Globalization & State

What is globalization? 

By globalization we simply mean the process of increasing interconnectedness between societies such that events in one part of the world more and more have effects on peoples and societies far away.

Societies are affected more and more extensively and more and more deeply by events of other societies. These events can be divided into three types: social, economic, and political. We can take example of the World Wide Web, global franchises, and global risks such as AIDS etc. it is also defined as the integration of world economy.

How this concept does come following are the features that discussed before the contemporary period as:

1] Globalization has many features in common with theory of modernization according to Modeiski and Morse:

·     Industrialization brings into existence a whole new set of contacts between societies.

·     It changes the political, economic, and social processes that characterized the pre-modernized world.

·     It changes the nature of the state give to it more responsibilities and also weakening its control over outcomes.

·     State becomes a regulator and the state becomes major negotiator.

·     Theory of modernization also brings modernization not only in industries, but in ideas, and civil society.

2] Idea of economic growth Walt R:

Any country who wants progress needs economic growth. A country must encourage production and industries. He says that economic growth is very important and is a central piece of globalization. The economic of developed countries keeps growing because of positive policies.

3] Economic independence: one industry can not make every thing – entire product is made in several countries.

4] Idea of global village: Marshall M.

Electronic communication has shrunk the world, and world comes to global village. He has anticipated significantly some of the main themes of globalization- primarily he was talking of communication revolution.

5] John B. talks about the emergence of “world society”. He says that the old state-system was becoming outmoded, as significant interactions took place between non-state actors.

He was the person who coined the cobweb model of world politics. The central message here was that the most important patterns in world politics were those created by trade, communication, language, ideology, etc.

6] World Order Models Project (WOMP):

Set up in 1968. They focus on the question of global government. For them unit of analysis is the individual, and the level of the analysis is the global. By the mid 1990s WOMP had become much wider in its focus, concentrating on the worlds most vulnerable people and the environment.

7] Well global governance says knowledge does not have barriers and in knowledge based society, intellectual power is important. Globalization changes a lot of attitudes.

8] Least governments are the best: - less interference is the best one. Of course that transparency and regulation should be there, but not interference.

9] Free trade is the best option. Liberal democracy delivers the economic goods better than any other types of political regimes, Fukuyama says.

10] And finally in “Liberal Peace” writers such as Bruce R. and Michael D. talks those liberal democracies do not fight one another. 
 

Globalization: Myth or reality: 

The main arguments in favour of globalization comprising the new era of world politics are:

1] Economic transformation: it is so great that has created a new world politics. States are not closed units any more. They can not control their economies. The world economy is more interdependent than over with trade and finances ever expanding.

2] Communications have fundamentally revolutionized the way we deal with the rest of the world. We now live in a world where events in one location can be immediately observed on the other side of the world e.g. 9/11. Electronic communications alter our nations of the social groups we work and live in:

3] Global culture- the world shares a common culture, much of it emanating from Hollywood.

4] The world is becoming more homogeneous differences between peoples are diminishing.

5] Time and space seem to be collapsing- effects are so fast that even national governments can do nothing.

6] Emerging of the global polity with transnational social and political movements.

7] A cosmopolitan culture is developing. People are beginning to think globally and act locally.

8] A risk culture is emerging- pollution, AIDS- states are unable to deal with such problems. 

There are also arguments that suggest the opposite some of them are:

In a very powerful critique of the G theory, Hirst and Thompson conclude that:

1] The present internationalized economy is not unique in history.

2] Genuinely transnational companies are relatively rare, most are national companies trading internationally.

3] There is no shift of finance and capital from the developed to underdeveloped worlds. Direct investments are only in highly concentrated amongst the developed countries.

4] The world economy is not global rather trade, investment, and financial flows are concentrated in and between three blocs Europe, North America, and Japan. 

However we should note that Hirst and Thompson are only looking at economic theories of globalization.

Well another apposition is that globalization is very uneven in its effects and also among critiques, another critique says: that globalization makes it easier for drug cartels and terrorists to operate. We can also say that global culture leads to Islamic fundamentalism.

Influence of globalization on world politics or (International System): 

Over the last three decades the sheer scale and scope of global interconnectedness has become increasingly evident in every sphere from the economic to the cultural.

Worldwide economic integration has intensified as the expansion of global commerce, finance, and production links together the fate of nations, communities and households across the world’s major economic regions and beyond within an emerging global market economy. Crises in one region, whether the collapse of the Argentinean economy in 2002 or the East Asian recession of 1997, take their toll on jobs, production, savings, and investment many thousands of miles away, while a slowdown in US economy is felt every where from Birmingham to Bangkok.

