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Political Science 144 Study Notes
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Political Sciences 144Textbook: John Baylis: The Globalization of World Politics
Introduction - Chapter 4
Introduction:
● “Globalisation” (the term often used to explain world politics in the contemporary period) is a
controversial term. Most simply, it refers to the process of increasing interconnectedness among
societies such that events in one part of the world increasingly have effects on peoples and
societies far away.
● From international politics to world politics:
○ The discipline that studies structures and processes such as the causes of war and peace
or the global economy and its inequalities is nearly always International Relations.
However, the phrase ‘world politics’ is more inclusive and signals a study of a wide set of
actors and political relations in the world (not only those among nation-states). For
example, multinational corporations, transnational terrorist groups, social classes and
NGOs such as human rights groups have significant roles to play.
● The study of International Relations:
○ The key concepts that organise debate in the field of IR are also some of the most
contentious: power, violence, sovereignty, states, empire, genocide, intervention, inequlity,
justice, and democracy. The highly diverse field can be organized into various subfields,
including international security, international political economy, international history,
international law and international organisations. Scholars of IR often work with regional
specialities (e.g. Latin America, East Asia, Middle East etc).
○ The field is also highly interdisciplinary, drawing on theoretical and methodological
traditions from fields as diverse as history, law, political science, geography, sociology,
anthropology, gender studies and postcolonial studies.
○ Political science has tended to have the greatest influence on the discipline of IR,
especially in the US. There is an on-going debate about the extent to which IR is an
American social science - the field is excessively concerned with issues related to US
foreign policy to the detriment of non-Western history and theories of world politics.
Scholars have started to move the field away from Eurocentric approaches to world politics
and developing a global IR.
○ There are different accounts of the history of IR: one is that the discipline formed in 1919
with a university department that attempted to explore the causes of WW1 to prevent future
war (and thus IR is marked by a commitment to change the world); anther is that IR
emerged in the history of the colonial administration and study of imperialism.
,● Theories of world politics:
○ Theory is a simplifying device that allows you to decide which historical or contemporary
facts matter more than others when trying to develop an understanding of the world -
different lenses.
○ Realism: this has been the dominant way in the West of explaining world politics during the
last 150 years; in general the main actors on the world stage are states (legally sovereign
actors), and other actors have to work within the framework of inter-state relations.
■ Realists see human nature as centrally important and rather selfish, therefore world
politics represents a struggle for power among states with each trying to maximise its
national interest. Order is due to a balance of power, bargaining and alliances with
diplomacy as a key mechanism for balancing various national interests.
■ The most important tool for implementing states’ foreign policies, however, is military
force - since there is no body above states, states must rely on their own military
resources. Cooperation can achieve their ends, but the potential for conflict is ever
present.
■ Since the 70s and 80s, a variant known as neorealism has developed - it stresses the
importance of the structure of the international system in affecting the behaviour of
the states (e.g. during the Cold War, two main powers dominated the IS, which gave
rise to certain rules and now politics is moving towards multipolarity).
■ Do not see globalisation as altering the territorial divide of the world into nation states
or render obsolete the struggle for political power among those states.
○ Liberalism: the main themes are that human beings can be improved, that democracy is
necessary for liberal improvement, and that ideas (not just material power) matter; a belief
in progress is paramount.
■ Liberals see individuals, multinational corporations, transnational actors and
international organisations as NB actors alongside states. They see the state as
made up of collective societal preferences and interests, as well as comprising a set
of bureaucracies that dominate decision-making.
■ They value cooperation, and order emerges from the interactions among many layers
of governing arrangements, comprising laws, agreed norms, international regimes,
and institutional rules. They feel that sovereignty is not as important in practice as
realists - states may be legally sovereign but have to negotiate with other actors;
interdependence is critical.
■ See globalisation as the end product of a long-running transformation of world politics
wherein states are no longer the central actors they once were.
