Conceptualizing Politics

participation are still to be seen.
Human rights, or rather the debates and the struggles aimed at codifying them 
and making them respected all over the planet, have also been boosted by globali-
sation, which has brought labourers and union activists in the developing coun-
tries closer together with the liberal public opinion of Western consumers. In the 
remaining Communist regimes (China, Vietnam, North Korea, Cuba) and in some 
African dictatorships or plebiscitary democracies, little has changed, but there is no 
longer an alternative empire, like the former Soviet Union, to deny the primacy of 
liberal democracy in the name of ‘substantial democracy’. The right of women to 
not be marginalised or kept as men’s servants, to not be sold as child brides, to not 
be excluded from education and deprived of bodily integrity by genital mutilation 
is more widely and loudly asserted, though not much seems to have changed in 
traditional societies. In a backlash against cultural modernity, Islamist fanaticism has 
even revived the enslavement of women – questionable or outright faked that their 
attempted resort to Islamic religion may be. In light of these events, a differentiated 
analysis of the relationship of human rights with the various religions and cultures 
on earth appears to be more fruitful than philosophical speculations; while the 
question of their universality or relativity will be discussed in Chapter 8.
With the unrelenting change it has promoted in all societies and its modernist, 
rationalistic culture, globalisation has created an environment opposite to the reli-
gious fundamentalism that since the beginning of the new century has become the 
main inspiration of international terrorism as a global phenomenon.
3
 Where  does 
then their connection lie? It is, on the one hand, characterised by international 
terrorism being, to an extent, a reaction to devastating (for traditional cultures) 
advances of globalisation. On the other hand, globalisation of trade and commu-
nication has greatly facilitated the spreading of terrorism, having created an open, 
complex and fragile world society, which is easy to attack or even to paralyse by 
applying the asymmetric warfare of suicide bombers, with its de-globalising effects 

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The globalised world  131
(on air traffic and tourism, for example). It is not even safe to assume that another 
piece of asymmetric warfare, a possible nuclear device built by terrorists maybe in 
the form of a ‘dirty bomb’, can be prevented from ever being created. In general, 
militarization and war are verifiably anti-globalisation forces (cf. Acemoglu-Yared 
2010).