Chapter 8: Globalization and Global Society

Introduction

Our world today is different from the world of thirty or forty years ago. Economic, political and cultural interdependence between states and people have been strengthened. State issues like economics, poverty, human rights, etc. have now become globalized. In a way, states are more vulnerable to threats, risks and crises that happen outside their territories. This has forced states to act together to cope with such issues. As a result, multinational corporations, transnational networks, or nongovernmental organizations have emerged. Moreover, global governance has gained currency due to the globalization process.

Making Sense of Globalization

There are three main position on globalization:

Hyperglobalists: They believe that globalization is the consequence of information and communications as well as capitalism. It is a revolutionary shift in technology, economy, culture, and politics. The global financial system and a single economy have emerged. Hyperglobalists depict an image of a borderless world.

Sceptics: They believe that globalization is a myth. They argue that the world economy has been dominated by three major regions: Europe, North America, and AsiaPacific. They are convinced that they world is not marked by globalization but by regionalization. For sceptics, hyperglobalist conceptualization and presentation of globalization masks the significance of Western capitalism and US hegemony in shaping contemporary world politics.

Transformationalists: They have a position between hyperglobalists and sceptics. They believe that there is an unprecedented change in social, economic, and political processes with no clear distinction between international and domestic affairs, but also believe that globalization has not swept away all the traditional features. For them, globalization process is primarily associated with the widening, deepening, and speeding up of global interconnectedness between states.

Main Drivers of Globalization: The contemporary process of globalization has three main drivers: technology, economy, and politics.

The state today is no longer the only actor in world politics. Joining it are individuals, non-governmental actors, and non-state actors.

These new actors of world politics can be classified under three main types:

• Intergovernmental organizations such as the United Nations and the European Union,
• International nongovernmental organizations such as Greenpeace, Doctors without Borders, and Amnesty International, and
• Multinational or transnational corporations like the Coca Cola Company, British Petroleum, and Nike.

The terms “transnational corporations” and “multinational corporations” are often used interchangeably. These can be defined as companies that operate in more than one country.

Impact of Globalization

Globalization of Economy: Early trade routes such as the Silk Road and the search for a route to spices of the east provided the necessary basis for increasing relations between communities. These routes promoted economic relations and simultaneously made political and cultural interactions possible. It is no longer possible for a state to keep its economy separate and isolated from the rest of the world. The result is Strengthening interdependency between states with ever increasing trade volumes, a vast ow of capital and currency exchange that has almost become unrestrainable. The number of multinational corporations has increased significantly in the twenty-first century and they have relative power in the contemporary global economy. It is remarkable to note that only thirty of the world’s top 100 economies in 2015 were states. e remaining seventy economies were all corporations!

This situation has brought risks along with opportunities and facilities. States are vulnerable to economic crises that may emerge thousands of miles away. The 1997 and 2008 financial crises are examples to this.

Globalization of Migration: A key dimension of globalization is the unprecedented increase in the volume of all sorts of cross-border flows - goods, services, capital, ideas, ideologies and, most importantly, people. Scholars discuss a process they label the “globalization of migration.” All sorts of movers (labor migrants, asylumseekers, refugees, students, victims of climate change, stateless people, irregular migrants) from many different countries cross international borders. One of the significant recent changes has been the feminization of international migration. More than half of all migrants in the world are now women. Diversification and intensification are the other remarkable changes in the phenomenon. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), there are currently about 7.5 million internally displaced persons while over four million people have sought asylum in neighboring countries.

The Rise of Regions: In the last decades, states have increasingly participated in regional cooperation and integration mechanisms. Regionalism has been an important aspect of world politics. Region is described as a territory that includes a group of countries in the same geographical area. Scholars tend to consider areas as regions when there are cultural, economic, linguistic, or political affinities among a group of countries in addition to their proximity. Regionalization processes produce interdependence between states in the emerging area.

Recent efforts of regionalism in Latin America have led to establishment of free trade areas, common markets, and cooperation in problems such as organized crime, terrorism, human trafficking, security end environment. MERCOSUR and NAFTA are two examples. MERCOSUR was established as an economic and political bloc in South America by Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay in 1991. Its associate members are Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. MERCOSUR aims to deepen economic integration among its members, which agreed to liberalize trade among themselves and to harmonize their economies. Currently, the bloc is responsible for more than three-quarters of the economic activity on the South American continent.

