Power Shift Essay

Power Shift
Jessica T. Mathews

THE RISE OF GLOBAL CIVIL SOCIETY

THE END ofthe Cold War has brought no mere adjustment among states but a novel redistribution of power among states, markets, and civil society. National governments are not simply losing autonomy in a globalizing economy. They are sharing powers—including political, social, and security roles at the core of sovereignty—^with businesses, with international organizations, and with a multitude of citizens groups, known as nongovernmental organizations (NGOS). The steady concentration of power in the hands of states that began in
1648 with the Peace of Westphalia is over, at least for a while.^
The absolutes of the Westphalian system—territoriallyfixedstates where everything of value lies within some state's borders; a single, secular authority governing each territory and representing it outside its borders; and no authority above states—are all dissolving.
Increasingly, resources and threats that matter, including money, information, pollution, and popular culture, circulate and shape lives and economies with little regard for political boundaries. International standards of conduct are gradually beginning to override claims of national or regional singularity. Even the most powerful states find the marketplace and international public opinion compelling them more often to follow a particular course.
The state's central task of assuring security is the least affected, but still not exempt. War will not disappear, but with the shrinkage of U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals, the transformation of the
JESSICA T. MATHEWS

Relations.

[50]

is a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign

Power Shift

Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty into a permanent covenant in 1995, agreement on the long-sought Comprehensive Test Ban treaty in 1996, and the likely entry into force of the Chemical Weapons
Convention in 1997, the security threat to states from other states is on a downward course. Nontraditional threats, however, are rising— terrorism, organized crime, drug trafficking, ethnic conflict, and the combination of rapid population growth, environmental decline, and poverty that breeds economic stagnation, political instability, and, sometimes, state collapse. The nearly 100 armed conflicts since the end of the Cold War have virtually all been intrastate affairs. Many began with governments acting against their own citizens, through extreme corruption, violence, incompetence, or complete breakdown, as in Somalia.
These trends have fed a growing sense that individuals' security may not in fact reliably derive from their nation's security. A competing notion of "human security" is creeping around the edges of official thinking, suggesting that security be viewed as emerging from the conditions of daily life—food, shelter, employment, health, public safety—rather thanflowingdownward from a country's foreign relations and military strength.
The most powerful engine of change in the relative decline of states and the rise of nonstate actors is the computer and telecommunications revolution, whose deep political and social consequences have been almost completely ignored. Widely accessible and affordable technology has broken governments' monopoly on the collection and management of large amounts of information and deprived governments of the deference they enjoyed because of it. In every sphere of activity, instantaneous access to information and the ability to put it to use multiplies the number of players who matter and reduces the number who command great authority.
The effect on the loudest voice—which has been government's— has been the greatest.
By drastically reducing the importance of proximity, the new technologies change people's perceptions of community. Fax machines,
^The author would like to acknowledge the contributions of the authors often case studies for the Council on Foreign Relations study

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