UNIT I: INTRODUCTION TO GLOBALIZATION
1. It involves both the creation of new social networks and the multiplication of
A. Globalization Concepts, Meanings, Features, and Dimensions
Globalization is the process in which people, and ideas and goods spread
throughout the world, spurring more interaction and integration between the world's
cultures, governments, and economies.
Globalization is about growing worldwide connectivity
Globalization is a process of interaction and integration among the people,
companies, and governments of different nations, a process driven by international trade
and investment and aided by information technology. This process has effects on the
environment, on culture, on political systems, on economic development and prosperity,
and on human physical well-being in societies around the world
People are engaged in buying and selling from other places in far-away
lands like the famed Silk Road across Central Asia that connected China and Europe
during the Middle Age for thousands of years and they also invested in enterprises in
other countries for centuries.
There were similarities in features of those prevailing wave of globalization
before the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 to the current wave. There is an
increase cross border- trade, investment, and migration due to policy and technical
developments in the past few decades. It is in the area of economic development that
observers believe the world has entered a new phase. Today’s globalization is farther,
faster, cheaper, and deeper in compared to earlier wave of globalization.
Example: Since 1950, the volume of world trade has increased by 20 times
and from1997 to1999, flows of foreign investment nearly doubled from $468 billion to
$827 domestically.
In the years since the Second World War, and especially during the past
two decades, many governments have adopted free-market economic systems, vastly
increasing their own productive potential and creating myriad new opportunities for
international trade and investment. Governments also have negotiated dramatic
reductions in barriers to commerce and have established international agreements to
promote trade in goods, services, and investment. Taking advantage of new
opportunities in foreign markets, corporations have built foreign factories and
established production and marketing arrangements with foreign partners. A defining
feature of globalization, therefore, is an international industrial and financial business
structure.
One principal driver of globalization is technology. Economic life is
dramatically transformed by advancement in information technology. All sorts of
individual economic actors like consumers, investors, and businesses which are
valuable new tools for identifying and pursuing economic opportunities, including faster
and more informed analyses of economic trends around the world, easy transfers of
assets, and collaboration with far-flung partners are provided by information
technologies.
Globalization is the process of integration of economies across the world
through cross-border flow of factors product and information. According to the
International Monetary Fund (IMF) globalization is the growing economic
interdependence of countries worldwide through increasing volume and variety of cross
border transactions in goods and services and of international capital flows and also
through the more rapid and wide diffusion of technology.
Globalization is an expansion, and intensification of social relations and
consciousness across world time and world space. It is about growing worldwide
connectivity according to Steger.
Definition by Manfred Steger
The expansion and intensification of social relations and consciousness
across world-time and across world-space
 Expansion
Both the creation of new social networks and the multiplication of existing
connections that cut across traditional political, economic, cultural and geographic
boundaries.
 Intensification
Refers to the expansion, stretching, and acceleration of these networks.
 Across world-time and across world-space
Globalization processes do not occur merely at an objective, material level
but they also involve the subjective plane of human consciousness.
Globalization vs Globalism
Globalization
Represents the many processes that allow for the expansion and
intensification of global connections.
Globalism
Widespread belief among powerful people that the global integration of
economic markets is beneficial for everyone, since it spreads freedom and democracy
across the world.
The 5 SCAPES by Anthropologist Arjun Appadurai
 Ethnoscape – refers to global movement of people
 Mediascape – flow of culture
 Technoscape – refers to the circulation of mechanical good and software
 Financescape – denotes the global circulation of money
 Ideoscape – realm where political ideas move around
B. Attributes, Qualities or Characteristics of Globalization
existing connections that cut across traditional, political, economic, cultural,
and geographical boundaries.
Example: Brazilian World Cup: Today’s media combine
conventional TV coverage with multiple streaming feeds into digital devices
and networking sites that transcend nationally based services.
2. Globalization is reflected in the expansion and the stretching of social
relations, activities, and connections.
Examples: Reaching of financial markets around the globe.
Occurrence of electronic around the clock. Emergence of gigantic and
virtually identical shopping malls in all continents to cater to consumers who
can afford commodities all over the world-including products whose various
components were manufactured in different countries. This process is called
SOCIAL STRETCHING.
3. Globalization involves the intensification and acceleration of social
exchanges and activities.
Examples: The worldwide web relays distant information in real
time. Satellites provide consumers with instant pictures of remote events.
