I think it is also true because there is a decline of the nation-state in general. Nationalism is dying. People are more and more identifying each other as humans rather than black or white, Somali or Iranian. The modern era is breaking apart the stitches that keep nation-states together. People have more loyalty towards their football teams or baseball teams than towards their government. I think that is a major factor in the decline of the West, because governments don't have the leverage they used to.

That may only be true in the west frankly goldfinger. Chinese, Indian, other emerging powers' nationalism actually seems to be growing.

Perhaps lack of nationalism actually has something to do with the decline? I doubt it but I could see someone like a Christian conservative arguing that.

Well, you pretty much nailed me on the head with that one lol. I do sincerely think that the decline in nationalism and national pride - in part due to our government's actions - has adversely affected our nation's power

Though note, I'm not an ultra-conservative. I'm pretty liberal socially.

The decline of the West is neither good nor bad.

Tell you what I think.

I think level of nationalism is correlated to direction a country is headed - up-and-coming powers tend to have rising nationalism, declining powers, the reverse.

This isn't causation though in my opinion. If anything it's the other way around, and they may indeed influence each other to some extent but I think the nations' power has more to do with the citizen's perceptions than the other way around.

Is it occurring or inevitable, furball? If so why?

I'm not sure if its occurring or if it is inevitable. I don't think the power of the West is declining, but I have no facts I'm basing these conclusions on. I mean, how on earth can their power be declining? I just think that powers that are not of the West are growing.

Decline of western states, yes; decline of western power, no. Western corporations are in my view likely to dominate the international scene for the next era, since eastern states are on a looong development timetable and eastern corporations are unheard of (actually this is a part of Chinese strategy, to do most business through western brand names).

To the extent that the nation-state continues to fail as a model for political organization, and the democratic model in particular, these things will be even more true - strict authoritartian models like corporations will be successful, albeit immoral, microfeifs for a while, but hopefully strong socialistic market-states like china will finish the development process and tame corporate excess.

Furball, that is relative decline you just described. For the umpteenth time. Lol.

bbdaniels - I agree about the corporations. But are those not more and more international anyway? Also emerging market's companies actually are getting pretty important - yes we may not have heard of them but they are behemoths. The few we have heard of are important as hell, Tata motors for example.

Bad (since apart from Japan and perhaps India I can't think of a dependable liberal democracy outside the West), and not inevitable. Decline is a choice.

Oh please, dependable liberal democracies are in South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, the Philippines to an extent, Turkey, Indonesia, Ghana, Senegal, South Africa, Botswana, and all over Latin America.

"Decline is a choice."

Interesting, what do you mean.

@thucy - by 'decline' do you mean permenant decline? As in never again to be top dog?

No, not really. There isn't really such a thing as permanent decline either. China could be said to be bouncing back after ~400 years. I just mean for the short term, say the 21st century.

Define "decline."

To say that the West is "declining" in the sense that it's not experiencing the anomalous breakneck economic growth experienced since the days of yore, while other nations just begin their growth spurts, is an unnecessarily West-centric way to put it.

The West isn't declining. It's slowing down while everyone else is speeding up. Hopefully they're not breaking the sound barrier like we were when the hit the speed bump we just ran over.

Okay - sorry.

Decline for the purposes here represents a loss of power from a previous peak on the international level, whether relatively or absolutely. This encompassing all elements of "power," hard and soft, and therefore extends to economics, politics, and culture.

ta-da

An interesting idea you might want to think about that I'm considering attempting to incorporate into my essay:

There is a sense in which the question is irrelevant because the world has for the most part moved beyond concepts like "the West" in the meanings they had previously.

That is to say - recent historical trends have in many ways created a worldwide civilization. The "civilizations" of the past exist of course via their historical imprints, but the level of interaction is now such that we could for the most part be considered part of a single civilization, the West being merely a region within it, a component.

So a more relevant question becomes: "Is *society* in decline?"

The question is really asking - can the human race overcome its present challenges of global warming, population growth, limited resources, poverty, disease, and war?

In a broad sense, humanity as a whole has been on a inexorable rise of power. The question is, will we peak?

