Glocalism is a process of norm diffusion from the local to the global and from the global to the local. It is the generic idea illustrating how, for example, ICT and the global economy have been shaping our modern way of life since the 1990s. For Viktor Roudometof, the glocal and glocalism cannot yet theoretically explain or justify why we are better off in a glocalized world rather than in a national territorial state (2016). Whereas we understand through the global economy and thus globalization, the transfer and exchange of goods and knowledge around the globe, the dynamic of the local–global economy changes the picture. The new glocal economy is not only a green economy but also recycling processes of hardware as well as the sharing economy, i.e., sharing cars, industrial goods, etc. Many of the new local economy ideas are exchanged via the Internet and makes them accessible for consumers globally. Start-ups and small enterprises share ideas and tips between Bolivia and Kyrgyzstan which have otherwise little in common. There are no language or otherwise physical borders on the Internet, thanks to automated translation programs, which makes this new local economy a glocal one. Guilherme et al. (2019) have investigated how and to what extent our language and communication have been glocalized over the past centuries, turning every local language in some mix of glocal language with English terms. The phenomenon of adapting words from other languages into one’s own is not new, but the speed by which it happened over the past decades is breathtaking. With a harmonized glocal language, communication becomes faster and easier, and many other aspects are connected to it. World economy becomes more glocal, too, and even the concept of capitalism is at stake, because in the local–global shared economy, the benefit for individuals and economic growth of societies are measured differently. Enterprises often no longer pay any taxes to national authorities, if their company is spread in locations around the globe. The trend toward a glocal economy is inevitable, also due to the growth of the world population and its density. Apart from share economy, today goods can be developed in one country, and manufactured in another or 3D-printed locally—or recycled for that matter, yet in another country. State authorities have little control over where trade and goods go during the production and consumer cycle.

Whereas globalization is an interactive process between stakeholders and public resources around the status quo, namely that glocality and glocalism is a mixture of both. Glocalism is by no means sufficiently explained, neither academically nor in practice, to serve as a theory or as an ideology. Unlike other ‘isms and theories, it does not yet fully explain why solving problems in a glocal manner could serve as an alternative to Nation-States. Statehood and glocalism can both go hand in hand, albeit Nation-State excludes all those who do not belong or identify themselves with a certain Nation or do not hold citizenship and is rather contradictory to multi-stakeholder-based governance.

Glocality and glocalism seem irreversible since the rise of civil society in the 1960s and the IT revolution in the 1990s. One individual empowered Internet-literate person can change world politics today, as seen by the global movements such as the Anonymous, Me Too, Fridays for Future, or Extinction Rebellion.

In 2021, Facebook’s CEO Zuckerberg, launched the Network-Messenger Giant ‘Meta’ combining Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, in today’s largest glocal Tech company in the world, with annual revenue of 86 billion Dollar and only sixty thousand workers glocally. But CEO Zuckerberg, cannot be held accountable for violating global norms of anti-racisms, by one country alone. If people face hate speech and cyber-discrimination on Facebook in India, Meta may be able to delete the harmful entry on Facebook in India, but not in Bangladesh. National governments face hard times to justify their authority and irreplaceable functionality if they no longer can control companies operating in their territory and violating citizens’ rights. Every sphere of our lives has become glocal, and informal stakeholders are a much more important part of policymaking today than state authorities.

In the light of the 2005 Responsibility to Protect (R2P) debate at the UN Security Council along with the inauguration of the UN Human Rights Council in 2006 and the installment of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in 2002, we have seen a certain level of global norm saturation. It was the period when the individual rights of people were defined, in an ever increasing number of international treaties dealing with setting global standards and implementation mechanisms for monitoring them. Once our rights were manifested in treaties, we started to execute them ourselves. These are not governmental rights, but people’s. And by doing so, we became glocal actors and overall consumers. Global logistic companies such as DHL and glocal virtual shopping malls such as Amazon and Alibaba have democratized consumer monopolies because we anticipate equal access to consumer products—providing we have financial credits and access to the Internet. Although the virtual world is not as inclusive as it seems, it is non-territorial. It rather depends on whether each of us has a bank account and a credit card, whether we are blacklisted by the company or not. Our citizenship, let alone with nationality, does not matter, only our personal ‘credibility.’ Consumer protection in this wild-web-cyber space, which has (yet) few rules and regulations, remains the key human security challenge for the state and the users (Mihr, 2014).

Glocalism only explains what we observe on global and local levels. Glocalism conceptualizes the sequence of paradigm shifts triggered by global mobility and ICT-based connectivity. For Ritzer (2016), glocalism is an analytical concept that illustrates how a set of different ideas and notions in our minds change and build our identity and, overall, our attitudes toward our surroundings. Meanwhile, our moral values, habits, culture, and institutions, and consequently our behavior and responses to daily matters, change. Our identity has more in common with people on the other side of the planet than was the case 50 years ago. Our common ‘glocal identity’ is not simply a cosmopolitan attitude but also a similar behavior that turns into similar habits. During times of global capitalism in the 1990s, our glocal attitudinal behavior, according to Ulrich Beck (2000), has slowly emerged and led to a global–local citizen identity. Ritzers (2016) describes glocalism as anything that is fluid, constantly moving, and changing, and that determines how we perceive and solve local and global problems at the same time. People share similar perspectives on the impact of climate change around the world and would not say that climate change is ‘nationally’ and ‘traditionally’ different in Vietnam than it is in Norway. The consequences of climate change are, of course, different, but the concept of climate change is not, and nor are the measures to be undertaken to mitigate its catastrophic effect on our habitat.

Therefore, glocalism is far from new and can be found among Utopians promoting a one-world society and common humanities centuries ago. During the period of the fifteenth century, Italian Humanism, and sixteenth-century Renaissance thinkers’ glocalism was a widely shared concept. In the aftermath of the eighteenth-century American and French Revolutions and Immanuel Kant’s ‘Perpetuate Peace’ (1795), he already proclaimed that a World Republic governed by morally guided leaders that act according to universal human rights norms might be the best form of governance for all to overcome despotic monarchs. The nineteenth century was the period of Nation-State building, and the once utopian concept of inclusive glocalism turned into our modern idea of democratic constitutional statehood. Its most perverted form is today’s modern ‘nationalistic electoral democracy’ in which authoritarian leaders seek legitimacy through controlled elections and citizens’ participation.

The closest form of glocal governance regime in the nineteenth century was the Paris Commune of 1871. Its 20,000 communitarians gave themselves a constitution that defied global capitalisms and promoted equal human rights for women and men in line with the legacy of the French Revolution ninety years earlier. Article 4 of the French Declaration for Human Rights of 1789 states that ‘Freedom consists in being able to do anything that does not harm others.’ Nationality, gender, and language did not matter among its members, and its leadership was elected as an egalitarian council taking the role of a ‘management board’ to solve problems. Strikingly, the Commune only lasted for two months before it was dissolved by the French nationalist army, which saw its attraction and competition. The French government feared the success of the Commune that would turn France into a socialistic Marxist state. 7,000 people lost their lives in the battle between communitarians and state soldiers. But songs and ideas of the democratic experiment of the Commune survived and serve until today as an example for glocal governance.

We find traces of the Commune in many other utopian concepts of modern times. One prominent example is that of Francis Fukuyama’s 1992 bestseller ‘The End of History and the Last Man,’ illustrating how governing beyond the Nation-States under direct democratic and human rights principles could be possible. In this view, glocal governance is more pragmatic and less idealistic, including the concept of direct democracy and the redundancy of political parties. Going back further into history and mythical figures, we find glocality based on equalitarian principles and inclusiveness, for example, in the saga about King Arthur and his Round Table diplomacy, resembling the human desire for equality and inclusive participation—which is, until today, a blueprint for thousands of phantasy novels and films. Glocalism has inspired not only writers and filmmakers but also a plethora of artists. For example, Josef Beuys, an artist and social activist scandalized the public with his vision of glocal governance at the world’s largest Modern Art exhibit Documenta in Kassel, Germany, in 1971. Beuys proposed a democratic governance regime without political parties and with direct participation and voting rights for anyone, regardless of his/her citizenship. He also proposes a basic income for everyone to avoid inequalities. He was ridiculed for his ideas and performances at his time but left a remarkable legacy for modern authors.

Whereas the global is often equated with universally agreed norms and international treaties, the local is much more difficult to grasp. Localization of decision-making is best seen by direct consequences for citizens, for example, the building of local labor unions, women’s safe houses, introducing codes of conduct for local business, or adapting global hygienic standards in local hospitals. The multi-stakeholder bases approach (MSA) to glocal governance carries the risk of finding consensus on minimum levels only, and hence the whole—and often very long—multi-stakeholder process becomes redundant.

Local ethnic-nationalistic populist and faith-based community leaders are more difficult to challenge let alone convince to change their governing practices, than global actors. They are often guided by traditions and habits rather than visions, norms, or global standards. If there is no strict normative order or legitimate statehood, local leaders can dominate, suppress, and intimidate local communities and define anything beyond their community as evil, dangerous, and simply as the ‘others.’ Most often, they adhere to patriarchal and traditional practices and are either ignorant of, or refuse, global standards. Instead, traditional or faith-based leaders cherish traditional motherhood through ‘mother-tongue’ and paternalistic principles of seniority. Women are child breeders and housekeepers, and men must always be ready to fight and die for the community and the fatherland. This toxic mix and a vicious cycle can be broken through global incentives given by external factors such as IOs and CSOs, allowing for local communities to question and change their leaderships. Instead, installing leaders that solve problems in a more inclusive manner than traditional practices do.

In local and traditional communities, one image we find anywhere in the world is symbolic figures such as ‘mother of the nation’ or ‘mother of the land’ and female statues resembling ‘victory’ and the limited role that women play in society. Women are limited in their role in governance, but because they are often reduced to only being mothers without which no nation can exist, they are also pivotal for any paradigm shift of societal order.

