markets and malls—and there is every reason to pre-sume that this has enhanced their skills in coping with the contradictions and uncer-tainties of the events that unfold beyond their urban communities. Indeed, “[t]hereis a substantial amount of evidence ... indicating that increases in environmentalcomplexity increase intellectual functioning and that the complexity of the environ-ment has generally been increasing since the start of the industrial revolution” (p.67) [7] (see also [8]).

With the learning that has flowed from greater analytic skills has come a greatercapacity to focus emotions. Being and feeling more competent, people are moreaware of their values with respect to the course of events. Scenes of genocide,accounts of riots, reports of corruption, and the many other distant situations ladenwith heavy ethical or normative implications and depicted by the electronic mediahave enriched the sensitivity of people and heightened their emotional skills.

Perhaps the least appreciated dimension involves the way in which the dynamics ofthe fragmegrative era have freed up peoples’ imaginations—their capacity to envisionalternative futures, lifestyles, and circumstances for themselves, their families, andtheir cherished organizations. Their electronic connections, their travel, their friendsand family abroad, their ethnic ties, and their professional contacts all serve to stimu-late notions of different—often preferred—ways of living. Whether the stimuli areprovided by global television, soap operas, relatives working as maids in Hong Kong,cousins who found employment in Saudi Arabia, or children who married foreignspouses, the materials for wide-ranging imaginative musings are abundantly avail-able. These are especially relevant for peoples in developing countries whose circum-stances have previously prevented contacts with other cultures and lifestyles. Fromthe perspective of those who have long been hemmed in by the realities of life onor below the poverty line, the freeing up of imaginative capacities is among themost powerful forces at work in the age of fragmegration. The imagination sharpensgenerational differences, divides families, undermines cultural affinities, and other-wise disturbs the routines and relations of individuals and communities. As oneobserver put it, “The imagination is today a staging ground for action, and not onlyfor escape” (p. 7) [9].

Less obvious is the relevance of information. To note that people have becomemore skillful in relating themselves to world affairs is not to say they are necessarilymore informed about them. What is involved is reasoning ability in the case ofanalytic skills, self-consciousness in the case of emotional skills, and unrestrainedthinking in the case of imaginative skills, and none of these are dependent on the


level of information one may possess. One may be able to reason better, be moreself-aware, and freer to think creatively, the more informed one is, but such skillscan thrive and deepen whatever the extent of the information available. A generalunderstanding of the major contradictions and uncertainties that predominate in ourage is sufficient to construct the scenarios that trace a path from distant fragmegrativetensions to personal circumstances and that are thus expressive of analytic skills.Likewise, a general understanding along these lines plus a sensitivity to one’s valuesand the priority among them is sufficient to the nourishment of emotional skills. Asfor the imagination, it too can thrive in the absence of extensive information—aslong as periodic inputs are experienced which provoke speculation or reflection aboutalternative ways of living.

Another way of putting the relevance of information in perspective is to conceiveof analytic skills as working knowledge—premises and understandings of how theworld works and which people apply to any situation that arises, regardless of thefullness of the information they may have. This is not to imply that people every-where are becoming equally skillful along any or all of the skill revolution’s dimen-sions. Access to the electronic media varies and so do opportunities for the advance-ment of skills.2 The skill revolution is worldwide in the sense that even as theanalytically, emotionally, and imaginatively rich get richer, so do those who are poorin these respects get richer.

Nor is there an implication that the skill revolution is generating a worldwidevalue convergence around, say, democracy or capitalism. The presumption is ratherthat individuals and officials are becoming more skillful in terms of their own cul-tures. Latin American peasants are more skillful than their grandparents; just as Pari-sian sophisticates, Islamic fundamentalists, and all other groups have advanced theirskills beyond those of their forbears even as a preponderance of them have retainedthe core premises of their particular cultures.

Some might argue that there is nothing new about the skill revolution, that thehistory of the human brain across millennia is one of ever greater capacity, empathy,and creativity. The cognitive and evaluative capacities of the brain have expandedcontinuously. From the perspective of accelerated time, however, the skill revolutioncan be viewed as a new set of phenomena. Today the pace of learning has expandedat a sharply faster rate than was the case in prior epochs. Pictures, words, and ideasare transmitted more rapidly than in the past, transportation facilities move peoplearound the world more swiftly, education and teaching materials allow for quickeradaptation by students than previously, and the computer gives virtually instan-taneous feedback when mistakes are made—all these dynamics have contributed tothe expansion of skill levels in recent decades at a rate that warrants being regardedas revolutionary.