Recent regional cooperation in Africa have focused on economic gains. The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the Southern African Customs Union, and the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa present examples of such economic cooperation. Some organizations have advanced even political aims, as well. While the Southern African Development Community fought against the old apartheid system in South Africa.

Regionalism in Asia has had different dynamics. The Association of Southeastern Asian Nations (ASEAN) aimed cooperation in economy, politics and security. Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) was formed by Russia and eleven other former Soviet Republics and provides a venue for economic, political and security cooperation for its members. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) enables various forms of regional cooperation in problems such as organized crime, drug trafficking, and weapons smuggling.

Differently from the other continents, regionalism in Europe has led to a gradual process of integration among the member countries after the Second World War. Today, the EU encompasses 4 million km2 and 508 million people. It has a single market functioning without any internal borders or any other regulatory obstacles to the free movement of services, capital, goods, and persons. It has a common currency, the Euro, used by many member countries, and it offers European citizenship, derivative of member state citizenships. Moreover, the EU institutions have exclusive policy- making competence (meaning only the EU can act) in the fields of customs union, competition policy, monetary policy, common fisheries policy, and common commercial policy.

Theories of Regionalism: The first wave of regionalism theories such as functionalism, transactionalism, neofunctionalism, and intergovernmentalism have tried to understand old regionalism in post-war Europe.

The new regionalism, on the other hand, is not specific to Europe. It refers to “the current ideology of regionalism, i.e. the urge for a regionalist order either in a geographical area or as a type of world order”. The new regionalism transcends free trade areas or preferential agreements as it encompasses many issues with economic, political, social, cultural, and security implications.

Serious Consequences of Globalization

In our globalized society, which German sociologist Ulrich Beck calls the Risk Society, unintentional “bads” which accompany “the goods” include poverty, climate change, and global terrorism, plus many others.

In this risk society, we are occupied with debating, preventing, and managing risks that have been produced by modern society itself. These risks result from contemporary technological and economic developments; they have been caused by the very successes of the industrial society. Risks today may be categorized into three main groups. ese are:

a) wealth-driven ecological destruction and technological-industrial dangers, such as climate change and risks related to genetic manipulation;

b) poverty-related ecological destruction, for example the reduction of rainforests; and

c) weapons of mass destruction.

Poverty: In its simplest sense, poverty can be defined as “not possessing the necessities of life”; that is, not having enough food, fuel, shelter, or clothing to maintain physical efficiency. The United Nations defined two types of poverty: absolute poverty and overall poverty.

Absolute poverty is a condition characterized by severe deprivation of basic human needs, including food, safe drinking water, sanitation facilities, health, shelter, education, and information.

Overall poverty, on the other hand, is defined from a broader perspective. It takes the form of a lack of income and productive resources sufficient to ensure sustainable livelihoods.

In addition to these two United Nations categories of poverty, the literature also refers to “relative poverty.” is involves a subjective assessment of poverty and is based on a feeling of deprivation and disadvantage because people lack enough income to maintain the average standard of living in their society.

In the year 2000, the UN adopted Millennium Development Goals; eradicating extreme poverty and hunger was set as the number one goal. Despite all achievements since the Millennium Development Goals were adopted, including the willingness of world leaders and the international community to end poverty for all, and everywhere, the world is still a place of inequalities, poverty, and injustice. e gap between poor and rich people within countries grows as an issue. Compared to the poor in developing regions, many of the poor in the industrialized world do have better conditions.

Environmental Degradation: On environment matters, the distinction between the global and the national or local has lost its meaning. For instance, a flood may be caused by deforestation in a developing country in the South, a land where a majority lives on agriculture. is local event may easily have global consequences. Deforestation, eradication of life from that part of the soil, means that some species living in that region may not exist anymore in the ecological system. Deforestation significantly affects global warming in a negative way.