The reduced female role justifies for many traditionalists or faith-based community leaders that women must be ‘protected from public’ and preserved and enclosed in homes or behind a veil. Societies in search of belonging to a nation that is worth identifying with often end up in a rough state, what we see in most post-colonial countries such as post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan, for example. The country’s domestic laws illustrate the search for women’s roles in nation-building in bizarre ways. The countries’ marriage laws do not allow for Kyrgyz women to marry foreigners to avoid foreign influence into family traditions, but Kyrgyz men can marry foreign women and give them their names while assimilating them to become Kyrgyz nationals (Isambaeva, 2012). Traditional nationalists articulate how women should dress, behave, and have strict roles for home and private spheres. Their social status is defined exclusively by the number of sons they breed, not by their talents and skills. But the exclusive and discriminatory practice of the ‘others’ and women can also be a trigger for change. As Dankwart Rustow, in his 1970 concept of Transitology, paraphrases it, system and governance change are always linked to the uprising of those who perceive themselves as underprivileged and disempowered, and therefore excluded and discriminated against. Women’s empowerment over the past decades has led to massive protests against patriarchy and many changes in societies across the world. Therefore, today, as a response by autocratic leaders, we see efforts to ‘retraditionalize’ women in these societies, and push them back into their roles as mothers. Women pass on culture and national identities such as mother tongues and habits. If they become skillful and economically independent it will allow them to decide for themselves whether they will become mothers or not, and hence some of them may decide not to bear children for a patriarchal society will keep them at home. One reason why billions of women are deprived of proper higher education and working mobility relates to the fact that society should be prevented from any changes and transitions of the status quo that are set by the patriarchy. It means that thus far, we have been governed by political systems in which predominantly the oldest men—according to the principles of seniority—take political ‘father-like roles’ as head of states and the family. Their successors are reckoned through the male line, which can be seen when state governors aim to pass on their power to their sons, disciples, followers, or male relatives. Women are generally excluded from taking higher political positions or leadership roles. However, glocalization of all aspects of social life might have a side-effect on women and minority emancipation.

Another example of glocalism and glocal governance is the dramatic rise of the informal labor sector. Today, most of the local GDPs come from informal and hence unprotected labor and therefore need to connect directly to international labor and business standards. Most people working in the informal sector are women. The International Labor Organization (ILO) estimates that over two billion people work in the informal economic sector alone, which is predominantly local, and that comprises approximately 60% of all workforces globally. Local small and medium enterprises, local markets, and farmers make up to 40% of the GDP in Sub-Saharan Africa and up to 10% of the GDP in North America. Much of the national GDP comes from the informal sector and from transnational corporations that exploit natural resources in these regions. And increasingly, more states depend on remittances from their youth migrating abroad. At least half a million of the young population (mostly men) leave Tajikistan per year to work abroad. Most workers, domestically or abroad, don’t enjoy labor or employment rights, insurance, pension funds, or other modes of protection. They are vulnerable in many senses and often subject to violence if they speak up against their employers. Where the informal sector is high, statehood is often low and locally organized groups start to help themselves and also turn into pressure groups. Most of them are led by working mothers.

Furthermore, the volume and the share of remittances of the national GDPs around the world has doubled since the 1990s. This shows weak or even failed state governance. Countries such as Kyrgyzstan or Tajikistan in Central Asia ‘export’ working migrants and live on their remittances coming from Russia, Turkey, and the Arab Peninsula. These remittances make up 30% of GDP, and most of them are found in post-colonial contexts such as Armenia 10%, Georgia 14%, Moldova 15%, Nicaragua 15%, Honduras 24%, and in Lebanon, Jamaica, and Kosovo, up to 20%, and Somalia up to 35% of all sources of income.Footnote 1 Dysfunctional state authorities are often remittance dependent, up to 10% on average, or depend on exploitation of natural resources and are often connected to illicit financial flows. The same countries that depend on remittances lack a well-organized economy and trade policies—which is one of three core functions of a sovereign state. One consequence of this dysfunctionality is that organized crime groups often operate major business sectors in these countries. In comparison, in consolidated democratic countries, like Germany, Denmark, South Korea, or Canada, the remittance rate is between 0.1–0.5%. Consolidated democracies are often the target of OC groups but not the origin. In Europe alone, the estimate of active OCs is between 4,000 and 5,000 groups, many of them closely involved in politics and in a local business, but originating from the Middle East, Eastern and Southern Europe, and Central Asia. In 2021, former mayor of New York, De Blasio, even declared former US President Donald Trump’s Corporate activities in the city as OC with an attempt to issue criminal investigations against him.

Furthermore, in the remittance-depended countries, it is the diaspora youth that keeps the state alive. But the fact that they work abroad will prevent them from triggering a necessary change in their home countries. They are de facto excluded from political participation in their home countries and hence cannot oppose corrupt or dysfunctional leadership. The control mechanism against corruption that works in consolidated democracies, namely the (young) civil society which seeks change and opportunities, does not work in countries who ‘export’ their youth as migrant workers abroad. Without an active and free young population, change is impossible. This triggers a downward spiral caused by the lack of young opposition to seniority, outdated traditions, and corruption. The more state authorities refuse to issue reforms, the more the frustrated and disillusioned youth will leave the countries, with their families often being their only ties back to their homelands. It does not take much to link this situation to the failure of national governments to respond to the needs of their citizens sufficiently. This vicious cycle continues for generations. Nonetheless, worldwide we observe a youth mobilization of people born after the major democratic paradigm shift of 1991 when most countries undertook substantial democratic reforms, which most of them never implemented. The failure of these democracies, and the backsliding of their performance, goes along with the rise of organized crime and NSA, fueled by an army of young desperate men and women who have been disenchanted by the promises of the 1990s. It also goes along with the rise of Violence against Women and the withdrawal of the Istanbul Convention by authoritarian regimes such as Turkey. Gender-based discrimination and violence against women is always a means to measure the level of an inclusive society and democracy. One reason why ISIS in the Middle East, Boko Haram in Africa, or the Maras in Latin America are growing in numbers, is the endless supply of disillusioned, often young males, who have been disenchanted by their governments and elites and are now fighting back.

While the youth in these countries, in my view, are intentionally ‘exported’ as labor forces abroad to keep the country’s old-male patriarchal systems alive, the diaspora youth also works as a boomerang thanks to global mobility and ICT. They reconnect via Facebook, Telegram, and WhatsApp and are slowly but steadily infiltrating the next generation with new ideas and concepts. During the global paradigm shifts and peace movements of the 1970s, these same people and global movements were protesting for ‘peace’ and ended the Cold War; in the 1990s, they did for ‘freedom’ and brought the totalitarian regimes down; in the 2010s, they sacrificed their lives for ‘justice’ and held many regimes and leaders accountable for their wrongdoings; and in 2020 it is their claim for equal ‘opportunities’ and fair treatment.

We observe an inevitable change going on because IT-based civil society today make up 60% of participation and public policy engagement. In India, the estimate is that there is one NGO/CSO for every 400 citizens, and globally over 15 million groups can be considered organized activist groups, most of them run by people below 30—there were only a few thousand two decades ago. Private donations to support CSOs have doubled over the past decades and compose its own market worth billions of dollars. Three out of four volunteers or staff in NGOs are women, and in the US, for example, NGOs contribute to 5% of the GDP. These developments show that they can become significant political actors, lobbyists, community leaders, and influencers in any country of the world.Footnote 2 Needless to say, that not all have a humanitarian and liberating agenda, but the growing numbers illustrate that people start to organize themselves beyond statehood. According to a CSO survey by the UN in 2012, 61% of grassroot groups contribute to the social sector locally, namely in health, literacy, education, and social services, 20% of all CSOs engage in women’s affairs and 10% in youth activities, and 14% work on behalf of marginalized groups, such as the homeless and refugees.Footnote 3 These figures illustrate that wherever the number of CSOs is highest, the countries are governed by dysfunctional regimes, but with growing influence from external actors that often apply global norms and standards directly on the local level. CSOs fill the power gap in the public sector and replace state responsibility, which poses a huge problem for governmental authorities. More so, they often also fill the political gap wherever elected governments fail at responding to public health, climate change, cyber security, or migration problems, for example.

ICT based platform activisms enjoy many more millions of followers and supporters than ever before. Platform activists are quick, respond to specific issues, and advice to fix a problem on the ground. At the same time, they have globally connected exchange experience with others also thanks to the Open-Source technology of Tech giants such as Meta, Google, or Weibo, disseminating global norms directly to the local and individual user, for example, on matters related to domestic violence, labor standards, and unfair payments. Much of the localization we observe today is triggered by Open-Source Software such as GitHub or Linux, allowing for everyone’s use and often making their patents accessible to anyone for free, as are scientific Open Access books—such as this one—and journals and Wikipedia. This provides new forms of knowledge transfer and global connectivity through public digital infrastructure—if one has access to it. Hence the control over users is by the users themselves. This makes them an ‘open data resource’ that can also be used or exploited by anyone if there are no rules and regulations for all in place.

Another example illustrating the shifts from the local to the global is the ‘MeToo’ movement starting in 2017 that triggered similar movements around the globe. The anti-sexual harassment and abuse campaign initiated by female Hollywood celebrities started as a campaign against sexual harassment and discrimination in the film business in the US and soon enjoyed millions of followers even in the most remote corners of the world. The same is true for ‘Fridays for Future’ and ‘Extinction Rebellion’ in 2018, starting as a youth protest in Stockholm and London, today supported by billions of followers of all shapes and colors. What these movements have in common is a simple message, namely Adhere to global standards and implement them locally!.Footnote 4 In 2021, the Earth Overshoot Day was marked on 29th July, the earliest ever measured; hence half a year we are exhausting 150% of our resources on a day-to-day basis. Only half a century ago, in 1971, the Overshoot Day was 20th December, marking the date when our demand for ecological resources and services exceeds what Earth can regenerate in that year. Glocal activism has become the norm, thanks to ICT. In 2018, within less than a year, the Fridays for Future’s, F4F, campaign started with Swedish teenage activist Greta Thunberg, which by September 2019 had over eight million supporters around the world (Díaz-Pérez et al., 2021). The recent developments confirm what Roudometof paraphrased earlier, namely that civil society is the ‘blender of the local and the global’ (Roudometof, 2017). But Robertson (1992) and Ritzer (2014) have also warned that glocalization of attitudes and actions, such as F4F, can be somewhere between top-down hierarchy and anarchy.

2.1 Bridging the Rest to the West

Glocalization is a de facto motor of diffusion of Western lifestyles to the non-Western world. We are bridging the rest of the world to Western norms and standards, not in a geographical sense—as one might assume—but rather seeing the Western way of life, that Ritzer called McDonaldization (Ritzer, 2014), and mode of governance as an intriguing alternative to corrupt, nepotistic, and dysfunctional statehood in different parts of the world.

Glocalization is more than linking the local with the global and vice-a-versa. It can bridge different political systems, ideologies, faith, and lifestyles through conviction. The notion of the East and the West and the Global South and the North are popular ones, and we use them or read these terms at least once a day and believe we have a clear idea of what they represent. But in fact it is the West against the rest.

