hypothesis on globalization

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Globalization

Covering a wide range of distinct political, economic, and cultural trends, the term “globalization” remains crucial to contemporary political and academic debate. In contemporary popular discourse, globalization often functions as little more than a synonym for one or more of the following phenomena: the pursuit of classical liberal (or “free market”) policies in the world economy (“economic liberalization”), the growing dominance of western (or even American) forms of political, economic, and cultural life (“westernization” or “Americanization”), a global political order built on liberal notions of international law (the “global liberal order”), an ominous network of top-down rule by global elites (“globalism” or “global technocracy”), the proliferation of new information technologies (the “Internet Revolution”), as well as the notion that humanity stands at the threshold of realizing one single unified community in which major sources of social conflict have vanished (“global integration”). Globalization is a politically-contested phenomenon about which there are significant disagreements and struggles, with many nationalist and populist movements and leaders worldwide (including Turkey’s Recep Erdoğan, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, and former US President Donald Trump) pushing back against what they view as its unappealing features.

Fortunately, recent social theory has formulated a more precise concept of globalization than those typically offered by politicians and pundits. Although sharp differences continue to separate participants in the ongoing debate about the term, most contemporary social theorists endorse the view that globalization refers to fundamental changes in the spatial and temporal contours of social existence, according to which the significance of space or territory undergoes shifts in the face of a no less dramatic acceleration in the temporal structure of crucial forms of human activity. Geographical distance is typically measured in time. As the time necessary to connect distinct geographical locations is reduced, distance or space undergoes compression or “annihilation.” The human experience of space is intimately connected to the temporal structure of those activities by means of which we experience space. Changes in the temporality of human activity inevitably generate altered experiences of space or territory. Theorists of globalization disagree about the precise sources of recent shifts in the spatial and temporal contours of human life. Nonetheless, they generally agree that alterations in humanity’s experiences of space and time are working to undermine the importance of local and even national boundaries in many arenas of human endeavor. Since globalization contains far-reaching implications for virtually every facet of human life, it necessarily suggests the need to rethink key questions of normative political theory.

1. Globalization in the History of Ideas

2. globalization in contemporary social theory, 3. the normative challenges of globalization, other internet resources, related entries.

The term globalization has only become commonplace in the last three decades, and academic commentators who employed the term as late as the 1970s accurately recognized the novelty of doing so (Modelski 1972). At least since the advent of industrial capitalism, however, intellectual discourse has been replete with allusions to phenomena strikingly akin to those that have garnered the attention of recent theorists of globalization. Nineteenth and twentieth-century philosophy, literature, and social commentary include numerous references to an inchoate yet widely shared awareness that experiences of distance and space are inevitably transformed by the emergence of high-speed forms of transportation (for example, rail and air travel) and communication (the telegraph or telephone) that dramatically heighten possibilities for human interaction across existing geographical and political divides (Harvey 1989; Kern 1983). Long before the introduction of the term globalization into recent popular and scholarly debate, the appearance of novel high-speed forms of social activity generated extensive commentary about the compression of space.

Writing in 1839, an English journalist commented on the implications of rail travel by anxiously postulating that as distance was “annihilated, the surface of our country would, as it were, shrivel in size until it became not much bigger than one immense city” (Harvey 1996, 242). A few years later, Heinrich Heine, the émigré German-Jewish poet, captured this same experience when he noted: “space is killed by the railways. I feel as if the mountains and forests of all countries were advancing on Paris. Even now, I can smell the German linden trees; the North Sea’s breakers are rolling against my door” (Schivelbusch 1978, 34). Another young German émigré, the socialist theorist Karl Marx, in 1848 formulated the first theoretical explanation of the sense of territorial compression that so fascinated his contemporaries. In Marx’s account, the imperatives of capitalist production inevitably drove the bourgeoisie to “nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, and establish connections everywhere.” The juggernaut of industrial capitalism constituted the most basic source of technologies resulting in the annihilation of space, helping to pave the way for “intercourse in every direction, universal interdependence of nations,” in contrast to a narrow-minded provincialism that had plagued humanity for untold eons (Marx 1848, 476). Despite their ills as instruments of capitalist exploitation, Marx argued, new technologies that increased possibilities for human interaction across borders ultimately represented a progressive force in history. They provided the necessary infrastructure for a cosmopolitan future socialist civilization, while simultaneously functioning in the present as indispensable organizational tools for a working class destined to undertake a revolution no less oblivious to traditional territorial divisions than the system of capitalist exploitation it hoped to dismantle.

European intellectuals have hardly been alone in their fascination with the experience of territorial compression, as evinced by the key role played by the same theme in early twentieth-century American thought. In 1904, the literary figure Henry Adams diagnosed the existence of a “law of acceleration,” fundamental to the workings of social development, in order to make sense of the rapidly changing spatial and temporal contours of human activity. Modern society could only be properly understood if the seemingly irrepressible acceleration of basic technological and social processes was given a central place in social and historical analysis (Adams 1931 [1904]). John Dewey argued in 1927 that recent economic and technological trends implied the emergence of a “new world” no less noteworthy than the opening up of America to European exploration and conquest in 1492. For Dewey, the invention of steam, electricity, and the telephone offered formidable challenges to relatively static and homogeneous forms of local community life that had long represented the main theatre for most human activity. Economic activity increasingly exploded the confines of local communities to a degree that would have stunned our historical predecessors, for example, while the steamship, railroad, automobile, and air travel considerably intensified rates of geographical mobility. Dewey went beyond previous discussions of the changing temporal and spatial contours of human activity, however, by suggesting that the compression of space posed fundamental questions for democracy. Dewey observed that small-scale political communities (for example, the New England township), a crucial site for the exercise of effective democratic participation, seemed ever more peripheral to the great issues of an interconnected world. Increasingly dense networks of social ties across borders rendered local forms of self-government ineffective. Dewey wondered, “How can a public be organized, we may ask, when literally it does not stay in place?” (Dewey 1927, 140). To the extent that democratic citizenship minimally presupposes the possibility of action in concert with others, how might citizenship be sustained in a social world subject to ever more astonishing possibilities for movement and mobility? New high-speed technologies attributed a shifting and unstable character to social life, as demonstrated by increased rates of change and turnover in many arenas of activity (most important perhaps, the economy) directly affected by them, and the relative fluidity and inconstancy of social relations there. If citizenship requires some modicum of constancy and stability in social life, however, did not recent changes in the temporal and spatial conditions of human activity bode poorly for political participation? How might citizens come together and act in concert when contemporary society’s “mania for motion and speed” made it difficult for them even to get acquainted with one another, let alone identify objects of common concern? (Dewey 1927, 140).

The unabated proliferation of high-speed technologies is probably the main source of the numerous references in intellectual life since 1950 to the annihilation of distance. The Canadian cultural critic Marshall McLuhan made the theme of a technologically based “global village,” generated by social “acceleration at all levels of human organization,” the centerpiece of an anxiety-ridden analysis of new media technologies in the 1960s (McLuhan 1964, 103). Arguing in the 1970s and 1980s that recent shifts in the spatial and temporal contours of social life exacerbated authoritarian political trends, the French social critic Paul Virilio seemed to confirm many of Dewey’s darkest worries about the decay of democracy. According to his analysis, the high-speed imperatives of modern warfare and weapons systems strengthened the executive and debilitated representative legislatures. The compression of territory thereby paved the way for executive-centered emergency government (Virilio 1977). But it was probably the German philosopher Martin Heidegger who most clearly anticipated contemporary debates about globalization. Heidegger not only described the “abolition of distance” as a constitutive feature of our contemporary condition, but he linked recent shifts in spatial experience to no less fundamental alterations in the temporality of human activity: “All distances in time and space are shrinking. Man now reaches overnight, by places, places which formerly took weeks and months of travel” (Heidegger 1950, 165). Heidegger also accurately prophesied that new communication and information technologies would soon spawn novel possibilities for dramatically extending the scope of virtual reality : “Distant sites of the most ancient cultures are shown on film as if they stood this very moment amidst today’s street traffic…The peak of this abolition of every possibility of remoteness is reached by television, which will soon pervade and dominate the whole machinery of communication” (Heidegger 1950, 165). Heidegger’s description of growing possibilities for simultaneity and instantaneousness in human experience ultimately proved no less apprehensive than the views of many of his predecessors. In his analysis, the compression of space increasingly meant that from the perspective of human experience “everything is equally far and equally near.” Instead of opening up new possibilities for rich and multi-faceted interaction with events once distant from the purview of most individuals, the abolition of distance tended to generate a “uniform distanceless” in which fundamentally distinct objects became part of a bland homogeneous experiential mass (Heidegger 1950, 166). The loss of any meaningful distinction between “nearness” and “distance” contributed to a leveling down of human experience, which in turn spawned an indifference that rendered human experience monotonous and one-dimensional.

Since the mid-1980s, social theorists have moved beyond the relatively underdeveloped character of previous reflections on the compression or annihilation of space to offer a rigorous conception of globalization. To be sure, major disagreements remain about the precise nature of the causal forces behind globalization, with David Harvey (1989 1996) building directly on Marx’s pioneering explanation of globalization, while others (Giddens 19990; Held, McGrew, Goldblatt & Perraton 1999) question the exclusive focus on economic factors characteristic of the Marxist approach. Nonetheless, a consensus about the basic rudiments of the concept of globalization appears to be emerging.

First, recent analysts associate globalization with deterritorialization , according to which a growing variety of social activities takes place irrespective of the geographical location of participants. As Jan Aart Scholte observes, “global events can – via telecommunication, digital computers, audiovisual media, rocketry and the like – occur almost simultaneously anywhere and everywhere in the world” (Scholte 1996, 45). Globalization refers to increased possibilities for action between and among people in situations where latitudinal and longitudinal location seems immaterial to the social activity at hand. Even though geographical location remains crucial for many undertakings (for example, farming to satisfy the needs of a local market), deterritorialization manifests itself in many social spheres. Business people on different continents now engage in electronic commerce; academics make use of the latest Internet conferencing equipment to organize seminars in which participants are located at disparate geographical locations; the Internet allows people to communicate instantaneously with each other notwithstanding vast geographical distances separating them. Territory in the sense of a traditional sense of a geographically identifiable location no longer constitutes the whole of “social space” in which human activity takes places. In this initial sense of the term, globalization refers to the spread of new forms of non-territorial social activity (Ruggie 1993; Scholte 2000).

Second, theorists conceive of globalization as linked to the growth of social interconnectedness across existing geographical and political boundaries. In this view, deterritorialization is a crucial facet of globalization. Yet an exclusive focus on it would be misleading. Since the vast majority of human activities is still tied to a concrete geographical location, the more decisive facet of globalization concerns the manner in which distant events and forces impact on local and regional endeavors (Tomlinson 1999, 9). For example, this encyclopedia might be seen as an example of a deterritorialized social space since it allows for the exchange of ideas in cyberspace. The only prerequisite for its use is access to the Internet. Although substantial inequalities in Internet access still exist, use of the encyclopedia is in principle unrelated to any specific geographical location. However, the reader may very well be making use of the encyclopedia as a supplement to course work undertaken at a school or university. That institution is not only located at a specific geographical juncture, but its location is probably essential for understanding many of its key attributes: the level of funding may vary according to the state or region where the university is located, or the same academic major might require different courses and readings at a university in China, for example, than in Argentina or Norway. Globalization refers to those processes whereby geographically distant events and decisions impact to a growing degree on “local” university life. For example, the insistence by powerful political leaders in wealthy countries that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) or World Bank recommend to Latin and South American countries that they commit themselves to a particular set of economic policies might result in poorly paid teachers and researchers as well as large, understaffed lecture classes in São Paolo or Lima; the latest innovations in information technology from a computer research laboratory in India could quickly change the classroom experience of students in British Columbia or Tokyo. Globalization refers “to processes of change which underpin a transformation in the organization of human affairs by linking together and expanding human activity across regions and continents” (Held, McGrew, Goldblatt & Perraton 1999, 15). Globalization in this sense is a matter of degree since any given social activity might influence events more or less faraway: even though a growing number of activities seems intermeshed with events in distant continents, certain human activities remain primarily local or regional in scope. Also, the magnitude and impact of the activity might vary: geographically removed events could have a relatively minimal or a far more extensive influence on events at a particular locality. Finally, we might consider the degree to which interconnectedness across frontiers is no longer merely haphazard but instead predictable and regularized (Held, McGrew, Goldblatt & Perraton 1999).

Third, globalization must also include reference to the speed or velocity of social activity. Deterritorialization and interconnectedness initially seem chiefly spatial in nature. Yet it is easy to see how these spatial shifts are directly tied to the acceleration of crucial forms of social activity. As we observed above in our discussion of the conceptual forerunners to the present-day debate on globalization, the proliferation of high-speed transportation, communication, and information technologies constitutes the most immediate source for the blurring of geographical and territorial boundaries that prescient observers have diagnosed at least since the mid-nineteenth century. The compression of space presupposes rapid-fire forms of technology; shifts in our experiences of territory depend on concomitant changes in the temporality of human action. High-speed technology only represents the tip of the iceberg, however. The linking together and expanding of social activities across borders is predicated on the possibility of relatively fast flows and movements of people, information, capital, and goods. Without these fast flows, it is difficult to see how distant events could possibly posses the influence they now enjoy. High-speed technology plays a pivotal role in the velocity of human affairs. But many other factors contribute to the overall pace and speed of social activity. The organizational structure of the modern capitalist factory offers one example; certain contemporary habits and inclinations, including the “mania for motion and speed” described by Dewey, represent another. Deterritorialization and the expansion of interconnectedness are intimately tied to the acceleration of social life, while social acceleration itself takes many different forms (Eriksen 2001; Rosa 2013). Here as well, we can easily see why globalization is always a matter of degree. The velocity or speed of flows, movements, and interchanges across borders can vary no less than their magnitude, impact, or regularity.

Fourth, even though analysts disagree about the causal forces that generate globalization, most agree that globalization should be conceived as a relatively long-term process . The triad of deterritorialization, interconnectedness, and social acceleration hardly represents a sudden or recent event in contemporary social life. Globalization is a constitutive feature of the modern world, and modern history includes many examples of globalization (Giddens 1990). As we saw above, nineteenth-century thinkers captured at least some of its core features; the compression of territoriality composed an important element of their lived experience. Nonetheless, some contemporary theorists believe that globalization has taken a particularly intense form in recent decades, as innovations in communication, transportation, and information technologies (for example, computerization) have generated stunning new possibilities for simultaneity and instantaneousness (Harvey 1989). In this view, present-day intellectual interest in the problem of globalization can be linked directly to the emergence of new high-speed technologies that tend to minimize the significance of distance and heighten possibilities for deterritorialization and social interconnectedness. Although the intense sense of territorial compression experienced by so many of our contemporaries is surely reminiscent of the experiences of earlier generations, some contemporary writers nonetheless argue that it would be mistaken to obscure the countless ways in which ongoing transformations of the spatial and temporal contours of human experience are especially far-reaching. While our nineteenth-century predecessors understandably marveled at the railroad or the telegraph, a comparatively vast array of social activities is now being transformed by innovations that accelerate social activity and considerably deepen longstanding trends towards deterritorialization and social interconnectedness. To be sure, the impact of deterritorialization, social interconnectedness, and social acceleration are by no means universal or uniform: migrant workers engaging in traditional forms of low-wage agricultural labor in the fields of southern California, for example, probably operate in a different spatial and temporal context than the Internet entrepreneurs of San Francisco or Seattle. Distinct assumptions about space and time often coexist uneasily during a specific historical juncture (Gurvitch 1964). Nonetheless, the impact of recent technological innovations is profound, and even those who do not have a job directly affected by the new technology are shaped by it in innumerable ways as citizens and consumers (Eriksen 2001, 16).

Fifth, globalization should be understood as a multi-pronged process, since deterritorialization, social interconnectedness, and acceleration manifest themselves in many different (economic, political, and cultural) arenas of social activity. Although each facet of globalization is linked to the core components of globalization described above, each consists of a complex and relatively autonomous series of empirical developments, requiring careful examination in order to disclose the causal mechanisms specific to it (Held, McGrew, Goldblatt & Perraton 1999). Each manifestation of globalization also generates distinct conflicts and dislocations. For example, there is substantial empirical evidence that cross-border flows and exchanges (of goods, people, information, etc.), as well as the emergence of directly transnational forms of production by means of which a single commodity is manufactured simultaneously in distant corners of the globe, are gaining in prominence (Castells 1996). High-speed technologies and organizational approaches are employed by transnationally operating firms, the so-called “global players,” with great effectiveness. The emergence of “around-the-world, around-the-clock” financial markets, where major cross-border financial transactions are made in cyberspace at the blink of an eye, represents a familiar example of the economic face of globalization. Global financial markets also challenge traditional attempts by liberal democratic nation-states to rein in the activities of bankers, spawning understandable anxieties about the growing power and influence of financial markets over democratically elected representative institutions. In political life, globalization takes a distinct form, though the general trends towards deterritorialization, interconnectedness across borders, and the acceleration of social activity are fundamental here as well. Transnational movements, in which activists employ rapid-fire communication technologies to join forces across borders in combating ills that seem correspondingly transnational in scope (for example, the depletion of the ozone layer), offer an example of political globalization (Tarrow 2005). Another would be the tendency towards ambitious supranational forms of social and economic lawmaking and regulation, where individual nation-states cooperate to pursue regulation whose jurisdiction transcends national borders no less than the cross-border economic processes that undermine traditional modes of nation state-based regulation. Political scientists typically describe such supranational organizations (the European Union, for example, or United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA) as important manifestations of political and legal globalization. The proliferation of supranational organizations has been no less conflict-laden than economic globalization, however. Critics insist that local, regional, and national forms of self-government are being supplanted by insufficiently democratic forms of global governance remote from the needs of ordinary citizens (Maus 2006; Streeck 2016). In contrast, defenders describe new forms of supranational legal and political decision as indispensable forerunners to more inclusive and advanced forms of self-government, even as they worry about existing democratic deficits and technocratic traits (Habermas 2015).

The wide-ranging impact of globalization on human existence means that it necessarily touches on many basic philosophical and political-theoretical questions. At a minimum, globalization suggests that academic philosophers in the rich countries of the West should pay closer attention to the neglected voices and intellectual traditions of peoples with whom our fate is intertwined in ever more intimate ways (Dallmayr 1998). In this section, however, we focus exclusively on the immediate challenges posed by globalization to normative political theory.

Western political theory has traditionally presupposed the existence of territorially bound communities, whose borders can be more or less neatly delineated from those of other communities. In this vein, the influential liberal political philosopher John Rawls described bounded communities whose fundamental structure consisted of “self-sufficient schemes of cooperation for all the essential purposes of human life” (Rawls 1993, 301). Although political and legal thinkers historically have exerted substantial energy in formulating defensible normative models of relations between states (Nardin and Mapel 1992), like Rawls they typically have relied on a clear delineation of “domestic” from “foreign” affairs. In addition, they have often argued that the domestic arena represents a normatively privileged site, since fundamental normative ideals and principles (for example, liberty or justice) are more likely to be successfully realized in the domestic arena than in relations among states. According to one influential strand within international relations theory, relations between states are more-or-less lawless. Since the achievement of justice or democracy, for example, presupposes an effective political sovereign, the lacuna of sovereignty at the global level means that justice and democracy are necessarily incomplete and probably unattainable there. In this conventional realist view of international politics, core features of the modern system of sovereign states relegate the pursuit of western political thought’s most noble normative goals primarily to the domestic arena (Mearsheimer 2003.) Significantly, some prominent mid-century proponents of international realism rejected this position’s deep hostility to international law and supranational political organization, in part because they presciently confronted challenges that we now typically associate with intensified globalization (Scheuerman 2011).

Globalization poses a fundamental challenge to each of these traditional assumptions. It is no longer self-evident that nation-states can be described as “self-sufficient schemes of cooperation for all the essential purposes of human life” in the context of intense deterritorialization and the spread and intensification of social relations across borders. The idea of a bounded community seems suspect given recent shifts in the spatio-temporal contours of human life. Even the most powerful and privileged political units are now subject to increasingly deterritorialized activities (for example, global financial markets or digitalized mass communication) over which they have limited control, and they find themselves nested in webs of social relations whose scope explodes the confines of national borders. Of course, in much of human history social relations have transcended existing political divides. However, globalization implies a profound quantitative increase in and intensification of social relations of this type. While attempts to offer a clear delineation of the “domestic” from the “foreign” probably made sense at an earlier juncture in history, this distinction no longer accords with core developmental trends in many arenas of social activity. As the possibility of a clear division between domestic and foreign affairs dissipates, the traditional tendency to picture the domestic arena as a privileged site for the realization of normative ideals and principles becomes problematic as well. As an empirical matter, the decay of the domestic-foreign frontier seems highly ambivalent, since it might easily pave the way for the decay of the more attractive attributes of domestic political life: as “foreign” affairs collapse inward onto “domestic” political life, the insufficiently lawful contours of the former make disturbing inroads onto the latter (Scheuerman 2004). As a normative matter, however, the disintegration of the domestic-foreign divide probably calls for us to consider, to a greater extent than ever before, how our fundamental normative commitments about political life can be effectively achieved on a global scale. If we take the principles of justice or democracy seriously, for example, it is no longer self-evident that the domestic arena is the exclusive or perhaps even main site for their pursuit, since domestic and foreign affairs are now deeply and irrevocably intermeshed. In a globalizing world, the lack of democracy or justice in the global setting necessarily impacts deeply on the pursuit of justice or democracy at home. Indeed, it may no longer be possible to achieve our normative ideals at home without undertaking to do so transnationally as well.

To claim, for example, that questions of distributive justice have no standing in the making of foreign affairs represents at best empirical naivete about economic globalization. At worst, it constitutes a disingenuous refusal to grapple with the fact that the material existence of those fortunate enough to live in the rich countries is inextricably tied to the material status of the vast majority of humanity residing in poor and underdeveloped regions. Growing material inequality spawned by economic globalization is linked to growing domestic material inequality in the rich democracies (Falk 1999; Pogge 2002). Similarly, in the context of global warming and the destruction of the ozone layer, a dogmatic insistence on the sanctity of national sovereignty risks constituting a cynical fig leaf for irresponsible activities whose impact extends well beyond the borders of those countries most directly responsible. Global warming and ozone-depletion cry out for ambitious forms of transnational cooperation and regulation, and the refusal by the rich democracies to accept this necessity implies a failure to take the process of globalization seriously when doing so conflicts with their immediate material interests. Although it might initially seem to be illustrative of clever Realpolitik on the part of the culpable nations to ward off strict cross-border environmental regulation, their stubbornness is probably short-sighted: global warming and ozone depletion will affect the children of Americans who drive gas-guzzling SUVs or use environmentally unsound air-conditioning as well as the future generations of South Africa or Afghanistan (Cerutti 2007). If we keep in mind that environmental degradation probably impacts negatively on democratic politics (for example, by undermining its legitimacy and stability), the failure to pursue effective transnational environmental regulation potentially undermines democracy at home as well as abroad.