,○ Social constructivism: arose out of the disintegration of the Soviet empire, symbolised by
the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989; the events indicated that human agency had a much
greater role in politics than realism and liberalism implied.
■ Theoretical underpinnings relate to a series of social-scientific and philosophical
works that dispute the notion that the ‘social world’ is external to the people who live
in it, and not easily changed. Constructivism argues that we make and re-make the
social world.
■ Not a theory in and of itself, rather an approach to the philosophy of social science
with implications for the arguments that can be made about world politics.
■ Globalisation is presented as an external force acting on states, which leaders argue
is a reality that they cannot challenge - constructivists feel this allows leaders to duck
responsibility by blaming ‘the way the world is’.
○ Marxist theories: has been incredibly influential, inspiring socialist revolutions during the
process of decolonisation and in recent global uprisings in response to the global financial
crisis since 2007 BUT has been less influential in the discipline of IR.
■ From this perspective, realism and liberalism serve the class and imperial interests of
the most powerful actors in world politics to the detriment of most of the rest of the
world. World politics takes place in a highly unequal world capitalist economy.
■ The most important actors are classes, and behaviours are explicable by class
forces. World politics is the setting in which class conflicts are played out. The most
important feature of world politics is the degree of economic autonomy.
■ Feels globalisation is a sham - doesn’t mark a qualitative shift in world politics or
render existing theories and concepts redundant, merely furthers the development of
global capitalism; deepens the divide between the core, semi-periphery and
periphery.
○ Postcolonialism: all the major theories discussed so far are Eurocentric, and postcolonial
scholars question whether Eurocentric theories can explain world politics as a whole; more
likely they merely continue to justify the military and economic subordination of the global
South by powerful Western interests (neocolonialism).
■ Since the 9/11 attacks, people have been encouraged to understand how the
histories of the West and global South have been intertwined - e.g. the identities of
the colonised and colonisers are constantly in flux and mutually constituted.
■ Suggests that traditional Marxism didn’t pay enough attention to the way racial and
gendered identities and power relations were central to upholding class power.
■ Highlights the important degree of continuity and persistence of colonial forms of
power in the globalised world.
, ○ Feminism: different approaches are united by their focus on the construction of differences
between women and men in the context of hierarchy and power.
■ This field analyses how gender affects world politics and is an effect of world politics;
how the gendering of concepts has different consequences for men and women.
■ Examine: how women are excluded from power; restricted to roles critically important
for the functioning of things (e.g. reproductive economies) but that aren’t usually
deemed important for theories of world politics; how the cause of women’s inequality
is found in the capitalist system.
■ Some argue that liberal feminists were too slow to challenge the way in which poor
women of colour remain subordinated by the global economic system, in a
systematic way.
■ Liberal feminists see globalisation as a way to incorporate women into the political
and economic system, while others point out the negative effects of neoliberalism
and economic globalisation on the global wealth gap.
● Meta-theoretical questions:
○ Explanatory vs constitutive theories: explanatory theories see the world as something
external to our theories of it (typically liberal and realist), and a constitutive theory thinks we
help construct the world.
○ Foundational vs anti-foundational: foundationalist position thinks all truth claims can be
judged true or false (typically explanatory); anti-foundationalist think there are never neutral
grounds for judging truth claims (typically constitutive).
■ The distinction refers to the simple-sounding issue of whether our beliefs about the
world can be tested or evaluated against any neutral or objective procedures; central
to the branch of the philosophy of social science known as epistemology (study of
how we can claim to know something).
● Arguments in favour of globalisation:
○ The pace of economic transformation is so great that it has created a new world of politics.
○ Communications have fundamentally revolutionized the way we deal with the rest of the
world.
○ Much of the urban world shares a common culture, much of it emanating from Hollywood
(global culture).
○ A global polity (organized society; a state as a political entity) is emerging.
○ A cosmopolitan culture is developing.
○ A risk culture is emerging, with people realizing both that the main risks that face them are
global and that individual states are unable to deal with these problems.
● Arguments against globalisation:
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