During 20 years in diaspora, as a European, I learned that the ‘The West’ stands for a liberal ‘way of life,’ in which women can earn a decent income and young men and women can choose freely their career path, beyond family traditions, beliefs, and habits. The West resembles a composition of attitudes and opportunities. The fact that this lifestyle is connected to human rights and democracy is not necessarily seen by those with no direct experience with a functioning democracy. A peaceful, free, just, merit and opportunity-driven society organizes itself in a particular mode of governance, mostly democratic and secular. Deities and holy books may be valuable moral guidance but not a justification of one’s corrupt rulership. Over the century, this division between state and faith allowed people not only to dream of personal freedom but also to exercise it.

Moreover, the liberty and mobility to develop these personal capabilities, no matter one’s background or citizenship, is what the West stands for—at least ideally. This is far from new, but currently under global scrutiny when we look at how societies will govern themselves in the years to come. The fact that autocratic regimes such as China and Russia openly threaten and even supported or launch a war against democratizing states in Myanmar in 2021 and in Ukraine in 2022, is a setback for global freedom movements. Political thinkers have always looked for the best way to overcome these cleavages. So we learn from the Greek philosopher Plato (300 BC) that anything that excluded or prohibited individual striving and personal development will lead sooner or later to conflict, as we see today. Ethnic, class, or religious superiority of one group over another leaves no air to breathe for merit-based societies. To inherit property and build on it might be not harmful per se, but it will discriminate, exclude, and deprivilege those without property and who must build skills and merits on their own, and even the most liberal attempt to govern people’s faith has its limits. Faith-based communities have always tried to break inequality between classes and castes and left traces in our languages. The Greek word for ‘democratic assembly’ (600 BC), for example, is ‘Ekklesia,’ and we find it today in the Latin language in the Church term, iglesia or eglise, illustrating that any attempt to govern a society, through governance regimes, of free men and women has its rules and boundaries.

Striving for divine or ideological legitimacy is particularly strong among weak leaders and governments who cannot adequately respond to citizens’ needs and problems, even in modern democracies. Former US President Donald Trump (2016–2020) enjoyed being portrayed as a Christian Messiah, and even his speeches had a prophetic eclectic and apocalyptic tone. Refusing to acknowledge his loss in the election in 2020, he launched an unsuccessful coup attempt against the Congress with the support of his white supremacy disciples and male followers, the ‘Proud Boys,’ in 2021. Trump described the failed coup as ‘sacred’ on his Twitter account, namely that ‘These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been unfairly treated for so long.’Footnote 5 The democratic institutions have stood against this coup, thus far, but without the active support of civil society it might fall one day.

Nevertheless, with all its many weaknesses and shortcomings, the West has not lost much of its intriguing power, and this serves as a linkage between the global and the local. It becomes even more elusive when we look back to the roots of ‘Westernism’ and its first reported polemic dating back to the fourth century AD. The concept of the West comes from the Western Roman Empire that declined during that period. At the heights of its decline, Roman citizens demanded the division of the divine and earthly power to save their Western living standards, but they were beaten down and the Roman Empire ceased to exist. Over a five hundred years later, this claim eventually succeeded in the division of powers between the heads of the Catholic Church and the ruling monarchs in the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation in Europe from the tenth to the eighteenth century. Due to  the division this empire became the longest-lasting empire in Europe that impacted much of the world’s governance regimes today, and eventually branded the term ‘Western’ lifestyle and mode of governance. It first manifested in the Magna Charta Libertatum in England in 1215 and the Corpus of Melfi in Italy in 1231 promulgated by the German Holy Roman Empire, demanding clarity on the divine, the royal, and more importantly, the role of citizens. Even though many of these treaties bear any modern human rights and democracy standards, and instead strengthened the power of the God-given ruler, centralized rulership, and diminished the power of his feudatories, peasants, army, and citizens, it also established an equal Rule of Law regime for all. The West started with the Rule of Law before moving to capital-driven democracy by the sixteenth-century protestant reformer Martin Luther in Germany. In 1517 he proclaimed secularization and citizen-driven governance, hence the beginning of modern democracy and capitalism. Until present times, we aim to organize our modern democratic societies much along these lines, and after a multitude of wars, genocides, and suppressive regimes, we know at least one thing, namely that centralistic regimes have never been able to resolve the problems of societies over a more extended period unless they use coercion, violence, and initiate wars. Ever since, the West was equated with Europe, and later with the US, and today ‘Western values.’ The American and French Revolution in the late eighteenth century were the continuation of what started 800 years earlier, namely striving for separating inherited and divine powers from merit-based and individual powers. The French Revolution in 1789 aimed to finish with God-empowered-royalties once and forever and to end totalitarian rulership. Despite its failure at the time, alternative modes of governance were high on the agenda throughout the nineteenth century, all proclaiming fair and merit-based representation. Marx and Engels’ most prominent promoted equalitarian and inclusive governance and a mixture of communism-socialism. Their ideas eventually led to a successful overthrow of one of the last absolute empires in Europe, Czarist Russia, in 1917. The second wave of democratization, according to Samuel Huntington, started after WWII in 1945 as a response to despotic totalitarian rulership of Nazi-Germany and decolonization process in the French, Spanish, and Britisch colonies. Western values, norms, standards, and the idea of liberal democracy based on universal human rights standards that are enshrined in the UN Charta of 1945 and the subsequent UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in 1948 building the foundations of modern Nation-States. This world order, however, has been seriously damaged over the past years and for some it has ended with the Russian aggression against Ukraine in 2022.Footnote 6

More than ever in this New Cold War, the West stands as a ‘way of life,’ despite its many flaws and rollbacks, and remains an attractive system to millions of people and not necessarily connected to a particular preference for political regimes.

But why, despite this attractiveness of the Western democracy has autocratic patriarchy been such a successful and sustainable governance regime for millennia? The short answer is: it has worked out well for many, thus far. It began with the shift from matriarchy to patriarchy during the Bronze Age and solar cults. Early civilizations such as the societies that founded Goebekli Tepe in Turkey (10,000 BC), Goseck in Germany (4000 BC), Uruk in Iraq (3500 BC), Mohenjo-Daro in the Indus Delta (2500 BC), and Minoans in Crete (2000 BC) were non-hierarchical and non-patriarchal but adhered to more female deities than male. What archeologists argue is that these early mixed nomadic-pastoral-agro cultures had no male nor female priest cast because they had not yet settled in cities and temples to worship them, let alone steady councils to discuss politics. Community leaders of that time met during seasonal events, build necropoles for their ancestors, and met at these locations several times a year when they took decisions for the whole communities in the months to come. They managed sizable administrative cities like storage places in Knossos in Crete, Mohenjo-Daro in the Indus Delta, and Goebekli Tepe for harvest and seasonal ritual ceremonies. They were no palaces, no kings, no queens, no hierarchies. Hence, female deities and the fertility of ‘Mother Earth’ were more appreciated than male figures, let alone leaders, who had one purpose—to cultivate and protect the harvest. We can find the legacy of these rituals and beliefs in the ‘Mother of the Nation’ and fertility cults across the world until today.

But to govern settlements and farmland, led to power shifts and competition. With the growing numbers of settlements and cities, the civitas, we transformed into what we know as civilizations, with a growing priest and administration cast and temples, towers, and fortresses. Military leaders and kings and knights became mystical and even divine male heroes, with the sole purpose to protect urban settlements, turning later into dynastical monarchies around 2000 BC. Most prominently became Babylonian half-god-half-man rulers (1800 BC), Egyptian divine Pharaohs (1500 BC), Zoroaster Emperors (1000 BC) cumulating in Persian Kingdoms (600 BC), Chinese heavenly-son-emperor dynasties (200 BC), that continue in the way modern autocrats portrait themselves. A strict patriarchal regime was established and lasted for thousands of years, and remains mainly in non-Western countries until modern times. Nevertheless, signs of structural weakness showed soon which led to the first democratic experiments in Greece (400 BC) and later Rome (300 BC), namely to build a treaty-based civitas and republica. Even though these early experiments failed because they were neither inclusive nor equalitarian but only made for male citizens, the idea that these alternatives were first explored in Europe, stigmatizes until today democracy and human rights as a Western concept.

But it wasn’t only the Greeks and the Romans who revolutionized governance, there were even earlier reported attempts to do so. In 1300 BC Egypt it was a revolution of social order and hence governance,—albeit unsuccessfully—when Pharaoh Akhenaton shifted from plural Gods to the first monotheist deities in Egypt, aiming to concentrate power and rulership. The second attempt only happening 500 years later during the Zarathustra era (800 BC) and much later the rise of all Abrahamic religions. What they nevertheless kept in common was that the divine power was male and a warrior like king, protecting civilizations and, hence fueling patriarchy. Most of today’s religious rituals, ceremonies, and even seasonal holidays, like Christmas (Jesus) in winter, Nauruz (Zarathustra) in spring, and Maulid an-Nabi (Mohammed) festival in fall, are alleged birthdays of these male prophets. Moreover, they manifest religions and belief systems that are social orders and governance regimes tailor-made for men, not for women. The day-to-day legacies of these male caste and brotherhood governance regimes continue until present times in the plethora of brotherhoods and Freemasonries everywhere in the world, spiritual sports clubs like the Zurkhaneh ‘House of Strength’ in Iran, with the difference that these brotherhoods govern modern states in non-democratic societies, and hence have institutionalized themselves, and in democratic societies they are either faith-based or political organizations. Cicero (50 BC) already responded to these vicious cycles of male brotherhoods and dependencies that fueled a toxic cycle of Aristocracy, Oligarchy, Monarchy, Tyranny—that 300 years earlier were illustrated by Socrates—and an incapability to share power, and eventually lead to democratic movements. He resumes that if power holders and leaders are not under control by the population, tyranny is inevitable. How present this idea of brotherhood style governance is today, shows the infamous speech by Belarusian autocratic President Lukashenko in response to the failed democratic coup against him in 2021 and the support to Russia’s invasion in Ukraine in 2022, praising Belarussian and Russian governance regimes as a shield against Western liberalism, he claimed that ‘Because this brotherhood is above the contrived umbrage and short-sighted political ambitions. Our unbreakable ties represent the foundation of common security and survival.’Footnote 7

However, democracy can only work if all citizens see the benefit of it and an effective alternative vis-a-vis autocracy, as Socrates (400 BC) had already highlighted.Footnote 8 But when moving from exclusive patriarchy to an inclusive form of governance, the devil is in the details. Both regime types ‘compete’ which one better deals with issues such as public health, primary education, fair access to work, and security?

