For hyperglobalists, globalization is a revolutionary shift in technology, economy, culture, and politics. It is real and new. These observers believe globalization is the consequence of information and communications as well as capitalism. The global financial system and a single global economy have emerged as an impact of technological change. Now that they have emerged, they have generated an economic globalization in which capital, services and goods move freely, transce-nding the national borders.

The transformationalist stance falls between the highly positive views of the
hyperglobalists and the negative views of the sceptics. For the transformational-ists, globalization processes drive historically unprecedented social, economic, and political changes. They reshape societies and world order and lead govern-ments to adapt themselves for a world in which there is no clear distinction between international and domestic affairs (Held, et al., 1999: 7).  Moreover, for the transformationalists, despite the profound changes it has caused in the patterns and processes of world politics, globalization has not swept away all the traditional features. They agree that profound change is taking place but argue that not everything is changing. 

The contemporary process of globalization has three main drivers: technology, economy, and politics.
• Technological change is central to the process. Modern communication techno-logies enable the interconnectedness seen almost universally; they lead to the
emergence of a worldwide economy.
• Similarly, the economic logic of capitalism, which has an “insatiable require- ment for new markets and profits,” is as crucial as are the technological innova-tions, because it drives the globalization of economic activity (McGrew, 2011: 22).
• Politics (manifesting itself as ideas, interests, power, or negotiations) provide the third important logic behind the process of globalization. As the sceptics point out, this is true not only for the governments of capitalist states such as the United States or the United Kingdom but it is the case also for those interna-tional organizations, dominated by these governments, which provide the main thrust and direction to globalization. Sceptics criticize institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank on these grounds. 

The terms “transnational corporations” and “multinational corporations” are often used interchangeably. These can be defined as companies that operate in more than one country. Coca Cola, Shell, Apple, McDonald’s, British Petroleum, Siemens, Nestle, Toyota, and Vodafone are some examples of such companies operating globally in various sectors.

Strengthening interdependency between states with ever increasing trade volumes, a vast flow of capital and currency exchange that has almost become unrestrainable. Economic activities of multinational corporations and transna-tional corporations around the world have increased tremendously.

This has meant that, at the very same time, the state’s power and capability to control its borders and intraborder economic activities have significantly diminished.

All sorts of movers (labor migrants, asylum-seekers, refugees, students, victims of climate change, stateless people, irregular migrants) from many different countries cross international borders and they become more and more visible, in part due to the electronic expansion of news gathering.

Refugee: Someone who has been forced to flee his or her country because of a
well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion (The Refugee Convention, 1951).

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: Turkey, Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq. Among these countries, Turkey is reported to host the largest number of Syrian refugees – almost three million people as of May 2017.

While states have taken big steps to liberalize the flows of capital, goods and services, they have been reluctant to recognize a similar degree of liberalization for migration. They want to control who can and cannot enter and exit their territories and their political communities. Most of the destination countries favor highly skilled, educated migrants or people with capital while they tend to restrict the entry of lower-skilled workers, asylumseekers, and refugees.

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.

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.

Shared competence means that the member states can act only if the EU has chosen not to do so. These fields are social policy, internal market, transport,
environment, agriculture, economic, social and territorial cohesion, energy, migration, asylum, borders, visa policy, development cooperation, and humanitarian aid.

Both the acceleration of regional integration and the economic and political rise of regions have renewed interest in 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” (Hettne and Söderbaum, 2000:
457).

Globalization has many good sides – increased communication, new opportuni-ties, new actors in world politics, and an increase in the volume of cross-border flows of goods, services, capital, ideas, ideologies, and people. But the process is not without its bad and even ugly sides. As discussed by the German sociologist Ulrich Beck, the “bads” are tied up with the production of the “goods.” The risks of our times are unique: They are unintentional and uncontrollable. In our globalized society, which Beck calls the Risk Society, unintentional “bads” which accompany “the goods” include poverty, climate change, and global terrorism, plus many others.

Globalization has contributed to the widening of the economic gap among countries and, in addition, people. Since the early days of this century, the gap between poor and wealthy countries continues to widen. Poverty, and its concomitant, social injustice, has become a critical issue in the agendas of states and international organizations. Poverty can be defined in different ways. 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 (Heywood, 2014, p. 353). In 1995, the United Nations defined two types of poverty: absolute poverty and overall poverty.