Philosophers and political theorists have eagerly addressed the normative and political implications of our globalizing world. A lively debate about the possibility of achieving justice at the global level pits representatives of cosmopolitanism against myriad communitarians, nationalists, realists, and others who privilege the nation-state and moral, political, and social ties resting on it (Lieven 2020; Tamir 2019). In contrast, cosmopolitans tend to underscore our universal obligations to those who reside faraway and with whom we may share little in the way of language, custom, or culture, oftentimes arguing that claims to “justice at home” can and should be applied elsewhere as well (Beardsworth 2011; Beitz 1999; Caney 2006; Wallace-Brown & Held 2010). In this way, cosmopolitanism builds directly on the universalistic impulses of modern moral and political thought. Cosmopolitanism’s critics dispute the view that our obligations to foreigners possess the same status as those to members of particular local and national communities of which we remain very much a part. They by no means deny the need to redress global inequality, for example, but they often express skepticism in the face of cosmopolitanism’s tendency to defend significant legal and political reforms as necessary to address the inequities of a planet where millions of people a year die of starvation or curable diseases (Miller 2007; 2013; Nagel 2005). Nor do cosmopolitanism’s critics necessarily deny that the process of globalization is real, though some of them suggest that its impact has been grossly exaggerated (Kymlicka 1999; Nussbaum et al . 1996; Streeck 2016). Nonetheless, they doubt that humanity has achieved a rich or sufficiently articulated sense of a common fate such that far-reaching attempts to achieve greater global justice (for example, substantial redistribution from the rich to poor) could prove successful. Cosmopolitans not only counter with a flurry of universalist and egalitarian moral arguments, but they also accuse their opponents of obscuring the threat posed by globalization to the particular forms of national community whose ethical primacy communitarians, nationalists, and others endorse. From the cosmopolitan perspective, the tendency to favor moral and political obligations to fellow members of the nation-state represents a misguided and increasingly reactionary nostalgia for a rapidly decaying constellation of political practices and institutions.

A similar divide characterizes the ongoing debate about the prospects of democratic institutions at the global level. In a cosmopolitan mode, Daniele Archibugi (2008) and the late David Held (1995) have argued that globalization requires the extension of liberal democratic institutions (including the rule of law and elected representative institutions) to the transnational level. Nation state-based liberal democracy is poorly equipped to deal with deleterious side effects of present-day globalization such as ozone depletion or burgeoning material inequality. In addition, a growing array of genuinely transnational forms of activity calls out for correspondingly transnational modes of liberal democratic decision-making. According to this model, “local” or “national” matters should remain under the auspices of existing liberal democratic institutions. But in those areas where deterritorialization and social interconnectedness across national borders are especially striking, new transnational institutions (for example, cross-border referenda), along with a dramatic strengthening and further democratization of existing forms of supranational authority (in particular, the United Nations), are necessary if we are to assure that popular sovereignty remains an effective principle. In the same spirit, cosmopolitans debate whether a loose system of global “governance” suffices, or instead cosmopolitan ideals require something along the lines of a global “government” or state (Cabrera 2011; Scheuerman 2014). Jürgen Habermas, a prominent cosmopolitan-minded theorist, has tried to formulate a defense of the European Union that conceives of it as a key stepping stone towards supranational democracy. If the EU is to help succeed in salvaging the principle of popular sovereignty in a world where the decay of nation state-based democracy makes democracy vulnerable, the EU will need to strengthen its elected representative organs and better guarantee the civil, political, and social and economic rights of all Europeans (Habermas 2001, 58–113; 2009). Representing a novel form of postnational constitutionalism, it potentially offers some broader lessons for those hoping to save democratic constitutionalism under novel global conditions. Despite dire threats to the EU posed by nationalist and populist movements, Habermas and other cosmopolitan-minded intellectuals believe that it can be effectively reformed and preserved (Habermas 2012).

In opposition to Archibugi, Held, Habermas, and other cosmopolitans, skeptics underscore the purportedly utopian character of such proposals, arguing that democratic politics presupposes deep feelings of trust, commitment, and belonging that remain uncommon at the postnational and global levels. Largely non-voluntary commonalities of belief, history, and custom compose necessary preconditions of any viable democracy, and since these commonalities are missing beyond the sphere of the nation-state, global or cosmopolitan democracy is doomed to fail (Archibugi, Held, and Koehler 1998; Lieven 2020). Critics inspired by realist international theory argue that cosmopolitanism obscures the fundamentally pluralistic, dynamic, and conflictual nature of political life on our divided planet. Notwithstanding its pacific self-understanding, cosmopolitan democracy inadvertently opens the door to new and even more horrible forms of political violence. Cosmpolitanism’s universalistic normative discourse not only ignores the harsh and unavoidably agonistic character of political life, but it also tends to serve as a convenient ideological cloak for terrible wars waged by political blocs no less self-interested than the traditional nation state (Zolo 1997, 24).

Ongoing political developments suggest that such debates are of more than narrow scholarly interest. Until recently, some of globalization’s key prongs seemed destined to transform human affairs in seemingly permanent ways: economic globalization, as well as the growth of a panoply of international and global political and legal institutions, continued to transpire at a rapid rate. Such institutional developments, it should be noted, were interpreted by some cosmopolitan theorists as broadly corroborating their overall normative aspirations. With the resurgence of nationalist and populist political movements, many of which diffusely (and sometimes misleadingly) target elements of globalization, globalization’s future prospects seem increasingly uncertain. For example, with powerful political leaders regularly making disdainful remarks about the UN and EU, it seems unclear whether one of globalization’s most striking features, i.e., enhanced political and legal decision-making “beyond the nation state,” will continue unabated. Tragically perhaps, the failure to manage economic globalization so as to minimize avoidable inequalities and injustices has opened the door to a nationalist and populist backlash, with many people now ready to embrace politicians and movements promising to push back against “free trade,” relatively porous borders (for migrants and refugees), and other manifestations of globalization (Stiglitz 2018). Even if it seems unlikely that nationalists or populists can succeed in fully halting, let alone reversing, structural trends towards deterritorialization, intensified interconnectedness, and social acceleration, they may manage to reshape them in ways that cosmopolitans are likely to find alarming. Whether or not nationalists and populists can successfully respond to many fundamental global challenges (e.g., climate change or nuclear proliferation), however, remains far less likely.

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• Chapter 3. The Globalization Hypothesis...
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Globalization and Nationalism

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Chapter 3. The Globalization Hypothesis and Its Fallacies

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1 This chapter takes issue with some of the basic assumptions of the globalization hypothesis by raising the following questions: How does the resurgence of nationalism manifest itself? Can we talk about the rise of nationalism as following a constantly increasing linear trajectory, or does it experience fluctuations? Can we speak about one kind of new nationalism that has become characteristic of the global era? And how new is this kind of nationalism? Are globalization and nationalism contradictory by their very nature and thus destined for a relationship of clash and opposition? By addressing these questions, I intend to offer a critique of the globalization hypothesis described in the last chapter and introduce a different perspective on the relationship between globalization and nationalism to be further explored in the case studies.

3.1 Nationalism Resurgent

2 One of the underlying assumptions of the globalization hypothesis is that nationalism is on the rise. Resurgence of nationalism as a fact is rarely disputed and is seen as a defining feature of the post-Cold War world. Even though the 1950s and 60s witnessed the rise of nationalist politics in the developing world following the decolonization and establishment of new states, it could not compete for attention with the threat of nuclear annihilation at the height of the Cold War. In addition, nationalism at that time was an anti-imperial, emancipatory force that was seen as contributing to the legitimate struggle of the oppressed peoples. Contemporary or new nationalism by contrast is seen as not only lacking legitimacy and moral high ground but also as one of the most potent causes of war, destruction, and insecurity. The end of the Cold War may have ended the prospect of major interstate warfare but it was rapidly replaced with the real and potential intrastate wars and more localized forms of violence and conflict.

3 It is possible to identify three main manifestations of nationalist resurgence. The first has to do with the disintegration of multinational states such as the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia and the accompanying spread of ethnic tensions and in some cases ethnic warfare. The disintegration of post-communist states along ethnic lines continues with Serbia and Georgia being the latest examples. Ethnic nationalism, it can be concluded, remains a potent, fragmenting force in the post-communist space. The second manifestation is the increasing popularity of nationalist parties, sometimes with a separatist political agenda, among stateless nations of Western Europe. This includes Scotland, Basque Country, Catalonia, and Belgium, where nations within multiethnic states have been voicing demands for secession or renegotiating their statuses within these states toward greater autonomy and self-rule. Thirdly, nationalism increases with the rising popularity of radical right-wing political parties in Western Europe and elsewhere. These profess a particularly populist form of nationalism or national populism as some commentators have termed it and seem to represent a clear reaction against influences of globalization such as growing immigration and movement of labor, decline of traditional industries as well as traditional ways of life.

4 Each of these manifestations of nationalism is real and is shaping the political environment in which we live and operate. However, can we say that there is a resurgence of nationalism, often described as un precedented and implying that there is more of nationalism today than there has ever been and that it is growing? One of the striking features of nationalism is that it tends to get noticed in extreme cases and ignored in all other, more benign circumstances. This creates a false impression that nationalism is an unusual phenomenon not characteristic to the mainstream political establishment. It also tends to be projected onto Others—tribes, former communist states, Easterners, the Balkans, unstable new entities—with the underlying impression that established nations do not do nationalism. In reality, however, nationalism is always there, it may not always claim the political center stage but it is there in the background, ready to be tapped by governments and other political actors as needed. 1 In the case of former communist countries, nationalism was not a post-Cold War phenomenon. It existed before and, as the Georgian case would demonstrate, was even institutionalized under the Soviet system, which explains the rapid reappearance of nationalism as a political force right before and after the Soviet collapse.

5 In addition, the overwhelming use of nationalist discourse among ethnonational groups competing for power and recognition after the collapse of communism led to the classification of all conflicts and tensions as “ethnic.” This obscured the fact that behind the façade of nationalist rhetoric, there were many factors other than ethnonational that played an important role in the eruption and perpetuation of these conflicts. As Kalevi Holsti noted, “Western analysts all of a sudden discovered ‘ethnic wars,’ many of which were not primarily about ethnicity, and most of which had been going on long before 1989.” 2 Once a conflict is framed in terms of identity, ethnicity, culture, us vs. them, in other words, in non-negotiable categories, it then certainly becomes increasingly difficult to discern underlying causes of such conflicts and look for solutions through normal political bargaining. Ethnicization of social, economic and political issues was one of the characteristic features of the post-communist politics in the early 1990s and has contributed to the perception of nationalist resurgence.

6 Nevertheless, research on post-Cold War ethnic conflict does not support the commonly held view that the end of the Cold War unleashed new waves of animosities and nationalist-driven fighting. For instance, the data compiled by Holsti shows that out of total of 126 wars recorded in 1995, 113 began before 1989. 3 As for the majority of post-Cold War conflicts, they erupted in the period of 1989–1993 and few have started since. Similar conclusions have been reached by Ted Robert Gurr, who argued that by the late 1990s, the most common strategy among ethnic groups was not armed conflict but prosaic politics. The number of new ethnic wars has dropped significantly since the early 1990s and many old ones have been settled. These findings challenge the conventional wisdom “that tribal and nationalist fighting is raging out of control” 4 and show that the creation of new institutions, particularly in Eastern Europe and former Soviet Union has contributed to the managing of instability 5 and I would argue to the overall decline of radical ethnonationalism.

7 It should be noted that actual instances of ethnic conflict and nationalist-driven warfare varied greatly from country to country and was not necessarily correlated with the strength of nationalist sentiment among the public. For example, among the first to demonstrate strong nationalist tendencies in the Soviet Union were Baltic republics but they never engaged in violent confrontation with their formidable Russian minorities, even though tensions at times were high. Similarly, Hungarian minorities continued to live relatively peacefully in Romania and Slovakia, while the neighboring Balkan states were torn apart by ethnic strife and warfare. The Caucasus, alongside the Balkans, came to represent the main hotbed of violent nationalism in the former communist space but with its own internal inconsistencies and variations. For example, Georgia never engaged in conflict with neighboring Armenia and Azerbaijan despite the presence of significant minorities of both Armenian and Azeri origin on the Georgian territory. Armenia and Azerbaijan on the other hand, locked themselves in the bloody confrontation over Nagorno-Karabakh, while Georgia practically disintegrated as a result of conflicts with its own autonomous regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. The existence of such variations shows that conflicts break out not solely from the presence of strong and competing nationalisms but rather from a combination of multiple factors. These include the role and motivations of the elites, competition over the distribution of resources and material benefits, external pressures and involvement patterns of the neighboring states and regional powers, the lack or instability of internal power-sharing arrangements, majority–minority relations, and many more. In the majority of the post-communist cases, it was the combination of nationalism with other conflict-provoking mechanisms that led to violence. Where such mechanisms were weak or counterbalanced by other factors, conflict, irrespective of the strength of nationalism, was avoided.

8 There are two main problems with the “resurgent nationalism” view when applied to the cases of post-communist states. First, it overemphasizes those cases where nationalist mobilization did occur but ignores those where it did not occur, and second, under the broad heading of the post-Cold War period, it focuses on the dramatic events that took place in the early 1990s and overlooks important changes that occurred thereafter. While it is true that in Eastern and South Eastern Europe nationalist politics and ethnonational conflicts have experienced a significant revival since the end of the Cold War, the experience within the region was more varied than it is often recognized. The variation in the strength of nationalist mobilization occurred not only across space but also across time. Comparing election results and general political developments taking place in the beginning of the 1990s to the mid and late 90s reveals a picture of the region which has experienced significant transformations including both the rise and decline of radical ethnic nationalism. The example of Georgia is telling in this respect. Nationalist political assertiveness peaked there, as well as in other parts of the former Soviet Union, in the period between 1989 and 1993. The first free elections after the collapse of the USSR were fought between a variety of nationalist platforms where even the communist parties adopted nationalist agendas. Victory belonged to the more radical and uncompromising of the nationalists. However, their success was shortlived and resulted in quick and widespread disappointment with radical nationalism. By the end of the decade, the power and appeal of nationalism as both an ideology and a political movement was strikingly weaker in comparison to the early years of transition.

9 This change is significant within the context of post-communist politics and yet far less noted and analyzed. As Rogers Brubaker rightly noted, “declining curves of mobilization have been particularly neglected, although they are as common, as deserving of explanation, and as theoretically challenging as the more sexy ascending curves.” 6 The change also occurred in the style and character of post-communist nationalist movements and in the vision of the future they were projecting. It is possible to argue that many former communist countries experience not only the decline in popularity of nationalist political parties and instances of nationalist warfare, but also a significant deradicalization and moderation of their nationalist political thought and action. The nature of nationalist demands as well as popular understanding of what constitutes national interest has been experiencing transformation over the past 15 years. 7 For example, the Baltic States have made significant concessions to their Russian minorities and have experienced a noticeable change in their respective nationalist discourses. The issue of minorities is particularly telling in this regard. Thus, in Georgia the nationalist discourse changed from a total exclusion or even expulsion of minorities in the early 1990s to their recognition and acceptance of cultural and political rights today. Certainly the current situation in terms of minority protection is far from ideal but it is the change itself that is noteworthy.

10 The reasons behind such a change can be numerous, including historic and political circumstances, confrontation with competing nationalisms, the experience of independent statehood as well as the influence, both material and ideational, exercised by international actors. 8 It has been noted on the example of Baltic States that international organizations, in addition to material incentives, have used dialogue with national decision-makers to influence the way they think about minorities and the way they perceive national interests. 9 Similarly, I would argue on the Georgian example that the exposition to the international discourse of rights and norms has significantly modified Georgians’ nationalist thinking. In this case, globalization manifested in the spread of the democratic discourse as well as the work and influence of international organizations can be credited for the taming previously aggressive nationalist sentiments and deradicalizing political nationalism.

11 Proponents of the globalization hypothesis also speak about the transformation of local nationalisms under the influence of globalization but from an opposite perspective. In their view, nationalism in the global era has taken on a particularly radical, militant, and defensive character in reaction to globalization and its influences. As discussed in the previous chapter, globalization theorists speak about the rise of new nationalism that is specific to the current age of globalization. It is to the critique of the concept of new nationalism that I turn in the next section.

3.2 Old and New Nationalisms

12 New nationalism is said to differ from the earlier forms of nationalism in both style and content. It is the product of more recent decades and has little in common with either classical 19 th century nationalisms or anti-colonial struggles of the Third World national liberation movements. New nationalism is arguably less about political and economic motives than about identity politics expressed through deep-rooted ethnic animosities and intercommunal divisions. It contains strong new drives towards separatism and challenges the stability and integrity of multiethnic states. 10 Let me compare and contrast new nationalism as it emerges from the reviewed literature with earlier forms of nationalism.

13 Nationalism was once an ideology of expansion, unification and homogenization of small and diverse ethnonational units. Eric Hobsbawm describes how nationalism was conceived by its liberal founding fathers such as Mazzini as a movement for national unification and expansion. According to Hobsbawm, “it was accepted in theory that social evolution expanded the scale of human social units from family and tribe to county and canton, from the local to the regional, the national and eventually the global.” 11 Nations and nationalisms, therefore, were legitimate only insofar as they extended the scale of human society and united “the scattered populations” into a bigger whole. Today, when the global expansion of human society is more real than ever, nationalism seems to have become a fragmenting and particularistic force legitimating the ongoing disintegration of states into ever smaller, ethnocultural units.

14 Nationalism was once a political, state-making ideology and movement. It legitimated the establishment of sovereign states and provided them with popular support and loyalty. Before the modern period, states justified their existence in the name of a monarch, a ruler, or religion. With the demise of traditional loyalties, nationalism or the new “civic religion” came as a guarantor of popular loyalty and legitimacy. In the words of Hobsbawm, “What else could legitimize the monarchies of states which had never previously existed as such, like Greece, Italy or Belgium, or whose existence broke with all historical precedents, like the German empire of 1871?” 12 Nationalism, in other words, was a state-promoting political project, which would also resolve the problem of the sociopolitical cohesion of modern states. Today, however, nationalism appears as primarily a cultural and state-subverting movement, challenging rather than supporting the cohesion and unity of the state.

15 Finally, nationalism once was one of the main pillars upon which the contemporary international system was founded. Nationalism and the international system grew to be mutually reinforcing. 13 First, nationalism became the legitimizing principle embraced by the system, and later, as a result of its “internationalization,” nationalism became further diffused and extended around the world. As Fred Halliday observed, the link between nationalism and the international system is not only historical but also normative. It is concerned with values, norms and the governing principles of how people should live and who to obey. According to Halliday, by spreading across the world, nationalism developed into the main justifying or legitimizing doctrines of the international system itself. “(It) has become the ethical, moral, basis of international relations so much so that the body grouping the states of the world is called the United Nations.” 14 Today, however, nationalism is increasingly regarded as an anti-system phenomenon.

16 It follows that the main distinguishing feature of the so-called new nationalism is its troubled relation with state and more broadly with the international system the states comprise. The new nationalisms arguably lack forward-looking, emancipatory political agendas—they do not carry state-building ambitions and instead develop mainly in opposition to the state. The old forms of nationalism, both secessionist ethnic nationalisms and civil nationalisms of established states were primarily connected to the formation of national citizenry. According to Gerard Delanty, even secessionist and irredentist nationalisms of the past epochs had a strong connection with the project of nation-state building. Contemporary nationalism in contrast, Delanty argues, “no longer tries to include by assimilation as much of the population as possible. The age of nation-state building is over, as are early nationalism projects to create culturally homogenous populations.” 15

17 Similarly Manuel Castells argues that the new nationalism is not necessarily oriented towards the construction of classical, sovereign modern states. It appears rather to be the major force behind the constitution of quasi-states , which are political entities of shared sovereignty either in loose federalist arrangements such as Canada and Spain, or in international multilateralism such as the European Union or the Commonwealth of Independent States of ex-Soviet Republics. 16 For instance, Catalonia and Basque Country in Spain are autonomous regions powerful and independent enough to perform certain state functions and thus can be described as quasi-states . They may not seek independence but at the same time are fervently nationalistic and mobilized in defense of their national culture and identity, Castells argues.

18 Recently Europe witnessed further proliferation of quasi-states such as Kosovo, supported by the European Union and other members of international community, and Abkhazia and South Ossetia, supported by Russia. Examples of these separatist entities together with Dniester region and Gagauzia in Moldova, Crimea in Ukraine, and fragmentational and at times irredentist pressures from minority nationalisms elsewhere in Europe seem to add credence to the concept of new nationalism as a fundamentally different, state-subverting, ethnocentric and defensive cultural force. Nevertheless, the above discussion of the new nationalism raises a number of questions. First, are the characteristics such as separatist, fragmenting, anti-statist, cultural, defensive, radical, etc. sufficiently novel to justify the term new nationalism? Second, does the rise of new nationalism mean that it has replaced the old forms of nationalism or does it mean that the old nationalisms have been transformed into what is now described as new nationalism under the impact of globalization? Third, if new nationalism has risen in opposition to the state and has such strongly anti-statist character then what alternative to the state as a form of social organization does it have to offer? Fourth, who are new nationalists? And finally, how is globalization the cause of new nationalism?

19 The term new nationalism obscures more than it reveals. It contains no information that would specifically describe contemporary nationalism except for the claim that it is something recent. It is worth recalling that postcolonial nationalist movements in the 1960s were also often described as “new nationalisms.” There is a danger that every time a certain manifestation of nationalism occurs, it will be described as new and we will end up with the confusing accumulation of “new nationalisms” of various sorts and various time periods. In addition, I am skeptical about the fundamentally novel character of contemporary nationalism and would argue that it shares much with its predecessors particularly with ethnic or organic nationalisms of the previous era.

20 As already noted, the crucial difference between the older forms of nationalism and the new nationalism of the global era is that the latter undermines the nation-state and is anti-statist by nature while the former supported the state and was state-enhancing in its role and function. It is unclear, however, whether the new nationalism offers any alternative to the state. If it presents a critique of the modern order, then what alternative political order is envisaged by new nationalism? Is it based on premodern tribalism, postmodern communitarianism, ethnoreligious isolationism or something entirely new? Jurgensmeyer, for instance, argued that the goal of some of the contemporary ethnic and religious activists is the revival of a nation-state that avoids the effects of globalization. Examples are Taliban in Afghanistan or Khomeini’s Iran. In other parts of the world, however, he admits that it is not the creation of new religious states that is at issue but the breakdown of old secular states with no clear alternative. 17

21 I would argue that contemporary nationalism, like any other nationalism of the previous era, is both anti- and pro-state. It challenges multinational states and in some cases has contributed to their demise, however, it does not oppose the state per se and neither does it promote alternative forms of political and social relations. It instead seeks to establish a new state that a national group in question can claim as its own. In that sense, it pursues the most traditional task of nationalism, which is making sure that ethnocultural and political units are congruent. 18 Post-communist nationalist movements that are seen as main examples of the new nationalisms of the global era aimed not only at the dissolution of the Soviet Union or Yugoslavia but also at the establishment of new, national states with clear state-building ambitions. Some of these successor states face further disintegration under pressure of minority nationalisms that either support the creation of inde-pendent states (e.g., Abkhazia) or pursue unification with what they conceive as “their state” defined in strictly ethnocultural terms (e.g., Crimean Russians or Bosnian Serbs).

22 Anti-statism, in the sense of being anti status quo for the nation or ethnic group in question, as well as ethnocentrism coupled with defensiveness and emphasis on cultural preservation, were also typical of 19 th century organic or ethnic nationalisms. As a Polish writer observed, “if nationality and state citizenship were equivalent, 19 th century Poles should have been considered to be Russians or Germans…nothing was more alien and horrifying to Polish patriots than the idea of identifying nation with state, nationality with citizenship, and patriotism with loyalty to existing state.” 19

23 One of the earliest writers on nationalism, Hans Kohn, described ethnic nationalism of Eastern Europe and Asia of 19 th century in terms remarkably similar to the new nationalism of today, emphasizing its exclusive and collectivistic characteristics. In his accounts, ethnic nationalism at the time was mainly aimed at the preservation of national culture and survival under threat of alien rule, and for this reason was strictly exclusive and suspicious of outsiders. National community was defined in terms of ethnic descent and common culture, and required a complete subordination from the individual. Thus, according to Kohn, nationalism in these places “tended towards the closed society, in which the individual counted for less than the strength and authority of the national whole.” 20

24 Ethnic nationalism of the past, as well as the so-called new nationalism of today, rely heavily on glorified and romanticized images of the past to project and justify the image of the future. Thus Mary Kaldor pointed out how new nationalism relates to an idealized, nostalgic representation of the past and even though it may appear on the outside to be a throwback to the past, it has its future-oriented mission and contemporary characteristics. Similarly, Hans Kohn described how nationalists in Central and Eastern Europe “created often, out of myths of the past and dream of the future, an ideal fatherland, closely linked with the past, devoid of any immediate connections with the present and expected to become sometime a political reality.” 21 Kohn and Kaldor would even agree on the fact that the type of nationalism discussed is primarily an East European phenomenon. In other words, exclusive, highly collectivistic and authoritarian forms of nationalism, that relied heavily on past myths and memories for the justification of their present and future goals had characterized nationalisms of different East European nations for quite some time.