Transnational corporation now account fro between 25 and 33 percent of world output, 70 percent of world trade, and 80 percent of international investment while overseas production by these firms exceeds considerably the level of world exports, making them key players in the global economy controlling the location and distribution of economic and technological resources.

New modes and infrastructure of global communication have made it possible to organize and mobilize like minded people across the globe in virtual real time.

With a global communications infrastructure has also come the transnational spread of ideas, cultures, and information, from Madonna to Mohammed, both amongst like minded peoples and between different cultural groups.

With the recognization of global problems and global interconnectedness there is awareness that the security and prosperity of communities in different regions of the world is bound together.

However for those of a sceptical persuasion this is far from a novel condition, nor is it necessarily evidences of globalization it that term means something more than simply international interdependence, i.e. linkage between countries. 

Globalization as a process characterized by following four things-

1] A stretching of social, political, and economic activities across political frontiers so that events decisions and activities in of region of the world come to have significance for individuals and communities in distant regions of the globe. Civil wars and conflict in the poor regions increase the flow of asylum seekers and illegal migrants into the world’s affluent countries.

2] The intensification of the process- we have intensification of positive things like activities of Microsoft and intensification of negative things like WMD, SARS virus.

3] The accelerating pace of global interactions and processes as the evolution of worldwide system of transport and communication increases the rapidity or velocity with which ideas, news, goods, information, capital and technology move around the world.

4] The growing extensity, intensity and velocity of global interactions is associated with a deepening enmeshment of the local and global in so far as local events may come to have global consequences and global events can have serious local consequences creating a growing collective awareness of the world as a shared social space. Or this can lead to deterritorization. 
 

What is the skeptical view of globalization: 

New Marxist led by I. Wallerstein, A.G. Frank, Samir A – major authors grounds that they criticize globalization are:

1] By comparison with the period 1870 to 1914 the world is much less globalize economically, politically and culturally. All are not at one level it is not level playing ground.

2] Rather than globalization the contemporary world is marked by intensifying regionalization and internationalization.

3] The vast bulk of international economic and political activity is concentrated within the group of OECD states.

4] The majority of the world’s population and countries in the south are now much less integrated into the global system.

5] State power, nationalism and territorial boundaries not getting less.

6] Internationalization and regionalization are creatures of states not corporation or capitalism.

7] Globalization is best to bring USA and western hegemony in world politics, particularly USA hegemony. 

Patterns of contemporary globalization: 

Globalization is multidimensional process. And it is evident in all the principal sectors of social activity.

1] Economic: to bring a single global capitalist economy. Global informational capitalism. Engines of these chains are transnational and multinational companies.

2] Military: The global arms trades, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, growth of transnational terrorism, etc. and because of these we have global discourse on insecurity.

3] Legal: the expansion of transnational and international law from trade to human rights and creation of institutions such as international criminal court. UN after 9/11 passed a new resolution saying that whoever kills innocent people on whatever grounds is a terrorist.

4] Ecological: a shared ecology involves shared environmental problems, from global warming to species protection, alongside the creation of multilateral responses and regimes of global environmental governance.

5] Cultural: involves a complex mix homogenization. Fear is that a single cultural issue may overrun a culture. Well few cultures are hermetically sealed off from cultural interaction.

6] Social: shifting patterns of migration from south to north and east to west have turned migration into a major global issue. 

The Westphalia constitution of world politics: 

1] Territoriality: human being organized principally into exclusive territorial (political) communities with fixed borders.

2] Sovereignty: within its borders the state has an entitlement to supreme, unqualified and exclusive political and legal authority.

3] Autonomy: countries appears as autonomous containers of political, social and economic activity in that fixed borders separate the domestic sphere from the world outside. We should know domestic and foreign policy are depending on each other. 

In conclusion a post wetphalian world order is in the making as sovereign statehood is transformed by the dynamics of globalization. A conceptual shift in our thinking is required from geopolitics to global politics.

Cosmopolitan theory suggests that a more democratic form of global politics is both desirable and feasible. 

The three waves of globalization:

1] The age of discovery (1450-1850) globalization shaped by European expansion and conquest.

2] (1850-1945) a major expansion in the spread and entrenchment of European empires.

3] (1960s onwards) marks a new epoch in human affairs.

