COVERAGE AND POINTERS FOR MIDTERM EXAMINATION

THE CONTEMPORARY WORLD

The Study of Globalization:

(The people who study Globalization and how they define it:)

Webster’s dictionary, 1961- That definitions could be classified as either (1) broad and inclusive or (2)
narrow and exclusive

Ohmae, 1992- Globalization means the onset of the borderless world

Robert Cox, 2000- The characteristics of the globalization trend include the internationalizing of
production, the new international division of labor, new migratory movements from South to North, the
new competitive environment that accelerates these processes, and the internationalizing of the state…
making states into agencies of the globalizing world

Kumar, 2003- The debate about what can be done about globalization and what it is are similar

Ritzer, 2015- Globalization is a transplanetary process or a set of processes involving increasing

liquidity and the growing multidirectional flows of people, objects, places, and information as well as the
structures they encounter and create that are barriers to, or expedite, those flows

Arjun Appadurai, 1996- Globalization is a world of things that have different speeds, axes, points of
origin and termination, and varied relationships to institutional structures in different regions, nations,
or societies.

Al- Rhodan, 2006- Definitions suggest the perspective of the author on the origins and the geopolitical
implications of globalization.

Cesare Poppi, 1997- Globalization is the debate and the debate is globalization. One became part and
parcel of the other. The literature stemming from the debate on globalization has grown in the last
decade beyond any individual’s capability of extracting a workable definition of the concept.

Metaphors of Globalization:

In order for us to better understand the concept of Globalization, we will utilize metaphors. Metaphors
make use of one term to help us better understand another term.

Solid- The social relationships and objects remained where they were created. Solidity also refers to
barriers that prevent or make difficult movements of things. Furthermore, solids can either be natural
or man-made.

Example of Natural solids are landforms and bodies of water.

An imaginary line such as the nine-dash line used by the People’s Republic of China in their
claim to the South China Sea is an example of modern man-made solid.

Liquid- Liquids are not fixed. Liquidity, therefore, refers to the increasing ease of movement of people,
things, information, and places in the contemporary world. Today’s phenomena change quickly and
their aspects, spatial and temporal, are in continuous fluctuation. This means that space and time are
crucial elements of globalization.

For instance, changes in the stock market are a matter of seconds.

Videos uploaded on YouTube or Facebook are unstoppable once they become viral.
Finally, the forces made political boundaries more permeable to the flow of people and things.

Flows- The movement of people, things, places, and information brought by the growing porosity of
global limitations. Think of different foreign cuisines being patronized and consumed by the Filipinos.
Clearly, foods are being globalized.

Another example of flows is global financial crises.

A financial crisis in a given country can bring ramifications to other regions of the world.

The following are other kinds of flows that can be observed today:
 Poor illegal migrants
 The virtual flow of legal and illegal information such as blogs and child pornography
 Immigrants recreating ethnic enclaves in host countries
 Filipino communities abroad and Chinese communities in the Philippines

The Global Economy:

The global financial crisis will take decades to resolve. The solutions proposed by certain
nationalist and leftist groups of closing national economies to world trade, however, will no longer
work. The world has become too integrated. Whatever one’s opinion about the Washington
Consensus is, it is undeniable that some form of international trade remains essential for countries to
develop in the contemporary world.

Exports, not just the local selling of goods and services, make national economies grow at
present. In the past, those that benefited the most from free trade were the advanced nations that
were producing and selling industrial and agricultural goods. The United States, Japan, and the
member- countries of the European Union were responsible for 65 percent of global exports, while
the developing countries only accounted for 29 percent. When more countries opened up their
economies to take advantage of increased free trade, the shares of the percentage began to change.
By 2011, developing countries like the Philippines, India, China, Argentina, and Brazil accounted for
51 percent of global exports while the share of advanced nations- including the United States- had
gone down to 45 percent. The WTO- led reduction of trade barriers, known as trade liberalization, has
profoundly altered the dynamics of the global economy.

In the recent decades, partly as a result of these increased exports, economic globalization
has ushered in an unprecedented spike in global growth rates. According to the IMF, the global per
capita GDP rose over five-fold in the second half of the 20th century. It was this growth that created
the large Asian economies like Japan, China, Korea, Hong Kong, and Singapore.

And yet, economic globalization remains an uneven process, with some countries,
corporations, and individuals benefiting a lot more than others. The series of trade talks under the
WTO have led to unprecedented reductions in tariffs and other trade barriers, but these processes
have often been unfair.
 First, developed countries are often protectionists, as they repeatedly refuse to lift policies that
safeguard their primary products that could otherwise be overwhelmed by imports from the
developing world. The best example of this double standard is Japan’s determined refusal to allow
rice imports into the country to protect its farming sector. Japan’s justification is that rice is “sacred”.
Ultimately, it is its economic muscle as the third largest economy that allows it to resist pressures to
open its agricultural sector.

The United Stated likewise fiercely protects its sugar industry, forcing consumers and sugar-
dependent businesses to pay higher prices instead of getting cheaper sugar from plantations of
Central America.

