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polarisation — English
Parties who have the same viewpoint about any important matter will band together to form polarised pressure groups who could oppose one another more effectively. In any international gathering of interested parties, polarisation inevitably happens. Whether it is a political, economical or environmental issues that is at stake, it is a given that the role players will not all share the same opinion. Each party will in the first place want to protect its own interests. It would join the group that holds opinions most compatible with its own. The gathering will inevitably become polarised, and two or more powergroups will then face it off. In the political and economical environments, formal agreements might be reached by like-minded parties. Some of these agreements might stand for many years and might even survive wars, terrorism and enemy aggression. A typical example is the Allied Forces of the Second World War who opposed the Axis States, but in that instances many of the allegiances changed after the war and new animosities surfaced in what became a 40-year Cold War. The African Union which originated from the Organisation for African Unity has survived despite a number of wars between the member nations themselves, but both of these organisations have been remarkably ineffective in establishing peace and development in Africa. Since politics and economics are often intertwined, political and economical polarisations are also intertwined. Some authors regard the world as being polarised between an economically developed grouping and an economically developing (or underdeveloped) grouping of states (see “economic development”, “developed North” and “developing states”). However, nowadays the most prominent economical groupings are the Group of Eight, the developing states and the BRICS countries (see “economic development”, “developed states” and “developing nations”). In the environmental sphere, polarisations are very common, but they tend to be loose, self-serving and changeable. Some countries might band together during one Cites meeting (see “international conventions”) and oppose all others in order to sell-off their stock-piles of ivory or rhino horn, and be completely opposed about the very same issue at the next Cites meeting. At the so-called “Earth Summit” (see “environmental justice”) the developing (poor) nations and the developed (rich) nations opposed each other vigorously in unpremeditated polarisation about environmental responsibility and air pollution. But on the whole, environmental polarisations tend to be fluid, opportunistic and issue-bound.