Furthermore, the skill revolution is not only worldwide in scope, it is also

2 For a recent analysis of the gap between developed and developing countries in this regard, see theWorld Development Report of the World Bank [10]. Yet, the gap can be exaggerated: for evidence thatthe poor peasant, despite the gap, is nonetheless increasingly skillful, see the work by Anderson [11].


unfolding at all levels of society, from the rich to the poor, from elites to ordinarypersons. Just as one recent study uncovered such a long-term trend among varioustypes of elites in several cultures [12], so has a major investigation of IQ scoresacross more than six decades concluded that “people are getting smarter. Researcherswho study intelligence report that scores around the world have been increasing sofast that a high proportion of people regarded as normal at the turn of the centurywould be considered way below average by today’s tests” [13]. Stated more elabor-ately

Data now are available for 20 nations, and there is not a single exception tothe finding of massive IQ gains over time. These countries include the mostadvanced nations of continental Europe, that is, The Netherlands, Belgium,France, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, the former East and West Germany, Austriaand Switzerland. They include virtually all English-speaking nations, that is, Bri-tain including Scotland, Northern Ireland, Canada, the United States, Australia,and New Zealand. They include two nations outside Europe but predominantlyof European culture, namely, Israel and urban Brazil. They include two Asiannations that have adopted European technology, namely, Japan and urban China(p. 26) [8].

In sum, the analytic, emotional, and imaginative dimensions of the skill revolutioncontinuously reinforce each other, as each increment of one fosters comparableadvances in the other two.

4. The organizational explosion

In all parts of the world and at every level of community people are comingtogether to concert their efforts on behalf of shared needs and goals. Exact statisticsdescriptive of this pattern do not exist, but few would argue with the proposition thatthe pace at which new associations are formed and old ones enlarged is enormous.

There are several reasons for the organizational explosion. One is the skill revol-ution; people have become more able to know when, where, and how to engage incollective action. A second involves the declining competence of states and thegreater opportunities opened up for those who organize to press their demands; theorganizational explosion serves as a powerful impetus toward empowerment.Another concerns the pervasive cynicism toward politics and government throughoutthe world that encourages people to want to act on their own and in concert withothers to remedy their problems. Fourth and perhaps most important, the deepeningcomplexity of world affairs has led to more and more specialization which, in turn,fosters greater reliance on coordinating with like-minded others. A goodly proportionof the organizational explosion, for example, derives from the growing preoccupationwith environmental and resource problems that have stirred organizational activitiesin innumerable communities. Lastly, the micro-electronic revolution has facilitatedthe forming of groups, alliances, and networks. The capacity to network has pro-


foundly altered the nature of organizations. Where organizations used to be essen-tially vertical structures, today they are increasingly horizontal and decreasingly hier-archical as greater complexity leads them to network with counterparts elsewhereand as new electronic technologies facilitate the creation and routinization of theirhorizontal ties.

In short, the global stage has become ever more dense with actors. In earlierepochs it was occupied mainly by states and their intergovernmental organizations,but in the emergent epoch the cast of characters on the stage has multiplied. Statesstill occupy important roles in world affairs, but their ranks have become thin relativeto all those organizations that now reach across boundaries. This density of the globalstage seems likely to render the future of politics different than what it has tradition-ally been. As people are increasingly either members of or familiar with the diverseorganizations active in world affairs, so are fragmegrative tensions not only likelyto become increasingly salient and intense, but the crowded density of agents on theworld stage also has significant consequences for the transformation of global struc-tures.

