Cultural dimension of international governance
At the beginning of the 21st century, the rise of the Islamic State and its continued impact on European society is presented as a security issue and a “civilization clash”. However, the roots of these problems lie deep in the failure of cultural governance. After the end of the Cold War, there was a massive release of power from the world's long-suppressed cultures, and the unbalanced development of world politics, economy, and culture reached a new turning point. This phenomenon can be called a “cultural lag” in global governance. The causes behind such a phenomenon are cultural globalization and cultural hegemony attempts from European countries and America. To change the unfavorable situation in global cultural governance and to build a more reasonable world cultural order, the international society has explored several options, such as a global ethics, civilization clash, and civilization dialogue patterns. Meanwhile, regional culture governance could also bring a functional perspective that will help solve these problems. In the past, regional cultural governance gained a series of experiences; that is, to play the leading role of influential cultural countries, to launch practical regional cultural policies, to enhance economic and social support within the region, and to guarantee a sufficient cultural pressure from outside the region.
The growth of the Islamic State has caused panic and anxiety in Eurasian society and boosted political extremism worldwide, which triggered cultural reactions from different civilizations. Many political phenomena, such as Brexit, the German anti-refugee movement. Donald Trump's victory in the U.S. presidential election, and the radical constitutional amendments in Japan, among others, all demonstrate a wave of collective phobias and political conservatism, which in turn affects the international society’s attitude and intensity toward security governance in the Middle East. What are the origins of all these events? Do these events show that the so-called "clash of civilizations” (Huntington, 1996), which the American political scientist predicted 20 years ago, has come tme? The reflection on the rise of the Islamic State continues to deepen, which, to a certain extent, can be comparable to the world's thoughts on the rise of Nazi Gennany after World War II (Liu & Yu, 2016; Tian, 2014; Wang, 2014). This chapter argues that the reason for such cultural radicalization lies in the unbalance of global governance mechanisms. The key is that global cultural governance is left far behind the overall steps of global governance. Although it is nomial and acceptable that international cultural relations remain relatively undeveloped
Dimension of international governance 17 compared with their economic and political counterparts, once the gap of their development becomes too large, the cultural field will suffer depression and trigger global crises in different ways. From this perspective and judgment, we might call such a phenomenon the "cultural lag" in global governance.
