International Relations and Global Governance
Chapter 1
Interconnectedness: the interweaving of human lives so that events in one region of the world have
an impact on all or most other people.
International Monetary Fund: an institution of 188 members as of late 2015, providing extensive
technical assistance and short-term flows of stabilization finance to any of those members
experiencing temporarily distressed public finances, while also monitoring all countries to see
whether pre-emptive ‘corrective’ measures are considered necessary.
Globalism: a growing collective awareness or consciousness of the world as a shared social space.
Interdependence: a condition where states (or peoples) are affected by decisions taken by others; for
example, a decision to raise interest rates in the USA automatically exerts upward pressure on interest
rates in other states. Interdependence can be symmetric, i.e. both sets of actors are affected equally, or
it can be asymmetric, where the impact varies between actors. A condition where the actions of one
state impact on other states (can be strategic interdependence or economic). Realists equate
interdependence with vulnerability.
World Trade Organization: established in 1995 with headquarters in Geneva, with 164 members as
of mid-2016. It is a permanent institution covering services, intellectual property, and investment
issues as well as pure merchandise trade, and it has a disputes settlement mechanism in order to
enforce its free trade agenda.
Time-space compression: the technologically induced erosion of distance and time given the
appearance of a world that is, in communication terms, shrinking.
Deterritorialization: a process in which the organization of social activities is increasingly less
constrained by geographical proximity and nation territorial boundaries. It is accelerated by the
technological revolution, and refers to the diminution of influence of territorial places, distances, and
boundaries over the way people collectively identify themselves or seek political recognition. This
permits an expansion of global civil society but equally an expansion of global criminal or terrorist
networks.
Internationalization: this term is used to denote high levels of international interaction and
interdependence most commonly with regard to the world economy. The term is often used to
distinguish this condition from globalization, as the latter implies that there are no longer distinct
national economist in a position to interact.
Epiphonemanal: a by-product or secondary effect of some other primary cause.
Uneven globalization: describes the way in which contemporary globalization is unequally
experienced across the world and among different social groups in such a way that it produces a
distinctive geography of inclusion in, and exclusion from, the global system.
,Institutionalization: the degree to which networks or patterns of social interaction are formally
constituted as organization with specific purposes.
Territoriality: humankind is organized principally into exclusive territorial (political) communities
with fixed borders.
Sovereignty: within its borders the state or government has an entitlement to supreme, unqualified,
and exclusive political and legal authority.
Autonomy: the principle of self-determination or self-governance considers countries as autonomous
containers of political, social , and economic activity- fixed borders separate the domestic sphere from
the world outside.
Global policy networks: complexes which bring together the representatives of governments,
international organizations, NGOs, and the corporate sector for the formulation and implementation of
global public policy.
Global polity: the collective structures and processes by which ‘interests are articulated and
aggregated, decisions are made, values allocated and policies conducted through international or
transnational political processes’.
World government: associated in particular with those idealists who believe that peace can never be
achieved in a world divided into separate sovereign state. Just as governments abolished the state of
nature in civil society, the establishment of a world government must end the state of war in
international society.
Global governance: the loose framework of global regulation, both institutional and normative, that
constrains conduct. It has many elements: international organizations and law; transnational
organizations and frameworks; elements of global civil society; and shared normative principles.
Transnational civil society: a political arena in which citizens and private interests collaborate across
borders to advance their mutual goals or to bring governments and the formal institutions of global
governance to account for their activities.
Collaboration: a form of cooperation requiring parties not to defect from a mutually desirable
strategy in order to pursue an individually preferable strategy.
State autonomy: in a more interdependent world, simply to achieve domestic objectives national
governments are forced to engage in extensive multilateral collaboration and cooperation. But in
becoming more embedded in frameworks of global and regional governance states confront a
dilemma: in return for more effective public policy and meeting their citizens’ demands, whether in
relation to the drugs trade or employment, their capacity for self-governance- that is the state
autonomy- is compromised.
Disaggregated state: a state that has become increasingly fragmented as an actor in global politics as
every part of the government machine becomes entangled with its foreign counterparts and others in
dealing with global issues through proliferating transgovernmental and global policy networks.
,Facts:
- Globalization involves:
- A stretching of social, political, and economic activities across political frontiers.
- A growing magnitude of interconnectedness in almost every sphere of social
existence.
- An accelerating pace of global interactions and processes associated with a deepening
enmeshment of the local and the global.
- Globalization is considered a historical process of fast-growing interconnectedness in every
sphere of social, political and economic life, across political and national frontiers.