Faced with these blatantly protectionist measures from powerful countries and blocs, poorer
countries can do very little to make economic globalization more just. Trade imbalances, therefore,
characterize economic relations between developed and developing countries.

The beneficiaries of global commerce have been mainly transnational corporations (TNCs) and
not governments. And like any other business, these TNCs are concerned more with profits than with
assisting the social programs of the governments hosting them. Host countries, in turn, loosen tax
laws, which prevents wages from rising, while sacrificing social and environmental programs that
protect underprivileged members of their societies. The term “race to the bottom” refers to countries’
lowering their labor standards, including the protection of workers’ interests, to lure foreign investors
seeking high profit margins at lowest cost possible. Governments weaken environmental laws to
attract investors, creating fatal consequences on their ecological balance and depleting them of their
finite resources (like oil, coal, and minerals).

The Global 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 affair.

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 religion in 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 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 Austrian
diplomat, Klemens von Metternich, who was the systems’ 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 still has 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.

Contemporary Global Governance

One major fallacy about international organizations is that they are merely amalgamations of
various state interests. In the 1960s and 1970s, many scholars believed that International
Organizations or IOs were just venues where the contradicting, but sometimes intersecting, agendas
of countries were discussed- no more than talk shops. What has become more evident in recent years,
however, is that IOs can take on lives of their own. For example, the IMF was able to promoted a
articular form of economic orthodoxy that stemmed mainly from the beliefs of its professional
economists. IOs can thus become influential as independent organizations. International relations
scholars Michael N. Barnett and Martha Finnemore listed the following powers of IOs:

First, IOs have the power of classification. Because IOs can invent and apply categories, they
create powerful global standards. For example, it is the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)
that defines what a refugee is. And since states are required to accept refugees entering their borders,
this power to establish identity has concrete effects.

Second, IOs have the power to fix meanings. This is a broader function related to the first.
Various terms like “security” or “development” need to be well- defined. States, organizations, and
individuals view IOs as legitimate sources of information. As such, the meanings they create have
effects on various policies. For example, recently, the United Nations has started to define security as
not just safety from military violence, but also safety from environmental harm.

Finally, IOs have the power to diffuse norms. Norms are accepted codes of conduct that may
not be strict law, but nevertheless produce regularity in behavior. IOs do not only classify and fix
meanings; they also spread their ideas across the world, thereby establishing global standards. Their
members are, as Barnett and Finnemore emphasized, the “missionaries” of our time. Their power to
diffuse norms stems from the fact that IOs are staffed with independent bureaucracies, who are
considered experts in various fields. For example, World Bank economists come to be regarded as
experts in development and thus carry some form of authority. They can, therefore, create norms
regarding the implementation and conceptualization of development projects.

Because of these immense powers, IOs can be sources of great good and great harm. They can
promote relevant norms like environmental protection and human rights. But, like other entrenched
bureaucracies, they can become sealed- off communities that fail to challenge their beliefs. For
example, the Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz famously criticized the IMF for using a
“one-size-fits-all” approach when its economists made recommendations to developing countries.
Asian Regionalism

It is not only the states that agree to work together in the name of a single cause (or causes).
Communities also engage in regional organizing. This “new regionalism” varies in form; they can be
“tiny associations that include no more than a few actors and focus on a single issue, or huge
continental unions that address a multitude of common problems from territorial defense to food
security.” Organizations representing this “new regionalism” likewise rely on the power of individuals,
non- governmental organizations (NGOs), and associations to link up with one another in pursuit of a
particular goal (or goals). Finally, “new regionalism” is identified with reformists who share the same
“values, norms, institutions, and system that exist outside of the traditional, established mainstream
institutions and systems.”

New regionalism differs significantly from traditional state-to-state regionalism when it comes to
identifying problems. For example, states treat poverty or environmental degradation as technical or
economic issues that can be resolved by refining existing programs of state agencies, making minor
changes in economic policies, and creating new offices that address these issues. However, new
regionalism advocated such as the NGO Global Forum see these issues as reflections of flawed
economic development and environmental models. By “flawed”, they mean economic development
plans that are market- based, profit- driven, and hardly concerned with social welfare, especially among
the poor.

ASEAN members continue to disagree over the extent to which member countries should
sacrifice their sovereignty for the sake of regional stability. The Association’s link with East Asia has
also been problematic. Recently, ASEAN countries also disagreed over how to relate to China, with the
Philippines unable to get the other countries to support its condemnation of China’s occupation of the
West Philippine Sea. Cambodia and Laos led the opposition favoring diplomacy over confrontation, but
the real reason was the dramatic increase of Chinese investments and economic aid to these countries.
Moreover, when some formerly authoritarian countries democratized, this “participatory regionalism”
clashed with ASEAN’s policy of non-interference, as civil society groups in Indonesia, the Philippines,
and Thailand demanded that the other countries democratized adopt a more open attitude towards
foreign criticism.