Beck's Risk Society on a Global Scale

The challenge of voting in today's world

This informal article is inspired by numerous ideas I have acquired through my Jr. College and 1^st Year University education. It applies epistemology, anthropology, sociology, and globalisation studies to understand and address two contemporary problems.

In his book Risk Society, Ulrich Beck notes that modernisation has produced many hazards and risks characteristic of the 20^th and 21^st Century. Two major problems are especially pertinent today:

1. Climate Change and 

2. Economic Collapse

These two problems are truly global in scale. Their impact is or will be felt across the world regardless of borders and their solutions necessarily involve concerted, multilateral action. The unilateral actions of single nations or political blocs cannot conclusively solve these problems. However, concerned voters find it difficult to make informed decisions about these issues due to its specialist nature. Only select government agencies, NGOs, industry experts and academic communities possess the technical knowledge to thoroughly assess and address these problems. Voters’ relative ignorance compromises their ability to cast sound votes and make informed choices through the democratic process and, even if they do, such unilateral action does not solve the problem because concerted multilateral action is lacking. In light of these issues, it seems that national democratic processes cannot cope with the demands of global problems.

Hazards and Risk

Beck states that societies have always faced the risk of existential hazards like plague, war, floods and other catastrophic events. However, it tended to be ‘explained’ through supernatural beliefs. In the 20^th century, a ‘scientific’ worldview became widely accepted as the orthodox form of explanation and humanity used its principles to drive social and economic change. It delivered progress, defined one way or another, through a characteristically modern and rational-secular world-view, but also generated a number of risks that were believed to result from human action.

For example, Beck notes that greater risk usually follows the accumulation of wealth. Taking a historical view of the 20^th century, it is easy to see why. Events like the Great Depression (1920s), Oil Shock/ Nixon Shock (1970s, 1980s), and Asian Financial Crisis (1997) were all unexpected events, as is the recent US Subprime Mortgage Recession (2008). Economic growth and stability is central to a nation’s quality of life. It ensures employment, income, and production in a domestic and import/export sense. However, in an intricately connected global economy, recessions in one important country or region can impact the entire world. While the UN has been developed with the explicit purpose of preventing war through diplomacy and, when deemed necessary, intervention, no similarly global institution has been created with the explicit purpose of ensuring global economic stability and the legal powers to do so. The Bretton Woods system and GATT during the immediate post-war years attempted to do that, but the US has since abandoned the “gold peg” and Free-Trade Agreements while regional economic blocs like the EU, NAFTA, and ASEAN have since superseded the international GATT arrangement. Furthermore, the scope of the IMF and World Bank are limited to international BOP and development issues respectively and lack the power to create resolutions about members’ internal economic policies or enforce them. There is thus little supranational coordination with the mission and powers to systemically manage the world economy.

States are understandably reluctant to create one. Each state has divergent laws and economic norms that reflect certain cultural positions. For example, the relatively laissez faire approach in the USA contrasts with the highly managed economy of Singapore and respectively reflects a more liberal and authoritative approach to governance. Given the fact that supranational management also implies that nations acquire a ‘federal’ status with a political structure that spells out rights and obligations, supranational management would involve some surrender of some sovereign autonomy as national interests become subordinate to collectively defined targets. However, the lack of such a supranational arrangement – and indeed international accountability – means that the actions of single states (e.g. the USA) can and probably will continue to upset the welfare of our global financial system.

The same can be said of global climate change. The common perspective is that industrial development patterns and consumer consumption tends to release pollutants that damage the earth’s protective ozone layer, resulting in a ‘greenhouse effect’ that increases temperature and upsets the ecological status quo. Its implications are primarily economic – global warming may produce shifts in climate belts and affect the agricultural industry that feeds the world’s populace. Having colder winters, warmer summers, and everything in-between may also make some areas unliveable and diminish the appeal of outdoor lifestyle activities, but that tends to be a footnote relative to the economic implications.

The solution thus requires the cooperation of all interested parties, as a single major pollutant that goes unchecked will still damage the ozone layer regardless of others’ actions. The challenge in implementing one is what game theorists would call a coordination problem. Assuming that global economic and ecological stability are in the interests of all parties, and that the solution necessarily involves their concerted participation, it follows that any action by any national actor(s) will be unsuccessful in the larger scheme of things unless all significant parties engage in the desired corrective behaviour.

