Welcome!

International
Political Economy
RRC/IB/IPE
Globalization
• Importance of globalization
• Different processes
• Anti-globalization

RRC/IB/IPE
What is globalization?
• The growth of supraterritorial relations between people creating a
complex series of connections that tie together what people do,
what they experience, and how they live across the globe. In
participating and acting in these connections, individuals and
communities see the world increasingly as one place and imagine
new activities and roles for themselves in this world.
• (Supraterritorial: erosion of state borders. Expansion beyond states
and legal authorities of borders.)
Can you think of examples of globalization
agreements affecting Canada right now?
Importance of Globalization
• strengthened and weakened the power of
• Institutions – Legislature, government, etc
• and actors – politicians, political parties, judicial organizations
• European Union

RRC/IB/IPE
European Union
• The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic
union of 27 member states that are located primarily in Europe.
• The Union has a total area of 4,233,255 km2 (1,634,469 sq mi) and
an estimated total population of over 448 million.
• The EU has often been described as a sui generis political entity
(without precedent or comparison) combining the characteristics of
both a federation and a confederation.
Properties of supraterritorial relations
• Extensity – the extent to which cultural, political and economic
activities are stretching across a global space
• Intensity – the magnitude and regularity of the global connections
that occur
• Velocity – the speed at which global connections occur
• Enmeshment – the degree to which what happens locally is tied to
global events and the degree to which what happens globally is tied
to local events
 Globalization
• Economic process:
• interconnections based on new technologies and the
mobility of trade and capital
• the integration of national markets into a single global
market

(Balaam et al., 2019)

RRC/IB/IPE
 Globalization
• Political process:
• weakens state authority
• replaces it with the power of deregulated markets

(Balaam et al., 2019)

RRC/IB/IPE
 Globalization
• Cultural process:
• reflects a growing network of complex cultural
interconnections and interdependencies in modern society

(Balaam et al., 2019)

RRC/IB/IPE
 Globalization
• Some analysts further claim that globalization is an inevitable
occurrence that has produced a new form of capitalism —
hypercapitalism (extreme capitalism at the expense of
traditional values)
• is a process for which nobody is in charge;
• benefits everyone, especially economically;
• furthers the spread of democracy in the world.

(Balaam et al., 2019)

RRC/IB/IPE
 Anti-globalization
• Started in the 1990s
• Focuses on negative consequences:
• sweatshop conditions in poor countries
• Rich-poor gap
• damage to the environment
• maldistribution of income
• Struggling developing countries
• continued armed conflicts

(Balaam et al., 2019)

RRC/IB/IPE