LESSON 2

THE GLOBALIZATION OF WORLD ECONOMICS

Learning Outcome(s):

1. Identify key events in the development of international relations

2. Differentiate internationalization from globalization
3. Distinguish the state and nation
4. Distinguish between the competing conceptions of internationalism
5. Discuss the historical evolution of international politics.

LESSON:

The world is composed of many countries or states, all of them having

different forms of government. Some scholars of politics are interested in
individual states and examine the internal politics of these countries. For
example, a scholar studying the politics of Japan may write about the history
of its bureaucracy. These scholars look at trade deals between states. They
also study political, military, and other diplomatic engagements between two
or more countries. These scholars study international relations. Moreover,
when they explore the deepening of interactions between states, they refer to
the phenomenon of internationalization.

Internationalization does not equal globalization, although it is a

major part of globalization. It is important to study international relations as a
facet of globalization, because states/governments are key drivers of global
processes.

ATTRIBUTES OF TODAY’S GLOBAL SYSTEM

World politics today has four key attributes:

1. There are countries or states that are independent ang govern

themselves.
2. These countries interact with each other through diplomacy.
3. There are international organizations, like UN.
4. Beyond simply facilitating meetings between states, international
organizations also take on lives of their own.
What are the origins of this system? A good start is by unpacking what one
means when he/she says a “country”, or what academics also call the nation-
state. This concept is not as simple as it seems.

The nation-state is a relatively modern phenomenon in human history, and

people did not always recognize themselves as countries. At different parts in
the history of humanity, people in various regions of the world have identified
exclusively with units as small as their village of their tribe, and at other times,
they see themselves as members of larger political categories like
“Christendom” (the entire Christian World)

The nation-state is composed of two non-interchangeable terms. Not all states

are nations and not all nations are states. The nation of Scotland, for
example, has its own flag and national culture but still belongs to a state
called the United Kingdom. Closer to home, many commentators believe that
the Bangsamoro is a separate nation existing within the Philippines but,
through their elites, recognizes the authority of the Philippine State.
Meanwhile, if there are states with multiple nations, there are also single
nation with multiple states. The nation of Korea is divided into North and
South Korea, whereas the “Chinese Nation” may refer to both the people’s
Republic of China and Taiwan.

What is the difference between nation and State?

IN layman’s terms, state refers to a country and its government, i.e., the
government of the Philippines. A state has four attributes.

1. It exercises authority over a specific population, called citizens.

2. It governs a specific territory
3. A state has a structure government that crafts various rules that people
follow
4. A state has sovereignty over its territory.

Sovereignty refers to internal and external authority. Internally, no individual

or groups can operate in a given national territory by ignoring the state. This
means that groups like churches, civil society organizations, corporations, and
other entities have to follow the laws of the state where they establish their
parishes, offices, or headquarters, Externally, sovereignty means that a
state’s policies and procedures are independent of the interventions of other
states. Russia and China, for example, cannot pass laws for the Philippines
and vice versa.

On the other hand, nation, according to Benedict Anderson, is an “imagined

community”. It is limited because it does not go beyond a given “official
boundary”, and because rights and responsibilities are mainly the privilege
and concern of the citizens of that nation. Being limited means that the nation
has its boundaries. This characteristic is in stark contrast to many religious
imagined communities. Anyone, for example can become a Catholic if one
chooses to. IN fact, Catholics want more people to join their community; they
refer to it as the call to discipleship. But not everyone can simple become a
Filipino.

An American cannot simply go to the Philippine Embassy and’convert’ into a

Philippine Citizen. Nations often limit themselves to people who have imbibed
a particular culture, speak a common language and live in a specific territory.

Calling it ‘imagined’ does not mean that the nation is made-up. Rather, the
nation allows one to feel a connection with a community of people even if
he/she will never meet all of them in his/her lifetime. When you cheer for a
Filipino Athlete in the Olympics, it is not because you know personally the
athlete. Rather, you imagine the connections as both members of the same
Filipino community.