However that isn't the question I was posed. Within this world system, the Western world is surely becoming less important and less powerful, no?

@Thucy: Nice definition of "decline!" I should now be mean and ask for a definition of "West," but life is too short. I do not think "society" as a whole is in decline, because society is always in flux. There is not one peak ideal of "society" from which further transformation signifies decline. Moreover, society is not a singular concept. We live in a world of multiple societies, and many sub-societies that cut across the grain of larger communities that are often presented as monolithic and mutually antagonistic. Think of a Hui (Chinese Muslim) getting an engineering degree in the US or Western Europe and married to a local man . . .

how does one measure power? and importance?

Of course the relative power of the West is in decline. This is because that has been the goal of the West for decades. For years Western folk have looked at their TV screens and read newspaper stories about the poor little foriegners being all poverty stricken and stuck in dictatorships etc etc, and have made huge efforts to help them out of it.

The drawback of helping your fellow man off his kness is that you're no longer the tallest man in the room. However, if you compare what we have gained to what we have lost by these actions, they have clearly been a good thing.

Is it inevitable, Octavious?

And I define the West in my paper as the US, Canada, Aus/NZ, and Western Europe or the EU.

@ Thucy

Yes. If the West wishes to lay claim to any ethical values, which it ever increasingly does, then such a decline is inevitable.

"Oh please, dependable liberal democracies are in South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, the Philippines to an extent, Turkey, Indonesia, Ghana, Senegal, South Africa, Botswana, and all over Latin America."

South Korean democracy is less than 25 years old. Singapore is run by very polite fascists. Taiwan's democracy is even younger than South Korea's. The Philippines has had numerous coup attempts of varying seriousness in the 25 odd years since Marcos was kicked out. They might have a fairly solid democratic system now, but in all these countries authoritarianism is in living memory.

As for Turkey, Indonesia, Ghana, Senegal, South Africa, Botswana, the issue is even more complicated. Turkey had a coup-in-all-but-name as recently as 1997. Indonesia had an authoritarian regime right up till 1999. Ghana and Senegal are only came out of military rule in the last two decades. South Africa, while unrecognizably better now than under apartheid, still has serious societal problems and an increasingly corrupt ANC has virtual one party rule. Botswana has never had an opposition party run the government.

I always mentally include Latin America in the West. Didn't make that clear. However, virtually every country there also has only a relatively recent experience with real democracy. Offhand I can only think of Costa Rica as an example of a state that hasn't experienced a period of military rule recently.

I meant dependable in the sense that any undemocratic form of government would be unimaginable. A democratic reversal is much more likely in, say, Ghana than in Finland. I hope we don't see a rollback of democracy outside the West, but I really think it's possible. The plain fact is that tanks rolling down the streets of Dublin is unimaginable, while tanks rolling down the streets of Dakar or Manila isn't yet.

Decline for the West is bad because the rest of the world hasn't accepted the values of the Enlightenment wholeheartedly yet. I happen to think those values and ideas mean something and are worth defending and spreading.

Europe - yes. The US, no. US share of global GDP is roughly the same as it was in 1970. US share of GDP was 27% in 1970, it is 26% today. It's hovered at about this rate for 30 years. The 15 western European countries, by contrast, have declined. They were at about 36% in 1970, now they're at 26%. Expanding that bloc of capital to include the 12 central/east european countries doesn't bump it up by much, maybe 2% to 28%.

India's has increased from >1% to 2%. China's has increased from .68 to 7.5, which is incredible but still far below the other major blocs of capital. Japan has gone through a period of rise and decline. It's share of GDP is actually lower now than it was in 1970. It at one point was 12%.

http://www.ers.usda.gov/Data/Macroeconomics/

Mauritius has always been a reliable democracy. But this is unfair since many of these places haven't even been countries for very long.

At any rate, "democracy" is in the eye of the beholder. Switzerland has always been considered a paragon of "democracy" even though it only allowed women the right to vote in the 1970s. Why are polls and elections the end all be all of good government?

They aren't. Lebanon has elections, for crying out loud. But without democratic accountability good government is impossible.