The Globalization of World Politics: Chapter 1 (Globalization)
Introduction
Globalization is the widening, deepening and speeding up of the world wide
interconnectedness. Hyperglobalists argue it will bring the demise of sovereign nation-state
while critics reject the idea of globalization by arguing states and geopolitics remain the
principal agents and forces shaping the world politics today. This chapter takes a
transformalist position that argues globalization is associated with the emergence of a global
politics in which traditional distinction between domestic and international affairs is no longer
meaningful.
Evidencing globalization
Worldwide economic integration has intensified as the expansion of global commerce,
finance, and production binds together the economic fortunes of nations, communities and
households. In the aftermath of the GFC, many governments confronted real reductions in
public spending in order to protect their creditworthiness in world bond markets. New modes
of global communication and infrastructures have made it possible to organize and mobilize
people across the globe in virtual real time (e.g. Arab Spring in 2011 when democratic
movements spread across the ME).
Global communications infrastructure has also facilitated the transnational spread of
ideas, information, ethics, etc. the digital revolution connects both like-minded people with
different backgrounds. Also evident in both the formal international organizations
(International Monetary Fund) and informal networks of cooperation (Dublin Group/Financial
Action Task Force). Sceptics suggest it’s interdependence, exchanges among nation-states.
Key points:
o Over the last three decades the scale, scope and acceleration of global
interconnectedness have become evident in every sphere
o Growth in transnational and global forms of governance, rule-making and
regulation
o Sceptics say globalization is evidence of interdependence (exchanges among
nation-states)
o Globalization differs from international interdependence or internationalization
Conceptualizing globalization
Globalization is a process characterized by following developments:
1. Stretching of social, political and economic activities
2. Intensification of interconnectedness of social existence
3. Accelerating pace of global interactions and processes as the evolution of worldwide
systems of transport and communication increases
4. Growing intensity of global interactions which provokes a growing collective
awareness or consciousness
Globalization captures the shift that is under way in the very organization of human affairs:
from a world of interdependent national states to the world of shared social spaces and
systems that transcend national boundaries. Central to this structural change are
contemporary informatics technologies and the physical infrastructures of communication
and transportation that make such technologies possible. Geography and distance still
matter, globalization is still a process of time-space compression (shrinking the world). So,
globalization embodies a process of deterritorialization: social, political, and economic
activities are increasingly stretched across the globe. Globalization captures the idea that
power is organized and exercised across and around the state. It describes the relative
denationalization of power in world politics.
Can be defined as: “A historical process involving a fundamental shift or transformation in the
spatial scale of human social organization that links distant communities and expands the
,reach of power relations across regions and continents. Internationalization refers to growing
interdependence among states, they remain discrete national units in which borders matter.
but globalization refers to a process in which they distinction between the domestic and
external breaks down. Borders are no longer barriers and distances collapse.
Key points:
o Globalization is associated with a shift in the scale of social organization;
emergence of the world as a shared social space; deterritorialization of social
economic and political activity
o Fundamental shift in the human social organization that links distant
communities and expands the reach of power relations across regions and
continents
o Globalization is to be distinguished from internationalization and international
interdependence
Interpreting globalization
Sceptical argument tends to conflate globalization with world economic trends: a form of
economic reductionism. It overlooks non-economic trends and tendencies or treats them as
secondary or epiphenomenal. Globalization is not a singular process: manifest all domains of
social life.
Sceptical views on globalization:
Countries in the South are less integrated into the global system
state power, nationalism, geopolitics are growing not declining
Engines of globalization:
Technics: technological change and social organization. Without modern
communications infrastructure, a global system would not be possible
Economics: capitalism’s demand for new markets and profits leads to globalization of
economic activity.
Politics: provides its normative infrastructure. Governments have been critical actors
in nurturing the process of globalization
Patterns of contemporary globalization
Economic: worldwide trade, finance, production, creating global markets. Operation of
global financial markets determines which countries get credit and on what terms
Security: growth of terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, military corporations
Legal: expansion of international law e.g. trade and human rights
Ecological: shared ecology involves shared environmental problems
Cultural: homogenization and increased heterogeneity due to global diffusion of
popular culture.
Social: shifting patterns of migration from South to North and East to West turned into
global issue
It is a common misconception that globalization implies universality. It exhibits a distinctive
geography of inclusion and exclusion. This is described as uneven globalization.
Globalization is perceived as Western globalization which stokes fears of imperialism that
generates counter-tendencies by anti-globalization movements of ethnic/national
communities trying to protect indigenous cultures and ways of life.
The power shift in world politics towards China, India and Brazil is a critical factor for major
economic powers. Some argue this new wave of globalization will be led by the world’s
emerging power rather than by Western states. the emerging BRIC states (Brazil, Russia,
India and China) are central to global economic growth. For governments, contemporary
,globalization generates constraints on their freedom of action or autonomy (especially in the
economic domain).
