Jihad Vs. Mcworld the Nature Term Paper

The McWorld model is a threat to democracy because of the dominance of the economic system, wherein the large and dominant economic societies dictate social order and structure in terms of the capitalist objectives. As Barber countered in the article, "[a]ll national economices are now vulnerable to the inroads of larger, transnational markets..." This increased dependency of society on markets and economic societies result to greater dependence also on changes in the technology and policies regarding capitalist endeavors and free trade.

The McWorld model showed that the capitalist economic system, with its competitive nature, tended to threaten democracy because of its self-governing nature. As popularly contrasted against socialism, the McWorld model trivializes the role of government and society in the inner workings or operations of this kind of society.

The Jihad model, meanwhile, affects societies socio-politically as the McWorld model, but in a different manner. While the McWorld model called for cooperation to eventually make itself self-sustaining and -regulating, the Jihad model was already self-sustaining from the center. The objective of the Jihad model was to isolate one society from the other, and strengthen the society in effect from this isolation.Just like the nature of Jihad, or "struggle" or "holy war," societies under this model was in a constant state of war with other societies, driven by their differences in religion, political structure, or simply, in culture. In this particular model, war becomes "not as an instrument of policy but as an emblem of identity, an expression of community, an end in itself."

This was the state of the McWorld and Jihad models that prompted Barber to create a "third way" through which democracy will be preserved without sacrificing development and nationalism. Under Barber's proposed confederalized representative system, he sought to make society return to its roots, to return to the state wherein all societies are not susceptible to economic forces nor nationalistic tendencies. In effect, by creating a new political and social order and structure that preserves democracy, the confederalized representative system actually asks societies to return to the original principles of the concept of civil society......