25 Contemporary new nationalism also shares with the earlier forms of ethnonationalism a negative self-identification and a strong presence of the Other in its discourse and strategy. In the 19 th and early 20 th centuries, ethnonationalism became particularly common among those nations that were colonized, ruled, or dominated by foreign powers and aspired for greater freedom and political recognition. In these cases, nationalists tended to organize their movement as an opposition to the existing state and strengthen national consciousness by appealing to the “threat” emanating from the state and invoking historical myths, cultural traditions, folklore, and language, where relevant. The ethnonationalism of politically subordinate groups had a strongly “negative” way of self-affirmation directed against the oppressive Other and as a result had a largely reactive and defensive character focused around the need for national survival under threat.

26 Despite all these similarities, it is possible, however, to identify two main differences between past and present forms of ethnic nationalism: the first has to do with the perception of “threat,” which in previous cases was normally emanating from another powerful state or nation, while in the case of new nationalism, the threat is arguably stemming from impersonal forces of globalization; and the second concerns the relation and relative importance of identity interests vis-à-vis material ones. New nationalism is more a response to the material deprivation and economic marginalization than were the older forms of ethnonationalism. Reasonably enough, the earlier forms of ethnonationalism that characterized politically subordinate groups were more concerned with the politics of identity and with the threat that had the concrete face of a foreign state, oppressive empire, or alienated elite. However, history knows other cases of ethnonationalism that emerged not among colonized or subjugated nations but rather among independent and considerable powers and focused not on political emancipation but on psychological compensation for economic marginalization and underdevelopment. The two obvious examples are 19 th century German nationalism and the Slavophile movement in Russia. In both cases ethnic nationalism worked as a compensatory ideology justifying the existing difference between the two countries and the rest of Europe by overemphasizing cultural distinctiveness and the importance of identity based on the claims of spiritual and national superiority. In some respects, these ethnonationalisms represented a response to the global economic developments appealing both to identity and material interests.

27 In this respect, Marx’s discussion of German nationalism appears particularly relevant. He perceived the rise of nationalism in his native Germany as an outgrowth of Germany’s political weakness and economic backwardness. He was highly critical of German nationalism, because it ended up glorifying the nation with all its regressive and backward features instead of fostering healthy self-criticism and promoting reforms. Marx also believed that the negative identification in terms of the Other—characteristic of nationalism—was profoundly alienating. According to Erica Benner, in the popular attachments to restricted community, specifically to national community, Marx saw not just a noble desire of an individual to commitment and identification with a larger entity stretching beyond one’s self, but also a “negative response to adverse social conditions.” 22 In the words of Benner, “Marx recognized that the ‘illusion’ of belonging to an integrated or superior community may, after all, be a negatively rational response to social disorientation, material deprivation, or a sense of weakness vis-à-vis other communities.” 23

28 Interestingly enough, Marx believed that there were important international factors contributing to the rise of German nationalism, namely the pressure of global competition. This is where his arguments become relevant not only for understanding contemporary globalization, but also the complex interplay between globalization and nationalism. In German Ideology , Marx emphasized the alienating character of not only exclusive national communities but also that of the world market. In his view, the expansion of the world market created not only preconditions for cooperation but also compelled regions and countries to become increasingly enslaved under an alien power, fuelling the exploitative and competitive processes that pitted class against class and nation against nation. 24 Marx, therefore, was quite aware that with the rise of the world market new sources of conflict might emerge. According to Benner, Marx foresaw that national identities forged in response to the global expansion of capitalism might appear to be particularly divisive. Benner writes that, “Already in 1843, he observed that the pressures of international competition had engendered a distinctly alienated form of nationalist ideology in his native Germany.” 25

29 It follows, therefore, that the nationalist reaction to the development of global competition is not a new phenomenon. One may also recall how modernization and its effects were seen to have provoked nationalist responses in places such as Germany and Russia in the 19 th and early 20 th centuries. Isaiah Berlin argued that both the Slavophile and populist movements in Russia, as well as German nationalism, can only be understood in the context of the traumatic effects of rapid modernization, including the effect of technological revolution, the development of new markets and the decay of the old ones, the consequent displacement of the entire classes, and the destruction of traditional ways of life. 26 Similar processes are at work today, linked to globalization and the impact it has on people’s lives. Communities are arguably reacting and responding to the perceived threats stemming not from another state or nation, but rather from the nature of ongoing social change that creates a sense of insecurity and undermines the familiar bonds of loyalty and identity.

30 What is different, however, in the accounts of past nationalist movements and those of new nationalism today is the striking absence of agency in the latter. Who exactly are new nationalists? It is rare that one encounters references to concrete nationalist groups, parties or leaders who could be described as new nationalists and whose interests, political agendas and motivations one could analyze. Traditionally, special attention was paid to the role of elites, political entrepreneurs, intellectuals, and charismatic leaders in shaping and influencing nationalist discourses, objectives, and political choices. It is possible to argue that new nationalism is a popular rather than elite-driven phenomenon, which is one of the features that sets it apart from the previous forms of nationalism. Moreover, new nationalism is arguably anti-elitist, since elites are seen as globalized cosmopolitans, detached from the rest of the populations and lacking both trust and legitimacy. For instance, Delanty suggests that one of the specificities of the new nationalism is that it is a movement from “below” unlike the old nationalisms that were often inspired and organized from above. However, one still needs to know how these movements from “below” organize themselves, who their leaders are and what their driving interests and motivations might be. Nationalism, as a form of politics, cannot function solely in terms of spontaneous feelings and leaderless groups. The role of political entrepreneurs in the case of post-communist nationalism, which is claimed to be one of the major incarnations of new nationalism, was well pronounced and cannot be underestimated. As Brubaker pointed out, the result of the breakdown of the Soviet System was not a struggle of post-Soviet “nations,” but of “institutionally constituted national elites.” 27

31 If new nationalism is a purely popular phenomenon representing a reaction or a backlash against globalization, then its political significance becomes doubtful. No matter how powerful a backlash is, if it is not able to organize itself into a political movement and bring votes or result in concrete political actions, then it is likely to remain on the margins of political life. There is no doubt that anti-globalization reactions exist and are often expressed in terms of defense of culture, tradition, and resistance to change. However, how these reactions translate into political action is an important question that remains unanswered by the globalization hypothesis.

32 Linked to the question of agency is the question of evidence in the literature on new nationalism. What are concrete examples of new nationalist movements that can be studied and analyzed? It seems that all manifestations of nationalism today are subsumed under the heading of new nationalism. This includes post-communist nationalisms that are most frequently cited as prime examples of new nationalism; it also includes minority nationalisms that are challenging the integrity of well-established multinational states such as Britain, Spain, Belgium, and Canada; and it also covers populist nationalisms of the extreme right or left that have strongly anti-globalist, radical, anti-establishment political agendas and seem to resemble closely the so-called new nationalisms of the globalization literature. These three manifestations of contemporary nationalism, however, are quite different in their vision, discourse, relations, and position within mainstream politics, public support and last but not least, attitudes to and relationship with globalization.

33 I have argued that the case of post-communist nationalism does not sit squarely within the new nationalist paradigm. It shares much with earlier forms of ethnic nationalism characteristic to nations ruled by foreign imperial powers; it had experienced not only a dramatic rise but also a significant decline in its popular appeal and political power; it went through the process of transformation and deradicalization, and even though it has contributed to the dissolution of multinational states such as the USSR or Yugoslavia, it could not be described as anti-statist by its outlook and aspiration. Minority nationalisms such as the Basque or Scottish are also difficult to characterize as exclusively new nationalist. They have long historic roots and traditions shaped by the specificities of their past and present. Nationalism in these cases is not a new phenomenon and one is left wondering whether it has experienced transformation under the influences of globalization and developed into what is now described as new nationalism. The case study of Basque nationalism returns to this question later in the book. Here it is suffice to say that radicalism of minority nationalisms defined in terms of their support for separatism varies greatly from place to place. Catalans for example seem to be content with arrangements of shared sovereignty, while Basques are more ambivalent and divided about the prospect of independence. Within minority nationalisms, as well as within cases of post-communist nationalisms, there are often divisions between more moderate and radical forces associated with different political parties and movements that complicate further their classification under the general heading of new nationalism.

34 The type of contemporary nationalism that comes closest to the concept of the new nationalism as described by supporters of the globalization hypothesis is the populist nationalism of the extreme left and right. In Western Europe political parties and movements that can be classed as representing and professing populist nationalism include mostly far right parties such as the French National Front, the Austrian Freedom Party, the British National Party, the Belgian Vlaams Blok, the Italian Alianza Nacionale, the Scandinavian Progress Parties, and others. In Eastern Europe, political actors endorsing populist nationalism range from the extreme right to the extreme left, encompassing the entire political spectrum. These include the Polish National Front, the Hungarian Magyar Gárda, the Slovak Party of National Unity, the Russian Liberal Democratic Party, as well as social/political movements such as Eurasia and Russian National Unity. In the United States, the Patriot Movements consisting of different organizations and societies comes closest to the populist nationalism under discussion. 28

35 Given the wide variety of actors involved in the production and spread of populist nationalism around the world, as well as the diversity of political and cultural backgrounds they represent, it is not easy to come up with a general characterization of populist nationalism either as a movement or as an ideology. To borrow Roger Griffin’s terminology, populist nationalism tends to be “customized” by drawing on local national myths unique to specific national groups and their cultural traditions. Nevertheless, it is possible to identify certain shared characteristics of various populist nationalisms. These include well pronounced anti-globalism and over dramatization of threats to national culture and identity arguably stemming from globalization, immigration, and economic transformation; ethnocentric nationalism often mixed with elements of racism and xenophobia; belief in the institutionalization of ethnic bias justified on the grounds of “national justice”; and general conservativism expressed in the glorification of family values, traditional morality, and hostility towards social and political dissent.

36 Ethnic nationalism under the condition of globalization appears to be the only force capable of defending nations from the perceived threat of annihilation. Even in countries such as the U.S. and France, with strong traditions of civic nationalism, contemporary manifestations of populist nationalism place special emphasis on blood, soil, history, bounded community, tradition, and culture and present a highly ethnocentric and exclusive vision of a nation. As a means of protecting the nation in question, national populists advocate anti-immigration policies as well as measures aimed at supporting and prioritizing national culture and privileging co-nationals—defined in ethnic terms— for jobs, access to resources, and social benefits. In some East European countries, such as Russia or Georgia where ethnocentric nationalism has traditionally been dominant, populist nationalists advocate open discrimination against foreigners as well as against internal religious and national minorities. They receive the recommendations of international institutions to protect and respect human and minority rights with particular hostility, since these institutions, as well as local governments that cooperate with them, are seen as agents of globalization and its anti-national conspiracies.

37 It is possible to argue that contemporary populist nationalism can be taken as one of the manifestations of new nationalism in the global era. It has a clear anti-globalization focus; its proponents display open hostility toward mainstream political actors and international institutions; and it has a highly exclusive and ethnocentric definition of a national community to be defended and protected from external influences. The main difference, however, is that populist nationalism tends to be strongly statist rather than anti-statist and that it is a marginal political force rather than a dominant one as the new nationalism should be according to the globalization hypothesis.

38 Populist nationalists may oppose multinational states and lament the changing demographic composition of their societies resulting from immigration or higher birth rates among minority communities, but they are staunch supporters of the nation-state ideal as well as of principles of sovereignty, independence and unity. The position of the famous Russian national populist Alexander Dugin is indicative in this respect. He maintains that his party supports the strong state, which would reinforce “Russia’s strategic unity, her geopolitical homogeneity, the vertical line of authority, curtailing the influence of oligarchic clans, supporting national business, fighting separatism, extremism, localism.” 29 Most of the European far right politicians would share these objectives as they tend to be staunchly statist, opposed to the EU and concerned with the restoration of ethnic and cultural homogeneity of their respective states. Thus the British National Party (BNP) campaigns for the restoration of strong and independent Britain, which would leave the EU, close its borders for immigrants and asylum seekers, boost defense spending and concentrate on the promotion of “British national interests.” 30 Similarly, France’s National Front aims at the restoration of a strong and purely French state by curtailing immigration, reinforcing French culture, and establishing preferences for French people. 31

39 In recent years populist nationalists have gained significant electoral success particularly in countries of Western Europe. However, their performance has been very unstable, often boosted by what is referred to as protest votes which rarely translate into sustainable political clout. In addition, populist nationalists tend to enjoy far greater public and media attention than they deserve, creating a false impression of a highly visible, active and significant political force. Nick Cohen has observed that the BNP receives coverage in the reverse proportion to its political significance and gains much from media attention. 32 Similarly, Peter Davies noted with respect to the French National Front and its leader that French national populists thrive on media attention and give the impression that they are deliberately arranging to be surrounded by controversy in order to remain in the headlines. 33 It should also be noted that the performance of populist nationalists have varied significantly across Europe. In some countries they are well organized, well structured, with relatively wide outreach and popular support. In others, they have performed poorly, not to say disastrously; the British National Party or the Dutch Center Party are the cases in point. The German extreme right has performed moderately well, but, as Hainsworth pointed out in his study of the European extreme right, overall they represent an unfulfilled promise. 34 It would probably be an understatement to dismiss the National Front of France or Austria’s Freedom Party as politically insignificant and marginal given their performance in several elections. However, it would be an equally erroneous overstatement to say that populist nationalism is a new and resurgent force, reshaping state boundaries and threatening international peace and security.

40 An important factor in the success or failure of populist nationalism in a given country is the presence and a relative strength of more moderate and mainstream forms of nationalism. In Georgia, as the next chapter demonstrates, populist nationalism declined almost in proportion with the rise of government-led nationalism against which populist nationalists were unable to compete. The Basque case also shows that the traditionally strong nationalism of the ruling party continues to attract a majority of supporters, making it more difficult for the radicals to succeed. In Western Europe, populists from the far right parties tend to do less well when mainstream parties take on a more nationalistic agenda and start talking tough on issues such as crime and immigration, which are the main issues of concern for the right wing voters. This is how the Conservative Party has neutralized the far right vote in Britain. In the 2007 French presidential election Nicolas Sarkozy did the same to the National Front’s Jean Marie Le Pen, who was far more successful and reached the run-off stage in 2002.

41 In some cases, however, this trend could lead to the worrying radicalization of the mainstream instead of the marginalization of radicals. This has been happening in Russia for instance, where growing nationalism of the ruling party has allowed radicals to begin exerting more and more influence not by competing against the mainstream but by working with it. The Financial Times of September 8, 2008, a month after Russia’s invasion of Georgia, noted that against the backdrop of conflict in Georgia and deteriorating relations with the West, Russia’s ultra-nationalist thinkers are starting to exert unprecedented influence. The publication quotes Alexander Dugin who says that only few years ago people like himself had been considered extremists, “respectable, yes, but radicals. Now we are moving right into the centre.” 35

42 It is possible to conclude that even though populist nationalism does resemble to a certain degree the type of new nationalism that the globalization hypothesis describes, it is neither the dominant nor the only type of nationalism that exists in the global era. The case studies will illustrate clearly that as a rule different types of nationalist forces coexist within a single society and they tend to develop different attitudes and relationships with globalization. The concept of new nationalism does not add clarity to the understanding of contemporary nationalism in its various manifestations and neither does it allow the elaboration of a complete picture of the relationship between globalization and nationalism.

3.3 The Globalization Hypothesis: An Incomplete Picture

43 Understanding the relationship between globalization and nationalism is contingent upon the way we understand the role and nature of contemporary nationalism. The globalization hypothesis interprets nationalism mainly in terms of fragmentation, isolation, exclusion, cultural protectionism, and opposition to the state. It is the opposite of the integrationist and internationalist essence of globalization that is seen as a threat to national culture and identity and needs to be resisted in defense of the national, the local, and the particular. Consequently, the relationship between globalization and nationalism appears to be a clash and confrontation, representing the struggle between the two contradictory and mutually exclusive tendencies.

44 Such an interpretation of nationalism, however, misses out on a significant international dimension that is inherent in both the ideology and practice of nationalism and that explains why coexistence of nationalism and globalization is not a paradoxical but an understandable occurrence, with nationalism often promoting rather than resisting globalization. It should be noted that nationalism, for its relevance, relies entirely on a specific international environment, which rewards communities that are defined as “national” with sovereignty and recognition. Many have argued that the unique power and appeal of nationalism lies in its ability to speak for a particular community, cherishing its roots, traditions, myths, and symbols. It is linked to the deep-rooted desire of people to preserve ancient values and traditions and to reinvigorate a distinctive cultural heritage. 36 This view, however, does not explain why the creation and preservation of a specifically national community and national culture matters in the first place. Why is it so important that communities constitute themselves as nations and seek to be recognized as such? The answer lies in the existing international system, which values nationhood as the basis of sovereign statehood, and sovereignty remains the only form of political recognition. As Eugene Rosens discovered when comparing ethnic identifications among Indians in Canada and Bolivia, “a rise of ethnic self-affirmation under the banner of ‘own’ culture, ‘the right to remain different,’ and ‘being an independent people,’ is related to a broader political context that rewards such self-affirmation in one way or another.” 37

45 In the context of the existing international system, therefore, nationalism enjoys unique relevance as it is inextricably linked to the very nature and set up of its constituent political communities. It is the main discourse through which claims to political authority and control of territory are articulated and justified. As Andrew Hurrell noted, “it is the norm that, more than any other, ties the inside and the outside: what the units are to be, who their members are, and how their boundaries are to be determined.” 38 A the same time, it is important not only to constitute oneself as a nation but also to be recognized as such by others. International recognition is a matter of utmost importance for nationalists who rarely seek isolation in the name of cultural preservation. One may argue that the struggles for national self-determination of both past and present are essentially struggles for international recognition. Even the most radical of post-communist nationalists of Eastern Europe sought international engagement as a necessary condition for national self-preservation and made tireless appeals to portray themselves as European and Western. Vesna Goldsworthy noted that Serbia’s most notorious nationalist, Slobodan Milosevic, proclaimed at the opening ceremony of one of the Danube bridges destroyed in NATO bombing that Serbia was the most European of European countries, emphasizing the “paradox of Europe being the enemy and the measure of Serbia’s ‘success.’” 39 Similarly, Croatia’s Tuđman, while engaging in the Bosnian War, asserted that in its struggle for independence Croatia was in reality choosing Europe and leaving the Balkans. As the Georgian case study demonstrates, the most radical and uncompromising of Georgian nationalists presented their nationalist aspirations as a way of returning Georgia to Europe and sought international support and engagement while fearing isolation and neglect.

46 Among the bigger and more powerful nations, it is common to seek domination over others as means of self-affirmation and perpetuation of national pride, which once again underscores internationalist elements of the nationalist doctrine. The main goal of Russian nationalists after the collapse of the Soviet Union has been the reassertion of dominance over its former satellites and the achievement of international recognition of its “region of privileged interest.” 40 Claims for international dominance coupled with the desire to be respected as a major player in world politics, represent a defining feature of Russia’s growing nationalism. The close link between nationalism and internationalism, whether defined in terms of domination or cooperation, is a common feature of major powers and the way they project themselves both at home and abroad. As Billig noted on the example of the United States, “when U.S. presidents, today, claim to speak simultaneously on behalf of their nation and a new world order, they are not placing, side by side in the same utterance, elements from two, clearly separate ideologies; nor are they creating a novel synthesis from the thesis of nationalism and antithesis internationalism. They are using the hegemonic possibilities of nationalism… (that) are endemic in nationalist habits of thinking.” 41

47 The significance of international recognition and international engagement is not merely symbolic. It includes highly pragmatic, political, and national security considerations. For the majority of newly independent states of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, being part of European and global structures meant securing rather than undermining independence and viability of their recently acquired statehood. For example, Katherine Verdery described how in Romania the campaign for NATO membership was framed entirely in terms of nationalism and national interests. During the winter of 1997, an email signed by President Emil Constantinescu urged Romanians abroad to lobby their respective governments in Romania’s favor to fulfill their patriotic duty. According to Verdery, this episode demonstrated that internationalism is not opposed to nationalism but is rather seen “as the condition of national prospering.” 42 Similarly, Croatians’ drive to join Euro-Atlantic structures has been seen as an attempt to internationalize Croatia’s security and hence better guarantee peace. Thus according to Croatian political analyst Sinisa Tatalovic, Croatia’s entry into global political and military structures would ensure the necessary level of internationalization of its security and “further improve its security situation and chances for a long lasting peace and successful realization of its national interests.” 43 Similarly, the Hungarian foreign minister described NATO membership as “a guarantee of our security,” 44 while his counterpart from the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia maintained that membership in NATO and similar structures is important because “it not only protects national sovereignty and geo political interests of their members but also enables unhindered further development…” 45 Dutceac also noted that in the eyes of Macedonian leaders, their country can exist only as part of the larger structures of the region. The sense of safety can be achieved via integration in regional security communities and through international guarantees. 46

48 For post-communist countries that have experienced ethnic conflict and internal warfare, greater international involvement and global integration has also carried prospects for eventual conflict settlement and sustainable peace as opposed to further conflict and confrontation as predicted by the globalization hypothesis. The Georgian case demonstrates that for many Georgians, including Georgian nationalists, the hope, whether justified or not, of resolving internal conflicts has always been associated with greater international involvement and increasing globalization of the country. Similarly, Dimitar Bechev wrote that Balkan peoples who were trying to get rid of their stigmatizing name rebranded the region as South-East Europe not only for emotional and psychological reasons but also to attract greater Western support and attention. In his words, the Balkanist discourse recommended a policy of non-engagement in the region: “A common refrain in the days of the Bosnian war was, for example, minimal engagement and caution in order not to be bogged down in the cycle of ethnic warfare.” 47 Many South-East Europeans have complained about their neglect by the West and the rest of Europe in comparison to other countries of Eastern and Central Europe, just as Georgians have been complaining about their treatment in comparison with the Baltic States. The reason for complaining was their belief that greater international attention and involvement would bring stabilization, democratization and better prospects for resolving the internal conflicts that have plagued both the Caucasus and the Balkans.

49 The above discussion raises a number of questions with regard to the globalization hypothesis and the relationship it depicts between globalization and contemporary nationalism. The first question has to do with the nature of threat that globalization is arguably posing to the survival of national culture and identity. In this context, if globalization is a threat then what is non-globalization? Is non-globalization— expressed in terms of international isolation, political exclusion, the closure of borders, lack of multinational companies, foreign investments, and international institutions—an answer to the survival and wellbeing of national communities? Is it true that some nationalist leaders, particularly those that were earlier described as populist nationalists, refer to globalization as a threat and play up popular fears and misperceptions? At the same time, there are other nationalist leaders who see globalization as an opportunity while international isolation and non-engagement as a major threat to their very nationalist goals and aspirations. As Ulrich Beck has noted, the threat nowadays is not so much an invasion by investors and influx of global actors and capital, but rather of their non-invasion, or the threat of their withdrawal. “There is only one thing worse than being overrun by big multinationals, not being overrun by big multinationals,” 48 Beck wrote. It is the threat of not doing something, the threat of not investing in and not engaging with one’s country.