Sophisticated social networking by means of Facebook or twitter has
become routine activity for more than a billion people around the globe.
The intensification of worldwide social relations means that local
happenings are shaped by events occurring far away, and vice versa. This
means that there is intermingling of local and global, with the national and
regional in over lapping horizontal scale.
4. Globalization processes do not occur merely or an objective, material level
but they also involve the subjective plane of human consciousness.
Without erasing local and national attachments, the compression of the world
into a single place has increasingly made global the frame of reference for
human thought and action.
Globalization involves both the macrostructures of a global
community and the micro-structures of global person hood. It extends deep
into the core of the self and its dispositions, facilitating the creation of
multiple individual and collective identities nurtured by the intensifying
relations between the personal and the global. They differ from each other by
an acceleration in the speed of social exchange and widening of
geographical scopes.
C. Historical Periods of Globalization
1. The Prehistoric Period (10000 BCE-3500 BCE)
In this earliest phase of globalization, contacts among hunters and
gatherers–who were spread around the world – were geographically limited. In this
period due to absence of advanced forms of technology, globalization was severely
limited.
2. The Pre-modern Period (3500 BCE- 1500 CE)
In this period the invention of writing and the wheel were great social and
technological boosts that moved globalization to a new level. The invention of wheel in
addition to roads made the transportation of people and goods more efficient. On the
other hand writing facilitated the spread.
3. The Early Modern Period (1500-1750)
It is the period between the Enlightenment and the Renaissance. In this
period, European Enlightenment project tried to achieve a universal form of morality and
law. This with the emergence of European metropolitan centers and unlimited material
accumulation which led to the capitalist world system helped to strengthen globalization.
4. The Modern Period (1750-1970)
Innovations in transportation and communication technology, population
explosion, and increase in migration led to more cultural exchanges and transformation
in traditional social patterns. Process of industrialization also accelerated.
5. The Contemporary Period (from 1970 to present)
The creation, expansion, and acceleration of worldwide interdependencies
occurred in a dramatic way and it was a kind of leap in the history of globalization.
D. Dimensions of Globalization
There are six dimensions in globalization. These include:
1. Economic Dimension
2. Political Dimension
3. Technological Dimension
4. Cultural Dimension
5. Religious Dimension
6. Ecological Dimension
1. ECONOMIC DIMENSION
This refers to the extensive development of economic relations across the
globe as a result of technology and the enormous flow of capital that has stimulated
trade in both sources and goods.
Major players in the current century’s global economic order
 Huge international corporations (General Motors, Walmart, Mitsubishi)
 International Economic Institutions (IMF, World Bank, The World Trade
Organization)
 Trading Systems
 The result of these powerful forces resulted in the wide gap between the rich
and the poor countries. Major Sources of Economic Growth across Countries.
1. Property rights
2. Regulatory institutions
3. Institutions for macro-economics
4. Stabilization
5. Institutions for social influence
6. Institutions for conflict management
2. POLITICAL DIMENSION
This refers to an enlargement and strengthening of political interrelations
across the globe.
Political Issues that Surface in this Dimension
1. The principle of state sovereignty
2. Increasing impact of various intergovernmental organization
3. Future shapes of regional and global governance
The globalization rendered almost powerless any political efforts to introduce
restrictive policies affecting individual states, with the results that the world in many ways
turned into a borderless world. Governments often seek to restrict the migration of
peoples, especially those coming from the poor countries in the global South.
In the development of supra-national structures and associations held together by
common concerns and mutually agreed upon norm, the most obvious is political
globalization. On the part of the involved parties, informal structures which are
considered binding, bring together world power centers due to common interests.
3. CULTURAL DIMENSION
This refers to the increase in the amount of cultural flows across the globe.
Cultural interconnections are at the foundations of contemporary globalization. and
consumerism which are the dominant cultural characteristics of our age and the drive for
economic success stimulated by the internet and other technological devices circulate
much more easily than they did in earlier periods. In the dissemination of popular culture,
transactional media corporations play a major role which brought a sharp rise in
homogenized popular culture that is manifested in the dominance of fast food restaurant
on more aspects of life throughout the world.
4. RELIGIOUS DIMENSION
Religion is a personal or institutionalized set of attitudes, beliefs, and
practices relating to or manifesting faithful devotion to an acknowledged ultimate reality
or deity. It is the most important defining element of any civilization as contrasted with
race, language, or way of life. As such, it is also portrayed as a defining element in
future conflicts. Whether the root cause of a particular conflict merely a vehicle for the
mobilization of nationalist or ethnic passions, religion is certainly central to much of the
strife currently taking place around the globe.