In their attempts to do so, Europe’s powerhouses such as France, Italy, Great Britain, Germany, and Russia, far too often gave up on democracy and returned to nationalistic, even totalitarian, and absolute modes of governance. Nevertheless, since WWII, we have witnessed a more sustainable effort to change patriarchal governance regimes. The struggle for freedom, diversity, and inclusive participation is at the center of these efforts. Today these are the markers describing the West. Far from perfect, these societies stand for the ability to critically self-reflect and learn from mistakes, which many traditional, patriarchal, and so-called non-Western countries and societies do not.

In the 2020 survey, the World Value Survey (WVS) highlighted that the demand by citizens anywhere in the world for more local decision-making and individual responsibility—regardless of the regime people are governed by—has risen dramatically over the past decade. The images and stories drive this demand for a different yet often Western way of life, vis-a-vis the incapability of corrupt, dysfunctional, and patriarchal leadership from where the people escape, seeking equal and more opportunities to grow and live in dignity.

Apart from patriarchy, there is also an intellectual divide to community life that is different in the West and the rest. Nothing less than the debates about ‘Family Values’ mark the current debate. Yet, not only Western observers often ask what do Family Values stand for? Carefully phrased, they stand that, first, family ties are the only safety net, both socially and economically for those living in dysfunctional societies. Family networks guarantee shelter, food, and help in an emergency and medical treatments. The family patron(s) pay for education and decide which sons must go abroad to earn money for the family members left behind. In an ideal scenario, families protect and promote their members. Per contra, they often disregard individual talents, wishes, or capacities of the young, overall the women. They leave little space, if at all, for individual development or talents, let alone for young women to become anything else but mothers and child bearers and home keepers, and young men to be the breadwinner of the family taking any work, even if he is not equipped for it. Therefore, family values often stand for the opposite of a Western lifestyle that resembles free choice and opportunities for everyone Dahrendorf already highlighted in his earlier writings in the 1960s, that the foundation for any liberal democratic society is the investment in human capital, regardless of gender, age, ethnicity, or class, to provide equal opportunities, and this is overall what differentiates Western values from Family values, today (Dahrendorf, 1979).

When it comes to the emotional ties toward family and relatives, there is not much difference anywhere in the world. According to the WVS, between 80 and 90% of all people value their families across the world, but for different reasons. In secular democracies such as Canada and the Netherlands, it is 79%, and in ideological autocracies such as China, the value of ‘families’ scores up to 86%. In cleric autocracies such as in the Islamic Republic of Iran, for example, it is 94%.Footnote 9 Hence family is an essential factor for all human beings globally, no matter the mode of governance; but their role and function are different in democratic and autocratic countries. In the West, they serve as overall emotional and moral support for one’s development; in societies without a social welfare system, they are simply a matter of survival.

Less than 1% globally find family ‘not important at all,’ which illustrates that family and social networks are pivotal for any society, no matter the regime type. Instead, the growing anti-Westernism is, to some extent, rooted in envy or fear that people have to take individual responsibility for their own faith and that not everyone is willing or able to take.

Therefore, alternative mode to the Western style are becoming more intriguing. China’s government, for example, is a modern and successful constructor, open to modernization, technology, and science. For many disillusioned youth around the world, it is an intriguing authoritarian model despite its patriarchal structure and total surveillance, because it has infrastructurally developed the country. The regime in Beijing propagates itself as a caretaker that fixes problems, even global ones, such as the pandemic and climate change—and it largely complies in terms of anti-covid strategy and renewable energy plants. It is not to be confused with the destructive policies of the Russian governance model, which works mainly through negative propaganda and blame policies against the West to maintain legitimacy. China resembles today the most striking example of a system opposed to what glocalization aims for and what the West stands for. It is top-down, patriarchal, and autocratic regime with specific ‘Chinese characteristics.’ It is a consultive mode of governance, not consensus-building one.

Nevertheless, China has issued a white paper on democracy launched in early December 2021 in response to the US Presidents’ Summit of Democracies a few days later (to which the Chinese president was not invited) and the New Cold War rhetoric of the political regimes. The paper is titled ‘China: Democracy that works,’ and in which the CPC highlights the importance of ‘political consultation’ between the government and the citizens, but it defies consensus-building among political leaders and civilians, as liberal parliamentarian democracies claim to do. It also defies the weakness of Western regimes explicitly and states that China did not duplicate Western models of democracy but created its own and hence, China is not against democracy, and by this makes concessions to its citizens and youth, but it defines it by its terms (The State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of China, 2021, p. 45). It simply means that those who aim for more decentralization and individuality, or participation are excluded from society—or in Chinese terms, ‘pacified.’ The number of ‘re-education concentration camps’ has dramatically grown in numbers over the past decade. Ethnic cleansing in Xinjiang province and Tibet are the norm, and lawyers, journalists, bloggers, and CSO activists have disappeared for years. China’s way of autocratic governance style took increased speed after the 2013 launch of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) around the world—a motor for China’s own economic development and an effort to change world order. This project came to pause by the 2020 pandemic and closure of the country toward foreigners, but did not end there. Building roads and railways, energy plants, and gas pipelines where there had been none before are compelling to young people. In less than ten years, China has invested approximately 50 billion dollars overall in over 138 countries worldwide in the energy, logistics, and transportation sectors, improving many people’s lives and giving opportunities to them. Development for all, no matter the political costs, is the striking new ideal and a proxy-ideology that finds more followers every day. China has become a lead nation in the ‘New Cold War’ between the West and the East.Footnote 10 Ever since the term New Cold War has entered world politics and is used to grasp what has been in the air and confirmed by the Chinese foreign minister in January 2021 and later US president Biden in March 2021. The New Cold War  started in January 2021, when China’s Foreign Minister, Wang Yi, said in a press conference, ‘(…) Some see China as the so-called biggest threat and their China policy based on this misperception is simply wrong. What has happened proves that the US attempt to suppress China and start a new Cold War has not just seriously harmed the interests of the two peoples, but also caused severe disruptions to the world (…).’Footnote 11 The US response followed shortly. In March of the same year during the G7 summit, newly elected US President Biden counteracted by saying ‘(…) I suggested we should have, essentially, a similar initiative “(author* BRI),” pulling from the democratic states, helping those communities around the world that need help (…).’Footnote 12 The battle for the minds and capacities of young people have started. Despite any diplomatic rhetoric, the ‘war is on’ and the New Iron Curtain, for the years to come, draws its line between China and Europe, along the Ukrainian border with Russia. Central Asia in the middle, creating a form of buffer or no-man’s-land. Which mode of governance and regime type will be ‘winning’ the war is the one that is able to best adapt to global challenges locally.

Europe’s response to this New Cold War came promptly in 2021, shortly before the ‘Summit of Democracies’ in December 2021. The EU launched its own BRI, namely the Global Gateway Initiative (GGI), mobilizing a total of 300 billion Euros for infrastructure investments in emerging countries by 2027. The focus is on digitization, energy, transport, health, and education. Unlike Chinas BRI, the EU provides the funds in the form of grants connected explicitly to the states’ human rights and democracy performance. The European State hope that from the perspective of the receiving countries, the GGI has a decisive advantage over loans from China, which drive up the high mountain of debt in emerging countries and is also one in the battle over a better governance system (GGI, 2021).

China is an intriguing case study when measuring glocal governance because its autocratic leadership is successful in many aspects of managing the public good, albeit there is no free civil society or media, and the economy is firmly controlled. Beijing complies with international norms, albeit cherry-picking, and denies them when dealing with the conflict in the South Chinese Sea with Japan and the Philippines or in their trade disputes with the US and Canada. Annually, Beijing is sending up to 100,000 students to the US and 50,000 to Europe to learn, copy, and implement back home—a precondition to stay patriotic when studying abroad. Beijing also supports thousands of students from its BRI countries. They receive scholarships to come to China to study, and by that, the regime in Beijing has successfully mobilized a youth globally in its favor—by scholarships, not coercion, but not by conviction. Hence, Chinese investments seem to have put food on millions of tables and filled in security gaps wherever needed along its BRI in Asia, Africa, and South America, and even Central Europe. Notwithstanding, the winds seem to have changed over the past years, and many governments and citizens protest the ‘Chinese way’ of development aid.

Because, whereas the ‘Silkroad’ of the past has often been romanticized as a synonym for East–West connectivity by peaceful means of trade, cohabitation, and ‘harmony,’ as Frankopan argues, the new BRI is far from the same principles. BRI is a one-way road from China to the rest of the world, but the road is closed and heavily controlled if one wants to enter China (Frankopan, 2017). China does not apply the same policy standards to foreign investors inside China as it expects other governments to grant to them. This dichotomy will sooner or later lead to domestic conflicts and an erosion of the CPC governmental grip, both in foreign policy and domestic ones. It started between 1976 and 1986 when China opened to global trade and even put former leaders of the CPC on trial, the ‘infamous 4,’ ‘bandit-group,’ under Mao Tsetung’s widow Hu Yaobang. She was sentenced to death and publicly disgraced as a female(!) sacrifice for all the bad the CPC had done. After all, this sacrifice did not cleanse the CPC of responsibility, let alone atoning for the massive human rights violations in the past. ‘Socialist democracy’ by Den Xiaoping (1904–1997) in 1979 and his call to ‘dare the change’—copied from German Chancellor Willy Brandt’s 1969 slogan to ‘dare more democracy’—did not last long, and neither will the newly launched ‘Democracy that works.’ Instead China’s ‘wall against democracy’ and any attempt to rewrite ‘democratic norms’ by excluding citizens from participating in decision-making started with the Tiananmen massacre in 1989, when China decided not to be part of the global paradigm shifts after the Cold War and cumulated today with approximately two million people in concentration and re-education camps.