50 Nationalists in many instances have been successful in combining liberal, pro-globalization messages and policies with strongly nationalist ones. This is often the case among stateless nations such as the Basques and the Scots who exhibit support for political nationalism, economic globalization, and integrationist projects such as the European Union in equal measure. The same is true for many post-communist countries that have been successful in integrating into the world market and global institutions while simultaneously adhering to a clearly nationalistic political agenda. For instance, post-communist Hungarian leaders have been perpetuating Hungarian national identity defined in ethnic terms and pursuing strong homeland nationalism with respect to kin-minorities living in neighboring states while simultaneously embracing economic liberalism and actively engaging in global economic and political processes. Hungary is a country with a long tradition of political nationalism but it has shown no signs of national protectionism in the sphere of economic policy or its drive for Euro-Atlantic integration. On the contrary, Hungary has experienced a huge inflow of foreign direct investment, reaching the highest per capita level in all of Central and Eastern Europe. Its export and import figures with the EU have quadrupled since 1989 and it became the first Eastern European country to apply for EU membership, as early as 1991. 49 The same can be said about the Baltic states of the former Soviet Union. On the eve of the Soviet Collapse, the Baltic Republics had the strongest and the best-organized nationalist movements, with nationalist sentiments dominating both politics and daily life. At the same time, however, the Baltic Republics were most clearly and un equivocally pro-Western and pro-European nationalists, leaving Russia’s sphere of influence and embracing economic, political and technological aspects of globalization faster than any other former Soviet country.

51 This leads to the second issue with the globalization hypothesis, which is its built-in universalism and lack of differentiation both in terms of different types of contemporary nationalism and applicability of its constituent arguments across a wide range of cases. For instance, it has been argued that emotional and psychological effects of globalization lead to the rebirth of the bounded community and traditional norms and values. This may be true in some cases but it is worth noting that the majority of the world’s population continues to live in traditional societies where communities are strong and need little reinvention. On the contrary, in many cases community and other traditional forms of bonding such as family and customs appear more as a source of restraint and collective control rather than that of meaning, freedom, and personal self-realization. Linked to the critique of globalization, and atomization of individuals that it represents, is the danger of over-romanticizing the notion of a bounded community, which is often rather unkind to its members.

52 The strength of community and the value people attach to it is often culturally determined. This means that the effects of globalization, both real and perceived, on local communities may vary from culture to culture. Similarly, the relationship between globalization and local nationalism may be different in different geographic and cultural areas. In other words, there is no reason to expect that the links between globalization and nationalism are the same in Europe as in the Middle East or South East Asia. Moreover, even within Europe, which is the main geographical focus of this study, there are variations worth pointing out. Why, for instance, has political nationalism been so strong in post-communist Georgia and less so in post-communist Moldova? According to the globalization hypothesis, nationalist reactions should be strongest where the impact of globalization has been the most pronounced. However, countries that rank high among the most globalized ones are rarely the ones that are known for the strength of radical and fragmenting nationalism.

53 Globalization theorists do not look at Singapore, arguably the most globalized nation in the world, 50 for the evidence of globalization-induced nationalist resurgence but the former communist countries or nationalist movements of minority groups. However, even among the post-communist states one may notice a reverse correlation between the impact of globalization and the strength and popular appeal of nationalism. As already noted, the resurgence of East European nationalism reached its peak in the early 1990s and since then has been experiencing relative decline alongside the increasing globalization of the region. Furthermore, ethnonational violence remained confined to the Balkans and the Caucasus, two regions that were particularly isolated and left out of global processes at the time. According to the Globalization Index developed by Foreign Policy , the most globalized post-communist country is Estonia. It is also the country where radical nationalism declined and the mainstream nationalism became much more moderate as the country embraced globalization, pointing to the reverse correlation between increasing globalization and nationalism.

54 This brings us to the question of whether the cases of post-communist nationalist mobilization serve as good examples and should be treated as evidence of globalization-induced contemporary nationalism. It can be argued that globalization contributed or provoked the collapse of the Soviet Union, which in turn resulted in the rise of radical ethnonationalism. The Soviet collapse can be seen as the most radical example of how globalization weakens and undermines states, leading to the rise of ethnonationalism and in some instances eruption of ethnic conflicts. Thus according to Anthony Giddens, globalization explains both why and how Soviet communism met its end. The staterun enterprises and inefficient heavy industries that formed the basis of the Soviet economy were not able to compete in the global electronic economy. In addition, Giddens notes that “the ideological and cultural control upon which communist authority was based could not survive in an era of global media.” 51

55 Similar arguments linking the destruction of the Soviet Union with the pressures of globalization have been put forward by a number of scholars and commentators. For instance, David Lockwood suggested that opening to the world market and globalization—which the Soviet Union was forced to do in order to maintain military parity and economic competitiveness—finally brought about its demise. 52 The Soviet Union of the 1980s was faced with the need to initiate far-reaching reforms such as introduction of elements of private entrepreneurship, establishment of joint companies with Western partners and accompanying relaxation of authoritarian rule. This increasing political openness and exposure of the Soviet public to the Western world and Western lifestyles further undermined ideological credibility of the Soviet system. Arguably, it failed to resist pressures of open economic and ideological competition and crumbled under influences of globalization.

56 There are of course numerous other explanations of Soviet demise that include arms race, institutionalized nationalism, the rising inefficiency and economic overstretch, ideological bankruptcy and so on. Some observers have preferred the use of several explanatory factors or their combination to account for the failure of the Soviet system. For example, Peter Shearman suggested that the dual forces of globalization and nationalism were responsible for the Soviet collapse and end of the Cold War. It is beyond the scope of this work to go into details of the role of globalization in the Soviet collapse. For the sake of the argument, let us assume that globalization was indeed the main—or at least one of the main—factors that caused the Soviet regime to meet its end. Consequently, the failure of the Soviet state led to the resurgence of nationalism throughout the former Soviet block. According to Michael Ignatieff, first comes the collapse of the state followed by the Hobbesian fear, nationalist paranoia, and warfare: “Disintegration of the state comes first, and nationalist paranoia comes next.” 53

57 The problem with such an orderly causal chain is that it implies that ethnonationalism only and suddenly appeared after the collapse of the state, while in reality it became a strong political force in some Soviet republics and East European countries already prior to the dissolution of the USSR. Countries such as Poland and Hungary, or Georgia and Baltic States, have known the strength of ethnonationalism before experiencing the end of the Soviet Union and its consequences. One may argue that nationalist warfare only followed the collapse of the state, which would be true. However, it does not explain why such warfare appeared in some cases and not in others. Why nationalist warfare in the South Caucasus and not in the Baltic States? Since the state collapse affected all equally, it does not seem to be a sufficient explanation for the breakout of ethnonational conflicts.

58 It is also questionable whether the collapse of the Soviet Union is representative of the secular trend towards the weakening of the nation-state under the impact of globalization. Some would argue that the Soviet Union was not a state but an empire and causes of its failure are better understood in terms of empyreal collapse. 54 Others would describe it as a multinational state, since constitutionally it was a state and offered a single formal citizenship to its subjects. 55 Whether a state or an empire, the Soviet Union had enough peculiarities that would preclude it from being characterized as a classic nation-state strained by the impact of globalization. As Michael Waller and Alexei Malashenko pointed out, “if the relationship corresponds but loosely with that characteristic of classical colonial empires, it corresponds equally loosely with that characteristic of the classical nation state.” 56 In addition, the Soviet state covered a vast geographic area rich in resource, which allowed it to develop and maintain a distinct economic system and avoid interdependence. The Soviet state was also unique in its composition. It was not only a multinational state but also a multi-civilizational state, containing Western Christianity, Russian Orthodoxy and Islam, and including states as diverse as Estonia in its northwest and Tajikistan in its south. 57 Each of these characteristics could have determined the Soviet Union’s responses to globalization that would differ from those of other states.

59 The effects of globalization on the collapse of the Soviet Union are debatable and there are no other examples that could demonstrate that globalization can be the cause of state failure. There is also no agreement on whether and how globalization is affecting states, with some claiming the onset of the borderless world and retreat of the states under the impact of globalization while others arguing that globalization itself is led by and dependent upon states. I will not reproduce here the debate on the impact of globalization on the state in full. Clearly much depends on which states we are talking about and what their starting positions are in terms of strength, political cohesion, economic power, and military might. Weak states one may argue are actually strengthened by globalization and its constituent processes. The Georgian case demonstrates that globalization is the force sustaining rather than undermining sovereignty and independence of post-communist Georgia. Furthermore, the very existence of many small and weak states such as Georgia is due more to the present global political environment that supports and recognizes them rather than by sheer strength and viability.

3.4 Conclusion

60 This chapter challenged some of the main assumptions of the globalization hypothesis with regard to the nature, main characteristics, and resurgent strength of nationalism in the era of globalization. It has argued that contemporary nationalism has much in common with previous forms of nationalism and can hardly be described as a new phenomenon or a new nationalism. It has also demonstrated that evidence of the past twenty years does not support the view of radical nationalism as a resurgent force rising exponentially and in proportion with increasing globalization. A more detailed and balanced analysis of the evidence suggests significant fluctuations in the strength and appeal of political nationalism both across time and space. It also highlights the changing nature of nationalist movements and discourses under the influences of globalization, with good reasons to believe that globalization contributed to the deradicalization and transformation of certain nationalist movements, including those in the post-communist space.

61 One of the main weaknesses of the globalization hypothesis is the view of nationalism as the defensive, protectionist, and isolationist force, which puts it in clear contrast and contradiction with globalization. Such a view, however, overlooks an important international dimension of nationalism and its reliance on a specific international system that provides it with power and legitimacy. It is precisely the outward-looking aspects of nationalism that drive nationalist forces not only to resist and criticize globalization but also to embrace and engage with it. The two can be and often are complementary rather than contradictory tendencies, with nationalism serving as a force promoting rather than resisting globalization. The next two chapters demonstrate how this is done in practice by looking at the cases of Georgian and Basque nationalisms respectively.

Notes de bas de page

1 See Michael Billig (1995) Banal Nationalism , London: SAGE.

2 Kalevi Holsti (2000) “Internationalism and Nationalism within the Multi community State” in Nationalism and Internationalism in the Post-Cold War Era , Kjell Goldmann, Ulf Hannerz, Charles Westin (eds.), London: Routledge p. 154.

3 Ibid., p. 154.

4 See Ted Robert Gurr (2000) “Ethnic Warfare on the Wane,” Foreign Affairs , 79:3, pp. 52–65.

5 Barnett R. Rubin (1998) “Managing Normal Instability” in Post-Soviet Political Order: Conflict and State Building , Barnett Rubin and Jack Snyder (eds.), London: Routledge, p. 165.

6 Rogers Brubaker (1998) “Myths and Misconceptions in the Study of Nationalism” in National Self-Determination and Secession , Margaret Moore (ed.), Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 243.

7 See Elena Jurado (2003) Complying with European Standards of Minority Protection, PhD Thesis, Oxford University.

8 See Natalie Sabanadze (2002) International Involvement in the South Caucasus, Working Paper, Flansburg: European Center for Minority Issues. Available at http://www.ecmi.de

9 Jurado, Complying with European Standards of Minority Protection.

10 See Kegley and Wittkopf, World Politics , p. 368.

11 Eric Hobsbawm (1992) Nations and Nationalism Since 1780 , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 33.

12 Ibid., p. 84.

13 For a discussion on the role of nationalism in the international system, see F. H. Hinsley (1973) Nationalism and the International System , London: Hodder & Stoughton; also James Mayall (1991) Nationalism and International Society , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

14 Fred Halliday (1999) “Nationalism and Globalization” in The Globalization of World Politics , John Baylis and Steve Smith (eds.), Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 361.

15 Ibid., p. 97.

16 Manuel Castells (1997) The Power of Identity , Oxford: Blackwell, p. 32.

17 Mark Jurgensmeyer (2002) “The Paradox of Nationalism” in The Postna tional Self , Ulf Hedetoft and Metter Hjort (eds.), Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, pp. 13–14.

18 See Ernest Gellner (1983) Nations and Nationalisms .

19 Adrzej Walicki (1982) Philosophy and Romantic Nationalism , Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. 64.

20 Hans Kohn (1965) Nationalism: Its Meaning and History , Princeton: D. Van Nostrand Company, p. 81.

21 Hans Kohn (1994) in Nationalism , Anthony Smith and John Hutchinson (eds.) Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 164.

22 Erica Benner (1995) Really Existing Nationalisms , Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. 78.

23 Ibid., p. 82.

24 Ibid., p. 81

25 Ibid., p. 82. See also Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (1965) German Ideology , S. Ryzanskaya (ed.), London: Lawrence and Wishart.

26 Isaiah Berlin (1981) “Nationalism” in Against the Current , Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 349.

27 Rogers Brubaker (1996) Nationalism Reframed , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 25.

28 For the discussion of contemporary American nationalism and its role in U.S. politics today, see Anatol Lieven (2004) America Right or Wrong , London: Harper Collins Publishers.

29 Available at http://eurasia.com.ru/dugin1013_eng.html .

30 See official site of the British National Party at http://bnp.org.uk/policies-2 .

31 See Jon Henley, “The True Face of The National Front,” Guardian , April 25, 2002.

32 See Nick Cohen, “All Mouth, No Trousers,” The Observer , June 6, 2004.

33 Peter Davies (1999) The National Front in France: Ideology , Discourse and Power , London: Routledge p. 6.

34 Hainsworth, The Politics of Extreme Right , p. 2.

35 Charles Clover in Moscow, “Invasion’s ideologues: ultra-nationalists join the Russian mainstream,” Financial Times , September 8, 2008.

36 See writing of Anthony Smith.

37 Cited in Margaret Canovan (1996) Nationhood and Political Theory , Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, p. 118.

38 Hurrell, On Global Order , p. 122.

39 Vesna Goldsworthy (2002) “Invention and In(ter)vention: the Rhetoric of Balkanization” in Dusan Bjelic and Obrad Savic (eds.), Balkan as Metaphor, Cambridge, Mass: The MIT Press, p. 35.

40 See George Friedman, “The Medvedev Doctrine and American Strategy, ”September 2, 2008 for Stratfor Global Intelligence. Available at: http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/medvedev_doctrine_and_american_strategy.

41 Billig, Banal Nationalism , p. 61. See also Lieven, America Right or Wrong.

42 Katherine Verdery (2000) “Nationalism, Internationalism, and Property in the Post-Cold War era” in Nationalism and Internationalism, p. 93.

43 European Integration and the Balkans (2002) (collection of speeches) Theodor Winkler, Brana Markovic, Predrag Simic and Ognjen Pribicevic (eds.), Belgrade: CSES, p. 248.

44 Ibid., p. 16.

45 Ibid., p. 310.

46 Anamaria Dutceac (2004) “Globalization and Ethnic Conflict,” The Global Review of Ethnopolitics, 3:2, pp. 31–32.

47 Bechev, “Contested Borders, Contested Identity: The Case of Regionalism in South-East Europe,” p. 12.

48 Ulrich Beck (2001) “Redefining Power in a Global Economy” available at http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/globalDimensions/ .

49 Dutceac, “Globalization and Ethnic Conflict,” pp. 33–34.

50 See Globalization Index, Foreign Policy available at http://www.foreignpolicy.com

51 Giddens, Runaway World , p. 14.

52 David Lockwood (2000) The Destruction of the Soviet Union: A Study in Globalization , New York: St. Martin’s Press, also for the arguments linking the collapse of the USSR to globalization, see Beverly K. Crawford (1999) “Mediating Globalization and Social Integration in Post-Communist Societies” in Scramble for the Balkans: Nationalism, Globalism and the Political Economy of Reconstruction , Carl-Ulrik Schierup (ed.), Basingstoke: Macmillan.

53 Michael Ignatieff (1999) “Nationalism and the Narcissism of Minor Differences” in Theorizing Nationalism , Ronald Beiner (eds.), Albany: State University of New York Press, p. 93.

54 See Alexander Motyl’s contribution in Post-Soviet Political Order: Conflict and State Building (1998), Barnett R. Rubin and Jack Snyder (eds.), London: Routledge.

55 See Michael Waller and Alexei Malashenko (1998) “Conflicts of Loyalty in the Soviet Union and Its Successor States” in Conflicting Loyalties and the State in Post-Soviet Russia and Eurasia , Michael Waller, Bruno Coppieters, and Alexei Malashenko (eds.), London: Frank Cass, p. 230.

56 Ibid., p. 231.

57 Ibid., p. 235.

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In This Article Expand or collapse the "in this article" section Globalization

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Globalization by David Atkinson LAST REVIEWED: 02 March 2011 LAST MODIFIED: 02 March 2011 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199743292-0009

Globalization is one of the most vibrant, contested, and debated issues in modern international relations. The process is subject to a wide-ranging number of definitions, but most scholars and observers agree that it represents a global process of increasing economic, cultural, and political interdependence and integration, with deep historical roots. It is a process fostered by liberalized international trade and innovations in information technology and communication, which has been promoted and managed to a greater or lesser degree by international institutions, multinational corporations, national governments (especially the United States), international nongovernmental organizations, and even individuals with access to the Internet. The field is particularly subject to the vagaries of events, and as such it is a dynamic literature that is constantly in flux. Nevertheless, the basic outlines of the field are clear. Economic interdependence remains the most obvious and significant manifestation of globalization. Nevertheless, scholars have increasingly turned their attention to the myriad additional symptoms of this process; in particular, challenges to the state’s primacy, migration, global security concerns, culture, crime, the environment, and technology. It remains a controversial process that has engendered both withering critiques and staunch defenses, while other scholars debate whether the process is irresistible, irrevocable, reversible, or even whether it represents the global reality at all.

Scholars of globalization are well served by a number of excellent general introductory texts. These overviews provide an indispensable entry point for new students, yet they are rigorous enough to provide new insights, approaches, and methodologies for graduate students and experienced scholars. Osterhammel and Petersson 2005 is a brief historical primer that emphasizes globalization’s deep historical antecedents. It is an indispensable guide for those seeking to explore the context of globalization’s most recent iteration. Ritzer 2010 offers an excellent orientation for those seeking a textbook-style introduction to the theory, debates, critiques, and scope of modern globalization. Similarly, Steger 2009 provides a concise but effective introduction to the myriad issues inherent in the subject. Scholte 2005 also provides an accessible overview of the major debates and themes, while stressing the overarching concept of superterritoriality. For those ready to delve into the often eclectic issues and implications raised by globalization in the modern age, Lechner and Boli 2007 presents a diverse assortment of essays and articles that run the gamut of opinion and methodology. Held and McGrew 1999 is an older but nevertheless excellent introduction to the major themes and debates facing globalization scholars. Once oriented in the theory and issues, new researchers will find Friedman 2000 and Greider 1998 excellent introductions to the often vigorous debates regarding the inevitability, impact, and sustainability of political, economic, and cultural globalization.

Friedman, Thomas L. The Lexus and the Olive Tree . Rev. ed. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000.

Popular journalistic account. Sees the process of globalization as inexorable and irrevocable; posits tension between consumer desires and traditional attachment to community. Insightful anecdotes illuminate the argument, but are increasingly outdated. Often betrays bias toward US-led free-market solutions, and its contrived jargon may grate. Lively introduction, best read in conjunction with Greider 1998 .

Greider, William. One World, Ready or Not: The Manic Logic of Global Capitalism . New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998.

Engaging polemical journalistic treatise against unfettered economic neoliberalism in particular and unregulated global capitalism in general. Sees globalization as a recipe for exploitation and severe economic inequity. Advocates global labor reforms, corrective tariffs, and capital reform. Unashamedly biased toward the left; best read in conjunction with Friedman 2000 .

Held, David, and Anthony McGrew. Global Transformations: Politics, Economics, and Culture . Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999.

Somewhat dated, but nonetheless an extremely well organized, thorough, and largely objective introduction to globalization and its many facets. Includes well-researched and historically grounded sections on historical precedents, violence, trade, finance, corporations, migration, culture, and environmentalism. Highly recommended to beginning undergraduates and graduate students, who should nevertheless bear in mind its age.

Lechner, Frank J., and John Boli, eds. The Globalization Reader . 3d ed. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2007.

Exceptionally rich collection of essays on various aspects of globalization. Impressive roster of contributors, ranging from esteemed academics to distinguished practitioners, along with statements from international nongovernmental organizations. Offers something for every researcher, from novice undergraduates to experienced scholars. Highly recommended, albeit eclectic, introductory text.

Osterhammel, Jürgen, and Niels P. Petersson. Globalization: A Short History . Translated by Dona Geyer. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005.

Translated from the German original (2003). Short, accessible primer on globalization’s deep historical roots. Brief introductory chapter on theory and concepts, but major focus on historical trends including imperialism, industrialization, emergence of global economy, and modern challenges to globalization. Especially suited to undergraduates and beginning graduate students.

Ritzer, George. Globalization: A Basic Text . Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010.

Thorough, extensive, and coherent introductory textbook. Particularly appropriate for undergraduates and new researchers. Effectively outlines contemporary theories, debates, criticisms, and issues. Includes chapters on historical antecedents, economics, culture, technology, the environment, migration, crime, and inequality.

Scholte, Jan Aart. Globalization: A Critical Introduction . 2d ed. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.

Highly praised theoretical introduction to globalization. Clearly presented and well-organized overview of major debates and concepts. Adopts superterritoriality as its organizing theme. Excellent bibliography provides readers of all levels with directions for future research. Suitable for use in the classroom, while experienced researchers will also benefit.

Steger, Manfred B. Globalization: A Very Short Introduction . Rev. ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.

Recently updated text from a popular series of introductory readers. Wide ranging and instructive despite its brevity. Thematic chapters on historical antecedents, economics, politics, culture, ecology, and ideology. Evident bias toward “compassionate forms of globalization,” which may irritate readers seeking a wholly dispassionate account. Nevertheless, an illuminating brief introductory text.

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Globalization: theory and experience

Globalization: theory and experience.’Globalization’ is a favourite catchphrase of journalists and politicians. It has also become a key idea for business theory and practice, and entered academic debates. But what people mean by ‘globalization’ is often confused and confusing. Here we examine some key themes in the theory and experience of globalization.

Contents : introduction · globalization: delocalization and supraterritoriality · risk, technological innovation and globalization · globalization and the rise of the multinationals and branding · capitalism, markets, instability and division · conclusion · further reading and references · links · how to cite this article

See, also, globalization and the incorporation of education

‘Globalization’ is commonly used as a shorthand way of describing the spread and connectedness of production, communication and technologies across the world. That spread has involved the interlacing of economic and cultural activity. Rather confusingly, ‘globalization’ is also used by some to refer to the efforts of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and others to create a global free market for goods and services. This political project, while being significant – and potentially damaging for a lot of poorer nations – is really a means to exploit the larger process. Globalization in the sense of connectivity in economic and cultural life across the world, has been growing for centuries. However, many believe the current situation is of a fundamentally different order to what has gone before. The speed of communication and exchange, the complexity and size of the networks involved, and the sheer volume of trade, interaction and risk give what we now label as ‘globalization’ a peculiar force.

With increased economic interconnection has come deep-seated political changes – poorer, ‘peripheral’, countries have become even more dependent on activities in ‘central’ economies such as the USA where capital and technical expertise tend to be located. There has also been a shift in power away from the nation state and toward, some argue, multinational corporations. We have also witnessed the rise and globalization of the ‘brand’. It isn’t just that large corporations operate across many different countries – they have also developed and marketed products that could be just as well sold in Peking as in Washington. Brands like Coca Cola, Nike, Sony, and a host of others have become part of the fabric of vast numbers of people’s lives.

Globalization involves the diffusion of ideas, practices and technologies. It is something more than internationalization and universalization. It isn’t simply modernization or westernization. It is certainly isn’t just the liberalization of markets. Anthony Giddens (1990: 64) has described globalization as ‘the intensification of worldwide social relations which link distant localities in such a way that local happenings are shaped by events occurring many miles away and vice versa’. This involves a change in the way we understand geography and experience localness. As well as offering opportunity it brings with considerable risks linked, for example, to technological change. More recently, Michael Mann has commented:

… what is generally called globalization involved the extension of distinct relations of ideological, economic, military, and political power across the world. Concretely, in the period after 1945 this means the diffusion of ideologies like liberalism and socialism, the spread of the capitalist mode of production, the extension of military striking ranges, and the extension of nation-states across the world, at first with two empires and then with just one surviving. (Mann 2013: 11)

Globalization, thus, has powerful economic, political, cultural and social dimensions. Here we want to focus on four themes that appear with some regularity in the literature:

• de-localization and supraterritoriality;
• the speed and power of technological innovation and the associated growth of risk;
• the rise of multinational corporations; and
• the extent to which the moves towards the creation of (global) free markets to leads to instability and division.