There have been 3 waves when it comes to globalization:
1. Age of discovery (1450 - 1850): shaped by European expansion and conquest
2. Major expansion (1850 - 1945): spread of European empires
3. Contemporary globalization (1960 - now): new technologies and shift of economic
power from West to the East with rise of China and India
4. May be in the making: driven by emerging economic powers of the BRIC states
So, contemporary globalization embodies a powerful systemic logic that can impose limits to
state power and autonomy.
Key points:
o Economic globalization may be at risk a result of the GFC
o Patterns of economic globalization and cultural globalization are neither
identical nor simply reducible to one another
o Contemporary globalization is uneven
o Contemporary globalization constraints political autonomy of national
governments
Globalization and global politics
Borders are a recent development where the idea that states are sovereign, self-governing,
territorially delimited political communities or polities. Globalization calls this into question.
Westphalian Constitution of world order
The Peace Treaties of Westphalia and Osnabruck (1648) was established the legal basis of
modern statehood, and by implication the fundamental rules or constitution of modern world
politics. It has formed the normative structure/constitution of the modern world order. It was
agreed among Europe’s rulers to recognize each other’s right to rule their own territories,
free from outside interference. It was only the 20th century that sovereign statehood and with
it national self-determination acquired the status of universal organizing principles of world
order. Constitutions are important because they establish the location of legitimate political
authority within a polity and the rules that inform the exercise and limits of political power.
The Westphalian Constitution of world politics:
1. Territoriality: humankind is organized into exclusive territorial (political) communities
with fixed borders Their sovereignty were located within the territorially delimited
states.
2. Sovereignty: within the borders the state/government has an entitlement to supreme,
unqualified and exclusive political and legal authority. No ruler had the right to
intervene in the sovereign affairs of other nations; unqualified in that within their
territories rulers assumed complete authority over their subjects.
3. Autonomy: self-governance considers countries as autonomous containers of
political, social, and economic activity (fixed borders separate the domestic sphere
from the world outside)
The UN has modified aspects of the Westphalian Constitution in qualifying aspects of state
sovereignty and it remains the founding covenant of world politics.
From state-centric geopolitics to geocentric global politics
Globalization challenges the one-dimensionality of orthodox accounts of world politics that
give primacy to geopolitics and the struggle for power among the major states. The concept
of global politics focuses our attention on global structures and processes of
, rulemaking/problem-solving and the maintenance of security and order in the world system.
However, it does not explain contemporary world affairs.Today’s multipolar geopolitics (great
or emerging powers) is better understood as inter-polar (system of interconnected or
interdependent major powers).
Global politics directs our attention to the emergence of a global polity within which interests
are articulated and aggregated, decisions are made, values allocated and policies conducted
through international or transnational political processes (how global order is governed).
World government remains the idea but global governance exists (embracing states,
international institutions, and transnational networks and agencies) that
functions/regulate/intervene in common affairs of humanity. This global governance
comprises of formal and informal structures of political coordination among governments,
intergovernmental agencies designed to realize common purposes or collectively agreed
goals by making global rules and regulating transborder problems (e.g. The International
Convention on the Elimination of Child Labour).
Within global governance, private or non-governmental agencies have become influential in
the implementation of global public policy. Global financial markets exercise significant power
too through policies designed to persuade global bond markets to continue lending to their
governments. A transnational civil society is a society where transnational organizations,
advocacy networks and citizen’s groups have come to play a significant role in mobilizing,
organizing and exercising political power across national boundaries. Multinational
corporations have much greater access to centres of power and capacity to shape the global
agenda. Pollution, drugs, human rights and terrorism are among transnational policy issues
that because of globalization, transcend territorial borders and existing political jurisdictions
and therefore require international cooperation for their effective resolution.
Sovereign state is in decline. States now assert their sovereignty less in the form of a legal
claim to supreme power. We are witnessing a post-Westphalian world order. Globalization
produces a more activist state. Because national governments are forces to engage in
multilateral collaboration and cooperation, their state autonomy is compromised. The unitary
state is being displaced by the image of the disaggregated state. “Global politics”
acknowledges the achievement of order and justice is not confined within territorial
boundaries. It questions the utility of the distinction between the domestic and the foreign.
Local politics is globalized and world politics is localized. Political authority has also been
diffused upwards (EU) and downwards (sub-state bodies). Sovereingty remains but is
divided and shared among local, national, regional and global authorities.
4 factors for inequality and exclusion in global politics:
1. Inequalities among states
2. Global governance is shaped by powerful vested interests such as global capital
3. Technocratic nature of global decision-making
4. No longer a monopoly in coercive power
These four factors produce cumulative inequalities of power between North and South which
leads to divided global politics. Divided in the sense that those states and groups with greater
power, resources and access to key sites of global decision-making tend to have the greatest
control/influence over the agenda and outcomes of global politics.
Key points:
o Disaggregated state
o Transforming but not eliminating Westphalian ideal of sovereign statehood
o Shift from state-centric to geocentric/global politics
o Divided global politics