In the light of this re-autocratization and backlash against democracies since the early 2000s, Francis Fukuyama wrote an essay in the British Guardian in 2007. In the article, he was explaining what he had meant by his much-disputed 1992 book, ‘The End of History,’ namely that the idea of freedom, democracy, and modernization will first unite people around the globe, and consequently will lead to a paradigm shift in terms of governance against autocratic leaders. Today’s mass conflicts and protests in Syria, Belarus, and Thailand and the fearful resistance of Ukrainians against Russian invadors are only the peaks of the iceberg that Fukuyama had predicted in 1992. These protesters and fighters want a government that provides fair and accessible opportunities for all and self-determination. Some do not necessarily want to change the regime (as most of these countries have de jure constitutional democracies) but they want to change the mode of governance. However, Fukuyama also highlighted that if the idea of democracy does not stand up to its promises and sustainably solve peoples’ problems, it will be weaken and eventually fail—as can be witnessed in many young democracies around the world. Back in 2007, Fukuyama also proclaimed that the future governance regimes would follow democratic principles but look more like the supranational EU because it stands on the subsidiary principle of local governance. Hence, the EU today is a rough example of glocal governance. The EU more accurately reflects what the world will look like at the end of history than the contemporary US. The EU’s attempt to transcend sovereignty and traditional power politics by establishing a transnational rule of law is much more in line with a ‘post-historical’ world than the Americans’ continuing belief in God, national sovereignty, and their military he ends.Footnote 13

Harrikari and Pauhala (2019) consider the global tendency to glocalization rather a form of modernization and transformation. They suggest a new concept in the era of glocality, that of ‘compressed modernity.’ This modernity connects global norms with individual activism and people who take the faith of their community into her/his own hands and solve problems faster and more effectively, without much state interference. Glocality thrives when the centralized state fails to deliver, but vanishes when the governments resume their obligations vis-a-vis citizens. However, if that were true, we would not see glocal governance in democratic regimes, too. During the deadly Tajik–Kyrgyz border enclave conflict over water in April 2021, after the installation of Chinese surveillance technology to control people’s access to water, Kyrgyz accused Tajiks of stealing water and in the fights 80 people were killed, including children. Thousands of people have been evacuated from the conflict zone and became homeless. A few days after the shootings and killings around the enclaves in Batken, around 500 people went to demonstrate in the capital city of Bishkek, demanding that the authorities hand them weapons so that they could ‘protect their homeland’—because the state failed to protect them. Left alone by an incapable or unwilling government, these people turn to IOs to resolve their problems, even preparing a lawsuit before the ICC as a last resort, but without any chance of being heard. They bought illegal weapons, primarily Chinese. After all, the conflict was also triggered by local elites to challenge and replace the state power in the region. In the end, the new hegemon in the region, China, organized a meeting among the two foreign ministries of the countries in conflict two weeks later in Xian in China. China instead delivers to the claims of its ‘clients’ in this case, conflicting parties and taking de facto control in Central Asia, leaving the former hegemon Russia out.Footnote 14

Less dramatic but nevertheless intriguing are examples of governance shifts within the EU, where Poland and Hungary have turned their backs on democracy and Rule of Law over the past years. The Hungarian President Orban is seen as the prototype of an ‘illiberal’ anti-democratic leader, successfully—as it seems—appealing and responding to the needs and fears of millions of citizens. His role models are Russian President Putin and Erdogan in Turkey, President Bolsonaro in Brazil, and Xi Jinping in China. Populist leaders, such as Orban, believe that democracy cannot work because it is not what people want. He calls other EU countries ‘chaotic’ and in disorder and positions himself as the only guardian of order to end the chaos and provide for ‘his people.’ Nevertheless, his patriarchal attitude toward governance erodes, as he was no longer able to deliver in times of crisis in 2015 and 2020 while losing absolute power in later elections.

As strange as it might sound, climate change can be the bridge builder in the New Cold War era. It is also the engine that drives much of what glocal governance stands for, namely dealing with global threats locally. For example, after China agreed to the UN FCCC, China’s Foreign Ministry envoy Xie Zhenhua, at the 2017 Climate Change summit in Germany, emphasized that the successful reduction of Chinas CO2 emissions by 2020 is

‘(…) the recognition of our country’s long-term efforts and achievement of coordinating of both domestic and international dimensions, (…).’Footnote 15 By this Xi provided an avenue for Chinese citizens to hold their leaders accountable in case of non-compliance. If a centralistic government over a longer time preaches one thing and does precisely the opposite, it paves the ground for rebellion because it produces a political system that shows a constant bias against the pursuit of the public interest (Petracca, 1991).

Other compelling examples of the ‘Bridge between The East and The West’ can be found globally when visiting the largest megacities in the world. They are multi-diverse, multi-lingual, and often run by multi-stakeholder groups, even in Shanghai with 24 million inhabitants, Delhi with 19 million, and Lagos and Istanbul with 14 million, next to Lima and Kinshasa with 10 million inhabitants, London and New York with up to 9 million inhabitants.Footnote 16 At least 60% of the world’s population lives in urban city-like areas. Some of the most densely populated are the Netherlands and city-states like Hong Kong. Most megacities are in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America. Asia is the region that has experienced the most rapid urbanization since the 1990s. It takes little to assume that in urban dwellings, governments need to respond much more diligently to changes and demands by citizens by providing hygienic standards, work opportunities to earn a decent income, schooling, and security, just to name a few. When it comes to governing these megacities, glocal governance is often the only solution.

Not surprisingly, it is the urban-dwelling megacities where we see the symbols of the West, in their architecture and infrastructure, and they are much alike everywhere in the world. Overall, the places of consumption are alike, the shopping malls, the McDonald’s and Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurants, and Starbucks Coffee shop franchises. They resemble the global–local capitalist political economy (Haller et al., 2019) in a glocal way of life, garnished with free Wi-Fi, vanilla-flavored Cafe Lattes, and refill sodas. For all that, copying a particular way of life is a statement more than anything.

The variance of effective governance is determined by how sustainability problems are solved following good governance and human rights principles (Shapiro, 2005). Many governments respond to these trends by making concessions, ratifying international treaties introducing reforms, and allowing franchises to come to town. However, in doing so, they often stabilize the existing ineffective or corrupt regimes. They make them more static and inflexible than practical (Croissant, 2004; Levitsky & Way, 2010). Corruption and lack of social mobility are obstacles to prosperity of the society, and the day-to-day corruption and dysfunctionality of the institutions outside the coffee shop cannot be sipped away with a cappuccino.

Scholte (2016), in his essay on ‘Whiter Global Theory,’ argues that the process of glocalization is ‘transscalar.’ Transscalarity describes the shift in social relations; for example, in a Western-style Cafe, young people forget for a moment the ethnical, racial, religious and overall social divides of their outside reality. This hybrid experience turns into a spatial, multi-dimensional complexity by abandoning, or purposefully being ignorant to for a couple of hours for the hierarchies between people, state institutions, countries, regions, federal or local versus national, etc. Wearing (real or fake) Adidas sneakers, working with a MacBook at a Starbucks coffee house, and sipping an Italian cappuccino is the highest expression of this hybridity these days in dysfunctional regime societies. Experiencing different realities in one day, when moving from the Western style Cafe home to a traditional environment, serving tea to elderly family members and obeying their words out of tradition and respect for seniority. This is a toxic mix of Family values and Western norms. Escaping to the cafes is also about escaping clientelism or patriarchy. Transscalarity is a slow but steady process in which neither side dominates but instead creates a new glocal reality. It is less hierarchical, but it is not necessarily functional if there are no clear and transparent norms and rules to which all can freely adhere.

Transscalar glocality replaces separate concrete domains as traditions, habits, or belief systems, but it can also be infused in authoritarian regimes because it is a manner of governance or living, not a regime. With this premise, the ‘transscalar’ methodology does not distribute causality between discrete spaces, such as global decisions at the UN level, nor does it determine national trade policies; rather a mutually interrelated and collaborative decision-making process in which all sides take their share of implementation and enforcement. Indeed, transscalarity, as Scholte argues, does not stipulate in advance what geographical or multi-level dimensions or actors dominate in each situation. Against this backdrop, glocalization is an analytical framework that helps assess how national boundaries erode and the global, national, and local modi of governance change. Consequently, Western standards and norms will diffuse into other lifestyles, It can change and penetrate geopolitics, power relations, the role of family, and cultural distinctiveness such as language, faith, and role of men and women.

Russia is another crucial player in this new global divide and the New Cold War. This immensely large country is geopolitically located between China and Europe in the heart of Eurasia, and slowly moved from its democratic commitment to a full fletched autocratic oligarchy. Its closest political and strategic partner is China and former Soviet Republics in Central Asia and the Caucasus. But Russia has nevertheless always been looking westward in its history, knowing that its most reliable partners are in Europe and the West. When realpolitik kicks in and the global crisis must be resolved diligently, much of the authoritarian and populist leaders of the world turn to the West for answers and solutions as seen during the pandemic in 2020–2022, the economic crisis in 2008–2009, and in times of climate change. Whoever takes the lead in the Kremlin will ally or fight its neighbors in Europe for economic terms and political stability. Russia already allied with European countries during the Afghan crisis in 2021 and will continue to do it. China will sooner or later find itself isolated from global politics, and the government in Beijing will feel more pressure from within the country.

When George Ritzer curbed the term glocalization and illustrated it with the McDonaldization of the world’s society in 2013, he observed a phenomenon, that people obviously do not go to McDonald’s because of the quality of its cheeseburgers, but because they seek refuge in an environment that resembles a way of life they seek to. To go to McDonald’s for lunch has become a status, and a statement for wanting to live a different life. The same can be observed with Starbucks Coffee and its plethora of imitations that resemble a ‘certain way of life.’ People indulge themselves in the illusion of equal opportunities and free choice. For all this, this diffusion of lifestyles goes in both ways; there is also a substantial influx of non-Western lifestyles, mostly Eastern, in the West, mainly seen in the cultural context of food, fashion, music, and language. However, what remains Western is the combination of a remarkably open and diverse lifestyle through democracy.

Apparently, Starbucksization of the world has one more element to offer than just a democratic lifestyle, and that is the intriguing and compelling effect of coffee itself. Whether we like this hot and bitter beverage or not, coffee stands for renovation and individualism. Since their first appearance in Europe, coffee shops have been the places of gatherings for opposition, intellectuals, and writers. Hence, they have posed a threat to autocratic powers since they first popped up in the fifteenth-century Ottoman Empire in Constantinople. In the later period of Enlightenment in Europe in the sixteenth century, coffee places in Italy and France were the cradle of new political thinking. A café is an open and spacious transparent place of debate, exchange, gossip, observation, and new ideas, often in opposition to the leading role model of divine powers and the ruling class. Similarly, before the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in 2021, in the Western part of Kabul, coffee houses were a refuge for the youth. Many places were run by women, providing a place where intellectuals and opposition met, discussed, and set up a business—but overall escape to a different lifestyle from the burdens of survival in conflict torn Kabul city.

It seems that coffee houses have often been the catalyst for change. In 1789, the French Revolution started in coffee shops in Paris, and there again, 80 years later, Karl Marx developed and discussed his communist ideas that were the cause and fuel for the next World Revolution in Russia in 1917. The correlation between the number of coffee houses and revolutions has for long triggered the interest of historians and chemists, alike, claiming to have found evidence that coffee contains not only physical stimulus but that it also improves our analytical thinking.Footnote 17 The century-old teahouse culture in Central Asia, for example, has the same purpose, providing a private, non-governmental space for deliberation and exchange. Their owners are often easy to bribe to keep silent and receive ‘donations’ from community leaders and businesses to not pass on information to local police.