Globalization: delocalization and supraterritoriality

Manuel Castells (1996) has argued persuasively that in the last twenty years or so of the twentieth century, a new economy emerged around the world. He characterizes it as a new brand of capitalism that has three fundamental features:

Productivity and competitiveness are, by and large, a function of knowledge generation and information processing; firms and territories are organized in networks of production, management and distribution; the core economic activities are global – that is, they have the capacity to work as a unit in real time, or chosen time, on a planetary scale. (Castells 2001: 52)

This last idea runs through a lot of the discussion of globalization.

Globalization and de-localization. Many of the activities that previously involved face-to-face interaction, or that were local, are now conducted across great distances. There has been a significant de-localization in social and economic exchanges. Activities and relationships have been uprooted from local origins and cultures (Gray 1999: 57). One important element in this has been the separation of work from the home (and the classic move to the suburbs – see Putnam’s discussion of the impact on this on local social relations). But de-localization goes well beyond this. Increasingly people have to deal with distant systems in order that they may live their lives. Banking and retailing, for example, have adopted new technologies that involve people in less face-to-face interaction. Your contact at the bank is in a call centre many miles away; when you buy goods on the internet the only person you might speak to is the delivery driver. In this last example we move beyond simple notions of distance and territory into a new realm (and this is what Scholte is especially concerned with when he talks of globalization). When we buy books from an internet supplier like Amazon our communications pass through a large number of computers and routers and may well travel thousands of miles; the computers taking our orders can be on a different continent; and the books can be located anywhere in the world. The ‘spaces’ we inhabit when using the internet to buy things or to communicate (via things like chatrooms and bulletin boards) can allow us to develop a rather different sense of place and of the community to which we belong.

Not everything is global, of course. Most employment, for example, is local or regional – but ‘strategically crucial activities and economic factors are networked around a globalized system of inputs and outputs’ (Castells 2001: 52). What happens in local neighbourhoods is increasingly influenced by the activities of people and systems operating many miles away. For example, movements in the world commodity and money markets can have a very significant impact upon people’s lives across the globe. People and systems are increasingly interdependent.

[T]he starting point for understanding the world today is not the size of its GDP or the destructive power of its weapons systems, but the fact that it is so much more joined together than before. It may look like it is made up of separate and sovereign individuals, firms, nations or cities, but the deeper reality is one of multiple connections. (Mulgan 1998: 3)

Businesses are classic example of this. As Castells (2001) noted they are organized around networks of production, management and distribution. Those that are successful have to be able to respond quickly to change – both in the market and in production. Sophisticated information systems are essential in such globalization.

Globalization and the decline in power of national governments. It isn’t just individuals and neighbourhood institutions that have felt the impact of de-localization. A major causality of this process has been a decline in the power of national governments to direct and influence their economies (especially with regard to macroeconomic management). Shifts in economic activity in say, Japan or the United States, are felt in countries all over the globe. The internationalization of financial markets, of technology and of some manufacturing and services bring with them a new set of limitations upon the freedom of action of nation states. In addition, the emergence of institutions such as the World Bank, the European Union and the European Central Bank, involve new constraints and imperatives. Yet while the influence of nation states may have shrunk as part of the process of globalization it has not disappeared. Indeed, they remain, in Hirst and Thompson’s (1996: 170) words, ‘pivotal’ institutions, ‘especially in terms of creating the conditions for effective international governance’. However, we need to examine the way in which national governments frame their thinking about policy. There is a strong argument that the impact of globalization is most felt through the extent to which politics everywhere are now essentially market-driven. ‘It is not just that governments can no longer “manage” their national economies’, Colin Leys (2001: 1) comments, ‘to survive in office they must increasingly “manage” national politics in such a ways as to adapt them to the pressures of trans-national market forces’.

The initiation, or acceleration, of the commodification of public services was… a logical result of government’s increasingly deferential attitude towards market forces in the era of the globalized economy… A good deal of what was needed [for the conversion of non-market spheres into profitable fields for investment] was accomplished by market forces themselves, with only periodic interventions by the state, which then appeared as rational responses to previous changes. (Leys 2001: 214)

In other words, the impact of globalization is less about the direct way in which specific policy choices are made, as the shaping and reshaping of social relations within all countries.

Risk, technological innovation and globalization

As we have already noted, a particular feature of ‘globalization’ is the momentum and power of the change involved. ‘It is the interaction of extraordinary technological innovation combined with world-wide reach that gives today’s change its particular complexion’ (Hutton and Giddens 2001: vii). Developments in the life sciences, and in digital technology and the like, have opened up vast, new possibilities for production and exchange. Innovations like the internet have made it possible to access information and resources across the world – and to coordinate activities in real time.

Globalization and the knowledge economy. Earlier we saw Castells making the point that productivity and competitiveness are, by and large, a function of knowledge generation and information processing. This has involved a major shift – and entails a different way of thinking about economies.

For countries in the vanguard of the world economy, the balance between knowledge and resources has shifted so far towards the former that knowledge has become perhaps the most important factor determining the standard of living – more than land, than tools, than labour. Today’s most technologically advanced economies are truly knowledge-based. (World Bank 1998)

The rise of the so-called ‘knowledge economy’ has meant that economists have been challenged to look beyond labour and capital as the central factors of production. Paul Romer and others have argued that technology (and the knowledge on which it is based) has to be viewed as a third factor in leading economies. (Romer, 1986; 1990). Global finance, thus, becomes just one force driving economies. Knowledge capitalism: ‘the drive to generate new ideas and turn them into commercial products and services which consumers want’ is now just as pervasive and powerful (Leadbeater 2000: 8). Inevitably this leads onto questions around the generation and exploitation of knowledge. There is already a gaping divide between rich and poor nations – and this appears to be accelerating under ‘knowledge capitalism’. There is also a growing gap within societies (see, for example, Stiglitz 2013). Commentators like Charles Leadbeater have argued for the need to ‘innovate and include’ and for a recognition that successful knowledge economies have to take a democratic approach to the spread of knowledge: ‘We must breed an open, inquisitive, challenging and ambitious society’ (Leadbeater 2000: 235, 237). However, there are powerful counter-forces to this ideal. In recent years we have witnessed a significant growth in attempts by large corporations to claim intellectual rights over new discoveries, for example in relation to genetic research, and to reap large profits from licensing use of this ‘knowledge’ to others. There are also significant doubts as to whether ‘modern economies’ are, indeed, ‘knowledge economies’. It doesn’t follow, for example, that only those nations committed to lifelong learning and to creating a learning society will thrive (see Wolf 2002: 13-55).

Globalization and risk. As well as opening up considerable possibility, the employment of new technologies, when combined with the desire for profit and this ‘world-wide’ reach, brings with it particular risks. Indeed, writers like Ulrich Beck (1992: 13) have argued that the gain in power from the ‘techno-economic progress’ is quickly being overshadowed by the production of risks. (Risks in this sense can be viewed as the probability of harm arising from technological and economic change). Hazards linked to industrial production, for example, can quickly spread beyond the immediate context in which they are generated. In other words, risks become globalized.

[Modernization risks] possess an inherent tendency towards globalization . A universalization of hazards accompanies industrial production, independent of the place where they are produced: food chains connect practically everyone on earth to everyone else. They dip under borders. (Beck 1992: 39)

As Beck (1992: 37) has argued there is a boomerang effect in globalization of this kind. Risks can catch up with those who profit or produce from them.

The basic insight lying behind all this is as simple as possible: everything which threatens life on this Earth also threatens the property and commercial interests of those who live from the commodification of life and its requisites. In this way a genuine and systematically intensifying contradiction arises between the profit and property interests that advance the industrialization process and its frequently threatening consequences, which endanger and expropriate possessions and profits (not to mention the possession and profit of life) (Beck 1992: 39).

Here we have one of the central paradoxes of what Beck has termed ‘the risk society’. As knowledge has grown, so has risk. Indeed, it could be argued that the social relationships, institutions and dynamics within which knowledge is produced have accentuated the risks involved. Risk has been globalized.

Globalization and the rise of multinational corporations and branding

A further, crucial aspect of globalization is the nature and power of multinational corporations. Such companies now account for over 33 per cent of world output, and 66 per cent of world trade (Gray 1999: 62). Significantly, something like a quarter of world trade occurs within multinational corporations ( op. cit ). This last point is well illustrated by the operations of car manufacturers who typically source their components from plants situated in different countries. However, it is important not to run away with the idea that the sort of globalization we have been discussing involves multinationals turning, on any large scale, to transnationals:

International businesses are still largely confined to their home territory in terms of their overall business activity; they remain heavily ‘nationally embedded’ and continue to be multinational, rather than transnational, corporations. (Hirst and Thompson 1996: 98).

While full globalization in this organizational sense may not have occurred on a large scale, these large multinational corporations still have considerable economic and cultural power.

Globalization and the impact of multinationals on local communities . Multinationals can impact upon communities in very diverse places. First, they look to establish or contract operations (production, service and sales) in countries and regions where they can exploit cheaper labour and resources. While this can mean additional wealth flowing into those communities, this form of ‘globalization’ entails significant inequalities. It can also mean large scale unemployment in those communities where those industries were previously located. The wages paid in the new settings can be minimal, and worker’s rights and conditions poor. For example, a 1998 survey of special economic zones in China showed that manufacturers for companies like Ralph Lauren, Adidas and Nike were paying as little as 13 cents per hour (a ‘living wage’ in that area is around 87 cents per hour). In the United States workers doing similar jobs might expect US$10 per hour (Klein 2001: 212).

Second, multinationals constantly seek out new or under-exploited markets. They look to increase sales – often by trying to create new needs among different target groups. One example here has been the activities of tobacco companies in southern countries. Another has been the development of the markets predominantly populated by children and young people. In fact the child and youth market has grown into one the most profitable and influential sectors. ‘The young are not only prized not only for the influence they have over adult spending, but also for their own burgeoning spending power’ (Kenway and Bullen 2001: 90). There is increasing evidence that this is having a deep effect; that our view of childhood (especially in northern and ‘developed’ countries) is increasingly the product of ‘consumer-media’ culture. Furthermore, that culture:

… is underpinned in the sweated work of the ‘othered’ children of the so-called ‘Third World’. [W]ith the aid of various media, the commodity form has increasingly become central to the life of the young of the West, constructing their identities and relationships, their emotional and social worlds… [A]dults and schools have been negatively positioned in this matrix to the extent that youthful power and pleasure are constructed as that which happens elsewhere – away from adults and schools and mainly with the aid of commodities. (Kenway and Bullen 2001: 187).

Of course such commodification of everyday life is hardly new. Writers like Erich Fromm were commenting on the phenomenon in the early 1950s. However, there has been a significant acceleration and intensification (and globalization) with the rise of the brand (see below) and a heavier focus on seeking to condition children and young people to construct their identities around brands.

Third, and linked to the above, we have seen the erosion of public space by corporate activities. Significant areas of leisure, for example, have moved from more associational forms like clubs to privatized, commercialized activity. Giroux (2000: 10), for example, charts this with respect to young people

[Y]oung people are increasingly excluded from public spaces outside of schools that once offered them the opportunity to hang out with relative security, work with mentors, and develop their own talents and sense of self-worth. Like the concept of citizenship itself, recreational space is now privatized as commercial profit-making venture. Gone are the youth centers, city public parks, outdoor basketball courts or empty lots where kids call play stick ball. Play areas are now rented out to the highest bidder…

This movement has been well documented in the USA (particularly by Robert Putnam with respect to a decline in social capital and civic community – but did not examine in any depth the role corporations have taken). It has profound implications for the quality of life within communities and the sense of well-being that people experience.

Fourth, multinational companies can also have significant influence with regard to policy formation in many national governments and in transnational bodies such as the European Union and the World Bank (key actors within the globalization process). They have also profited from privatization and the opening up of services. As George Monbiot has argued with respect to Britain, for example: the provision of hospitals, roads and prisons… has been deliberately tailored to meet corporate demands rather than public need’ (2001: 4). He continues:

… biotechnology companies have sought to turn the food chain into a controllable commodity and [there is an] extraordinary web of influence linking them to government ministers and government agencies…. [C]orporations have come to govern key decision-making processes within the European Union and, with the British government’s blessing, begun to develop a transatlantic single market, controlled and run by corporate chief executives. (Monbiot 2001: 5)

While with globalization the power of national governments over macro-economic forces may have been limited in recent years, the services and support they provide for their citizens have been seen as a considerable opportunity for corporations. In addition, national governments still have considerable influence in international organizations – and have therefore become the target of multinationals for action in this arena.

Branding and globalization. The growth of multinationals and the globalization of their impact is wrapped up with the rise of the brand.

The astronomical growth in the wealth and cultural influence of multi-national corporations over the last fifteen years can arguably be traced back to a single, seemingly innocuous idea developed by management theorists in the mid-1980s: that successful corporations must primarily produce brands, as opposed to products. (Klein 2001: 3)

As Naomi Klein (2001: 196) has suggested, ‘brand builders are the new primary producers in our so-called knowledge economy’. One of the key elements that keeps companies as multinationals rather than transnationals is the extent to which they look to ‘outsource’ products, components and services. The logic underlying this runs something like the following:

…. corporations should not expend their finite resources on factories that will demand physical upkeep, on machines that will corrode or on employees who will certainly age and die. Instead, they should concentrate those resources in the virtual brick and mortar used to build their brands

Nike, Levi, Coca Cola and other major companies spend huge sums of money in promoting and sustaining their brands. One strategy is to try and establish particular brands as an integral part of the way people understand, or would like to see, themselves. As we have already seen with respect the operation of multinationals this has had a particular impact on children and young people (and education). There is an attempt ‘to get them young’.

Significantly, the focus on brand rather than the inherent qualities of the product as well as advantaging multinationals in terms of market development also has an Achilles heel. Damage to the brand can do disproportionate harm to sales and profitability. If a brand becomes associated with failure or disgrace (for example where a sports star they use to advertise their brand is exposed as a drug-taker; or where the brand becomes associated in the public’s mind with the exploitation of children – as for example has happened with some of the main trainer makers) then it can face major problems in the marketplace.

Globalization and the multinationals. While there is no doubting the growth in scale and scope of multinational corporations – the degree of control they have over the central dynamics of globalization remains limited.

In reality, they are often weak and amorphous organizations. They display the loss of authority and erosion of common values that afflicts practically all late modern social institutions. The global market is not spawning corporations which assume the past functions of sovereign states. Rather, it has weakened and hollowed out both institutions. (Gray 1999: 63)

While multinationals have played a very significant role in the growth of globalization, it is important not to overplay the degree of control they have had over the central dynamics.

Capitalism, free markets, instability and division

Amartya Sen (2002) has argued that ‘the market economy does not work by itself in global relations–indeed, it cannot operate alone even within a given country’. Yet, for some proponents of globalization the aim is to expand market relations, push back state and interstate interference, and create a global free market. This political project can be seen at work in the activities of transnational organizations like the World Trade Organization (WTO), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and has been a significant objective of United States intervention. Part of the impetus for this project was the limited success of corporate/state structures in planning and organizing economies. However, even more significant was the growth in influence of neo-liberal ideologies and their promotion by powerful politicians like Reagan in the USA and Thatcher in the UK.

A new orthodoxy became ascendant. In the USA a Democrat President renounced ‘big government’; in Britain, the Labour Party abandoned its commitment to social ownership. The ‘markets were in command’ (Frank 2002: xv). The basic formula ran something like the following:

Privatization + Deregulation + Globalization = Turbo-capitalism = Prosperity

(Luttwak quoted by Frank 2002: 17)

As various commentators have pointed out, the push toward deregulation and ‘setting markets free’ that so dominated political rhetoric in many northern countries during the 1980s and 1990s was deeply flawed. For example, the central tenet of free market economics – that unregulated markets ‘will of their own accord find unimprovable results for all participants’ has, according to Will Hutton (1995: 237), ‘now proved to be a nonsense. It does not hold in theory. It is not true’. Historically, free markets have been dependent upon state power. For markets to function over time they require a reasonable degree of political stability, a solid legal framework and a significant amount of social capital . The push to engineer free markets has contained within it the seeds of its own destruction.

The central paradox of our time can be stated thus: economic globalization does not strengthen the current regime of global laissez-faire . It works to undermine it. There is nothing in today’s global market that buffers it against the social strains arising from high uneven economic development within and between the world’s diverse societies. The swift waxing and waning of industries and livelihoods, the sudden shifts of production and capital, the casino of currency speculation – these conditions trigger political counter-movements that challenge the very ground rules of the global free market. (Gray 1999: 7)

Capitalism is essentially disruptive and ever-changing – and takes very different forms across the world. While it produces wealth for significant numbers of people, many others have suffered. The gap between rich and poor has widened as global capitalism has expanded. For example, David Landes (1999: xx) has calculated that the difference in income per head between the richest nation (he cited Switzerland) and the poorest non-industrial country, Mozambique, is now about 400 to 1. ‘Two hundred and fifty years ago, the gap between richest and poorest was perhaps 5 to 1, and the difference between Europe and, say, East or South Asia (China or India) was around 1.5 or 2 to 1’ ( op. cit. ).

The development of markets, the expansion of economic activity, and the extent to which growing prosperity is experienced by populations as a whole has been, and remains, deeply influenced by public policies around, for example, education, land reform and the legal framework for activity. Economists like Amartya Sen have argued that ‘public action that can radically alter the outcome of local and global economic relations’. For him the:

… central issue of contention is not globalization itself, nor is it the use of the market as an institution, but the inequity in the overall balance of institutional arrangements–which produces very unequal sharing of the benefits of globalization. The question is not just whether the poor, too, gain something from globalization, but whether they get a fair share and a fair opportunity. (Sen 2002)

Strong markets require significant state and transnational intervention. To be sustained across time they also require stable social relationships and an environment of trust. Moreover, they can be organized and framed so that people throughout different societies can benefit.

One commentator has argued that there is a very serious case not against ‘globalization’,

… but against the particular version of it imposed by the world’s financial elites. The brand currently ascendant needlessly widens gaps of wealth and poverty, erodes democracy, seeds instability, and fails even its own test of maximizing sustainable economic growth. (Kuttner 2002)

The gap between rich and poor countries has widened considerably. However, as Sen (2002) has commented, to ‘see globalization as merely Western imperialism of ideas and beliefs (as the rhetoric often suggests) would be a serious and costly error’. He continues:

Of course, there are issues related to globalization that do connect with imperialism (the history of conquests, colonialism, and alien rule remains relevant today in many ways), and a postcolonial understanding of the world has its merits. But it would be a great mistake to see globalization primarily as a feature of imperialism. It is much bigger–much greater–than that.

For example, while the reach and power of multinationals appears to have grown significantly, neither they, nor individual national governments, have the control over macro-economic forces that they would like. Ecological and technological risks have multiplied. Globalization in the sense of connectivity in economic and cultural life across the world, is of a different order to what has gone before. As we said at the start, the speed of communication and exchange, the complexity and size of the networks involved, and the sheer volume of trade, interaction and risk give what we now label as ‘globalization’ a peculiar force.

All this raises particular questions for educators. Has the process of globalization eroded the autonomy of national education systems? How has it impacted on the forms that education now takes? What is the effect of an increased corporate presence and branding in education? What response should educators make? We examine these and other issues in globalization and the incorporation of education .

Further reading and references

Gray, J. (1999) False Dawn. The delusions of global capitalism , London: Granta. 262 pages. A spirited and well argued polemic against the effort to create a global free market. Includes a very useful overview of debates around globalization. Highly recommended.

Landes, D. (1999) The Wealth and Poverty of Nations. Why some are so rich and some are so poor , London: Abacus. 650 + xxi pages. A fascinating overview of the development of the world economy – and why significant differences occur between countries and regions.

Mann, M. (2013).  The Sources of Social Power: Volume 4, Globalizations, 1945-2011 . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. The final part of Mann’s influential exploration of social power, this volume examines the globalizations that occurred since the Second World War via the major macroinstitutions of society: capitalism, the nation state, and empires.

Stiglitz, J. (2002) Globalization and its Discontents , London: Allen Lane. 282 + xxii pages. Important book arguing that the west – acting through the IMF and WTO has seriously mismanaged the process of privatization, liberalization and stabilization. As a result many southern countries are worse off.

Beck, U. (1992) Risk Society , London: Sage.

Beck, U. (1999) What is Globalization? , Cambridge: Polity Press.

Beck, U. (2001) ‘Living your life in a runaway world: individualization, globalization and politics’, in W. Hutton and A. Giddens. (eds.) On The Edge. Living with global capitalism , London: Vintage.

Castells, M. (1996) The Rise of the Networked Society , Oxford: Blackwell.

Castells, M. (2001) ‘Information technology and global capitalism’ in W. Hutton and A. Giddens. (eds.) On The Edge. Living with global capitalism , London: Vintage.

Chossudovsky, M. (1997) The Globalization of Poverty. Impacts of the IMF and World Bank reforms , London: Zed Books.

Cogburn, D. L. (1998) ‘Globalization, knowledge, education and training in the global world’, Conference paper for the InfoEthics98, UNESCO , http://www.unesco.org/webworld/infoethics_2/eng/papers/paper_23.htm

Foreign Policy (2002) ‘Globalization’s last hurrah?’, Foreign Policy , January/February, http://66.113.195.237/issue_janfeb_2002/global_index.html

Fox, J. (2001) Chomsky and Globalization , London: Icon Books.

Frank, T. (2002) One Market Under God. Extreme capitalism, market populism, and the end of economic democracy , London: Vintage.

Gee, J. P., Hull, L. and Lankshear, C. (1996) The New Work Order. Behind the language of the new capitalism , St. Leonards, Aus.: Allen and Unwin.

Giddens, A. (1990) The Consequences of Modernity . Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Giroux, H. A. (2000) Stealing Innocence. Corporate culture’s war on children , New York: Palgrave.

Held, D., McGrew, A., Goldblatt, D. and Perraton, J. (1999) Global Transformations – politics, economics and culture , Cambridge: Polity Press.

Hutton, W. and Giddens, A. (eds.) (2001) On The Edge. Living with global capitalism , London: Vintage.

International Monetary Fund (2000) Globalization: threat or opportunity, International Monetary Fund , corrected January 2002. http://www.imf.org/external/np/exr/ib/2000/041200.htm#II

Kellner, D. (1997) ‘Globalization and the postmodern turn’, UCLA , http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/courses/ed253a/dk/GLOBPM.htm

Klein, N. (2000) No Logo , London: Flamingo.

Kuehn, L (1999) ‘Responding to Globalization of Education in the Americas — Strategies to Support Public Education’, Civil Society Network for Public Education in the Americas – CSNPEA , http://www.vcn.bc.ca/idea/kuehn.htm

Kuttner, R. (2002) ‘Globalization and poverty’, The American Prospect Online , http://www.prospect.org/print/V13/1/global-intro.html.

Leys, C. (2001) Market-Driven Politics. Neoliberal democracy and the public interest , London: Verso Books.

Mann, M. (2013).  The Sources of Social Power: Volume 4, Globalizations, 1945-2011 . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Monbiot, G. (2000) Captive State. The corporate takeover of Britain , London: Pan.

Mount, F. (2012).  The new few: Or, a very British oligarchy . London: Simon & Schuster.

Morozov, E. (2013).  To Save Everything, Click Here: Technology, solutionism, and the urge to fix problems that don’t exist . London: Allan Lane.

Mulgan, G. (1998) Connexity: Responsibility, freedom, business and power in the new century (revised edn.), London: Viking.

Ritzer, G. (1993) The McDonaldization of Society , Thousand Oaks, CA.: Forge Press.

Romer, Paul M. (1986) ‘Increasing Returns and Long-Run Growth’, Journal of Political Economy 94(5), pp.1002-37.