Jihadist globalism is a religious response to the materialist assault by the
ungodly West in the rest of the world. Coming out of what they consider a pure form of
Islam, its disciples seek to destroy all those alien influences that have been imposed on
Muslim people. It applies to those extremely violent strains of religion that convert the
global imaginary into very concrete political agendas and terrorist tactics. It is also
applied to those violent fundamentalists in the West who seek to transform the world into
a Christian Empire.
Bin Ladin understands umma as a single community of believers professing
faith in the one and only God, but at the same time committed to destroying not only
alien invaders but also corrupt Islamic elites in order to return power to the Muslim
masses.
Since one third of the world’s Muslim population lives in non Islamic
countries, the restoration of God’s proper reign must be a global event. Hence, Al-
Qaeda established jihadist cells in various parts of the world.
Roman Catholic Teaching of Globalization
There are eight (8) principles that summarize the Roman Catholic
Teachings:
1. Commitment to universal human rights
2. Commitment to the social nature of the human person
3. Commitment to the common good
4. Solidarity (The principle of Solidarity affirms that membership in the human
family means that all bear responsibility for one another.)
5. Preferential option of the poor (In the Theology of the Incarnation- Christ God
became poor for us so as to enrich us by his poverty. The poor are
susceptible to the effects of environmental irresponsibility because they live
in countries where cheap building materials and cheap labor are readily
available. They regularly work in farming, fishing, and forestry, areas which
suffer environmental damage).
6. Subsidiary (The Catholic Church teaches that decisions should be made at
the lowest level in order to achieve the common good.
7. Justice
8. Integral Humanism- is concerned with whole person
Justice is divided in three (3) categories:
1. Commutative justice
This aims at fulfilling the terms of contracts and other promises on both
personal and social level.
2. Distributive justice
This ensures a basic equity in how both the burden and the goods of society
are distributed and that ensures that every person enjoys a basically equal moral and
legal standing apart from differences in wealth, privilege, talent and achievements
3. Social justice
This refers to the creation of the conditions in which the first two categories
of justice can be realized and the common good identified and defended.
According to catholic teaching, a just society is one which these forms of
justice are assured because they are required by human dignity
5. IDEOLOGICAL DIMENSIONS
Ideology is a system of widely shared ideas, beliefs, norms and values
among a group of people. It is often used to legitimize certain political interests or to
defend dominant power structures. Ideology connects human actions with some
generalized claims. Globalization is a social process of intensifying global
interdependence while globalism is an ideology that gives the concept of neo-liberal
values and meanings to globalization.
Major Ideological Claims of Advocates of Globalism
1. Globalization is about the liberalization and global integration of markets.
The problem with this claim is that liberalization and integration of markets
happen through political project of engineering free markets by interference of
centralized state power, and it is in contrast to the neoliberal idea of limited role of
governments.
2. Globalization is inevitable and irreversible.
Globalists believe that spread of market forces driven by technological
innovations is inevitable in globalization. Neoliberals use this claim to convince people to
adopt the natural discipline of the market if they want to prosper, which implies the
elimination of government controls over the market.
3. Nobody is in charge of globalization.
This claim seeks to depoliticize the public debate on globalization and
neutralizing anti -globalist movements.
4. Globalization benefits everyone.
Globalists talk about the benefits of market liberalization such as rising global
living standards, economic efficiency, individual freedom, and technological progress.
But the reality is that the opportunities of globalization are spread unequally and power
and wealth are concentrated among a specific group of people, regions and
corporations.
5. Globalization furthers the spread of democracy in the world.
For the globalists democracy and free markets are synonymous.
The neoliberal explanation of globalization is ideological because it is
politically motivated and contributes to the construction of particular meanings of
globalization which stabilize existing power relations. Globalism tries to create collective
meaning and shape people’s identities.
UNIT II: THE STRUCTURES OF GLOBALIZATION
A. The Global Economy
Economic Globalization refers to the increasing interdependence of world
economies as a result of the growing scale of cross-border trade of commodities and
services, flow of international capital and wide and rapid spread of technologies. It
reflects the continuing expansion and mutual integration of market frontiers, and is an
irreversible trend for the economic development in the whole world at the turn of the
millennium.