Just as the industrial revolution and the expansion of the west in the 19^th century defined a new age in world history, so today microchip and the satellite are icons of globalize world order. 

The engines of globalization: 

1] Techniques- without modern communications infrastructures in particular, a global system or world wide economy would not be possible.

2] Economics- new markets and profits lead inevitably to the globalization of economic activity, Important as much as technology.

3] Politics- this provides normative infrastructure of globalization

Politics- shorthand here for ideas, interests, and power that constitute the Third logic of G. 
 

Great Divide: 
 

One survey has recently summarized its basis:

Domestic society and the international system are demonstrably different. The latter is a competitive anarchy where formally similar states rely on self help and power bargaining to resolve conflict. Domestic society is by contrast, rule based. (Caporaso 1997)

In normative theory, this divide is accordingly reproduced in the debate between communitarian and cosmopolitan perspectives, the former resting on the principle that values are grounded in the “domestic” constituency, whereas the latter makes “external” appeal to universal rights and values attaching to humankind.

In 1990s on one side there exist homogenizing factors -3M- those that unite the world are – markets, media, and monetary exchanges. And on the other hand we have nethetcogenizing.

Well the argument in the “great Divide” is that concept of globalization requires that the great divide overcome and also offers a theoretical strategy for doings so.

One of the salient characteristics of globalization is the manner in which it transcends or subsumes the separation between the internal and the external political realms.

The basic dichotomy of the great divide has been replicated in various aspects of the discipline. As indicated, it can be found throughout many types of normative and positive theory.

This basic dichotomy develops along two distinct lines of arguments.

1] If it is indeed the state that is the bearer of rights, it enjoys the right to autonomy and this is generally sanctioned under principles of sovereignty and national self determination. For and effective morality of states, the state must have freedom to determine its own good life.

2] It extends to the notion of the value of preserving the international order that is the instrument of this self determination and hence to the international society perspective often presented as a “third” or “middle” way.

Well this approach slides conveniently into the second and much favored, dichotomy between cosmopolitanism and communitarianism.

The former holds to the assumption that all people by dint of their common humanity inhabit a universal moral order and people are the overriding moral subjects within it. The latter insists that it is only through community that values are generated. In consequence, community has from a cosmopolitanist perspective. There should be no distinctive international moral anarchy since the universal moral order obliges all actors, persons, as well as states to conform to it. Alternatively from a communitarian point of view morality is constituted within communities, usually deemed to be represented by states.

Well we should know that elements of the great divide have been imported into international relations from political theory more generally. Much of this debate has been generated in response to the arguments of John Rawls- A theory of Justice (1972)- justice is discernible by all right thinking people wherever they might be found. They can as rational citizens of nowhere agree to the principles that should govern any just society.

Well another normative pairing developed by M. Walzer (1994), would normally be deemed to belong to the communitarian camp. His defense although qualified of the presumption in favour of no-intervention was largely on the premise that the community knows best what it wants and should be allowed to go about its business without hindrance. The qualification that he enters to this and the source of much subsequent criticism of his argument is that this broadly communitarian argument is made to coexist with a principle of human rights that is seemingly cosmopolitan in inspiration.

Then Walzer return in his “Thick and Thin” here he openly acknowledges the coexistence of the two moral spheres of human society, universal because it is human, particular because it is a society” well the dialogue between the thick and the thin becomes another powerful expression of the normative great divide other factors are human rights and then democracy. Changes in the international order towards peace and stability are contingent upon change at the domestic level: the more democratized the members of the international community the better the prospects for international peace.

The most influential manifestation of the great divide is the now deeply entrenched Waltzian scheme of “reductionist”and “systemic” theories. He says that a systemic theory postulates a structure as well as interacting units. By contrasts a reductionist approach concentrates on the units alone.

Well the great divide encourages us to see the transformation of state roles- in sovereignty, economy, security and rights of citizenship as the necessary response of beleaguered states in the face of overwhelming external forces.

The great divide encourages us to believe that the retreat of state is a consequence of globalization.

Moreover just as the great divide has a normative as well as a positive agenda, equally it will be seen that this is replicated in the discussions about globalization. Finally we have that issue of space and time (territoriality) global village. 

Dear Student, this text is based on the class lectures of Professor S Pandit, Department of Politics & Public Administration, University of Pune. References can be found on the official site of Pune University, Department of Politics & Public Administration, subject of Globalization & State, Syllabus 2004-2009. This note prepared by Ahmad Reza Taheri (2004-2006). This note needs edition.