Romer, Paul M. (1990) ‘Endogenous Technological Change’, Journal of Political Economy 98(5), pp. 71-102.

Scholte (1997) ‘Global capitalism and the state’, International Affairs , 73(3) pp. 427-52, http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/scholte.htm

Scholte, J. A. (2000) Globalization. A critical introduction , London: Palgrave.

Sen, A. (2002) ‘How to judge globalization’, The American Prospect Online , http://www.prospect.org/print/V13/1/sen-a.html

Shaw, M. (2001) ‘Review – Jan Aart Scholte: Globalization. A critical introduction’, Milleneum. A journal of international studies , http://www.sussex.ac.uk/Users/hafa3/scholte.htm

Stewart, J. (1992) ‘Guidelines for public service management: lessons not to be learnt from the private sector’, in P. Carter el. al. (eds.) Changing Social Work and Welfare , Buckingham: Open University Press.

Wolf, A. (2002) Does Education Matter. Myths about education and economic growth , London: Penguin.

World Bank. (1999) World Development Report 1998/99: Knowledge for Development . Washington: World Bank. [1999, 9 August]. http://www.worldbank.org/wdr/wdr98/contents.htm .

World Bank Research (2002) ‘Globalization, Growth and Poverty: Building an Inclusive World Economy’, The World Bank Group , http://econ.worldbank.org/prr/subpage.php?sp=2477

The American Prospect – special segment on globalization : helpful collection of articles and links.

Development Gateway Foundation : Useful set of pages on the knowledge economy + plenty of other resources.

Global Policy Forum. Useful set of resources and links that explore the nature of globalization.

No Logo : website linked to Klein’s book with bulletin board and various resources.

World Bank Research on Globalization . Collection of topic papers and reports.

Acknowledgement : Photograph – ‘Globalization’ is by Frederic Poirot – reproduced under a Creative Copmmons – Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 Generic licence [ http://www.flickr.com/photos/fredarmitage/3544394623/ ]

To cite this article : Smith, M. K. and Doyle M. (2002) ‘Globalization’ the encyclopedia of informal education , www.infed.org/biblio/globalization.htm .

© Mark K. Smith and Michele Erina Doyle 2002, 2013

Last Updated on April 24, 2024 by infed.org

Marxism and Globalisation

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This chapter will argue that much of the current discussion of the theme of globalisation suffers from an indeterminate characterisation of the process and that there is a need for a determinate historical and theoretical specification of the global system. Such a specification must be able to account for the particular intensity of modern globalisation as compared with the more general interaction across space that has characterised much of world history. We will see that there are close connections between discussions of globalisation and those of modernity. Specifically we argue that Marx has some claim to the status of the first major theorist of globalisation. Against this background, the chapter argues that, while other approaches have added refinements to Marx’s account and have suggested alternative lines of enquiry, they all rest on an unacknowledged starting-point — Marx’s. For these reasons, the argument concludes that the work of Marx and Marxism provide an indispensable point of departure for the study of globalisation.

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Bromley, S. (1999). Marxism and Globalisation. In: Gamble, A., Marsh, D., Tant, T. (eds) Marxism and Social Science. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-27456-7_14

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Globalization Theory: Approaches and Controversies, David Held and Anthony McGrew, eds., Oxford: Polity, 2007, pp. 288

2008, Canadian Journal of Political Science

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8.5: Theories of Globalization

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• Page ID 51784

• Lawrence Meacham
• Honolulu Community College

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Since the end of the Cold War, there have been fierce debates about the direction of world politics and the world economy. Globalists focus on numerous integrative organizations such as the UN, WTO, World Bank, International Monetary Fund. NAFTA, NATO and the EU, global MNC activities, the rise of tens of thousands of NGOs and increased cross-cultural influences. However, Barber’s Jihad vs. MacWorld and Friedman’s Lexus and the Olive Tree point out that there is also a counter tendency for traditional cultures to resist the homogenizing effects of globalization and to preserve local power, customs and lifestyles. Traditional local bosses have re-emerged in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and many other countries and affirmations of local culture are everywhere.

There is plenty of evidence for both tendencies. Countering all the integration is the fact that 53 of the 56 wars between 1990 and 2000 were civil wars, with local populations in Sudan, Yugoslavia, Chechnya and other regions trying to separate from central governments. This is not to mention Britain leaving the European Union and many other peaceful movements for local autonomy, such as in Quebec, Scotland, Wales, Catalonia and Northern Italy.

As for global vs. local culture, many Iranians exchange text messages on the Internet, watch forbidden cable TV shows produced by the Iranian community in the U.S., and wear sexy western fashions at private parties. However, the Iranian government does its their best to resist these outside influences, with government thugs harassing couples who hold hands, women whose scarves show too much hair, or young people with ‘decadent’ clothing or hairstyles. Indian MTV has rap music and sexy dancing, while militant Hindus enforce traditional culture by threatening people who celebrate Valentine’s Day and killing people accused of eating beef. In Pakistan, the government has sophisticated nuclear weapons, while mobs kill people accused of insulting the Koran. The second and third generations of immigrants in many countries are torn between the culture of their ‘native’ land and the culture where they grew up. Some immigrant children start high-tech companies. Others adopt militant Islam and carry out suicide attacks. Sometimes a blend is achieved. Many marriages are now semi-arranged, with both parents and children having input.

Thomas Friedman's book The World is Flat looks at how globalization is now being driven by technology, education and government policy (in contrast to Ricardo's theory of Comparative Advantage, which emphasized climate, natural resources, capital and labor). Furthermore, Friedman points out that the increased importance of these new factors means that any country, most recently China and India, can develop very rapidly and pose challenges to the West. Indian and Chinese engineers and computer scientists not only work cheaper - many have equal or superior skills to their Western counterparts. Microsoft’s software development office in Beijing has filed more patents than any other part of the company.

Samuel Huntington’s The Clash of Civilizations says that the world’s different civilizations (eight or nine of them, depending on the analysis) have basic differences in values, and thus will always be in conflict. Critics point out that there has been just as much conflict within Huntington’s civilizations (e.g. WWI and WWII in Europe, Sunnis vs. Shiites in the Muslim world) as between them, and that ‘different’ civilizations such as Confucianism and Christianity also share many values such as hard work, thrift and family.

In The End of History and the New Man , Francis Fukuyama claimed that the post-Cold War era of globalized capitalism and prosperity would also inevitably bring democracy, improving the political and economic life of the people it touches.

“What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government."

It hasn’t exactly worked out that way. New dictators rose and communist leaders reinvented themselves as nationalists and stayed in power. Strongmen were elected in Turkey, Poland, Hungary, the Philippines and Brazil. Elections installed radical Islamic governments in Egypt and Gaza and dictators like Venezuela’s Chavez and Russia’s Putin.

After being elected, Putin took over the media, set new election rules to exclude opponents, made regional governors appointed instead of elected, and took over most of the large corporations in the Russian economy, not to mention arresting and killing opponents. So much for the inevitability of free market capitalism and democracy.

Similarly, in 1913 the Chinese government’s Document Number 9 explicitly rejected Constitutional rights, the rule of law, free elections, the free press, free speech and other civil liberties. Since 2013, Xi Jin Ping has jailed critics and their lawyers, closed or taken over the media, increased censorship, required study of Communist ideology and increased support for government-owned corporations. Not very democratic in spite of some capitalism.

In The Coming Chaos , Robert Kaplan is pessimistic on both politics and economics. Like Friedman, he sees part of the world as globalizing and modernizing, but he points out that much of Africa, the Middle East, South and Southwest Asia, the Andean nations and Central America remain poor, violent, corrupt and misgoverned. There are so-called failed states, where the government is corrupt and ineffective. In Somalia, the so-called government only controls a few square blocks of the capitol city of Mogadishu, a multi-sided civil war rages in the rest of the country, and piracy operates openly from its coastal cities. In Afghanistan, former President Hamid Karzai had so little power outside the capitol that he was referred to as the Mayor of Kabul, and Taliban violence and massive corruption at all levels of government continue today. Unfortunately, there are many other examples.

In the age of modern travel and communications, it is easy for violence from these areas to spill over into the successfully globalized part of the world. In The Pentagon’s New Map , military theorist Richard Barnett acknowledges the split and sees the U.S. role as helping to stabilize and integrate these areas by giving them military assistance.

1. Briefly outline three types of globalization and give an example of each.

2. Briefly outline the globalization theories in The World Is Flat, The End of History, The Clash of Civilizations and The Coming Chaos. What is your opinion?

Globalisation Theories: World System, Modernisation, Dependency

Introduction – What is globalisation?

International trade has been around for centuries and while globalisation may feel like a modern concept, changes across borders have happened ever since. Silk and spice trade routes in East Asia, which originated in the first century BCE, brought diverse civilizations and linked various nations’ economies. In the 1500s, the British and Dutch import and export empires followed suit in this regard. The development of technology improving transport and communication has facilitated the growth of globalisation which includes sharing of language, culture, wealth and products. There is a large amount of information that is shared between peoples of different cultures and political, social or geographic backgrounds. Economies today are more interdependent than ever which further enhances the process of globalisation.

Globalisation is a word that is commonly used today, but its meaning is sometimes unclear, even among people who use it. Globalisation can be defined as the compression of the world in an attempt to strengthen the consciousness of the entire globe as one, based on a foundation of interdependency.

More than simply products and services are swapped as international trade evolves to become faster and more prevalent. Cultural traditions and ideas are also passed amongst different groups from group to group, which we know as a process termed diffusion. It’s a descriptive term for when material moves from areas of high concentration to areas of low concentration. Ideas and practices spread from locations where they would be well-known to regions where they are new and rarely noticed. Exploration, military conquest, missionary work, and tourism were formerly used to facilitate the exchange of ideas, but technology has dramatically accelerated the rate of diffusion. There is debate on whether globalisation should be seen as a never-ending process as some scholars suggest the possibility of future historians calling the period we are in the ‘era of globalisation’. This would indicate that there is a start date to the globalisation period, the end of the Cold War being a popular option for most.

The Three Globalisation Theories; Explained with Examples

World system theory.

World-systems theory emphasises the significance of the entire globe as a whole instead of individual nations. The world is divided into three regions: core nations, periphery countries, and semi-periphery countries. Countries in Western West Europe and the United States of America are examples of core countries. These countries have a powerful central government that is well-funded through taxes. They are economically diverse, industrialised, and largely self-sufficient. They have a sizable middle and working class, and they prioritise the manufacture of finished commodities above raw materials. Periphery countries generally refer to nations in Latin America and Africa that have unstable governments. They often rely on a single economic activity, which is more often than not, raw material extraction. There is a large proportion of impoverished and illiterate individuals, as well as a small elite class that controls the majority of the economy. As a result, there is a significant disparity in the population. Core nations and transnational firms have a significant impact on these countries. This has the potential to impair the peripheral nations’ future economic prospects.

Semi-periphery states such as India and Brazil fill the gap between the Core and the Periphery. They are not always influential in international commerce, but their economies are broad and advanced. These semi-periphery countries might arise from either Periphery countries climbing up to the modernised Core countries or Core countries descending to Periphery status. The World-Systems Theory is a fluid model, but it has been criticised for being overly focused on the economy and the Core nations, overlooking culture and even class conflicts inside individual countries.

            The United States (core nation) reaps disproportionate gains from economic and political interactions with Brazil (semi-peripheral nation) and Kenya (peripheral nation). The United States has a large, successful economy that is backed by a stable government whereas Brazil has a wide economy but is not an important international player in global trade activities. Meanwhile, Kenya only has the raw materials to offer to both countries and since they have no other buyers, they have to make do with the minimal prices offered by the USA and Brazil.

Modernisation Theory

According to the Modernization theory, all states follow the same route of transition from a traditional to modern society. It implies that traditional countries, with some assistance, may evolve into contemporary countries in the same manner that the modern nations of today emerged in the first place. Modernisation theorists examine the country’s internal factors affecting its progress (eg: economic policies of the country) as it adapts to new technology, as well as the socio-political changes that arise. One myth that modernisation theorists hold onto is that every population is on the path of modernising and that it is always desirable. This ignores the consequences, such as the weakening of bonds within the wider family, rising urban unemployment, and the fragmentation of the country’s current economic structure, and as a result, many ‘underdeveloped’ nations may see modernity in an adverse manner. Modernisation theory’s core argument is that with economic growth and development, any country can become advanced, industrialised and follow the footsteps of Western democratic countries in their goals. There is a strong focus on internal factors within the modernisation theory so much so that they do not consider external influences as a reason for the failure or success of a certain country’s economic progress. Although this theory focuses a lot on a single country, the understanding of this through the lens of globalisation is that modernisation expects developed countries to aid other countries in reaching their economic goals to bring them closer to a modernised society.

            Although there is ample debate on the modernisation theory, there is one commonality between the arguments for and the critique against it. Both sides use Japan as an example. Some regard it as proof that a totally contemporary way of life is possible in a non-Western civilization. Others claim that as a result of modernisation, Japan has grown noticeably more Western.

Dependency Theory

Dependency theory was developed in response to modernization theory, and it employs the concept of Core and Periphery nations from the World-systems theory to examine disparities between countries. Essentially, it is the belief that the poorer periphery or third world nations export raw resources to the rich core or first world countries. This occurs not because they are at a lower stage of development, but because they have been absorbed into the global system as an underdeveloped country. They have their unique structures and traits that are not found in industrialised countries, and they will not become a “core” nation at a rapid pace no matter the amount of external aid received. They are, more often than not, in an undesirable economic situation, which implies they have little potential to progress or develop. The Dependency theorists maintain that underdeveloped nations, if this model continues, will remain poor and dependent on wealthier nations.

Initially, dependency theory was connected mostly with Latin American countries that were embedded in the capitalist system. Resources tend to move from the periphery, or impoverished and undeveloped countries, to the core, or prosperous Western world. This is due to the fact that poorer nations on the periphery tend to offer natural resources and inexpensive labour for items created and sold by corporations in the wealthier, core countries. As time passes there have been various hegemonic cores that have emerged, like the US or previously Britain and before that the Netherlands which then for a period dominated the capitalist system. It’s not necessary that rich countries exploit poorer ones but capitalists exploit workers. For both dependency theorists and world systems theorists, wealth disparity is caused by the global capitalist system as a whole, and the answer for all structuralist thinkers is some kind of communism. Beyond that, import substitute industrialisation or ISI is an example of a suggestion to end dependency between nations. This term translates to something like the ‘Make in India’ movement that is gaining traction today.

            The Philippines embodies the same fundamental reality as other Third World countries. This is the reality of dependent and uneven development, which enriches global corporations and their local partners while impoverishing the poorest people. The omnipresent MNCs, or multinational companies, are the best example of this form of growth.

Benefits and Drawbacks of globalisation

These are just a few theories of globalisation. There are numerous interpretations and perspectives surrounding this process and through these, there are always an increasing number of benefits and/or drawbacks that are realised.

Benefits of globalisation:

• Increased efficiency in the use of resources
• Makes goods and services more accessible
• Promotes collaborations which boost the rate of modernisation
• Enhances Foreign Direct Investments (FDIs) which allows for increased development
• Assists in bringing populations above the poverty line
• Makes people aware of cultures and traditions from other part of the world
• Enables free flow of trade removing all restrictions and barriers
• Sharing of scientific and technological advances is made easier

Drawbacks of globalisation:

• Outsourcing labour reduces employment in the host country
• In countries with large human resources, machinery acquired through globalisation will cause large-scale unemployment
• Ill effects on the environment due to increased travel/traffic and overload of factories
• Processes of Globalisation might not have the same effect on all countries, resulting in economic inequalities
• Labour and Human rights are not kept in focus
• Cultural issues can arise when one culture dominates the other
• Allows Multinational Corporations (MNCs) too much power and liberty

The growing economic disparity between high-income and low-income nations is a cause for concern. And the amount of people living in abject poverty throughout the world is very concerning. However, it is incorrect to conclude that globalisation is to blame for the gap or that nothing can be done to alleviate the situation. On the contrary, low-income nations have taken longer to integrate into the global economy than others, partly due to their policies and partly due to causes beyond their control. Efforts are to be made to prevent globalisation from unfairly aiding the development and prosperity of advanced nations alone either by reevaluating the guidelines for international trade or by simply forcing core countries to foster development in underdeveloped nations.

Shaun Paul is a student at Symbiosis School for Liberal Arts doing a 4 year honours course. His major is International Relations and minors are Political Science and Sociology. He has been writing articles and reports since the age of 12 and has always found solace in researching, on most topics under the sun, and wishes to showcase this passion in his time at the Sociology Group.

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29 Globalization Theories

Rajnikant Pandey

Introduction

1.  Globalization: Definition

2.  Theories Of Globalization

2.1 Economic Globalization

2.3 Political Globalization

2.3 Cultural Globalization

3. Anthropology and Globalization Theory Summary

LEARNING OUTCOME

• understand the theoretical perspective on globalization
• use globalization as theoretical construct shaping the human socio-cultural life
• differentiate between globalization as idea and practice
• assess the impact of globalization theories on ethnographic research
• investigate the role of anthropologist in understanding globalization as process
• investigate the role of anthropologist in understanding globalization as idea
• define globalization for anthropological purpose
• challenge the notion of local global divide

Globalization is a buzzword today. There is extraordinary interest and concern over the globalization in academics. David Harvey claims that the word globalization was ‘entirely unknown before the mid-1970s’ and then it ‘spread like wildfire’. Globalization has attracted the attention of the mass media and general public as well and everyone is trying to grasp and define the phenomena in their own possible ways. Given the complexity of the topic, it is no wonder that there are plenty of controversies on what “globalization” means, and on the theoretical and methodological approaches for studying it.

Globalization as a socio-cultural phenomenon has been investigated by several disciplines and has attracted attention of anthropologist as well. Anthropologists have inquired the impact of globalization on the subject of their inquiry and its relation to traditional anthropological topics. And at the same time anthropologists have formulated theories of globalization which can inform the ethnographic practices and understanding of the socio-cultural life of humanity across the world.

The globalization as a process has influenced the lived reality of world today and subsequently changed the ideas about living in such a global world. These changes in ideas have taken shape in the form of theories of globalization which is highly interdisciplinary in nature. This chapter focuses on the formulation and discussion of anthropological definitions, modes of theorizing, and research methodologies in the field of globalization as well the emerging synthesis in the form of globalizing theories which has potential to influence ethnographic research in the world today.

1.   GLOBALIZATION: DEFINITION

During 1990s the term gained utmost prominence and there were hardly any social science talk and texts without mention of globalization. Anthropologists were also influenced by this dramatic upsurge of globalization as idea and practices in academic world. The anthropologist started to engage with globalization in two ways:

a) Understanding globalization as process and its impact on socio-cultural life

b) Understanding globalization as an idea and its theoretical propositions

The books and journals started to appear in mainstream anthropology to capture the nuances of globalization. Mike Featherstone edited a significant book titled Global Culture (1990) to set the agenda for Globalization studies in anthropology. The most prominent works which followed were Ulf Hannerz’s Cultural Complexity (1992), Jonathan Friedman’s Global Identity and Cultural Processes (1994) and Arjun Appadurai’s Modernity at Large (1996).

George Ritzer who is authority on theories of globalization define “globalization as a transplanetary process or 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 ”.

Ted C. Lewellen in his book The Anthropology of Globalization (2002) define “contemporary globalization as the increasing flow of trade, finance, culture, ideas, and people brought about by the sophisticated technology of  communications and travel and by the worldwide spread of neoliberal capitalism, and it is the local and regional adaptations to and resistances against these flows”.

Both the definitions are similar and prioritize the flows and connections of different kind and at the same time barriers and resistance which exist at global scale to counter these flows. The later aspect has been emphasized by anthropologist to understand globalization as a process leading towards disconnection, dispossessions, exclusions, and marginalization for many in the world.

Globalization old or new

The most contested issues in theorizing globalization is whether it is old or new process. The people who think that globalization is new emphasize the pace and nature of global connection which exists today is unprecedented and has never been seen in the human past. The supporters of old globalization have provided evidences of global network of trade commerce, pilgrimage and migration in at least 5000 year human history. Some even suggest that first human being walking out of Africa was first step towards globalization. The historical evidences suggest that human being have maintained strong network of places and people in the past as well and which have only intensified in the present time. Many suggest that globalization can be thought of as the outcome of imperialism, colonization, development and subsequent westernization and Americanization of world set in motion in recent past.

2.   THEORIES OF GLOBALIZATION

The globalization studies have emphasized the importance of role of free market and transnational capitalism in global changes. However there are clear depictions of legal, political, social and cultural aspect of human life being influenced by global economic flows. There is prominence of theories which give significance to techno-economic understanding of globalization and other aspect of globalization as extension of economic sphere. For the purpose of our understanding we are following George Ritzer (2011) who has discussed the theories of globalization in following headings to understand it separately. But there is always overlap between one and other processes of globalization and they cannot be separated as neatly as it seems in the following discussions.

The global markets of money, labour, capital, goods and services are basic features of globalization theories.

Most of the economic theories of globalization are neo-liberal and neo-Marxian in its approach.

Neo-liberalism: Neo –liberal theories which emerged in 1930s to put forth the ides of free operation of market, opposition to state interventions and individual liberty shaped the processes of economic globalization and thinking about it. Milton Friedman and set of Chicago economists are major economists who gave neo-liberalism an ideological face. William Easterly and others favors the free market and market fundamentalism as basic virtue of economic success. There is strong faith in global expansion of capitalist system and its inherent virtue to trickle down to all participants. Deregulation, privatization and free trade are basic necessity. Spending on welfare by state should be curbed and limited government intervention is required for global outreach of capital.

Neo-Marxian: Leslie Sklair takes a new Marxian approach to the understanding of globalization. He proposes that there are two kinds of globalization 1) capitalist globalization and 2) socialist globalization. The spread of transnational capitalism is an important factor behind capitalist globalization. In capitalist globalization  transnational capitalist class made up of four set of capitalists. The socialist globalization is coming forward as resistance to these different set of capitalists.

Another very important theoretical approach was developed by neo-Marxists Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s in their work Empire (2000) and Multitude (2004). They use the metaphor of empire to present a postmodern Marxian understanding of globalized economy.

The thinkers from different field like Giddens a sociologist, Harvey a geographer, etc emphasize the compression of time and space as important factor of economic globalization. Rapid communication and transportation have compressed the space and structured it into a single global time. Manual Castelles proposed the idea of network society which characterizes the present day global economic order. The multicentered networks of capital information and power rule the world through the help of highly mobile managerial elites who are the dominant actors in the flows.

2.2 Political Globalization

Political scientist and sociologist have given attention to the global play of power by new agencies in the present economic world. The discipline called international relation has emerged as specialist set of knowledge to study these developments. The scholars are discussing the decreasing significance of nation state and national identity. Denationalization is dominant theme in theories of globalization across the discipline.

David Held a British sociologist theorizes the global challenges to nation state and national sovereignty as mainstay of globalization. He believes that political decision making international legal frameworks for rights and duties and cultural contact are responsible for weakening of nation state. The role of United States and Civil society organization in promoting universal declarations on several political agenda is posing threat to role of nation state in these matters. However several nation states have maintained sovereignty in relations to human mobility and finance.

Ulrich Beck differentiates between “globalism” and “globality” to discuss the globalization. The globalism model prioritizes the economic flow and reduces everything else as subsidiary of it. Instead he advocate for globality which give equal importance to ecology, culture, civil society and politics in theorizing globalization. Beck believes globality is are making nation state illlusiory and is important in founding of global democracy.