According to the International Monetary Fund economic globalization is a
historical process, the result of human innovation and technological progress. It refers to
the increasing integration of economies around the world, particularly through the
movement of goods, services, and capital across borders. It also refers to the movement
of people (labor) and knowledge (technology) across international borders.
In economic terms, globalization is nothing but a process making the world
economy an organic system by extending transnational economic processes and
economic relations to more and more countries and by deepening the economic
interdependencies among them
TWO MAJOR DRIVING FORCES FOR ECONOMIC GLOBALIZATION
1. The rapid growing of information in all types of productive activities
2. Marketization (A restructuring process that enables state enterprises to
operate as market-oriented firms by changing the legal environment in which
they operate and can be achieved through reduction of state subsidies,
organizational restructuring of management such as corporatization,
decentralization, and privatization.
Rapid development of science and technologies served as basis for
immediate globalization of the world economies which in turn provided an environment
where there is a swift spreading of market economic system all over the world. It is also
developed based on the increasing cross-border division of labor which penetrates
within the enterprises of different countries on the level of production chains.
Dimensions of Economic Globalization
1. The globalization of trade of goods and services
2. The globalization of financial and capital markets
3. The globalization of technology and communication
4. The globalization of production
The European Financial Stability Mechanism (EFSM)
The European Financial Stability Mechanism (EFSM) is a permanent fund
created by the European Union (EU) to provide emergency assistance to member states
within the Union. It raises money through the financial markets, and is guaranteed by the
European Commission. Fund raised through the markets, use the budget of the
European Union as collateral. The European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) on the
other hand, is an organization created by the European Union to provide assistance to
member states with unstable economies. The EFSF is a special purpose vehicle (SPV)
managed by the European Investment Bank, a lending institution. The fund raises
money by issuing debt, and distributes the funds to eurozone countries whose lending
institutions need to be recapitalized who need help managing their sovereign debt or
who need financial stabilization.
B. Market Integration
Definition of Market Integration
Market integration refers to how easily two or more markets can trade with
each other. It occurs when prices among different locations or related goods follow
similar patterns over a long period of time. Groups of prices often move proportionally to
each other and when this relation is very clear among different markets it is said that the
markets are integrated.
The term is further used in identifying related phenomenon of market of
goods and services experiencing similar patterns of increase or decrease in prices of
products. It may also refer to the movement of prices of related goods and services sold
in a defined geographical location in similar patterns. When government implement
certain strategy to control the direction of economy then integration is intentional while
shifting in supply and demand that has a spillover effect on several markets is another
factor of market integration. One way of helping integration of market by reducing
barriers to trade and increasing fluidity between markets is through foreign trade.
Market integration exists when there are exerted effects that prompt similar
changes or shifts in other markets that focus on related goods on events occurring within
two or more markets.
Example:
China produces toys at a cheaper price than the US. If foreign trade
increased between the two countries, toys could be sold to the US more easily, making
them more available, thus reducing price. If the demand for baby dolls within a given
geographical market were to suddenly be reduced by 50%, there is a good chance that
the demand for baby doll clothing would also decrease in proportion within that same
geographical market. Should the baby market increase, this would usually mean that the
market for doll clothing would also increase. Both markets would have the chance to
adjust pricing in order to deal with the new circumstances surrounding the demand, as
well as adjust other factors, such as production.
The Meaning of BRICS Economies
Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) is an acronym for
the combined economies of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. BRIC, without
South Africa, was originally coined in 2003 by Goldman Sachs, which speculates that by
2050 these four economies will be the most dominant. South Africa was added to the list
on April 13, 2011 creating "BRICS". These five countries were among the fastest
growing emerging markets as of 2011.
Further, Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC) refer to the idea that China
and India will, by 2050, become the world's dominant suppliers of manufactured goods
and services, respectively, while Brazil and Russia will become similarly dominant as
suppliers of raw materials. Due to lower labor and production costs in these countries
now including a fifth nation, South Africa, many companies have also cited BRIC as a
source of foreign expansion opportunity i.e. promising economies in which to invest.
C. The Global Interstate System
Globalization and the Nation- States
Globalization and the Nation- States
Globalization in the early years of the 21st century has not displaced the
state. Max Weber, a German social theorist define state as a compulsory political
organization with a centralized government that maintains a monopoly of the legitimate
use of force within a certain territory. Hedley Bull, a 20th century international
philosopher stated that states are independent political communities each of which
possesses a government and asserts sovereignty in relation to a particular portion of the
earth’s surface and a particular segment of the human population. This means that
government and constitutions come and go but states readily endure.
