Soft Power on Hard Problems by Maan Ajit;Cheema Amar;

Author:Maan, Ajit;Cheema, Amar;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Hamilton Books
Published: 2012-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Scene III: The End of an Era

Common attitude in the narrative building appears to be that west has a humanitarian duty to export peace and stability, democracy and progress in the regions of the “wild” orient. The west it is not necessarily in a position to export any values or models of democracy. The west is not in the position to provide true freedom and democracy to their own constituency, let alone pretend to be masters of libertarianism to others. We tried it. We failed. Let us move on to alternative modes of conducting international politics. Let those people through their own processes inform the model of society and governance that fits their needs and particularities best. This concept could be precarious and ambivalent at best but there was a brief time in history where whole empires were not built on fear but acceptance of diversity.

De facto interdependency does not equal interventionism. There is no point in trying to prove whether these terrorist or anti-establishment ideologies are valid or not. History will show, assuming that there will be any objectivity to begin with. The key is to rather address the similar if not identical circumstances that not only allowed but demanded their creation.

As the oriental peoples have an inherent tendency—apparent through history—to incorporate the politicization of their inter-cultural contacts, their political mentality embraces the possibility of any cultural communication to be transformed into political act. Strong evidence for that is that western-type state of thick inter-institutional septum is not firmly established in the collective unconsciousness.

The aspect of religion was completely underestimated and marginalized in the process of westernization, as capitalistic models demand complete secularization. The capitalistic theory cannot possibly apply that simplistically as complete industrialization is yet to happen in the societies in question. Instead, economic recession is re-appearing with a disturbing frequency. People cannot rely upon sound and efficient states, which is partially the reason for the upsurge of religious extremism. The assumption that spirituality enables irrationality is exactly that: an assumption. It is not about the religious dogmas but about how people around the globe relate their religiosity and spirituality within the nation-state they belong.

Against the general approach of taking European developments as paradigmatic, atypical institutions and structures exist at particular points in time as the cumulative evolved result of agents’ previous efforts to satisfy their needs and interests. Institutions are therefore more like artifacts than natural kinds.[49] They are the result of many individuals’ purposive actions and unintended effects. To the extent there are common features of institutions these common features are derived from “parallel evolution”—a particular feature is a commonly accessible solution to a common existential problem—or the result of diffusion of organizational themes and ideas (transmission of governing styles and strategies).

It is also important to bear in mind that, at any given time, agents are presented with a repertoire of available institutions and variants (along the lines of Charles Tilly’s point about a repertoire of strategies of collective action; Tilly 1986). The contents of the

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