The cultural globalization discusses the issues of flows of culture and how it impacts the human life in the world today. Jan Nederveen Pieterse (2004) has identified three major paradigms in theorizing the cultural aspects of globalization, specifically on the centrally important issue of whether cultures around the globe are eternally different, converging, or creating new “hybrid” forms out of the unique combination of global and local cultures. It has developed and discussed by George Ritzer as major way of looking at cultural globalization and its potential implications for economic and political globalization as well. The three type of cultural globalization are

• Cultural Differentialism
• Cultural Convergence
• Cultural Hybridization

Cultural Differeentialism: This mode of thinking emphasizes the stubborn nature of culture and its retaining capacity to diffrences. This also tends to focus upon the core of the culture which remains unaffaected by the  processes of globalization though surface structure may change because of global connecettedness. The most famous example of this theory is Clash of Civilization thesis proposed by Samual P Huttington. He uses the world civilization to describe the coherent cultural identities which exist in the world and identifies eight such cultures in the world today. He proposes a historical argument to predict the clash of these different civilizations in future.

Huntington is concerned about the decline of the West, especially of the United States. He sees the United States, indeed all societies, as threatened by their increasing multicivilizational or multicultural character. For him, the demise of the United States effectively means the demise of Western civilization. Without a powerful, unicivilizational United States, the West is minuscule. For the West to survive and prosper, the United States must do two things. First, it must reaffirm its identity as a Western (rather than a multicivilizational) nation. Second, it must reaffirm and reassert its role as the leader of Western civilization around the globe. The reassertion and acceptance of Western civilization (which would also involve a renunciation of universalism), indeed all civilizations, is the surest way to prevent warfare between civilizations.

Cultural Convergence: Cultural convergence focuses upon the systematic homogenization and similarity of cultures across the globe. There is increasing sameness in the cultures in the world today because of the local cultures assimilation in dominant cultures. This similarities in culture is leading towards prominent changes in local cultures, however local realities are surviving in one way or other ways.

Cultural imperialism is an idea which reflects upon the influences of dominant cultures on local cultures being imposed consciously or unconsciously. This may result in complete transformation of local culture or in most of the case partial changes in one or other dimension of culture. The cultural hegemony of north countries on south is clearly visible today and many local cultures are threatened or being destroyed because of cultural imperialism. This view celebrates the formulation of new global culture replacing all local cultural deficiencies.

The related idea of Detrritorialization emphasizes the decreasing significance of place or geography in cultural experiences. The events and innovations in other parts of world have impact today in local everyday lives. The role of media and communication technology is significant in cultural imperialism as well as deterritorialization.

World Culture idea of cultural convergence highlights the structural isomorphism throughout the world. There is surprising amount of uniformity which exists today because of spread of similar models of politics, education, business, family etc. Advocates of this idea pursue the aim of bringing a homogenized world culture which will be enabling and empowering for people all across the world. The world culture approach looks at the positive side of singular global culture and suggests the models to bring changes for achieving this goal. Standard, guidelines and protocols are being devised to guide the establishment of one World Culture.

McDonaldization as a global homozenizing idea was proposed by Sociologist George Ritzer. He clearly outlines the principles which govern the McDonald fast food restaurant’s successful functioning. These principles are efficiency, calculability, predictability, control, and ironically the irrationality of rationality. He believes that these principles of McDonald have taken over not only on the ways which fast food industry is organized but also the various sector of life like education, NGOs, Church etc. across the world have started functioning.

Globalization of Nothing is another important contribution of Ritzer in the theories of globalization which emphasize upon the affinity between Globalization and Nothing. From nothing he means empty forms which are devoid of distinctive contents against something which is full forms rich in contents. He proposes that there is increase of these empty forms because they are easy to reproduce and transported. The world wide spread of  these similar empty forms like shopping complexes, tourist sites etc. is leaving world without any diversity and content. This he calls globalization of nothing. He believe that the imperialistic tendencies of powerful nations, corporations and international organization and their desire motivated by economic growth and profit to impose themselves throughout the world is responsible for the increasing nothingness. He calls this growth motivated globalization as grobalization.

Cultural hybridization: It is about production of new and unique hybrids because of the mixing of cultures. In this sense globalization is creative process leading to new cultural realities. Roland Robertson has coined a term ‘Glocalization’ to refer to the process of interpretation of global and local resulting into new outcomes in different geographical locations. Hybridization itself is a term which refers to making of cultural hybrids with mixed traits. Creolization refers to the mixing of language and culture into unique acceptable forms.

Arjun Appadurai in his Modernity at large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalizations proposed the idea of global flow and disjuncture within it. His contribution is central to the anthropological understanding of globalization. He elaborates his understanding of global flows against five scapes of globalization.

ethnsocape is the scape of identity with people and community in any geographical area. This scape is in flow because of people are highly mobile and their community identity is not fixed in place. They may recognize cognitively with the place of origin but living realty as tourist, migrants, refugee, expatriates etc. detach them from any fixed territory. Those who cannot move live with imagination and fantasies of movement.

technoscapes represents the flows through information and transportation technology at global scale. The technoscapes have changed the

finanacescapes are the rapid flows of huge sum of money across the world at unimaginable speed. The stock exchange and digital transfer of money have changed the way economies are connected and exchange are made.

Mediascapes involves the images and information created by media and the way it is electronically communicated within no time. The power of media to influence the mode of thinking and imagining is also very important in living in a global world.

Ideoscapes are political ideas and propaganda which are propagated by state and it spreads and engulf the thinking about political possibilities. The counter ideas to stae also are part and parcel of ideoscape having equal effect in channelizing anti state sentiment.

These multiple scapes are disjunctive and they are flowing in different direction and at different speed. The way we experience these flows are fragmented and it leads to the creation of hybrid forms in cultures.

3.   Anthropology and Globalization Theory

The anthropologist used the idea of globalization and its theories to understand the changing landscape of locations in which they conduct fieldwork. The anthropologists who were traditionally focusing on bounded local communities unaffected by outside influences were challenged by globalization thinkers to look for the outside influences including their own on the ethnographic practices. The theoretical tools were designed and borrowed to inform the new realities of local in a global world.

The globalization itself has provided opportunities for anthropologist to have easy and frequent access to the field. Availability of writings of native anthropologists can build a tradition of multi vocal understanding of the field. At the same time some anthropologists have taken this opportunity to celebrate the local and challenge the global onslaught on culture and tradition of remote people. The barriers across region have not necessarily been erased and some anthropologists have carved new ethnographic regions, for instance, South Asia to represent the people living in a landmass.

However the globalization approach in anthropology is not altogether new. The early thinkers of Political Economy and World System approach were emphasizing the impact of dominant core on recessive periphery. Ande Gunder Frank and Historian Immanuel Wallerstein set the agenda for understanding the underdeveloped economy crumbling under the developed west. Eric Wolf and Peter Worsley followed the trend in anthropology and criticized the Global capitalism and its impact on local people. These theories are looking at unidirectional flow whereas globalization is about the multidirectional influence, at least in principle.

Jonathan Friedman has coined his neologism Global Systemic approach to address the global in anthropology. He distinguishes his approach from globalization theories in anthropology. In his approach the global and local or at same plane and there is no higher global place floating above the local. Though local is always part of global but it does not mean that local is produced by global. The global is arena of interaction among the localities and global systemic is the study of logics of such interactions and the processes that emerge from such interactions. For him the globalization theory is empiricist and looks at apparent surface phenomena of flow, movement, media and networks instead of the underlying structure which makes this phenomenon apparent. Global systemic approach calls for a transdisciplinary study of these underlying structures of social reproduction and history of human species.

The Globalization theory in anthropology is represented by the work of Ulf Hannerez, Arjun Appadurai and Cultural Sociologist Roland Robertson. Ulf Hannerez, A Swedish anthropologist is prominent name in theorizing about globalization in anthropology. He considered Globalization as Global aspect of modernity rather than all-encompassing Global Village approach. He proposes to redefine culture signifying flow, process and partial integration instead of bounded integrated static whole. He emphasizes the understanding of intermixing of cultures and making of new forms and called it ‘cultural creolization’. According to his view global processes has impact on local life and culture. Generally the local resist and come out with innovative creative forms of hybrids in this process. Arjun Appadurai who has been discussed above is another name to shape the ideas of global culture and its local entanglements.

French Anthropologist Marc Auge wrote a seminal work Non-Places to question the future of anthropological notion of place, culture and community in the time of flux and global changes. He argued that stability of place can no longer be taken for granted in this disembedded world. The Actor Network Theory a specialty in Science and Technology Studies propounded by French Anthropologist Bruno Latour is also an approach fit for doing fieldwork in globalized world of science and technology. His theory talks about the processes of translation and networking in various shifting contexts of material and nonmaterial realities.

The major theoretical argument in anthropology developed as a critic of globalization. It critiqued the one way process of globalization and its role in perpetuating the global inequality. The critics have termed it as new imperialism and a catchy metaphor to mask the threat it poses for losers of globalization from the winners. The globalization theory is nothing more than diffusionism where Euro American West is new Egypt.

Whatever the critique may be the anthropologists are encountering hybrid cultures and life forms in their field which are mix of local national and global. The identity of anthropologist has also been shaped by these realities  of mixing and making of new forms. The globalization theory provides important insight to look at these new realities of human life and culture.

The module is focused upon the theoretical framework to understand the Globalization and how globalization itself provides the approaches to understand the changing dimension of society and culture in present time. The globalization theory has been discussed in terms of three major dimensions economic, political and cultural. In anthropology globalization theories have been utilized to decontextualize the local and free it from the boundedness in time and space. The cultural globalization and its theoretical nuances are important for apprehending the global-local binaries which informs the human realities today.

References:

• Eriksen, Thomas Hylland and Finn Sivert Nielsen, 2014, A History of Anthropology, Pluto Press.
• Barnard, Alan 2000, History and Theory in Anthropology, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Nederveen Pieterse, J. 2004. Globalization and Culture: Global Melange. Rowman and Littlefield.
• Stiglitz, J. 2002, Globalization and its Discontents, Allen Lane.
• M. Featherstone (ed.) 1990, Global Culture: Nationalism, Globalization and Modernity, Sage.
• Arjun Appadurai. 1996 Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization, University of Minnesota Press.
• George Ritzer 2011, Globalization: The Essentials, John Wiley & Sons.
• Ted C. Lewellen , 2010, The Anthropology of Globalization, Rawat Publication.
• Robbins, R. 2008. Global Problems and the Culture of Capitalism, Prentice Hall.
• M. Kearney 1995, The Local and the Global: The Anthropology of Globalization and Transnationalism, Annual Review of Anthropology Vol. 24: 547-565.
• Jonathan Friedman 2007 Global Systems, Globalization, and Anthropological Theory in Ino Rossi edited Frontiers of Globalization: Theoretical and Methodological Approaches Springer.

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Course: MCAT   >   Unit 14

• Demographic characteristics and processes
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• Demographic structure of society - sex, gender, and sexual orientation
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Open Access

Peer-reviewed

Research Article

Globalization and Economic Growth: Empirical Evidence on the Role of Complementarities

* E-mail: [email protected]

Affiliations Faculty of Management, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM), Johor, Malaysia, Department of Management, Mobarakeh Branch, Islamic Azad University, Isfahan, Iran

Affiliation Applied Statistics Department, Economics and Administration Faculty, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

• Parisa Samimi, 
• Hashem Salarzadeh Jenatabadi

• Published: April 10, 2014
• https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0087824
• Reader Comments

This study was carried out to investigate the effect of economic globalization on economic growth in OIC countries. Furthermore, the study examined the effect of complementary policies on the growth effect of globalization. It also investigated whether the growth effect of globalization depends on the income level of countries. Utilizing the generalized method of moments (GMM) estimator within the framework of a dynamic panel data approach, we provide evidence which suggests that economic globalization has statistically significant impact on economic growth in OIC countries. The results indicate that this positive effect is increased in the countries with better-educated workers and well-developed financial systems. Our finding shows that the effect of economic globalization also depends on the country’s level of income. High and middle-income countries benefit from globalization whereas low-income countries do not gain from it. In fact, the countries should receive the appropriate income level to be benefited from globalization. Economic globalization not only directly promotes growth but also indirectly does so via complementary reforms.

Citation: Samimi P, Jenatabadi HS (2014) Globalization and Economic Growth: Empirical Evidence on the Role of Complementarities. PLoS ONE 9(4): e87824. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0087824

Editor: Rodrigo Huerta-Quintanilla, Cinvestav-Merida, Mexico

Received: November 5, 2013; Accepted: January 2, 2014; Published: April 10, 2014

Copyright: © 2014 Samimi, Jenatabadi. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Funding: The study is supported by the Ministry of Higher Education of Malaysia, Malaysian International Scholarship (MIS). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Introduction

Globalization, as a complicated process, is not a new phenomenon and our world has experienced its effects on different aspects of lives such as economical, social, environmental and political from many years ago [1] – [4] . Economic globalization includes flows of goods and services across borders, international capital flows, reduction in tariffs and trade barriers, immigration, and the spread of technology, and knowledge beyond borders. It is source of much debate and conflict like any source of great power.

The broad effects of globalization on different aspects of life grab a great deal of attention over the past three decades. As countries, especially developing countries are speeding up their openness in recent years the concern about globalization and its different effects on economic growth, poverty, inequality, environment and cultural dominance are increased. As a significant subset of the developing world, Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) countries are also faced by opportunities and costs of globalization. Figure 1 shows the upward trend of economic globalization among different income group of OIC countries.

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https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0087824.g001

Although OICs are rich in natural resources, these resources were not being used efficiently. It seems that finding new ways to use the OICs economic capacity more efficiently are important and necessary for them to improve their economic situation in the world. Among the areas where globalization is thought, the link between economic growth and globalization has been become focus of attention by many researchers. Improving economic growth is the aim of policy makers as it shows the success of nations. Due to the increasing trend of globalization, finding the effect of globalization on economic growth is prominent.

The net effect of globalization on economic growth remains puzzling since previous empirical analysis did not support the existent of a systematic positive or negative impact of globalization on growth. Most of these studies suffer from econometrics shortcoming, narrow definition of globalization and small number of countries. The effect of economic globalization on the economic growth in OICs is also ambiguous. Existing empirical studies have not indicated the positive or negative impact of globalization in OICs. The relationship between economic globalization and economic growth is important especially for economic policies.

Recently, researchers have claimed that the growth effects of globalization depend on the economic structure of the countries during the process of globalization. The impact of globalization on economic growth of countries also could be changed by the set of complementary policies such as improvement in human capital and financial system. In fact, globalization by itself does not increase or decrease economic growth. The effect of complementary policies is very important as it helps countries to be successful in globalization process.

In this paper, we examine the relationship between economic globalization and growth in panel of selected OIC countries over the period 1980–2008. Furthermore, we would explore whether the growth effects of economic globalization depend on the set of complementary policies and income level of OIC countries.

The paper is organized as follows. The next section consists of a review of relevant studies on the impact of globalization on growth. Afterward the model specification is described. It is followed by the methodology of this study as well as the data sets that are utilized in the estimation of the model and the empirical strategy. Then, the econometric results are reported and discussed. The last section summarizes and concludes the paper with important issues on policy implications.

Literature Review

The relationship between globalization and growth is a heated and highly debated topic on the growth and development literature. Yet, this issue is far from being resolved. Theoretical growth studies report at best a contradictory and inconclusive discussion on the relationship between globalization and growth. Some of the studies found positive the effect of globalization on growth through effective allocation of domestic resources, diffusion of technology, improvement in factor productivity and augmentation of capital [5] , [6] . In contrast, others argued that globalization has harmful effect on growth in countries with weak institutions and political instability and in countries, which specialized in ineffective activities in the process of globalization [5] , [7] , [8] .

Given the conflicting theoretical views, many studies have been empirically examined the impact of the globalization on economic growth in developed and developing countries. Generally, the literature on the globalization-economic growth nexus provides at least three schools of thought. First, many studies support the idea that globalization accentuates economic growth [9] – [19] . Pioneering early studies include Dollar [9] , Sachs et al. [15] and Edwards [11] , who examined the impact of trade openness by using different index on economic growth. The findings of these studies implied that openness is associated with more rapid growth.

In 2006, Dreher introduced a new comprehensive index of globalization, KOF, to examine the impact of globalization on growth in an unbalanced dynamic panel of 123 countries between 1970 and 2000. The overall result showed that globalization promotes economic growth. The economic and social dimensions have positive impact on growth whereas political dimension has no effect on growth. The robustness of the results of Dreher [19] is approved by Rao and Vadlamannati [20] which use KOF and examine its impact on growth rate of 21 African countries during 1970–2005. The positive effect of globalization on economic growth is also confirmed by the extreme bounds analysis. The result indicated that the positive effect of globalization on growth is larger than the effect of investment on growth.

The second school of thought, which supported by some scholars such as Alesina et al. [21] , Rodrik [22] and Rodriguez and Rodrik [23] , has been more reserve in supporting the globalization-led growth nexus. Rodriguez and Rodrik [23] challenged the robustness of Dollar (1992), Sachs, Warner et al. (1995) and Edwards [11] studies. They believed that weak evidence support the idea of positive relationship between openness and growth. They mentioned the lack of control for some prominent growth indicators as well as using incomprehensive trade openness index as shortcomings of these works. Warner [24] refuted the results of Rodriguez and Rodrik (2000). He mentioned that Rodriguez and Rodrik (2000) used an uncommon index to measure trade restriction (tariffs revenues divided by imports). Warner (2003) explained that they ignored all other barriers on trade and suggested using only the tariffs and quotas of textbook trade policy to measure trade restriction in countries.

Krugman [25] strongly disagreed with the argument that international financial integration is a major engine of economic development. This is because capital is not an important factor to increase economic development and the large flows of capital from rich to poor countries have never occurred. Therefore, developing countries are unlikely to increase economic growth through financial openness. Levine [26] was more optimistic about the impact of financial liberalization than Krugman. He concluded, based on theory and empirical evidences, that the domestic financial system has a prominent effect on economic growth through boosting total factor productivity. The factors that improve the functioning of domestic financial markets and banks like financial integration can stimulate improvements in resource allocation and boost economic growth.

The third school of thoughts covers the studies that found nonlinear relationship between globalization and growth with emphasis on the effect of complementary policies. Borensztein, De Gregorio et al. (1998) investigated the impact of FDI on economic growth in a cross-country framework by developing a model of endogenous growth to examine the role of FDI in the economic growth in developing countries. They found that FDI, which is measured by the fraction of products produced by foreign firms in the total number of products, reduces the costs of introducing new varieties of capital goods, thus increasing the rate at which new capital goods are introduced. The results showed a strong complementary effect between stock of human capital and FDI to enhance economic growth. They interpreted this finding with the observation that the advanced technology, brought by FDI, increases the growth rate of host economy when the country has sufficient level of human capital. In this situation, the FDI is more productive than domestic investment.

Calderón and Poggio [27] examined the structural factors that may have impact on growth effect of trade openness. The growth benefits of rising trade openness are conditional on the level of progress in structural areas including education, innovation, infrastructure, institutions, the regulatory framework, and financial development. Indeed, they found that the lack of progress in these areas could restrict the potential benefits of trade openness. Chang et al. [28] found that the growth effects of openness may be significantly improved when the investment in human capital is stronger, financial markets are deeper, price inflation is lower, and public infrastructure is more readily available. Gu and Dong [29] emphasized that the harmful or useful growth effect of financial globalization heavily depends on the level of financial development of economies. In fact, if financial openness happens without any improvement in the financial system of countries, growth will replace by volatility.

However, the review of the empirical literature indicates that the impact of the economic globalization on economic growth is influenced by sample, econometric techniques, period specifications, observed and unobserved country-specific effects. Most of the literature in the field of globalization, concentrates on the effect of trade or foreign capital volume (de facto indices) on economic growth. The problem is that de facto indices do not proportionally capture trade and financial globalization policies. The rate of protections and tariff need to be accounted since they are policy based variables, capturing the severity of trade restrictions in a country. Therefore, globalization index should contain trade and capital restrictions as well as trade and capital volume. Thus, this paper avoids this problem by using a comprehensive index which called KOF [30] . The economic dimension of this index captures the volume and restriction of trade and capital flow of countries.

Despite the numerous studies, the effect of economic globalization on economic growth in OIC is still scarce. The results of recent studies on the effect of globalization in OICs are not significant, as they have not examined the impact of globalization by empirical model such as Zeinelabdin [31] and Dabour [32] . Those that used empirical model, investigated the effect of globalization for one country such as Ates [33] and Oyvat [34] , or did it for some OIC members in different groups such as East Asia by Guillaumin [35] or as group of developing countries by Haddad et al. [36] and Warner [24] . Therefore, the aim of this study is filling the gap in research devoted solely to investigate the effects of economic globalization on growth in selected OICs. In addition, the study will consider the impact of complimentary polices on the growth effects of globalization in selected OIC countries.

Model Specification

Methodology and Data

This paper applies the generalized method of moments (GMM) panel estimator first suggested by Anderson and Hsiao [38] and later developed further by Arellano and Bond [39] . This flexible method requires only weak assumption that makes it one of the most widely used econometric techniques especially in growth studies. The dynamic GMM procedure is as follow: first, to eliminate the individual effect form dynamic growth model, the method takes differences. Then, it instruments the right hand side variables by using their lagged values. The last step is to eliminate the inconsistency arising from the endogeneity of the explanatory variables.

The consistency of the GMM estimator depends on two specification tests. The first is a Sargan test of over-identifying restrictions, which tests the overall validity of the instruments. Failure to reject the null hypothesis gives support to the model. The second test examines the null hypothesis that the error term is not serially correlated.

The GMM can be applied in one- or two-step variants. The one-step estimators use weighting matrices that are independent of estimated parameters, whereas the two-step GMM estimator uses the so-called optimal weighting matrices in which the moment conditions are weighted by a consistent estimate of their covariance matrix. However, the use of the two-step estimator in small samples, as in our study, has problem derived from proliferation of instruments. Furthermore, the estimated standard errors of the two-step GMM estimator tend to be small. Consequently, this paper employs the one-step GMM estimator.

In the specification, year dummies are used as instrument variable because other regressors are not strictly exogenous. The maximum lags length of independent variable which used as instrument is 2 to select the optimal lag, the AR(1) and AR(2) statistics are employed. There is convincing evidence that too many moment conditions introduce bias while increasing efficiency. It is, therefore, suggested that a subset of these moment conditions can be used to take advantage of the trade-off between the reduction in bias and the loss in efficiency. We restrict the moment conditions to a maximum of two lags on the dependent variable.

Data and Empirical Strategy

We estimated Eq. (1) using the GMM estimator based on a panel of 33 OIC countries. Table S1 in File S1 lists the countries and their income groups in the sample. The choice of countries selected for this study is primarily dictated by availability of reliable data over the sample period among all OIC countries. The panel covers the period 1980–2008 and is unbalanced. Following [40] , we use annual data in order to maximize sample size and to identify the parameters of interest more precisely. In fact, averaging out data removes useful variation from the data, which could help to identify the parameters of interest with more precision.

The dependent variable in our sample is logged per capita real GDP, using the purchasing power parity (PPP) exchange rates and is obtained from the Penn World Table (PWT 7.0). The economic dimension of KOF index is derived from Dreher et al. [41] . We use some other variables, along with economic globalization to control other factors influenced economic growth. Table S2 in File S2 shows the variables, their proxies and source that they obtain.

We relied on the three main approaches to capture the effects of economic globalization on economic growth in OIC countries. The first one is the baseline specification (Eq. (1)) which estimates the effect of economic globalization on economic growth.

The second approach is to examine whether the effect of globalization on growth depends on the complementary policies in the form of level of human capital and financial development. To test, the interactions of economic globalization and financial development (KOF*FD) and economic globalization and human capital (KOF*HCS) are included as additional explanatory variables, apart from the standard variables used in the growth equation. The KOF, HCS and FD are included in the model individually as well for two reasons. First, the significance of the interaction term may be the result of the omission of these variables by themselves. Thus, in that way, it can be tested jointly whether these variables affect growth by themselves or through the interaction term. Second, to ensure that the interaction term did not proxy for KOF, HCS or FD, these variables were included in the regression independently.