Besides the protection of the environment, environmental justice has been a major issue in world politics. Currently there are 193 sovereign and independent states. They differ from each other in terms of capacity, culture, resource endowment, and the level of economic and human development. This difference determines the level of harm states may inflict on the environment and reveals their vulnerability. Free movement of capital and goods has brought polluting industries to developing countries, where labor is cheaper and environmental standards weakly enforced.

To help reverse the effects of climate change and pollution, the Kyoto Protocol, an international agreement signed by 191 states and the European Union, set binding emission reduction targets for its parties, particularly industrialized countries which are responsible for high levels of greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere due to long industrial activity.

Globalization of Terrorism: The relationship between terrorism and globalization is complex. Scholars have argued that globalization has had a pivotal role in the transformation of terrorism in the 21st century. Terrorism is characterized by violence. The use or the threat of violence is a key characteristic of terrorism. Also, terrorism is political in nature, as perpetrators and supporters are convinced that violence is the only remaining option to give a voice to the grievances of the suppressed, impoverished, or deprived groups. Perpetrators of terrorism are non-state actors. Finally, terrorist activities always target non-combatants such as officials, political figures, and civilians. Terrorism has existed throughout history, but it rarely transcended national borders before the mid-twentieth century. In other words, terrorism typically was an internal phenomenon. It was in the late 1960s that it became a transnational phenomenon. Starting with the 9/11 attacks, many terror acts have been conducted, ostensibly in the name of Islam. According to some militant Islamists, global jihad needed to be proclaimed and terrorism employed on a global scale “as a reaction to the perceived oppression of Muslims worldwide and the spiritual bankruptcy of the West”.

Many scholars hold that global terrorism owes its emergence to the processes of globalization itself. First, technological innovations have improved the capabilities of terrorist groups to plan and perpetrate more lethal and coordinated terrorist attacks. An equally important fact is that they use these technologies in to promulgate their causes and win sympathizers from all over the world. Furthermore, globalization has enabled terrorist groups to reach more resources, weapons, and the know-how that is needed to conduct more deadly attacks from a distance.

The Anti-Globalization Movement

The process of globalization gave birth to the antiglobalization movement at the end of 1990s. The first instance of an anti-globalization movement occurred with demonstrations held in 1999 in Seattle. What started as non-violent protests went violent; protestors smashed shop windows and police intervened with tear gas, stun grenades, and rubber bullets. Subsequently, many demonstrations around the world were organized to protest the consequences of globalization, governmental economic policies, and the increasing role of multinational corporations in national economies. The Battle of Seattle marked the beginning of a new type of demonstration in world politics; it created an anti-globalization movement that was truly global. The movement has used the communication revolution brought about by globalization. The Internet was widely utilized for the organization of demonstrations and to create worldwide awareness of the movement by demonstrators and their supporters.

Recently, occupy demonstrations have become perhaps the most visible popular manifestation of the antiglobalization movement.

Globalization and the Role of Nation-States in World Politics

Social, economic, cultural, and political interactions between nations have widened, deepened, and sped up. Interdependence between states and people has been strengthened; the traditional meaning of nation-state borders has changed because of the increasing mobility of goods, capital, services, and persons. These transformations and developments have resulted in an apparently shrinking world where the distinction between local and global dissolves. As a result, most traditional nation-state issues, such as economics, the environment, poverty, human rights, discrimination, communicable diseases, terrorism, violence, security, the rights of women, and migration have been globalized.

These transformations raise questions about the role and effectiveness of states as institutions. Borders have demarcated a clear distinction between domestic and international affairs, thus making states autonomous determiners of political, social, and economic activity within their territories.

The transformations brought on by globalization have had far-reaching effects on these traditional characteristics of the state. While states are not declining as an institution or disappearing, they are undergoing a complete transformation. Unlike the arguments put forward by hyperglobalists, the world is not a borderless place; only the functions of national borders are changing. States are voluntarily making their borders permeable for the free movement of ideas, capital, services, goods, and qualified people.

The permeability of borders has become an issue as states face the by-products of globalization, as they must address global terrorism, organized crime, irregular migrants, and other unauthorized transnational movements. States have been searching for new ways to cope with these nontraditional issues. One result has been the rise of regions as political and economic units. Similarly, an increase in the number of international organizations, governmental and non-governmental, has been another outcome of the quest for managing these issues.