IN a given national territory like the Philippine Archipelago, you rest in the
comfort that the majority of people living in it are also Filipinos. Finally, most
nations strive to become states. Nation-builders can only feel a sense of
fulfillment when that national ideal assumes an organizational form whose
authority and power are recognized and accepted by “the people”. Moreover,
if there are communities that are not states, they often seek some form of
autonomy within their ‘mother states.’ This is why, for example, the Nation of
Quebec, though belonging to the state of Canada, has different laws about
language (they are French-speaking and require French language
competencies for their citizens). It is also for this season that Scotland, though
part of the United Kingdom, has a strong independence movement led by the
Scottish Nationalist Party.

Nation and state are closely related because it is nationalism that facilitates
state formation. IN the modern and contemporary era, it has been the
nationalist movements that have allowed for the creation of nation-states.
States become independent and sovereign because of nationalist sentiment
that clamors for this independence.

Sovereignty is, thus, one of the fundamental principles of modern state

politics. Understanding how this became the case entails going back as far as
400 years ago.

The Interstate System

The origins of the present-day concept of sovereignty can be traced back to

the Treaty of Westphalia, which was a set of agreements signed in 1648 to
end the Thirty years War between the major continental powers of Europe.
After a brutal religious war between Catholics and Protestants, the Holy
Roman Empire, Spain, France, Sweden and the Dutch Republic designed a
system that would avert wars in the Future by recognizing that the treaty
signers exercise complete control over their domestic affairs and swear not to
meddle in each other’s affairs.

The Westphalian system provided stability for the nations of Europe, until it
faced its first major challenge by Napoleon Bonaparte. Bonaparte believed in
spreading the principles of the French Revolution—liberty, equality, and
fraternity—to the rest of Europe and thus challenged the power of kings,
nobility and the religion of Europe. The Napoleonic Wars lasted from 1803-
1815 with Napoleon and his armies marching all over much of Europe. In
every country they conquered, the French implemented the Napoleonic Code
that forbade birth and privileges, encouraged freedom or religion, and
promoted meritocracy in government service. This system shocked the
monarchies and the hereditary elites (dukes, duchesses, etc.) of Europe, and
they mustered their armies to push back against the French emperor.
 Anglo and Prussian armies finally defeated Napoleon in the Battle of
Waterloo in 1815, ending the latter’s mission to spread his liberal code across
Europe. To prevent another war and to keep their systems of privilege, the
royal powers created a new system that, in effect, restored the Westphalian
System. The Concert of Europe was an alliance of “great powers”—the United
Kingdom, Austria, Russia and Prussia—that sought to restore the world of
monarchical, hereditary, and religious privileges of the time before the French
Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. More importantly, it was an alliance that
sought to restore the sovereignty of states. Under this Metternich system
(named after the Australian diplomat, Klemens von Metternich, who was the
system’s main architect); the Concert’s power and authority lasted from 1815
to 1914, at the dawn of World War I.

Despite the challenge of Napoleon to the Westphalian system and the

eventual collapse of the Concert of Europe after World War I, present-day
international system has still traces of this history. Until now, states are
considered sovereign, and Napoleonic attempts to violently impose systems
of government in other countries are frowned upon. Moreover, like the
Concert System, “great powers” still hold significant influence over world
politics. For example, the most powerful grouping in the UN, the Security
Council, has a core of five permanent members, all having veto powers over
the council’s decision-making process.

Internationalism

The Westphalian and Concert systems divided the world into separate,
sovereign entities. Since the existence of this interstate system, there have
been attempts to transcend it. Some like Bonaparte, directly challenged the
system by infringing on other’s states’ sovereignty, while others sought to
imagine other systems of governance that go beyond, but do not necessarily
challenge, sovereignty. Still, others imagine a system of heightened
interaction between various sovereign states, particularly the desire for
greater cooperation and unity among states and peoples. This desire is called
internationalism.
 Internationalism comes in different forms, but the prinmciple may be
divided into two broad categories: liberal internationalism and socialist
internationalism.