Defining Risk

One obstacle in resolving these problems may lie with the way risk is defined. Beck notes that there is a discrepancy between the ways a risk is defined for particular audiences. In the academic field, economic and ecological risks are discussed in positivistic theoretical terms. Causes and solutions are weighed and debated based on specialist knowledge in each respective field. In the political arena, where policy actions are advocated based on normative goals and interests, risks are defined for an agenda. The former is too technocratic for a wide, layman audience in the political field, while the latter may be too partial and misleading for voters’ to feel certain about.

In the 2010 Australian national elections, opposition leader Tony Abbott pushed for a carbon emissions tax as part of his election campaign. The defending Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, campaigned against it. However, Gillard has since pushed for the introduction of the carbon tax while Abbott now speaks against it. Clearly, this back flip by both politicians suggests that the carbon tax may have been nothing more than an object of bipartisan politics as each tries to gain votes. On Australian TV channels, it is common to find a pseudo-utopian carbon tax advertisement by the “Australian Government Canberra”, followed by a bleak, worrying advertisement against it 5 minutes later. One can only wonder how lay voters feel when faced with such disparate arguments.

The same can be said of economic issues. Given the surprise recessions of the Great Depression, Asian Financial Crisis, and the latest 2008 US subprime mortgage debacle, perhaps economists themselves are uncertain of the global economy. Unlike ecologists, economic information is a matter of national interest and understandably kept within a nation’s government agencies. Assuming that economists have a sound theoretical framework – an assumption that we are hard pressed to ascertain – they would still lack factual information about the state of other economies. It may be a stretch to say that governments act without knowing what other governments are up to – after all, economies seem to be stable in-between recessions – but it certainly does not give us a sense of assurance.

One may object saying that the information we receive – myself included – is based on good, trustworthy authority but this is a fallacious argument. Authority is not infallible, and we may not possess the knowledge to discern its accuracy. Aside from the Australian Carbon Tax example above, anthropologist Sir Edward Evan Evans-Pritchard has compared our lay understanding of science with the Azande tribe’s belief in witchcraft as a paradigm of understanding events. The Azande (Southern Sudan) are aware of the natural causes behind misfortunes, but events that cannot be explained through natural causes are attributed to witchcraft. In similar fashion, our laymen’s knowledge understands that global warming is due to the release of pollutants into the air, and economic catastrophes are due to financial mismanagement – but that’s about as deep as it goes. Our understanding is superficial and we are not able to evaluate situations and policies with much epistemological depth or validity. Like the Azande, our understanding is derived from ‘experts’/ ‘witches’ – our paradigms are merely culturally accepted patterns of thought rather than absolute truths.

This leaves voters in a disempowered position.

Firstly, understanding hazards requires knowledge that far surpasses what we access. Few go to university, fewer still study economics or ecology. Yet we face pressing issues that impact everyone across the board and the democratic process requires our input. We are not in a position to know the situation and only apprehend it through the press, political speeches, and other mediums of popular communication that may not present the situation accurately or impartially.

Secondly, unilateral decisions made by voters in favour of corrective action may do little given the global nature of these problems that require collective, multilateral action. Pollution will not disappear when a single country, like Australia, implements corrective policies – it does nothing to halt pollution from the USA or China and may even inflate costs Down Under. Likewise, Australia – which continued to grown despite the 2008 recession – is not immune to economic dangers as long as other trading partners like the USA continue to mismanage their economies.

Keeping Democratic Processes Relevant

The specialist knowledge of these risks and the collective nature of their solutions make it difficult to find a clear resolution. It seems that democracy, or at least democratic principles and processes, is failing to cope with the most pressing issues of our time. At the grassroots level, practices like recycling or opting for sustainable transport may help but only specialists and specialist agencies are equipped with the knowledge to craft coherent strategic policies that specifically address these issues over the long run.

One possible remedy would be to empower voters through the impartial transmission of relevant information. The universities and academic community can play a central role in this. Their knowledge and experience in introducing complex subjects to fresh students could be the stepping-stone the public needs to deal with modern issues. Done by multiple universities, or a board comprised of them, a structured program can be implemented that bests educates the public on pressing issues. A simple e-newsletter is a simple and inexpensive method of educating the public – including university students who are specialising in other areas. While this approach does not solve the ‘witchcraft’ problem, academics have a professional interest in delivering accurate, impartial accounts that their peers can potentially critique. A peer-reviewed online newsletter discussing pressing issues could go far in keeping us educated about the issues of our age and, maybe someday, enable our age-old democratic processes to handle contemporary challenges.