Millennium Development Goals:
In September 2000, leaders of 189 United Nations member states came together in New York and signed the Millennium Declaration. It was a commit-ment by all member states to work together to combat poverty, hunger, disease, illiteracy, environmental pollution, and discrimination against women.
In line with the declaration, eight specific goals were set, with measurable targets and indicators determined. The aim was to reach these goals by 2015:
1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
2. Achieve universal primary education
3. Promote gender equality and empower women
4. Reduce child mortality
5. Improve maternal health
6. Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases
7. Ensure environmental sustainability
8. Develop a global partnership for development

The concept of Risk Society was introduced by German sociologist Ulrich Beck in 1986 in his book Risikogesellschaft: Auf dem Weg in eine andere Moderne which was translated into English in 1992 as Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. Beck argues that modern society, beginning with the early twentieth century, is different from previous societies with its risks and security challenges.

In this risk society, we are occupied with debating, preventing, and managing risks that have been produced by modern society itself (Beck 2006). These risks result from contemporary technological and economic developments; they have been caused by the very successes of the industrial society. The risks and problems are unintentional and unanticipated by-products of modernity, result-ing from an accumulation of the “bads” that are tied up with the production of the “goods” (Beck 2002: 44).

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 endow ment, and the level of economic and human development. This difference deter mines the level of harm states may inflict on the environment and reveals their vulnerability. For instance, those who suffer the worst impacts of climate change are the ones who have contributed least to the problem. Moreover, despite the increasing number of international environmental treaties, the efficiency of these treaties is highly questionable.

Climate Change: The United Nations Framework Convention Climate Change
defines climate change as a change of climate which is attributed directly or
indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and which is in addition to natural climate variability observed over comparable time periods.

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. Despite its almost global accep tance, the United States and China, the two countries with high GHG emissions in the world were not parties to Kyoto.

September 11 (9/11) Attacks: On September 11, 2001, individuals affiliated
with al-Qaeda perpetrated four coordinated simultaneous terrorist attacks on the United States. The terrorists hijacked four airplanes and flew them into military and civilian targets, killing more than 3,000 people. Two attacks in New York targeted and destroyed the main buildings of World Trade Center, and the attack near Washington was against the Pentagon. Following the attacks, the United States declared a “war on terrorism.” An Americaled military coalition began ‘Operation Enduring Freedom’ in October 2001 with heavy air strikes in Afghanistan, where the Taliban was harboring al-Qaeda militants. The War in Afghanistan was followed by a brief war fought by American and British forces in Iraq in 2003, because it was believed that weapons of mass destruction were being housed in Iraq. The Iraqi War was followed by a US-led occupation of Iraq. No weapons of mass destruction were found and Iraq was granted its sovere ignty shortly thereafter.

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. However,
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. After Seattle, similar demonstrations were staged in Washington, D.C.; Prague, Czech Republic; Genoa, Italy; Barcelona, Spain; and Davos, Switzerland.

The movement has used the communication revolution brought about by globali zation. The Internet was widely utilized for the organization of demonstrations and to create worldwide awareness of the movement by demonstrators and their
supporters. Demonstrators were not a homogenous group. They were poor and rich, young and old, white-collar and blue-collar, male and female, black and white.

Recently, occupy demonstrations have become perhaps the most visible popular manifestation of the anti-globalization movement. Everything started at Wall Street in New York. The protests announced on social media a march and a sit-in in the heart of the financial district of Manhattan. Protests started on September 17, 2011 but spread to many other American cities, including Boston, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. This triggered additional “occupy” demonstrations in about 1,500 cities across the world.

The movement was a reaction against the power of multinational corporations and major banks who were regarded as responsible for economic crises. The “occupy” movement somewhat copied the process of popular Arab-Spring uprisings in that it used social media to organize and carry out demonstrations.

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.

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.

States are voluntarily making their borders permeable for the free movement of ideas, capital, services, goods, and qualified people. This has brought consider able advantages to the citizens.

Despite the growing interdependence between states, and an increasing number of non-state actors, international society is still far from embracing a mechanism for global governance. The United States and China, the world’s largest carbon polluters, did not become a party to the Kyoto Protocol and the United States is walking out of the Paris Agreement. Such an example proves that states may continue to be reluctant to act in the name of what is good for the world unless their own national interests are promoted.