The first major thinker of liberal internationalism was the late 18 th

century German philosopher Immanuel Kant. Kant likened states in a global
system to people living in a given territory. If people living together require a
government lawlessness, shouldn’t that same principle be applied to sates?
Without a form of world government, he argued, the international system
would be chaotic. Therefore, states, like citizens of countries, must give up
some freedoms and “establish a continuously growing state consisting of
various nations which will ultimately include the nations of the world.” In short,
Kant imagined a form of global government.

Writing in the late 18th century as well, British philosopher Jeremy

Bentham (who coined the word “international” in 1870), advocated the
creation of “international law” that would govern inter-state relations. Bentham
believed that objective global legislators should aim to propose legislation that
would create “the greatest happiness of all nations taken together.”

To many, these proposals for global government and international law

seemed to represent challenges to states. Would not a world government, in
effect, become supreme? And would not its laws overwhelm the sovereignty
of individual states?

The first thinker to reconcile nationalism with liberal internationalism

was the 19th century Italian patriot Giuseppe Mazzini. Mazzini was both an
advocate of the unification of the various Italian-speaking mini-states and a
major critic of the Metternich system. He believed in a Republican government
(without kings, queens, and hereditary succession) and proposed a system of
free nations that cooperated with each other to create an international system.
For Mazzini, free, independent states would be the basis of an equally free,
cooperative international system. He argued that if the various Italian mini-
states could unify, one could scale up the system to create, for example, a
United States of Europe. Mazzini was a nationalist internationalist, who
believes that free, unified nation-states should be the basis of global
cooperation.

Mazzini influenced the thinking of United States president (1913-1921)

Woodrow Wilson, who became one of the 20 th century’s most prominent
internationalist. Like Mazzini, Wilson saw nationalism as a prerequisite for
internationalism. Because of his faith in nationalism, he forwarded the
principle of self-determination—the belief that the world’s nations had a right
to a free, and sovereign government. He hoped that these free nations would
become democracies, because only by being such would they be able to build
a free system of international relations based on international law and
cooperation. Wilson, in short, became the most notable advocate for the
creation of the League of Nations. At the end of World War I in 1918, he
pushed to transform the League into a venue for conciliation and arbitration to
prevent another war. For his efforts, Wilson was awarded the Nobel Peace
Prize in 1919.

The League came into being that same year. Ironically and
unfortunately for Wilson, the United States was not able to join the
organization due to strong opposition from the Senate. The League was also
unable to hinder another war from breaking out. It was practically helpless to
prevent the onset and intensification of World War II. On one side of the war
were the Axis Powers—Hitler’s Germany, Mussolini’s Italy, and Hirohito’s
Japan—who were ultra-nationalists that had an instinctive disdain for
internationalism and preferred to violently impose their dominance over other
nations. It was in the midst of this war between the Axis Powers and the Allied
Powers (composed of the United States, United Kingdom, France, Holland,
and Belgium) that internationalism would be eclipsed.

Despite its failure, the League gave birth to some of the more task-
specific international organizations that are still around until today, the most
popular of which are the World Health Organization (WHO) and the
International Labour Organization (ILO). More importantly, it would serve as
the blueprint for future forms of international cooperation. In this respect,
despite its organizational dissolution, the League of Nations’ principles
survived World War II.

The League was the concretization of the concepts of liberal

internationalism. From Kant, it emphasized the need to form common
international principles. From Mazzini, it enshrined the principles of
cooperation and respect among nation-states. From Wilson, it called for
democracy and self-determination. These ideas would re-assert themselves in
the creation of the United Nations in 1946 (see next lesson).

