International Journal on Criminology Volume 7, Number 2, Spring 2020 | Page 133

International Journal on Criminology
in them the conflict between ancestral political and social structures and the structure
of the democratic system, which may have originated in the West, but has now
spread into this world as a method of good governance.
It is not a case of confounding the necessary ontological basis with the
historically situated social form. Under these conditions, cultural diversity is not
antinomic with the functional universality of the ontological elements that allow
for the institutionalization, for example, of the separation of powers, which is the
foundation of good governance.
Bertrand Badie does not seem to grasp this. He opposes for example the
“multipolar” approach with the “classic” conception of geopolitics, even though the
realist view of the multipolar existence of converging blocs, limited in fact by—but
not only by—Hobbesian power effects, is not incompatible with the pluralist search
for shared values that enable the human race to perceive itself as one, beyond inevitable
differences; for example by general strengthening of interstate and transnational
relations. But Badie dismisses this dialectic, which sublates (in the Hegelian
sense of Aufhebung) the old universalism as too scientistic and ethnocentrist, while
also rejecting idealism. Instead, he proposes a classically deterministic paradigm
by insisting for example on the fact that conventional interstate political violence:
has now been overtaken by a new form of international violence,
this time social in nature. This international social violence is the
logical consequence of the lack of international social integration,
the failures of development, and consequent material dissatisfactions,
such as the humiliations suffered in conflict zones in the
global space. ( ... ) Embodied in the form of riots, civil wars, and
targeted acts of violence, and leading to the normalization of terrorist
acts, this social violence is accompanied by an international
expression that is ready to identify the cause of all evils, and especially
the lack of social integration, in power games, and in particular
those of the hegemon. ( ... ) Thus the international conflicts
that arise from it rebel against the traditional modes of regulation:
social violence is resistant to partnerships, negotiation, and the
classic models of conflict resolution. It has made commonplace the
many civil wars affecting Africa and plays a role in conflicts in the
Middle East, benefiting from their stalemate, in Palestine, Iraq, and
previously in Lebanon ( ... ) (Badie 2006, 14–16).
Badie thus discards political nature, which he reduces to power. Yet it is
possible to explain such acts of violence through the aggressiveness of political
motivations, in that they want to achieve their end by any means necessary—the
refusal to see certain traditions evolve has become structural. And yet this refusal
has been described as reactionary when it derives from German, Italian, Japanese,
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