Golden Arches
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The Golden Arches are the famous symbol of McDonald's, a fast-food hamburger chain based in Chicago. They have also been seen more broadly as a symbol of capitalism or globalization, since they are one of the more prominent American corporations that have become global in their reach (along with Coca-Cola and Nike).
In his book, The Lexus and the Olive Tree, Thomas L. Friedman proposed The Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention, observing that no two countries with a McDonald's franchise had ever gone to war with one another, a version of the democratic peace theory. Shortly after the book was published, the NATO bombing of Serbia proved an exception to the theory, though in a later edition Friedman argued that this exception proved the rule: the war ended quickly, he argued, partly because the Serbian population did not want to lose their place in a global system "symbolised by McDonald's" (Friedman 2000: 252–253). It should be noted that Friedman framed this theory in terms of McDonald's Golden Arches "with tongue slightly in cheek" (Friedman 2005). Recently, Friedman has updated the theory with the Dell Theory of Conflict Prevention (Friedman 2005).
References
- Friedman, Thomas. (2000) The Lexus and the Olive Tree. New York: Anchor Books.
- Friedman, Thomas. (2005) 'Global is good (http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1464454,00.html)', The Guardian, 21 April 2005.