THE CONTEMPORARY WORLD

LECTURE NOTES

III. GLOBALIZATION AND WORLD POLITICS

A. Definition of politics
• David Easton, who identified the political system with the “authoritative allocation of values
for a society”
• Harold Lasswell (1958), who defined it as “who gets what, when, and how.”

B. International Relations
One subfield of political science is International Relations (IR). IR focuses on the ways that
different states interact with one another. Its scope includes but is not limited to all intercourse
among states and all movements of peoples, goods, and ideas across frontiers, as a field of study.
Its main goal is to establish balance and a system of peace in the international arena.
There are two most important factors that a country considered in dealing with other countries:
a. National Interest
National interests are those things that states could do or seek to protect or achieve vis-à-vis other
states. There are two types of national interests:
1. Vital national interests – those for which a state is normally willing to fight immediately or
ultimately. Examples are the protection of existing territories and preservation of their prestige
from a massive loss of face.
2. Secondary interests – cover all the numerous desires of individual states that they would like
to attain but for which they will not fight. Secondary interests are the stuff of diplomatic
compromise. One interest can be obtained by giving up another in negotiation.

b. Power
In international relations, power is the ability of a state to prompt its preferred outcome in a given
situation. States aim to protect their sovereignty—their authority to govern themselves—and
guard against attacks from other countries. Growing and projecting their strength is the means
through which they achieve this goal.
Types of power
1. Military power
2. Economic power
3. Political power
4. Soft power

C. Global Governance
Global governance or world governance is a movement towards political integration of
transnational actors aimed at negotiating responses to problems that affect more than one state
or region.
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Theoretical Foundation
a. Liberalism (Idealism)
The nature of liberalism is optimistic that people are good, and peace can be preserved by
state cooperation. Liberalism values institutions or international order because they think that
people like the state are rational and want interest.
b. Realism
Realism is pessimistic about people. Realists believe that the state is the only actor in
international politics. Since the world is anarchy, states need to seek power to serve their
interests and to balance power with another states. Leaders must prioritize the national interest
and they are willing and ready to do everything for their national interests including breaking
promises and use of coercive forces.
c. Constructivism
Constructivists emphasize the role of ideas. The world is shaped not just by material factors
but also by ideational force, that once generated, shared, and internalized, provide meanings of
the material reality. Constructivists highlight the importance of norms, which are ideas that
influence the behavior of agents. Social constructivism attributes the success of social
development to norms, values and knowledge acquired through collaboration with others.
d. Marxism
Marxism believes that global governance is ineffective because MNCs and the more powerful
and wealthier states exploit the poorer states. Marxists believe that because of multinational
systems of trade, finance, and production, the state’s authority regresses to just one of many at
global, national, and local levels.
3. The United Nations (UN)
The United Nations officially came into existence on 24 October 1945. The purpose of the United
Nations is to bring all nations of the world together to work for peace and development, based on
the principles of justice, human dignity, and the well-being of all people.
There are currently 192 Members of the United Nations. The United Nations Headquarters is in
New York City. UN General Assembly – occupies the central position as the chief deliberative,
policymaking, and representative organs of the United Nations.
The UN does not have its own military, but it has peacekeeping forces which are supplied by the
member states.
UN Principal Organs
The General Assembly
• composed of representatives of all 192 member states
• the UN's central deliberative body, empowered to discuss and make recommendations on
any subject falling within the scope of the charter itself.
• approves the UN's budget and determines—alone or with the Security Council—part of the
composition of the other main organs, including the Security Council.
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The Security Council

• a 15-member body with five states as permanent members: China, France, the United
Kingdom, Russian Federation, and the United States. The remaining Security Council
members are elected by the General Assembly for two-year terms.
• primary responsibility for maintaining international peace and security
• In times of crisis, it is empowered to act on behalf of all member states and to decide on a
course of collective action that is mandatory for the entire membership.

The Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC)

• It consists of 54 members elected for overlapping three-year terms by the General
Assembly.
• is assigned the task of organizing the UN's work on economic and social matters and the
promotion of human rights.

The International Court of Justice

• It consists of 15 judges elected to nine-year terms by the General Assembly and the
Security Council voting independently.
• is the principal judicial organ of the UN.
• The Members of the Court do not represent their governments but are independent
magistrates.

The Trusteeship Council

• After 1975, it was composed of the five permanent members of the Security Council—
the United States, the sole remaining administering power, and the four permanent non-
administering powers.
The Secretariat
• The administrative arm of the organization.
• It is headed by a Secretary-General appointed by the General Assembly upon the
recommendation of the Security Council for a five-year, renewable term.

D. Understanding political globalization

Globalization, which is widely believed to be the widening, deepening, and speeding up of

worldwide interconnectedness, remains a contentious issue in the study of world politics
(McGrew, 2014). Steger (2014) defines political globalization as the intensification and expansion
of political interrelations across the globe.
Globalization challenges the one-dimensionality of orthodox accounts of world politics that give
primacy to geopolitics and the struggle for power between states. The concept of global politics
focuses our attention on global structures and processes of rulemaking, problem-solving, and the
maintenance of security and order in the world system (Brown 1992).

Under conditions of political globalization, an evolving global governance complex exists -

embracing states, international institutions, and transnational networks and agencies (both public
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and private)-that functions, with variable effect, to promote, regulate, or intervene in the common
affairs of humanity. This evolving global governance complex comprises a multitude of formal
and informal structures of political coordination among governments, intergovernmental
and transnational agencies-public and private-designed to realize common purposes or
collectively agreed goals by making or implementing global or transnational rules and regulating
transborder problems.

With globalization, inequality and exclusion are endemic features of contemporary global
politics. There are many reasons for this, but three factors are crucial (McGrew, 2014):
1. Enormous inequalities of power between states;
2. Global governance is shaped by powerful interests and global capital;
3. The technocratic nature of global decision-making, from health to security, tends to exclude
many with a legitimate stake in the outcomes.

E. Global Citizenship
Definition global citizenship
A citizen is a member of a political community who enjoys the rights and assumes the duties of
membership. Citizenship, on the other hand, is the state of being vested with the rights, privileges,
and duties of a citizen (Carabain, Keulemans, Gent, & Spitz, 2012).
UNICEF defines a global citizen as someone who understands interconnectedness, respects, and
values diversity, has the ability to challenge injustice, and takes action in personally meaningful
ways.
The global dimension of citizenship is manifested in behavior that does justice to the principles of
mutual dependency in the world, the equality of human beings and the shared responsibility for
solving global issues
Characteristics of a global citizen
According to the International Development Education Association Scotland (IDEAS), a global
citizen possesses the following traits:
• Active community participation in addressing societal issues for a more equitable and
sustainable world.
• Lack of tolerance for social injustice
• Responsibility for their actions.
• Awareness of social, cultural, political, environmental, and economic issues, both on a
local and global scale.
• Respect for other cultures and embrace diversity.