In the third approach, in order to study the role of income level of countries on the growth effect of globalization, the countries are split based on income level. Accordingly, countries were classified into three groups: high-income countries (3), middle-income (21) and low-income (9) countries. Next, dummy variables were created for high-income (Dum 3), middle-income (Dum 2) and low-income (Dum 1) groups. Then interaction terms were created for dummy variables and KOF. These interactions will be added to the baseline specification.

Findings and Discussion

This section presents the empirical results of three approaches, based on the GMM -dynamic panel data; in Tables 1 – 3 . Table 1 presents a preliminary analysis on the effects of economic globalization on growth. Table 2 displays coefficient estimates obtained from the baseline specification, which used added two interaction terms of economic globalization and financial development and economic globalization and human capital. Table 3 reports the coefficients estimate from a specification that uses dummies to capture the impact of income level of OIC countries on the growth effect of globalization.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0087824.t001

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0087824.t002

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0087824.t003

The results in Table 1 indicate that economic globalization has positive impact on growth and the coefficient is significant at 1 percent level. The positive effect is consistent with the bulk of the existing empirical literature that support beneficial effect of globalization on economic growth [9] , [11] , [13] , [19] , [42] , [43] .

According to the theoretical literature, globalization enhances economic growth by allocating resources more efficiently as OIC countries that can be specialized in activities with comparative advantages. By increasing the size of markets through globalization, these countries can be benefited from economic of scale, lower cost of research and knowledge spillovers. It also augments capital in OICs as they provide a higher return to capital. It has raised productivity and innovation, supported the spread of knowledge and new technologies as the important factors in the process of development. The results also indicate that growth is enhanced by lower level of government expenditure, lower level of inflation, higher level of human capital, deeper financial development, more domestic investment and better institutions.

Table 2 represents that the coefficients on the interaction between the KOF, HCS and FD are statistically significant at 1% level and with the positive sign. The findings indicate that economic globalization not only directly promotes growth but also indirectly does via complementary reforms. On the other hand, the positive effect of economic globalization can be significantly enhanced if some complementary reforms in terms of human capital and financial development are undertaken.

In fact, the implementation of new technologies transferred from advanced economies requires skilled workers. The results of this study confirm the importance of increasing educated workers as a complementary policy in progressing globalization. However, countries with higher level of human capital can be better and faster to imitate and implement the transferred technologies. Besides, the financial openness brings along the knowledge and managerial for implementing the new technology. It can be helpful in improving the level of human capital in host countries. Moreover, the strong and well-functioned financial systems can lead the flow of foreign capital to the productive and compatible sectors in developing countries. Overall, with higher level of human capital and stronger financial systems, the globalized countries benefit from the growth effect of globalization. The obtained results supported by previous studies in relative to financial and trade globalization such as [5] , [27] , [44] , [45] .

Table (3 ) shows that the estimated coefficients on KOF*dum3 and KOF*dum2 are statistically significant at the 5% level with positive sign. The KOF*dum1 is statistically significant with negative sign. It means that increase in economic globalization in high and middle-income countries boost economic growth but this effect is diverse for low-income countries. The reason might be related to economic structure of these countries that are not received to the initial condition necessary to be benefited from globalization. In fact, countries should be received to the appropriate income level to be benefited by globalization.

The diagnostic tests in tables 1 – 3 show that the estimated equation is free from simultaneity bias and second-order correlation. The results of Sargan test accept the null hypothesis that supports the validity of the instrument use in dynamic GMM.

Conclusions and Implications

Numerous researchers have investigated the impact of economic globalization on economic growth. Unfortunately, theoretical and the empirical literature have produced conflicting conclusions that need more investigation. The current study shed light on the growth effect of globalization by using a comprehensive index for globalization and applying a robust econometrics technique. Specifically, this paper assesses whether the growth effects of globalization depend on the complementary polices as well as income level of OIC countries.

Using a panel data of OIC countries over the 1980–2008 period, we draw three important conclusions from the empirical analysis. First, the coefficient measuring the effect of the economic globalization on growth was positive and significant, indicating that economic globalization affects economic growth of OIC countries in a positive way. Second, the positive effect of globalization on growth is increased in countries with higher level of human capital and deeper financial development. Finally, economic globalization does affect growth, whether the effect is beneficial depends on the level of income of each group. It means that economies should have some initial condition to be benefited from the positive effects of globalization. The results explain why some countries have been successful in globalizing world and others not.

The findings of our study suggest that public policies designed to integrate to the world might are not optimal for economic growth by itself. Economic globalization not only directly promotes growth but also indirectly does so via complementary reforms.

The policy implications of this study are relatively straightforward. Integrating to the global economy is only one part of the story. The other is how to benefits more from globalization. In this respect, the responsibility of policymakers is to improve the level of educated workers and strength of financial systems to get more opportunities from globalization. These economic policies are important not only in their own right, but also in helping developing countries to derive the benefits of globalization.

However, implementation of new technologies transferred from advanced economies requires skilled workers. The results of this study confirm the importance of increasing educated workers as a complementary policy in progressing globalization. In fact, countries with higher level of human capital can better and faster imitate and implement the transferred technologies. The higher level of human capital and certain skill of human capital determine whether technology is successfully absorbed across countries. This shows the importance of human capital in the success of countries in the globalizing world.

Financial openness in the form of FDI brings along the knowledge and managerial for implementing the new technology. It can be helpful in upgrading the level of human capital in host countries. Moreover, strong and well-functioned financial systems can lead the flow of foreign capital to the productive and compatible sectors in OICs.

In addition, the results show that economic globalization does affect growth, whether the effect is beneficial depends on the level of income of countries. High and middle income countries benefit from globalization whereas low-income countries do not gain from it. As Birdsall [46] mentioned globalization is fundamentally asymmetric for poor countries, because their economic structure and markets are asymmetric. So, the risks of globalization hurt the poor more. The structure of the export of low-income countries heavily depends on primary commodity and natural resource which make them vulnerable to the global shocks.

The major research limitation of this study was the failure to collect data for all OIC countries. Therefore future research for all OIC countries would shed light on the relationship between economic globalization and economic growth.

Supporting Information

Sample of Countries.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0087824.s001

The Name and Definition of Indicators.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0087824.s002

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: PS. Performed the experiments: PS. Analyzed the data: PS. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: PS HSJ. Wrote the paper: PS HSJ.

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8 Theories of Globalization – Explained!

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All theories of globalization have been put hereunder in eight categories: liberalism, political realism, Marxism, constructivism, postmodernism, feminism , Trans-formationalism and eclecticism. Each one of them carries several variations.

1. Theory of Liberalism :

Liberalism sees the process of globalisation as market-led extension of modernisation. At the most elementary level, it is a result of ‘natural’ human desires for economic welfare and political liberty. As such, transplanetary connectivity is derived from human drives to maximise material well-being and to exercise basic freedoms. These forces eventually interlink humanity across the planet.

They fructify in the form of:

(a) Technological advances, particularly in the areas of transport, communications and information processing, and,

(b) Suitable legal and institutional arrangement to enable markets and liberal democracy to spread on a trans world scale.

Such expla­nations come mostly from Business Studies, Economics, International Political Economy, Law and Politics. Liberalists stress the necessity of constructing institutional infrastructure to support globalisation. All this has led to technical standardisation, administrative harmonisation, trans­lation arrangement between languages, laws of contract, and guarantees of property rights.

But its supporters neglect the social forces that lie behind the creation of technological and institutional underpinnings. It is not satis­fying to attribute these developments to ‘natural’ human drives for economic growth and political liberty. They are culture blind and tend to overlook historically situated life-worlds and knowledge structures which have promoted their emergence.

All people cannot be assumed to be equally amenable to and desirous of increased globality in their lives. Similarly, they overlook the phenomenon of power. There are structural power inequalities in promoting globalisation and shaping its course. Often they do not care for the entrenched power hierarchies between states, classes, cultures, sexes, races and resources.

2. Theory of Political Realism :

Advocates of this theory are interested in questions of state power, the pursuit of national interest, and conflict between states. According to them states are inherently acquisitive and self-serving, and heading for inevitable competition of power. Some of the scholars stand for a balance of power, where any attempt by one state to achieve world dominance is countered by collective resistance from other states.

Another group suggests that a dominant state can bring stability to world order. The ‘hegemon’ state (presently the US or G7/8) maintains and defines international rules and institutions that both advance its own interests and at the same time contain conflicts between other states. Globalisation has also been explained as a strategy in the contest for power between several major states in contem­porary world politics.

They concentrate on the activities of Great Britain, China, France, Japan, the USA and some other large states. Thus, the political realists highlight the issues of power and power struggles and the role of states in generating global relations.

At some levels, globalisation is considered as antithetical to territorial states. States, they say, are not equal in globalisation, some being dominant and others subordinate in the process. But they fail to understand that everything in globalisation does not come down to the acquisition, distribution and exercise of power.

Globalisation has also cultural, ecological, economic and psychological dimensions that are not reducible to power politics. It is also about the production and consumption of resources, about the discovery and affir­mation of identity, about the construction and communication of meaning, and about humanity shaping and being shaped by nature. Most of these are apolitical.

Power theorists also neglect the importance and role of other actors in generating globalisation. These are sub-state authorities, macro-regional institutions, global agencies, and private-sector bodies. Additional types of power-relations on lines of class, culture and gender also affect the course of globalisation. Some other structural inequalities cannot be adequately explained as an outcome of interstate competition. After all, class inequality, cultural hierarchy, and patriarchy predate the modern states.

3. Theory of Marxism :

Marxism is principally concerned with modes of production, social exploi­tation through unjust distribution, and social emancipation through the transcendence of capitalism. Marx himself anticipated the growth of globality that ‘capital by its nature drives beyond every spatial barrier to conquer the whole earth for its market’. Accordingly, to Marxists, globalisation happens because trans-world connectivity enhances opportu­nities of profit-making and surplus accumulation.

Marxists reject both liberalist and political realist explanations of globalisation. It is the outcome of historically specific impulses of capitalist development. Its legal and insti­tutional infrastructures serve the logic of surplus accumulation of a global scale. Liberal talk of freedom and democracy make up a legitimating ideology for exploitative global capitalist class relations.

The neo-Marxists in dependency and world-system theories examine capitalist accumulation on a global scale on lines of core and peripheral countries. Neo-Gramscians highlight the significance of underclass struggles to resist globalising capitalism not only by traditional labour unions, but also by new social movements of consumer advocates, environmentalists, peace activists, peasants, and women. However, Marxists give an overly restricted account of power.

There are other relations of dominance and subordination which relate to state, culture, gender, race, sex, and more. Presence of US hegemony, the West-centric cultural domination, masculinism, racism etc. are not reducible to class dynamics within capitalism. Class is a key axis of power in globalisation, but it is not the only one. It is too simplistic to see globalisation solely as a result of drives for surplus accumulation.

It also seeks to explore identities and investigate meanings. People develop global weapons and pursue global military campaigns not only for capitalist ends, but also due to interstate competition and militarist culture that predate emergence of capitalism. Ideational aspects of social relations also are not outcome of the modes of production. They have, like nationalism, their autonomy.

4. Theory of Constructivism :

Globalisation has also arisen because of the way that people have mentally constructed the social world with particular symbols, language, images and interpretation. It is the result of particular forms and dynamics of consciousness. Patterns of production and governance are second-order structures that derive from deeper cultural and socio-psychological forces. Such accounts of globalisation have come from the fields of Anthropology, Humanities, Media of Studies and Sociology.

Constructivists concentrate on the ways that social actors ‘construct’ their world: both within their own minds and through inter-subjective communication with others. Conver­sation and symbolic exchanges lead people to construct ideas of the world, the rules for social interaction, and ways of being and belonging in that world. Social geography is a mental experience as well as a physical fact. They form ‘in’ or ‘out’ as well as ‘us’ and they’ groups.

They conceive of themselves as inhabitants of a particular global world. National, class, religious and other identities respond in part to material conditions but they also depend on inter-subjective construction and communication of shared self-understanding. However, when they go too far, they present a case of social-psychological reductionism ignoring the significance of economic and ecological forces in shaping mental experience. This theory neglects issues of structural inequalities and power hierarchies in social relations. It has a built-in apolitical tendency.

5. Theory of Postmodernism :

Some other ideational perspectives of globalisation highlight the signifi­cance of structural power in the construction of identities, norms and knowledge. They all are grouped under the label of ‘postmodernism’. They too, as Michel Foucault does strive to understand society in terms of knowledge power: power structures shape knowledge. Certain knowledge structures support certain power hierarchies.

The reigning structures of understanding determine what can and cannot be known in a given socio-historical context. This dominant structure of knowledge in modern society is ‘rationalism’. It puts emphasis on the empirical world, the subordi­nation of nature to human control, objectivist science, and instrumentalist efficiency. Modern rationalism produces a society overwhelmed with economic growth, technological control, bureaucratic organisation, and disciplining desires.

This mode of knowledge has authoritarian and expan­sionary logic that leads to a kind of cultural imperialism subordinating all other epistemologies. It does not focus on the problem of globalisation per se. In this way, western rationalism overawes indigenous cultures and other non-modem life-worlds.

Postmodernism, like Marxism, helps to go beyond the relatively superficial accounts of liberalist and political realist theories and expose social conditions that have favoured globalisation. Obviously, postmodernism suffers from its own methodological idealism. All material forces, though come under impact of ideas, cannot be reduced to modes of consciousness. For a valid explanation, interconnection between ideational and material forces is not enough.

6. Theory of Feminism :

It puts emphasis on social construction of masculinity and femininity. All other theories have identified the dynamics behind the rise of trans-planetary and supra-territorial connectivity in technology, state, capital, identity and the like.

Biological sex is held to mould the overall social order and shape significantly the course of history, presently globality. Their main concern lies behind the status of women, particularly their structural subordination to men. Women have tended to be marginalised, silenced and violated in global communication.

7. Theory of Trans-formationalism :

This theory has been expounded by David Held and his colleagues. Accord­ingly, the term ‘globalisation’ reflects increased interconnectedness in political, economic and cultural matters across the world creating a “shared social space”. Given this interconnectedness, globalisation may be defined as “a process (or set of processes) which embodies a transformation in the spatial organisation of social relations and transactions, expressed in trans­continental or interregional flows and networks of activity, interaction and power.”

While there are many definitions of globalisation, such a definition seeks to bring together the many and seemingly contradictory theories of globalisation into a “rigorous analytical framework” and “proffer a coherent historical narrative”. Held and McGrew’s analytical framework is constructed by developing a three part typology of theories of globalisation consisting of “hyper-globalist,” “sceptic,” and “transformationalist” categories.

The Hyperglobalists purportedly argue that “contemporary globalisation defines a new era in which people everywhere are increasingly subject to the disciplines of the global marketplace”. Given the importance of the global marketplace, multi-national enterprises (MNEs) and intergov­ernmental organisations (IGOs) which regulate their activity are key political actors. Sceptics, such as Hirst and Thompson (1996) ostensibly argue that “globalisation is a myth which conceals the reality of an interna­tional economy increasingly segmented into three major regional blocs in which national governments remain very powerful.” Finally, transformationalists such as Rosenau (1997) or Giddens (1990) argue that globalisation occurs as “states and societies across the globe are experi­encing a process of profound change as they try to adapt to a more interconnected but highly uncertain world”.

Developing the transformationalist category of globalisation theories. Held and McGrew present a rather complicated typology of globalisation based on globalization’s spread, depth, speed, and impact, as well as its impacts on infrastructure, institutions, hierarchical structures and the unevenness of development.

They imply that the “politics of globalisation” have been “transformed” (using their word from the definition of globalisation) along all of these dimensions because of the emergence of a new system of “political globalisation.” They define “political globalisation” as the “shifting reach of political power, authority and forms of rule” based on new organisa­tional interests which are “transnational” and “multi-layered.”

These organisational interests combine actors identified under the hyper-globalist category (namely IGOs and MNEs) with those of the sceptics (trading blocs and powerful states) into a new system where each of these actors exercises their political power, authority and forms of rule.

Thus, the “politics of globalisation” is equivalent to “political globalisation” for Held and McGrew. However, Biyane Michael criticises them. He deconstructs their argument, if a is defined as “globalisation” (as defined above), b as the organisational interests such as MNEs, IGOs, trading blocs, and powerful states, and c as “political globalisation” (also as defined above), then their argument reduces to a. b. c. In this way, their discussion of globalisation is trivial.

Held and others present a definition of globalisation, and then simply restates various elements of the definition. Their definition, “globalisation can be conceived as a process (or set of processes) which embodies a transformation in the spatial organisation of social relations” allows every change to be an impact of globalisation. Thus, by their own definition, all the theorists they critique would be considered as “transformationalists.” Held and McGrew also fail to show how globalisation affects organisational interests.

8. Theory of Eclecticism :

Each one of the above six ideal-type of social theories of globalisation highlights certain forces that contribute to its growth. They put emphasis on technology and institution building, national interest and inter-state compe­tition, capital accumulation and class struggle, identity and knowledge construction, rationalism and cultural imperialism, and masculinize and subordination of women. Jan Art Scholte synthesises them as forces of production, governance, identity, and knowledge.

Accordingly, capitalists attempt to amass ever-greater resources in excess of their survival needs: accumulation of surplus. The capitalist economy is thoroughly monetised. Money facilitates accumulation. It offers abundant opportunities to transfer surplus, especially from the weak to the powerful. This mode of production involves perpetual and pervasive contests over the distribution of surplus. Such competition occurs both between individual, firms, etc. and along structural lines of class, gender, race etc.

Their contests can be overt or latent. Surplus accumulation has had transpired in one way or another for many centuries, but capitalism is a comparatively recent phenomenon. It has turned into a structural power, and is accepted as a ‘natural’ circumstance, with no alternative mode of production. It has spurred globalisation in four ways: market expansion, accounting practices, asset mobility and enlarged arenas of commodification. Its technological innovation appears in communication, transport and data processing as well as in global organisation and management. It concentrates profits at points of low taxation. Information, communication, finance and consumer sectors offer vast potentials to capital making it ‘hyper-capitalism’.

Any mode of production cannot operate in the absence of an enabling regulatory apparatus. There are some kind of governance mechanisms. Governance relates processes whereby people formulate, implement, enforce and review rules to guide their common affairs.” It entails more than government. It can extend beyond state and sub-state institutions including supra-state regimes as well. It covers the full scope of societal regulation.

In the growth of contemporary globalisation, besides political and economic forces, there are material and ideational elements. In expanding social relations, people explore their class, their gender, their nationality, their race, their religious faith and other aspects of their being. Constructions of identity provide collective solidarity against oppression. Identity provides frameworks for community, democracy, citizenship and resistance. It also leads from nationalism to greater pluralism and hybridity.

Earlier nationalism promoted territorialism, capitalism, and statism, now these plural identities are feeding more and more globality, hyper-capitalism and polycentrism. These identities have many international qualities visualised in global diasporas and other group affiliations based on age, class, gender, race, religious faith and sexual orientations. Many forms of supra-territorial solidarities are appearing through globalisation.

In the area of knowledge, the way that the people know their world has significant implications for the concrete circumstances of that world. Powerful patterns of social consciousness cause globalisation. Knowledge frameworks cannot be reduced to forces of production, governance or identity.

Mindsets encourage or discourage the rise of globality. Modern rationalism is a general configuration of knowledge. It is secular as it defines reality in terms of the tangible world of experience. It understands reality primarily in terms of human interests, activities and conditions. It holds that phenomena can be understood in terms of single incontrovertible truths that are discoverable by rigorous application of objective research methods.

Ratio­nalism is instrumentalist. It assigns greatest value to insights that enable people efficiently to solve immediate problems. It subordinates all other ways of understanding and acting upon the world. Its knowledge could then be applied to harness natural and social forces for human purposes. It enables people to conquer disease, hunger, poverty, war, etc., and maximise the potentials of human life. It looks like a secular faith, a knowledge framework for capitalist production and a cult of economic efficiency. Scientism and instrumentalism of rationalism is conducive to globalisation. Scientific knowledge is non-territorial.

The truths revealed by ‘objective’ method are valid for anyone, anywhere, and anytime on earth. Certain production processes, regulations, technologies and art forms are applicable across the planet. Martin Albrow rightly says that reason knows no terri­torial limits. The growth of globalisation is unlikely to reverse in the foreseeable future.

However, Scholte is aware of insecurity, inequality and marginalisation caused by the present process of globalisation. Others reject secularist character of the theory, its manifestation of the imperialism of westernist-modernist-rationalist knowledge. Anarchists challenge the oppressive nature of states and other bureaucratic governance frameworks. Globalisation neglects environmental degradation and equitable gender relations.

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How scarcity pushes globalization

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Harold James is the Claude and Lore Kelly professor in European studies and professor of history and international affairs at Princeton University. His most recent book, Seven Crashes: The Economic Crises That Shaped Globalization , is a finalist for this year’s Lionel Gelber Prize, presented by the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy.

Many people today believe that globalization is collapsing. In this view, the world is replaying the tragedies of the 1930s, with rival blocs and escalating military conflict. But really the Great Depression analogy is wrong.

The COVID-induced supply shortages that jolted contemporary globalization have different historical parallels. Two stand out. In the 1840s, widespread hunger in Europe – not just in an Ireland ravaged by the potato famine – brought financial and then political upheavals. In the 1970s supply shock, Western democracy appeared vulnerable after the energy crisis in the wake of the Yom Kippur War and OPEC price hikes. But these supply shocks came at the beginning of dramatic intensification of globalization, not a collapse.

There was a common pattern. Acute food shortages produce famine; infectious diseases spread among an undernourished population; social unrest flares; political systems are challenged and destroyed. The attention of the world focuses on particular hot spots that dominate the geopolitical imagination – the Dardanelles, the eastern Mediterranean, the Red Sea, the South China Sea. The passage between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean assumes a global significance, a thin needle that connects the grain-producing areas of autocratically controlled central Eurasia to hungry or starving consumers. That is history, and we’re now living through it again.

The traumas that contemporary societies, voters and governments face constitute the fundamental drivers that bundled together make us more willing to reimagine how human ingenuity, and new techniques, may be used to solve problems and connect peoples across the world.

Supply shocks at first sight are terrifying. People are hungry, miserable, disoriented. Anyone who controls a supply bottleneck begins to use it to their advantage. After COVID shortages, energy exporters immediately thought about how to apply the squeeze on importing countries. It wasn’t simply the case of Russia using its gas and oil to intimidate European countries. Algeria, locked in a conflict in the western Sahara, threatened Spain with a gas embargo. The Houthis see the Red Sea as a place where they can squeeze the jugular vein of the rich industrial world. Shortages underscore multiple vulnerabilities.

How did the globalization surges of the past originate? Scarcity creates new incentives, focusing on the advantages of networking across distances. The transformative technologies may be old: The steam engine that revolutionized the world in the mid-19th century with railroads and transoceanic steamships was an innovation of the 18th century. The container ship that changed international commerce in the 1970s had originally been conceived of 40 years earlier. In the face of supply shocks, old obstacles to the implementation of new technology get swept away.

We can already see the innovation-sparking effects of COVID-19. The mRNA vaccine was deployed with lightning speed at the outbreak of the pandemic, but now offers solutions to a wider range of illnesses, including common cancers. The use of AI applications has been accelerated because of the new circumstances of scarcity. The innovations rely on older technologies, but their uptake results from the urgency of crisis.

Looking back on the history of globalization, we see contrasting shocks. When contagious and widespread financial crises destroy demand, as in the interwar Great Depression or in the Great Recession, countries initially try to respond with fiscal and monetary mechanisms to create more domestic demand, before turning inward. But when the challenge is a supply shock, the initial response may often be the same autarkic impulse, but the costs are too high, and the considered answer requires more opening, and more innovation, in government, business, society and technology.

Crises that initially look to be purely devastating, bringing death and destruction, often prove to be transformative: They lead to new impetuses to technical change, and also to more globalization. In the gloom of 1919, John Maynard Keynes had feared that “all this makes it increasingly probable that things will have to get worse before they can get better.” But we learn most when the present is most dismal.

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