Coffee- and teahouses are gathering spaces for community leaders and civil society at the same time. To what extent there is a causal link remains to be proven, but Starbucks imitations are found today in the most remote places of the world, and even when their coffee is overpriced and the quality of the beverage can be discussed, they have many customers, resembling the ‘transscalar’ act that Scholte has highlighted to. How controversial coffee houses are, even in modern societies, is illustrated in the opening of the Starbucks Café in the Forbidden City in Beijing in 2000, and which became extremely popular among Chinese youth immediately after it was opened. It was closed in 2007 after a government-driven online campaign accusing Starbucks of violating Chinese cultural values. In other words, people going there made a clear political statement about which way of life they preferred, especially in a country that had never been serving coffee to the public before (Han & Zhang, 2009). Examples like this illustrate that opening a Starbucks or imitating it is not a simple matter of drinking coffee, let alone enjoying it. It is a sign of desire to change societal and political culture. As Fukuyama predicted in 1992, a pro-Western attitude, even expressed through pop culture and coffee houses can threaten autocratic regimes that uphold their powers on so called traditional values.

Robertson (1992), Huntington (1996), and most recently Fukuyama (2018) have long postulated cultural clashes between Western ideas and ways of life, if the natural diffusion of ideas and lifestyles cannot merge freely among the people. If governments restrict and prohibit this diffusion and exchange of ideas and lifestyles, there will be resistance by citizens against the political regime, which in response will counteract with political violence. Robertson et al. (1995) argue that the West and its representations, overall business, and franchises like Starbucks, for that matter, willingly or not, shape and change identities worldwide. This is more so in societies and regions of the world that have thus far neither been significantly penetrated by European colonizers nor been in closer contact with Europe and the US. The way we dress, the kind of music we listen to, blockbusters we watch, and the way we carry our coffee-to-go are symbols of the lifestyles we attain. So does architecture, the way we build apartments, or how we decorate and spend our leisure time in Disneyworld Parks and their adaptations worldwide. The ‘Youth Cult’ and the billion-dollar anti-aging industry are equally shared globally, coming from Western beauty styles. In every society, we find the same youth hype. However, these rapid cultural, economic, and political shifts would not be possible without ICT and rapidly growing global pop culture industry, which in return has made it a prime target for propaganda, channeling, censoring, shaping, and often blocking.

Because with the cultural change comes political change, and what we expect from our political leaders, tomorrow. Mythical King Arthur, for example, has enjoyed dramatic renaissance over the past decades ad the ideal leader of a free world of brotherhoods. Although ‘kings’ seem unlikely to deliver and respond to peoples needs in a glocally intertwined world and the Anthropocene, he resembles an egalitarian mode of governance. Successful leaders today act as chairperson and look, dress, and act rather as CEOs and managers of political affairs, instead of knights and heroes. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, was such a new type of leaders. During her terms from 2005 to 2021 she saw herself as a servant and manager of people, not as their leader. Jens Stoltenberg, former prime minister of Norway from 2001 to 2013; and Tsai Ing-wen, the president of Taiwan, reelected once since 2016, strongly emphasized the consensus building way of governance they would follow. What they have in common is that they are democratically elected, served several scandal-free legislative periods, and rarely are on the front cover of a fashion magazine. Moreover, they delegate large parts of decision-making to local authorities and citizens and rather act as supervisors. One might call future glocal governors as being politically non-biased, truly gender-neutral, and hence calling for the end of patriarchy (Öztimur, 2007).

The idea of transcending, bridging, and overcoming borders, whether territorial or societal, is not new. Borders are always boundaries to overcome, but they serve as control mechanisms and safety guards in the form of checkpoints, lockdowns, and sanctions. ICT-Firewalls in Russia and China, the Cold War Iron Curtain and the Berlin Wall till 1989 in Germany, and even heavy sanctions against rough states such as Russia in 2022 and Iran in 2018, indicate, that classic top-down state diplomacy and politics have failed. Whether territorial borders still are the best boundaries to protect people today from what is commonly understood by significant threats and challenges remains to be seen. Last but not least, borders lead to exclusivity and, in many cases, to a homogeneous society which will—if we follow similar historical terms—always lead to the use of coercion and violence by governments because the lack of exchange and transparency will lead to dissatisfaction with the regime.

2.2 Theory of Glocality

The dissemination of global norms and the empowerment of local actors eventually led to what is glocality. Local actors become active because national governments fail to deliver, manage problems, and respond to citizens’ needs and for good grace or ill, share power with local leaderships on the one side, and international and global players, such as international aid organizations, on the other side.Footnote 18

Glocality determines the way we perceive and respond to challenges and which actors we ask to solve problems when they occur. If the Chinese government solves border conflicts between Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan because the governments on both sides are unwilling to do so, and when the China’s BRI allows them to rebuild public schools and provide food for victims of the conflict, then this is one form of glocality and glocal governance. Furthermore, if glocalization is a process, then glocality is the theory that would allow us to explain the advantages and disadvantages of glocalism. For example, glocalists claim that glocal governance allowed faster global health norms to be implemented by local director of hospitals during the pandemic because they directly adhered to the recommendation of the WHO in Geneva.

Critical theory and method as proposed by the Frankfurt School in the 1950s helps us to assess glocalization and what we know about it. It critially assesses  information, knowledge, and education and lets us ask whether and to what extent education and information, and even pop culture lead to attitudinal and behavioral shifts without ideological or religious interference (Theodor et al., 2017). How ICT and global markets have led to more global and local connectivity and why not between governments of different countries—which the Westphalian order would suggest? Being aware of one’s analytical subjectivity and cultural bias toward everything is the essence of critical thinking. In short, we aim to be as objective as possible when looking at current paradigm shifts, as there is no wrong, and there is no right; it is just different.

Against this backdrop, a theory of glocality is grounded in global principles that seem to change our values and morals, attitudes, behavior, and habits, through conviction not coercion, according to specific and socially preferable mode of conduct or end-state of traditional and static existence (Robbins & Judge, 2012). No matter how we comprehend our attitudinal and behavioral shifts, values lay the foundation for people’s attitudes and motivation and influence our behavior. Beliefs are rooted in lifestyles and cultural habits, which Ritzer described as McDonaldization, as mentioned above, and which we can see among others in the globally shared pop culture and coffee drinking culture, as long as they stand for forward looking perspectives and opportunities.

After all, if we take the pro-Western lifestyle example, as illustrated above, obviously that works in the other direction too, in anti-Westernism. Today’s anti-Western movements and followers proliferate within anti-capitalist, anti-globalist movements. Glocal movements such as We are the 99%, ‘F2F,’ and ‘Queer,’ and other populist and conspiracy movements such as Q-anon, express radical and often violent religious-traditionalist and nationalistic view. Some albeit a few, support terrorist acts, even allying with groups such as ISIS or the Lord Resistance Army.

Other examples of anti-glocal movements, are the Les identitaire in France, the Proud Boys in the US, and Hindutva movement in India who oppose anything close to glocal and prefer strict hierarchical and patriarchal order systems. Some do accept women as members, but most are predominantly male brotherhoods. They are the essence of the claim that the ‘World is divided’ today between the Western lifestyle embracing diversity and liberal individualism, and the Anti-Western lifestyle living in homogeneous societies based on religious values and family traditions. Hence the West does not stand for the geographical West but for a particular mode of governance.

When looking at the governance paradigm shifts in the Anthropocene, the gender inequality seems to be one major obstacle to move on. Female teachers in Greece such as Sapho (600 BC) and Attika 440/430 BC had a short period of equal access to resources and prosperity, but whenever women became too influential in matters of governance, patriarchy retook full control. Although the experience of all empires and societies has been that when governance is inclusive and society is diverse, innovation, trade, and economy flourishes and life is better for all. Men take over and establish exclusive order regime. Diversity and inclusivity and equality only seems to appeal to people when times are difficult, but not when they are overcome. At the same time it is very challenging to govern in a hierarchical top-down manner, no matter the gender. Hence, even if we realize that diversity is an asset, if we do not change the mode of governance, that asset will only prevail for a short period of time.

One of the early feminists whom we can associate with a theory of glocality, and of whom there is a record, is Christine de Pizan, and her book on the City of Ladies, ‘Le Livre de la Cite des Dames,’ from 1405 (2005). She illustrates how essential virtues such as reasoning, rectitude, and justice flourished under female leadership, but not under male. She observed how women were systematically expelled from leadership for that reason because they govern more sustainably and provide for future generations, too. Therefore, she wondered whether so many men hate women, maybe for their ability to concentrate on problems and fix them more effectively locally, rather than conquerors of society and imperialist (Hinterberger, 2020). Even female emperors, such as the Russian Empress Catherine II, the Great (1729–1796) were known for their different way of governing. Catherine was known for her social reforms and sustainable policies among them introducing a public health service for all people in Russia at that time.

Sociologist Max and Marianne Weber highlight in his 1904 works on ‘Protestant Ethics and Capitalism’ that effective and sustainable governance might be linked to the Protestant attitude and actions that allow for inclusive innovation during industrialization to flourish. The works paved the way for Samuel Huntington’s (1991) assessment of the first wave of democratization from the 1780s to 1920s. But any of these ethics, he goes on, can also be self-destructive if there is no free and civic control over capitalistic powers and leadership. Protestantism and its (global) values certainly dominate today’s global liberal capitalistic political economy and are currently questioned in the West and the East alike, because they create inequalities when there is no civic control (Haller et al., 2019). Both observations have in common that there must be virtues and principles to govern successfully.

