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THE DYNAMICS OF LOCAL-GLOBAL RELATIONS 407

a broader Europe in defense (North Atlantic predator/prey, growth/diffusion, and random
Treaty Organization, NATO), trade and variation/adaptation (Teune, 1978).
finance (European Union, EU), human rights
(Council of Europe, CoE) among others. The
global institutions, often referred to as ‘inter- Centers and peripheries
national’ institutions, are generally divided
politically into governmental and non- The most important fact about this period of
governmental organizations. There are globalization is that the US economy
‘global courts’, the International Court and dropped from providing about half of the
regional ones in most parts of the world, the world’s economic production around 1947 to
most active one being the European Court of somewhat under 25% just after the beginning
Human Rights. There are also some sem- of the twenty-first century. That percentage
blances of global armies and police in the will continue to drop only because of a
UN and most recently a ‘broadened’ NATO. continued high growth rate in China relative
Democratic order has penetrated, but this to the US. An indisputable indication of
change appears to have happened in a globalization is the decentralization of
moment, and seems to have become only production and distribution. Globalization
shallowly rooted in some places with ques- undermines the view of a world system of
tionable growth, as the case of Russia will centers and peripheries, described by Lenin
illustrate later in the chapter. Wherever as empires and in other interpretations as
democracy is established, however thinly it ‘dependency’ with capitalist centers control-
has penetrated, the potential for violent ling underdeveloped countries and regions.
conflict appears to have diminished. A longer-term perspective on globalization
Accompanying democratization and and development is the dispersal of world pro-
global economic penetration was political duction, the localization of national capitals,
decentralization to localities and regions and the rise of varieties of enclaves of innovative
weakening state control of national people and organizations, and the emergence
economies. After the democratic revolutions of networks of ensembles of sectors of activ-
in Central and Eastern Europe in 1989 and in ities that mutually enhance creativity and
the years following, there were global disper- productivity. As globalization continues, the
sions of democratic values and knowledge world is being re-structured into an urban
supporting ‘democratic’ change, indeed, rev- world of multiple centers that defines a
olutions, reaching to Asia and Africa and global political economy (Teune, 1988b).
including the non-violent democratic trans- The estimate is that nearly half of the world’s
formations in Georgia and the Ukraine population is urban. The impact of diminish-
in 2004–05. Democratization in the 1990s ing differences between centers and periph-
became a global ‘Second Democratic eries is to promote globalization as integration
Revolution’, about 200 years after the first rather than as dominance.
‘European’ democratic revolution in 1789.
The developmental dynamics at work in
global-local relations have redefined the Learning and adaptation
classical social ecological dynamics: centers
and peripheries, learning and adaptation, Ecology can be used as a theoretical para-
dialectics among levels and rates of change, digm to analyze long-term processes of learn-
and competitive games among levels of ing and adaptation, resulting in improved
human organization. These are at the core of capacities for more learning and at a faster rate.
classical social ecology as conflicts that have To date, humans have been the triumphant
3
replaced the more basic, and mindless, learning species. The occupiers of a niche
ecological dynamics of living systems of ‘learn’ to cope with their environment by