5. The mobility upheaval

Hardly less central as a transformative dynamic is the vast movement of peoplearound the world. Using the notion of “mobility” in the broadest possible sense soas to include any movement for any length of time and for any purpose—frombusiness to professional travel, from tourism to terrorism, from political asylum tothe search for jobs, from legal to illegal migration—the boundary-spanning activitiesof people in recent decades have been astounding. Statistics for every form of traveldepict sharp and continuous growth, and the trend shows no sign of letting up. Notonly is tourism among the world’s largest industries, but the data on business travelalso portray a growing flow of people around the world. And then there are themigratory flows driven largely by a search for employment and involving mostlypeople from the developing world moving into the industrial and financial centersof the developed world. All of these have been facilitated by transportational techno-logies—particularly the jet aircraft—that will continue to have a profound impact.

Among the most significant consequences of the mobility upheaval are its de-territorializing impacts. Those who move across borders not only loosen their tiesto the homeland of their birth, but they also serve as conduits for the transmissionof values and practices back and forth from one culture to another—with the resultthat peoples’ sense of attachment to a particular geographic space diminishes. Andthe spectacle of this diminution worldwide adds to the momentum with which de-territorialization occurs. However, de-territorialization also involves what might becalled “re-territorialization”. Migrants converge in neighborhoods, publish their ownnewspapers, maintain their own television programs, found their own churches, andopen their own restaurants—thereby creating homes away from home, diasporas thatthrough generational time become combinations of old and new homelands, subcul-tures in increasingly multicultural societies. The mobility upheaval is marked by


normative implications that are both good and bad. On the positive side are all thebenefits that follow from people being exposed to new ways of thinking, new culturalpremises, and alternative lifestyles as they move around the world. But on the nega-tive side are the diverse ways in which the presence of travelers from abroad,especially those who do not return home, often pit subculture against subculture andpose questions as to the degree to which “foreigners” are tolerated.

6. Structural transformations

While people at the micro-level will be playing a central role in the politics ofthe future, this is not to dismiss the relevance of structures. Elsewhere I have elabor-ated on how the structures of world politics have undergone a profound and pro-nounced bifurcation in which a multi-centric world composed of such diverse actorsas multinational corporations, ethnic minorities, professional societies, and NGOshas evolved to cooperate, compete, or otherwise interact with the state-centric world.States may still be central to the course of events, but their international system isno longer as predominant as it once was. Now there are two worlds of world politics,a bifurcation that has heightened the tensions through which people are tied into thedynamics of fragmegration (for an extended discussion of the bifurcation of globalstructures see Chapter 10 of [6]).

I proceed from the premise that the course of events is shaped by transformationsat both levels—the interaction of agents and structures, people at the micro-levelshaping macro institutions and the latter influencing the former.

7. The future of politics

If the foregoing analysis of the underlying dynamics of the emergent epoch isreasonably accurate, a broad outline of the nature and direction of politics in thefuture can be readily derived. With ever more skillful public converging into evergreater numbers of networks and organizations, with people on the move ever moreextensively, and with global structures increasingly bifurcated, it seems likely thatthe contradictory trends toward integration and fragmentation will continue to accel-erate. This means that authority at all levels of community throughout the world islikely to be increasingly decentralized and, in many cases, weakened. Even the auth-ority of the United States is likely to undergo continuous decentralization and frag-mentation. It follows, too, that the level of conflict within countries is likely to inten-sify, sometimes culminating in violence but perhaps more often in a diminution ofcommunity cohesion.

At the same time as the dynamics of localization unfold, so will those of globaliz-ation continue to accelerate, especially at regional levels. If the European Unionsucceeds it is likely to spur similar tendencies in other regions. On the other hand,the bifurcation of global structures makes it improbable that formal governmentalinstitutions will evolve on a worldwide scale. A much greater likelihood is issue-


based regimes that acquire some authority to cope with problems that arise in theirissue-areas.

While the 21st century may well be marked by less interstate war than the 20th,it seems likely to be as pervaded by as much commotion, change, and upheaval asits predecessor. The age of fragmegration, in short, is still very much in its infancy.

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[2] Robertson R. Social theory, cultural relativity and the problem of globality. In: King AD, editor.Culture, globalization and the world-system. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997.

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[9] Appadurai A. Modernity at large: cultural dimensions of globalization. Minneapolis: University ofMinnesota Press, 1996.

[10] World Development Report of the World Bank, 1998/99, Knowledge for development. New York:Oxford University Press, 1999.

[11] Anderson LE. The political ecology of the modern peasant: calculation and community. Baltimore:Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994.

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The future of politics