Nation on the other hand is an imagined political community and imagined as both
inherently limited and sovereign.
 It is imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never
know most of their fellow- members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in
the minds of each lives the image of their communion.
The nation is imagined as limited because even the largest of them, encompassing
perhaps a billion human beings, has finite, if elastic, boundaries, beyond which lie other
nations.
Neoliberalism and Economic Sovereignty
Neoliberalism is the intensification of the influence and dominance of
capital. It is the elevation of capitalism as a mode of production into an ethic, a set of
political imperatives, and a cultural logic. It is a project to strengthen, restore, or, in some
cases, constitute anew the power of economic elites. It values market exchange as an
ethic in itself capable of acting as a guide to all human action and substituting for all
previous held ethical beliefs. It emphasizes the significance of contractual relations in
the marketplace. It also holds that the social good will be maximized by maximizing the
reach and frequency market transactions, and it seeks to bring all human action into
domain of the market.
Economic sovereignty on the other hand is the power or national
governments to make decisions independently of those made by other governments.
Globalization as an increase in the international integration of markets for goods,
services, capital and labor, is also a counterpoint of national sovereignty. In a globalized
world economy, governments have no alternative but to adopt neoliberal economic
policies of privatization, deregulations, and reductions in public expenditures.
There are four different concepts of sovereignty. These include:
 International Legal Sovereignty
It refers to the acceptance of a given state as a member of the international
community.
 Westphalian Sovereignty
It is based on the principle that one sovereign state should not interfere in
the domestic arrangements of another.
 Interdependence Sovereignty
It is the capacity and willingness to control flows of people, goods and capital
into and out of the country.
 Domestic Sovereignty
It is the capacity of a state to choose and implement policies within the
territory
Global economic trends are influenced by economic sovereignty of an
individual member. The increase of the number of international organizations and the
expansion of their functions have undeniably restricted an individual country's
sovereignty to certain extent. The most typical example is the increasingly extensive
involvement of the world's three leading financial institutions the World Bank (WB), the
International Momentary Fund (IMF) and the World Trade Organization (WTO) in
domestic economic affairs of their members. The 60,000-plus transnational corporations,
which developed rapidly in the latter half of the last century, are now sharing or
"encroaching upon“ individual country's "sovereignty" in the economic domain.
Many underdeveloped nations that resorted to foreign assistance and
interventions resulted to the deprivation of government as regard control of their
economy due to the disorderly domestic economic establishments. Due to this, some
scholars predicted the loss of their economic sovereignty under this form of neo-
colonialism. More importantly, some of the world's leading economic entities, such as
the United States, the European Union and Japan, by taking advantage of their
predominant economic status, are affecting or infringing upon other countries' economic
sovereignty. Under these circumstances, an increasing number of scholars have
concluded that the economic dominion of individual nations has come to an end. While
countries inevitably cede some control over their economic sovereignty to external
actors, it is the “structural power” of sovereign states which still dictates the terms and
tenets of globalization.
The State and the Economic Interdependence
The rising momentum of global free-market capitalism in the final decades of
the 20th century, the accompanying rise in transnational enterprises, and the resulting
disparities between easy flows of money and commodities across international boarders
and the legal barriers and logistical hurdles that keep most workers tied to their home
communities are associated with globalization.
The belief that globalization imposes a forced choice upon states either to
conform to free market principles or run the risk of being left behind is termed into a
phrase called “Golden Straitjacket” by Thomas Friedman, a neoliberalism journalist and
advocate, to illustrate the forcing of states into policies that suit the preferences of
investment houses and corporate executives (Electronic Herd) who swiftly move money
and resources into countries favored as adaptable to the demands of international
business and withdraw even more rapidly from countries deemed uncompetitive.
Further, countries are compared to individual stocks where the states and
their government are rewarded and punished similar to buying and selling shares of
individual companies. States also have lost an important element of economic
sovereignty and that neo-liberalism is beyond contestation.
There are two things that will happen if a country is in Golden Straitjacket:
the economy grows and politics shrinks. It is a straitjacket because it narrows the
political and economic policy choices of those in power to relatively tight parameters.
This is the reason of the difficulty of finding any real differences today between ruling
and opposition parties in those countries that have put on the Golden Straitjacket.