- In the first wave, the age of discovery (1450-1850), globalization was decisively shaped by
European expansion and conquest.
- Globalization in the age of discovery was a result of European expansion and conquest, which
then determined the order of the world system.
- The second wave (1850-1945) evidenced a major expansion in the spread and entrenchment
of European empires.
- The second wave of globalization was characterised by the attempts of European empires to
enlarge their territories while at the same time securing them from external interference.
- The concept of asymmetrical globalization describes the unequal effects of globalization on
different parts of the world and among different social groups leading to a distinctive pattern
of inclusion in and exclusion from the global system.
- In a disaggregated state, the constituent agencies increasingly interact with their counterparts
abroad, international agencies and NGOs in the management of common and global affairs.
The image of a foreign-domestic policy divide is replaced by formal and informal
transgovernmental networks.
- Sceptical accounts of globalization dismiss its significance because they argue that…
, - By comparison with the period 1870 to 1914, the world is now less globalized
economically, politically and culturally.
- The vast bulk of international economic and political activity is concentrated within
the group of OECD states.
- Globalization is at best a self-serving myth or ideology which reinforces Western and
particularly US hegemony in world politics.
- Sceptical accounts assume that globalization and interdependence have been highly
exaggerated, or even are myths to conceal that the world is much more regionalized and that
globalization favours OECD states and the West in general.
- State autonomy is challenged in the "post-Westphalian" order because in a more
interdependent world, national governments are forced to engage in extensive multilateral
collaboration and co-operation simply to achieve domestic objectives.
- The capacity for self-governance of the state is compromised by new types of problems that
states cannot solve on their own. The authority to do so is increasingly shared between the
local, national, regional and global level.
- Time-space compression is the technologically induced erosion of distance and time, which
gives the appearance of a world that is, in communication terms, shrinking.
- The international Convention on the Elimination of Child Labour was the product of a
complex politics involving public and private actors from trade unions, industrial
associations, humanitarian groups, governments, and legal experts.
- The "Post-Westphalian Order" is characterized by:
- The sovereign power and authority of national government - the entitlement of states
to rule within their own territorial space - being transformed but not necessarily
eroded.
- A real dilemma: in return for more effective public policy and meeting their citizens’
demands, whether in relation to the drugs trade or employment, states’ capacity for
self-governance - that is state autonomy - is compromised.
- The emergence of a new geography of political organization and political power,
which transcends territories and borders.
- The main three elements of the Westphalian order - sovereignty, state authority and
territoriality - are affected by the consequences of globalization. Sovereignty is
increasingly shared among national, regional and global actors; state authority is
diminished by new types of transnational problems and consequently, a strict
principle of territoriality cannot be maintained.
Chapter 2
International order: regularized practices of exchange among discrete political units that recognize
each other to be independent.
, Gross domestic product (GDP): stands for gross domestic product, which is the monetary value of
all goods produced in a country’s economy in a year.
Facts:
- International orders are regularized practices of exchange among discrete political units,
which recognize each other to be independent. International orders have existed ever since
political units began to interact on a regular basis, whether through trade, diplomacy or the
exchange of ideas. In this sense, world history has seen a great many regional international
orders.
- The three regulating mechanisms of international society are diplomacy, international law,
and the balance of power.
- Ancient China, India, Rome, and both Christian and Islamic medieval civilization bear
evidence of international society.
- The Catholic Church, a form of supranational authority, contributed to both the normative
basis of international society, and in particular, just war theory.
- The exploration of the New World led to an interest in a political entity’s relations beyond its
borders, while the Protestant Reformation implicitly strengthened the principle of sovereign
equality by challenging Catholicism's claim to supreme authority.
- Sceptical accounts suggest both that international society is a rhetorical justification of great
power politics, and that globalization poses significant challenges to the order of international
society.
- The international society has endured for years in spite of interstate war. New challenges
involve civil conflict, environmental strain, American hyperpower, and changing forms of
political community and identity; all of these challenge the assumption of sovereign equality
upon which international society is founded.
- Organized Hypocrisy, the title of a 1999 book by Stephen Krasner, suggests that sovereignty
is a norm honoured more in the breach than in the observance, and cautions against assuming
that all states will always honour the precepts of international society.
- The American (1776) and French (1789) Revolutions brought new states and the concept of
nationalism to the forefront of inter-state relations, and led to the creation of the Concert of
Europe after the Napoleonic Wars.
- International society is distinguished from the above three ways of ordering the world system
by the principle of sovereign equality.
Chapter 3