One of Mazzini’s biggest critics was German socialist philosopher Karl

Marx who was also an internationalist, but who differed from the former
because he did not believe in nationalism. He believed that any true form of
internationalism should deliberately reject nationalism, which rooted people in
domestic concerns instead of global ones. Instead, Marx placed a premium on
economic equality; he did not divide the world into countries, but into classes.
The capitalist class referred to the owners of the factories, companies, and
other “means of production.” In contrast, the proletariat class included those
who did not own the means of production, but instead, worked for the
capitalists.

Marx and his co-author, Friedrich Engels, believed that in a socialist

revolution seeking to overthrow the state and alter the economy, the
proletariat “had no nation.” Hence, their now-famous battle cry, “Workers of
the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains.” They opposed
nationalism because they believed it prevented the unification of the world’s
workers. Instead of identifying with other workers, nationalism could make
workers in individual countries identify with the capitalists of their countries.

Marx died in 1883, but his followers soon sought to make his vision
concrete by establishing their international organization. The Socialist
International (SI) was a union of European socialist and labor parties
established in Paris in 1889. Although short-lived, the SI’s achievements
included the declaration of May 1 as Labor Day and the creation of an
International Women’s Day. Most importantly, it initiated the successful
campaign for an 8-hour workday.
 The SI collapsed during World War I as the member parties refused or
were unable to join the international efforts to fight for the war. Many of these
sister parties even ended up fighting each other. It was a confirmation of
Marx’s warning: when workers and their organizations take the side of their
countries instead of each other, their long-term interests are compromised.

As the SI collapsed, a more radical version emerged. In the so-called

Russian Revolution of 1917, Czar Nicholas II was overthrown and replaced by
a revolutionary government led by the Bolshevik Party and its leader, Vladimir
Lenin. This new state was called the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, or
USSR. Unlike the majority of the member parties of the SI, the Bolsheviks did
not believe in obtaining power for the working class through elections. Rather,
they exhorted the revolutionary “vanguard” parties to lead the revolutions
across the world, using methods of terror if necessary. Today, parties like this
are referred to as Communist parties.

To encourage these socialist revolutions across the world, Lenin

established the Communist International (Comintern) in 1919. The Comintern
served as the central body for directing Communist parties all over the world.
This international was not only more radical than the Socialist International, it
was also less democratic because it followed closely the top-down
governance of the Bolsheviks.

Many of the world’s states feared the Comintern, believing that it was
working in secret to stir up revolutions in their countries (which was true). A
problem arose during World War II when the Soviet Union joined the Allied
Powers in 1941. The United States and the United Kingdom would, of course,
not trust the Soviet Union I their fight against Hitler’s Germany. These
countries wondered if the Soviet Union was trying to promote revolutions in
their backyards. To appease his allies, Lenin’s successor, Joseph Stalin,
dissolved the Comintern in 1943.

After the war, however, Stalin re-established the Comintern as the

Communist Information Bureau (Cominform). The Soviet Union took over the
countries in Eastern Europe when the United States, the Soviet Union, and
Great Britain divided the war-torn Europe into their respective spheres of
influence. The Cominform, like the Comintern before it, helped direct the
various communist parties that had taken power in Eastern Europe.

With the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, whatever

existing thoughts about communist internationalism also practically
disappeared. The SI managed to re-establish itself in 1951, but its influence
remained primarily confined to Europe, and has never been considered a
major player in international relations to this very day.

For the postwar period, however, liberal internationalism would once

again be ascendant. And the best evidence of this is the rise of the United
Nations as the center of global governance.

Conclusion

This lesson examined the roots of the international system. In tracing

these roots, short history of internationalism was provided. Moreover,
internationalism is but one window into the broader phenomenon of
globalization. Nevertheless, it is a very crucial aspect of globalization since
global interactions are heightened by the increased interdependence of
states. This increased interdependence manifests itself not just through state-
to-state relations. Increasingly, international relations are also facilitated by
international organizations that promote global norms and policies. The most
prominent example of this organization, of course, is the United Nations.