A glocal governance theorem can, too, be explained and measured via ultimatum game and change theories (Reinholz & Andrews, 2020). The change theory describes a tipping point for successful change and shift from one system to another, namely when we have convinced or gained the trust of 33% of any given cohort of society. It explains that change makers need to convince 1/3 of any sum or society in order to move on to aim for a consolidated 2/3 majority of the total population. Being in the minority and only having 5–10% of the population’s trust or conviction that equality and opportunities is worth fighting for, will not make change happen. To reach a consolidated majority of 66% through sheer persuasion and convictions is an extremely long and difficult path. If we reach or convince at least 1/3 of a population to join the cause for change, i.e., through an ideology, religion, constitutional setup, then there is a likelihood of reaching out to more people, to at least a simple majority of 51%. Simple majorities can shift and decline at any moment and therefore are not a stable majority. Therefore any changemaker and thinker, such as Socrates or Marx, with a new idea on democratic governance should aim for getting at least a consolidated majority of 66% that support their ideas, in order to make sustainable change (Thornton, 2017). The reason why Socrates, Luthers, and Marx’s ideas were so revolutionary and successfully is because they published and marketed them widely at their time, and by this reached out and convinced more people at the time. The Ultimatum test game and theory involves two players. One of them receives a sum of money which she must share with a second player. The first player, the proposer, can decide how much she offers the second player, the responder. That player can either accept or reject the offer. If he rejects, neither of the players receives any money. Mathematically, the first intuition is to offer the opponent the smallest amount possible. However, during the game, players routinely reject even high offers if they deem the split unfair, which proves that together with change theory, fairly split and consolidated forces (team work) will effectively change society (Güth et al., 1982). In conclusion, one can deduct from both theories that successful change only occurs if a saturated and consolidated majority supports the mode of governance because they think it is in the best interest of all.

In their book ‘Why Nations Fail,’ Acemoglu and Robinson proof change theory. They argue that throughout history, sustainable change and state stability over a more extended period was possible by a mix of government-induced incentives of which a consolidated majority of at least 2/3 of society felt they could benefit from (Robinson & Acemoglu, 2012). Effective and consolidated governance is determined by how freely change is taking place by most people, namely 66%. For this, Transitional Justice procedures such as truth commissions, trials, or memorials to delegitimize past autocratic regimes can be a successful toolbox to consolidate and legitimize new democratic regimes. Measures such as vetting and lustration, memorials, and history commissions can shed light on wrongdoers, exclude them from the new political game and pave the way for political reformers who take democracy and human rights more seriously than their predecessors (Mihr, 2017). Thorough lustration processes, such as corrupt and criminal stakeholders and political leaders, paired with incentives, work slowly but steadily, and can trigger sustainable regime change. Transitional Justice measures, such as compensations, reparations, restoration, and affirmative actions, can enhance and fairly distribute resources of land and water considering climate change-induced migration and urbanization. In these incentive policies, the governments take a mediator role between the global and the local. Whenever incentive policies comply with the vision of fair distribution of public resources such as education, clean environment, health, and access to a decent income, the vicious circle leading to a Mafia state will have less chance to continue.

However, to trigger the change and move from 5% to 33% support rates, one slowly and steadily propagates and campaigns to convince people and stakeholders alike to go to new avenues better for all. Empowerment and education programs aim precisely at that. They explain how to reach constitutional majorities. In short, in any given society or market share, there is always a tiny margin of change-makers on the one side of the spectrum and the change phobics, on the other side. The undecided rest of the cohort, the 90%, can go either side, with or against the proposed change. Change-makers must make concessions and compromise to win over many of those undecided people. Someone who proposes a new idea or concept, such as glocal governance, will not be able to trigger significant change for the whole cohort or target group if she does not at least win over a number of up to 33%. If only 20% of the cohort believe glocal governance is a successful way to outmaneuver corrupt leadership, it will not succeed.

Populist leaders—for better or worse—know change theory, and apply them when using rhetoric such as ‘We against the others,’ and dividing societies in order to gain even a fragile 51% majority of supporters. They see the 1/3 as the ‘critical mass’ and the minimum threshold to make change happen. Once reached, it can lead to reach a larger majority and move most of the society. Once we have convinced people and often compromised our ideas to reach this 33%, we can move on—and compromise even more—to reach the consolidated, absolute, and constitutional majority, the 2/3 of votes, which is often used in referenda. That is why in autocracies fake opinion pools highlight support rates of 70% or 80% of leaders. We also know from electoral turnout and constitutional majorities that the simple majority of 51% is weak and unstable to justify major changes. This equation is more elusive, because the rest of the non-consolidated crowd, the other 33%, if fragmented, does not pose a significant threat to the 66%. If they organize and compromise, they can become the new change-makers or social movements to topple the ‘old regime’ that felt comfortable with 66%. Change theory explains the current shifts and flows of movements and countermovement toward glocal governance. More so, it explains why some leaders, once they reach 66% of public support, use coercion, propaganda, censorship, and lockdowns to maintain their powers. They will do anything to keep the remaining 33% of opponents fragmented and intimidated, so that they cannot build a coalition against them. Democratic leadership that does not work with censorship and coercion, and only by convictions and attitudes, will see significant shifts in power and difficulties in maintaining consolidated support for the system.

Even if a democratic government keeps its 66% of votes and supporters through free and fair elections, it is a constant struggle to maintain that support. To keep its consolidated majorities in parliament and among its constituency, policymakers must make constant concessions compromises, build coalitions and consensus, and not lose support (Emerson, 2016). In a democracy, leadership that cannot deliver, manage, and respond to most people will fail. Democracies resemble change and ultimatum theory principles, but we do see that in many parts of the world, white male supremacy and patriarchy, with its winner takes all mentality, leads to an exclusive ‘all or nothing’ mode of governance.

Hence, despite populist tendencies in a globalizing world and a trend toward Patriarchal Reconquista, billions of people’s faith and ideals have dramatically changed over the past decades. Through the McDonaldization and Starbucksization, and shared pop culture on Weibo, Netflix, and Youtube, and Telegram or Tik Tok, global norms have been disseminated, and people are more aware of their rights and possibilities instead of collective identities (Almond & Verba, 1963; Frank, 1995; Hirschl, 2004; Inglehart & Welzel, 2005, North et al., 2009; Rohrschneider, 2005; Simmons, 2009 and others). ‘Civic disobedience’ has been globalized as a form of resilience toward autocratic leaders, as elaborated by Thoreau in 1848. It grows every time, as he paraphrased, when people feel or perceive themselves to be deprived of their opportunities and capabilities. Protests and civic disobedience target three main areas of power control, (1) political/juridical, (2) economic/financial, and (3) religious/educational. Who holds control over these three public sectors holds control over society. Hence it is here where change begins (Barrington, 1993).

Since the 2010s, when a globally exhausted and disenchanted youth in Tunis, Tel Aviv, New York, Frankfurt, Tokyo, Cairo, Hong Kong, Tehran, Madrid, Athens, and Moscow turned to the streets, disobeyed authorities, and demanded justice, while often facing political violence; civil disobedience had a more vigorous revival, they were in fact asking for changing modes of governance.

Those who grew up in the 1990s had no hegemonic, ideological, religious, or otherwise belief system dominating their education or public surroundings. What impacted them instead was the fact that they never could build trust in governmental institutions, let alone having the confidence to make a change on their own, because of the massive corruption and strong nepotism they were surrounded by. Explaining why their frustration turned into protest movements around the world, we can use the help of Aristotle.

Aristotle (400 BC) coined the metaphor of the three-generational turns: first, the grandfather builds the house (1/3), second, the father consolidates and improves the house (2/3), and third, the grandson maintains or destroys the house (3/3). Hence, once people take democracy for granted, they tend to destroy it and turn it into tyranny. After that, the cycle starts from the beginning, and people seek more democracy. The rise and decline of human matters seem to be trapped in a vicious cycle of change theory. New evolving regimes ought to stand through at least one generation of 20–25 years—as highlighted by Aristotle—to see the actual change in people’s behavior and thus trust in these newly established institutions. Historians like Koselleck call it the ‘levels of time’ or pace of change that impact peoples’ belief systems and behavior, taking a minimum of one generation. Despite the historical facts or status quo, only our normative belief system and moral understanding determine whether we justify and adhere to a political system, and Koselleck calls it the divergence between power and justice (Koselleck, 2000). The question is, whether glocal governance which is a mode, not a regime type, can break this vicious cycle in the future?

At first, it does not look like it. Powerful male priest and warrior casts and brotherhoods, as explained earlier, have for millennia dominated and controlled societies. They defended the cities, the territorial fatherlands, and the family under patriarchal dominance. The past was more about conquest or defense of territory and women in the name of a religion or ideology. Most of these patriarchal regimes are built on fear and suppression, and much of these governed societies turn into populist-nationalist societies. Michel de Montaigne, a sixteenth-century philosopher, warned that ‘We should fear a society that is fearful and afraid of others,’ and he, as did Dahrendorf and Fromm in the post-WWII context, called upon policymakers, that to overcome fear they must empower people individually, giving them the confidence to stand up against usurpers—only then has tyranny no chance. When Thoreau in the 1840s called for civil disobedience of the masses, he meant that at least in the US people are empowered enough to turn their anger and dissatisfaction with a regime into peaceful and targeted protest. The era of Enlightenment was when reasoning, science, and morals were secular and beyond divine absolutism. In 1996 Huntington wrote his book ‘The Clash of Civilizations,’ arguing in the same direction, namely the empowered versus the non-empowered and fearful people. Those reasoning and searching for the truth and knowledge will less likely believe in irrational and absolute systems (Huntington, 1996).

These debates remind us that we are going through an epoch of Enlightenment and struggle similar to the one 300 years ago. Then, too, it was not much of a surprise when the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century thinkers and activists put the human being in the middle, urging every individual to be self-reflective and critical. Descartes’ sentence Cognito ergo sum (I think therefore I am) became a slogan of emancipation from fear at that time—as it is today in the debate how and to what extent artificial intelligence (AI) will determine the Anthropocene. Another resemblance is the growing youth rebellion against the establishment and traditionalists. Hollywood blockbusters mirror these changes and disseminate Western values, screening a plethora of High School movies where young people disobey elders, seek their own opportunities and find their solutions to problems in the light of the ‘right cause.’ By this, more than anything, ‘Western values’ are transported through pop culture, songs, and movies and represent a rebellious youth that protests seniority. In societies, mainly in the East, where that is unheard of, these rapidly incoming new ideas through pop cultures cause the clash of civilizations, but not among countries as widely believed, rather within societies and families, between a disenchanted and angry youth and traditionally obeyed elders.

The theory of change and the clash between youth and elders have always been the subject of political assessment. Machiavelli’s ‘Principe’ or Thomas Hobbes’ ‘Leviathan’ (1651) explain the nature of men in politics and his desire to control and do what is best for the community and then pass it on to their sons. Dynastical regimes are probably the most dysfunctional of all governance regimes but have determined much of our history and the concept of governance, which is overall exclusive, and hence a matter of time until it collapses. Considering Aristotle’s three-generation-model and change theory, and according to Hobbes the cycle goes as such, ‘the first men invade for gain; the second, for safety; and the third, for reputation.’ The first generation conquers to make themselves masters of other men’s persons, wives, children, and cattle; the second, to defend them; the third, for trifles.