D. Contemporary Global Governance
Meaning of Global or World Governance
Global governance or world governance is a product of neo-liberal
paradigm shifts in international political and economic relations. It is a movement
towards political integration of transnational actors aimed at negotiating responses to
problems that affect more than one state or region. It tends to involve institutionalization.
These institutions of global governance – the United Nations, the International Criminal
Court, the World Bank, etc. – tend to have limited or demarcated power to enforce
compliance.
Global governance is a tool to identify solutions to problems created by
neoliberal globalization. Its concept relates to the interaction of myriad collective or
individual entities emanating from various societal and professional orientations, which
form networks that engage to address issues that threaten local and global communities.
It is concerned with issues that have become too complex for a single state to address
alone. Humanitarian crises, military conflicts between and within states, climate change
and economic volatility pose serious threats to human security in all societies; therefore,
a variety of actors and expertise is necessary to properly same threats, devise pertinent
policy, implement effectively and evaluate results accurately to alleviate such threats.
Global governance can be thus understood as the sum of laws, norms,
policies, and institutions that define, constitute, and mediate trans-border relations
between states, cultures, citizens, intergovernmental and nongovernmental
organizations, and the market. It embraces the totality of institutions, policies, rules
practices, norms, procedures, and initiatives by which states and citizens try to bring
more predictability, stability, and order to their responses to transnational challenges-
such as climate change and environmental degradation, nuclear proliferation, and
terrorism which go beyond the capacity of a single state to solve.
Global governance is viewed as the sum of governance processes operating
in the absence of world government. Both the international organizations (lOs) and the
United Nations (UN) being the only universal membership and general-purpose
international organization, are essential to the understanding of contemporary global
governance. The two types of International Organizations are those with universal
membership and those with limited membership. Examples of IOs with universal
membership include: UN, Bretton Woods institutions and World Trade Organization
(WTO). Limited membership includes European Union (EU) and the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization (NATO).
The Roles and Functions of the United Nations
As an intergovernmental organization, the United Nation is tasked to
promote international co-operation and to create and maintain international order. It is
the largest, most familiar, most internationally represented and most powerful
intergovernmental organization in the world.
The United Nations (UN) in the world of politics has the roles of preventing
and managing conflicts, regulating armaments, championing human rights and
international humanitarian law, liberating the colonized, providing economic and
technical aid in newly liberated countries, organizing elections, empowering women,
educating children, feeding the hungry, sheltering the disposed and displaced, housing
the refugees, tending the sick and coordinating disaster relief and assistance. In policy
motivation, peacekeeping is the most important feature of UN activity in peace and
security.
The UN aims to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war; to
reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights; to establish conditions under which justice
and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international
law can be maintained; and to promote social progress and better standards of life in
larger freedom.
Four Main Purposes of the UN Charter - a written grant by a country's
legislative or sovereign power, by which an institution such as a company, college, or
city is created and its rights and privileges defined.
1. Maintaining worldwide peace and security
2. Developing relations among nations
3. Fostering cooperation between nations in order to solve economic, social,
cultural, or humanitarian international problems
4. Providing a forum for bringing countries together to meet the UN's purposes
and goals
There were five stages or main gaps meet by UN in the 21st century. These are
knowledge, norms, policy, institutions and compliance. A critical hole in any of the five
stages can cause efforts at problem solving to collapse.
Globalization’s Impact on the State
Factors which lead to the increase and acceleration of movement of people,
information, commodities and capital.
1. Lifting of trade barriers
2. Liberalization of world capital markets
3. Swift technological progress (information technology, transportation and
communication)
Problems afflicting the world today which are increasingly transnational in
nature those that cannot be solved at the national level or State to State negotiations.
1. Poverty
2. Environmental pollution
3. Economic crisis
4. Organized crime and terrorism
Effects of greater economic and social interdependence to national decision-
making processes.
1. It calls for a transfer of decisions to the international level
2. It requires many decisions to be transferred to local levels of government
due to an increase in the demand for participation.
Decision making processes in globalization is complex as it takes place in
various levels such as sub-national, national, and global which lead to the growth of a
multi-layered system of governance. The following are guaranteed by nation-State:
internal and external security, law established, national welfare systems funding,
structures provided for popular representation, public accountability instituted, and
framework for economic and social activities built.