Nevertheless, patriarchal concepts and dynasties have survived, and traces are found even in liberal democracies, despite their horrendous failure of the past, culminating in Hitler’s male supremacy Nazi elite and Stalin’s victorious homos sovieticus. Yet, in modern-day autocracies such as Belarus or China, the patriarchy system is preeminent even though societies embrace a Western lifestyle. During the 2020 rebellion in Minsk, leading protesters were predominately women, and hence Belarusian totalitarian leader Lukashenko felt he had to retaliate against women specifically. He lost the elections against a female opposition leader and urged these protesters not to pit women against him and explained what he meant by saying that a woman cannot yet become president of Belarus, arguing that ‘(…) that our Constitution is such that it is hard to even for a man to carry this burden. If this burden is placed on a woman, she will collapse, poor thing.’Footnote 19

Patriarchal traditions are one thing, and religious rituals are another, albeit they mutually reinforce each other. Both are hierarchal and exclusive by nature and seek followers, obedience, and submission. Faith-based patriarchal organizations and even states, such as the Catholic State of the Vatican, the Taliban Emirate, are strictly patriarchal by order. Mostly we find a mixture between faith and governance in all modern societies. For example, almost all national hymns reference God and a belief system, even more so to the many brave men who lost their lives for the fatherland and nation. National flags often resemble the blood that men spilled for the fatherland and the bright skies and fertile grounds and pastures of ‘mother-earth’ who nurtures them. Half of the nation’s population, namely girls and women, are not resembled in hymns or national symbols, other than child bearers. In short, our traditional understanding of the Nation-State includes male knights and conquerers, territorial warriors, and sacrifices in defense against others to safeguard women and their reproductivity.

The recent break-up with traditional forms of government is also a struggle for acknowledgment of the LGBTIQ community. The fact that patriarchy is rooted in reproductivity of men and his number of children and descendants, as well as in the father–son relationship, explains why gay men have been excluded from the political elite—unless they live a hidden or a bisexual life and produce a male heir. Many gay men are attacked, tortured, and even killed as a form of ‘honor killing’ by other men to defend the pride of male reproductivity.

Gay Parades, Cancel Culture, and Me Too protests are thematic rebellions seeking a social change toward more respect for individual identity and at the same time diversity and inclusiveness. It also stands for a rupture with tradition and customs, including the so-called ‘family values’ that assign a man and a woman to a specific role to keep societal order. Anything beyond that order, overall, including the rights of intersex, transgender, people of color, or gays and lesbians, is disruptive and hence a threat to traditional societies. Those who prefer the comfort zones of traditions and patriarchy fear the new and ‘the others.’ They respond with either populist, nationalistic, or otherwise radical movements and violent actions—of which domestic violence is often only one of many phenomena.

Fashion styles introduced by Western and white Anglo-Saxon masculine—and intriguing enough, often homosexual—designers have become the universal uniforms by male and female officials in particular in international settings. Locally they more often appear in traditional suits of their countries—signs of frustration over lost masculinity and brotherhoods toward diversity. The young, skinny, androgyny body shapes have become universal beauty standards, and heavy female shapes seem unsuitable and thus women incompetent. Women in office have to resemble male shapes in order to be recognized. Although this debate is not new either, its radicality is. Decades of feminist movements, millions of court cases on unequal and discriminatory treatment among the genders, and a global ‘Me Too’ movement illustrate how difficult it is for society to accept female leaders. Some 3,500 years earlier, in 1458 BC, the Egyptian female Pharaoh Hatshepsut had to disguise herself as a man with a fake beard to be a credible and legitimate leader and chief-priest and to receive the respect of her subordinates. Feminine shapes are viewed as weak and not fit, whereas broad shoulder pads in male suits signify competence, and if women stand for endurance and men for strength—no matter its scientific truth—it does replicate in the way they govern.

During the 2016 US presidential election campaign, the body shape and hair of the first female candidate, Hillary Clinton, seemed to be a more meaningful measure of her abilities to govern than her previous achievements as Secretary of State. British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s (1979–1990) dress code received more attention from the press than her mode of governance. Ukrainian Prime Minister Julia Timoshenko (2007–2010) was assessed according to her beauty, New Zealand’s prime minister Jacinda Ardern’s (2017–present) pregnancy was covered daily, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s (2005–2021) weight loss and hairstyle made it into the headlines.

Women in politics are not only reduced to their body shapes, female attractiveness, fertility, and appearance alone, but also to their status as widows, daughters, or granddaughters of former state leaders, and hence judged according to their family lines. Such was the case for presidents and head ministers Indira Gandhi in India from 1966–1984, Isabel Peron in Argentina from 1974–1976, Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan from 1988–1996, and Imelda Marcos in the Philippines (1995–2008), or Aung San Suu Kyi in Myanmar (1991–2021). They are measured by the reputation of their deceased fathers or husbands. Individual female competencies and merits are secondary, which says a lot about how we view women in politics today.

Nevertheless, questioning these traditions and political symbols of national identities can be deadly, as seen by the example of the mayor of Prague, Zdenek Hrib, in the Czech Republic in 2020. He and the heads of the city council became a victim of a poison attack by the Russian Secret Service (FSB) because they had ordered the removal of a 1980 bronze statue of Soviet ‘war hero’ Marshall Konev from the main square in the city center to a museum. Citizens of Prague had petitioned for the removal because the Marshall symbolized crimes against humanity during times of occupation of the Czechs until 1990. Russian intelligence, however, saw this as an attack on the victorious and liberating narrative promoted by patriarchal presidential leader in Russia, who was fearing that it would spill over to questioning the role of the Soviet Union during its existence.

In the same vein, the concept of Cancel Culture aligns with the LGBTI and Feminist movements as a rebellion against patriarchal traditions. Moreover, the search for true identities and self-empowerment follows the slogan of George Orwell’s novel 1984, ‘He who controls the past controls the future, he who controls the present controls the past.’ Today, one could add, ‘those who controls the Internet, controls the present.’ Tearing down statues of war heroes; removing portraits of governors and politicians who were enslavers and traders; changing street names and asking for the return of stolen and abducted archeological artifacts from the British or Berlin Museums and the Louvre to their countries of origins, is a cultural rebellion against Western and white male Anglo-Saxon hegemony and the status quo. If Western society responds to it in an inclusive and participatory manner and returns the artefacts, it will remain a cultural and political leader in the world; if not, it will lose its leading role. Hence, as a standards setter, the West has to perform according to its own values and norms. One example that is worldwide watched and followed is how Europe treats its minorities. Over the past decades, homophobia has become a new pseudo-religion of anti-pluralism and anti-democracy. Russian President Putin uses anti-gay propaganda as rhetoric against Europe, claiming that the EU’s only goal is to make Russian men gay. After the end of the Cold War in 1990, hardly anyone could have imagined that it would be Anti-Feminism and Homophobia who would replace anti-capitalist propaganda from the Cold War.

It is not determined how Western societies will respond to it because retaliation by the traditionalists waits no longer, neither in the West nor in non-Western societies. We are in the middle of a glocal culture rebellion that is part of the New Cold War. President Xi Jinping has started his own top-down cancel culture rally introducing an AI-driven Social Scoring System (社会信用体系) and surveillance technology to dismantle so-called ‘unicorn’ companies such as Huawei and Alibaba who represent the Western capitalistic way of life, and therefore culture. Anything Western, even business and leisure culture, ought to be either reinterpreted as Chinese or be abolished, as seen by the example of Starbucks in the Forbidden City. Instead, the attempt for glocal change is replaced by patriotism as a form of a pseudo-religious mix between ideology and personal identity, for which many people are willing to sacrifice their lives. Consequently, China has become a ‘fearful giant’ and is closing itself up again, step by step.

Switching continents, the much-underrated press statements by UN World Conference against Discrimination, Racism, and Xenophobia in 2001 in Durban, South Africa, already foresaw that ‘multi-ethnic States is the new norm,’ not the exception. Its enemies are those, who fear erosion of homogeneous, exclusive, and autocratic societies, and inevitably sooner or later using coercion to maintain their homogeneous status quo. With that warning in mind, one can also assess current conflicts and to what extent they are related to the hopeless retaliation of some governments to channel, stop, and even prevent the influx of migrants or mobility by others. Attempts to impose unilateralism often come at the expense of those who do not seem to fit in these cultures, such as migrants or ethnic minorities, and this creates social inequalities that, in return, will lead to conflict. To fight marginalization, minorities often intensify their efforts, even using political violence, to preserve and protect their identity. The hardening of opposing forces can cause increased intolerance and, in the worst case, armed ethnic conflict. In such cases and to prevent escalation, the protection and promotion of minority rights becomes essential.Footnote 20

Global human rights norms and standards aim to ease and help negotiate this transition process from homogeneous exclusive societies to more inclusive and diverse ones. The normative frameworks of freedom, cultural, political, or social rights are general benchmarks against which glocal policies are measured. Human rights treaties are toolboxes to fix problems in society and create a more inclusive and egalitarian society for all. A vast array of international human rights declarations, conventions, and agreements such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) 1948, the two significant covenants of 1966 (1976), the Inter-American 1969 or European Convention for Human Rights 1949, the African Banjul Charter 1981, the Arab Charter on Human Rights 1994 (2004) of the Charter for Fundamental Rights of the European Union from 2000 (2010), to mention but a few, all determine the human rights standards that serve as normative benchmarks and standard-setting tools to resolve, for example, child abuse, adequate housing, access to water, or fair working conditions. The advantage of human rights and good governance standards is that they are adaptive to different cultural, economic, environmental, demographic, or other circumstances of society because they are qualitative, not quantitative, by nature. Thus, parliaments or executive councils responding to citizens’ demands for education and professional development would follow these standards—but it does not necessarily say anything about how to respond, under what circumstances, and its outcome. The fact that there is a nonviolent response would already leverage the quality of governance in the long run. Therefore, this framework can be applied to all kinds of political regimes, regardless of traditions or political circumstances, because it only defines those responsible and accountable for practical actions and implementation.

With 80% of the world’s population under the age of 40 and over half of them with regular or permanent access to the Internet, the world is about to change forever. These digital natives have already formed one global society and generation, and they have more in common than apart. They do not even need a common language, territory, or faith, except for their access to the Internet. Net Neutrality is a global CSO movement demanding that Internet platform providers such as Google, Facebook, or Instagram treat all Internet communications equally and not discriminate or charge differently based on users’ background or content. Cyber and Internet Justice and free and neutral access are unresolved since free access is not working without the commercialization of the Internet and the heavy use of AI. Instead, AI has become an ally and tool for glocal actors and their identity.