In a world of expanded globalization, the need to supply collective public
goods, to manage externalities and to provide for minority needs persist. The State
persists because its need grows and because of its undiminished local resource pools
and socioeconomic problems on which States are based. The State remains the key
actor in the domestic as well as international arenas and that States which are effective
are essential for both tasks, and their capacity for both needs strengthening.
The following can be guaranteed only by the States through independent
courts:
1. Respect of human rights and justice
2. Promote the national welfare
3. Protect the general interest
The State has the roles in operating the intricate web of multi-lateral
arrangements and inter-governmental regimes, enter into agreements with other States,
make policies which shape national and global activities, agenda of integration by clearly
pronouncing the problem of capacity inadequacy of individual States. This indicates
political leverage of some States in shaping the international agenda while developing
countries have less active roles.
Though State is required by globalization to improve its capacity to deal with
greater openness, it must remain central to the well-being of its citizens and to the
proper management of social and economic development. It should also be responsible
for adopting policies, which are conducive to greater economic integration not forgetting
that further global integration can be reversed by state policies inimical to openness, as
occurred between the two World Wars which means that globalization does not reduce
the role of the nation-State, but redefines it given the pressures and responses it must
give at the local, national and international levels.
UNIT III: THE WORLD OF REGIONS
A. Three Primary Concepts of Global South
1. It refers to economically disadvantaged nation-states and as a post-cold war
alternative to “Third World.”
“Third World" is a phrase frequently used to describe a developing nation.
The phrase "Third World" arose during the Cold War to identify countries whose views
did not align with NATO and capitalism or the Soviet Union and communism. The First
World described countries whose views aligned with NATO and capitalism, and the
Second World referred to countries that supported communism and the Soviet Union.
Third World countries are largely characterized as poor and underdeveloped.
In these countries, low levels of education, poor infrastructure, improper sanitation and
poor access to health care mean living conditions are seen as inferior to those in the
world's more developed nations. As a result, the terms Third World country and
developing nation have become increasingly interchangeable in recent decades.
2. The Global South captures a deterritorialized geography of capitalism’s
externalities and means to account for subjugated peoples within the borders
of wealthier countries, such that there are economic Souths in the
geographic North and Norths in the geographic South.
3. It refers to the resistant imaginary of a transnational political subject that
results from a shared experience of subjugation under contemporary global
capitalism.
The global South is not a directional designation or a point due south from a
fixed north. It is a symbolic designation meant to capture the semblance of cohesion that
emerged when former colonial entities engaged in political projects of decolonization
and moved toward the realization of a post- colonial international order.
The process of globalization places into question geographically bound
conceptions of poverty and inequality. The increase and intensification of global flows
spread both poverty and affluence. Spaces of underdevelopment in developed countries
may mirror the poverty of the global south, and spaces of affluence mirror those of the
global north.
The strongest vehicle for social redistribution and the main mechanism for
social transfer is the state. The redistributative function of the state becomes crucial in
the context of economic globalization where the goal of neo-liberal economists and
institutions is precisely to dismantle local state oversight.
The development of the global south must begin by drawing most of the
country’s financial resources for development from within rather than becoming
dependent on foreign investments and foreign financial markets.
The global south is not relevant for those who live in countries traditionally
associated with it but also signifies that the south continues to be globalized. It also
represents emergent forms of progressive cosmopolitanism. It is an always emergent
and provisional internationalism.
New Internationalism in the Global South
The ills of the global south are being globalized. Underdeveloped states of
the global south are ravaged by merciless IMF policies in the 1980’s. The economic
prescriptions of the IMF as cures are recommended for countries in the global south.
Other countries like Greece realize the similarity of problems in the global south that
inspirations were drawn from poorer nations. The global south has provided model of
resistance for the world like Gandhi’s non-violence that initially directed at colonial
authority in India is now part of global protest culture, as well as benefits of critiques of
international financial institutions from the experiences and writings of intellectuals and
activists from the global south.
A similar globalization of the south’s concern is arising from the issue about
global environment. Amidst the existential threat of climate change the most radical
notions of climate justice are being articulated in the global south. As global problems
increase, it is necessary for people in the north to support people from the south.
As a symbol and metaphor, global south is not only relevant for those who
live in countries traditionally associated with it. The global in global south does not only
mean that the south is the globe but also signifies that the south continues to be
globalized. The global south while embedded in specific geographic imaginaries,
represents emergent forms of progressive cosmopolitanism. It is always emergent and
provisional internationalism.