Internationalist
theoretical perspectives best describe the globalization in the world today.
Barry
Gilheany ©
This essay engages with the essentially contested
phenomenon of globalization in the domains of culture, politics and
economics. It examines the merits of a
number of theoretical approaches to globalization with particular emphasis on
internationalist perspectives. The essay
describes and critiques internationalist
perspectives and compare them to others.
It concludes by endorsing internationalism fused to social
constructivist insights.
Globalization is the subject of intense debate amongst
social scientists concerning definition, meaning, measurement, chronology,
explanation and impact. It is a
multi-dimensional process which relates to the totality of social relations:
cultural, economic, political, social and environmental. It is not reducible to one single process, as
if ‘it’ could be explained from an Archimedean standpoint (Ritzer, ed.
2007). Rather it consists of two major
directional tendencies: increasing global connectivity and increasing global
consciousness and the dimensions just mentioned are heavily intertwined.
(Ritzer, Ed: p.64).
To give a brief account of the operation of globalization,
it is generally accepted that it consists of four main elements: stretched social relation across nation
state boundaries and involving transcontinental and inter-regional relations
which extend across the globe e.g. environmental degradation; intensification of flows or increased density of interaction around the world
causing greater global impact of events such as famine, war and earthquakes; increasing interpenetration between
apparently distant cultures and societies as for example in the ‘outflow’ of
US/Western cultural products such as Coca Cola and Hollywood but also the
‘return’ flows to the West of the Latin
American soap operas telenovelas and
music from Africa and the creation of a
global institutional infrastructure enabling globalized networks to operate
e.g. international organisations like the United Nations and the World Trade
Organisation, networks of cities and non-governmental organisations (NGOs)
(Held, ed. 2004).
The mainstream
literature on globalization usually categorises three different views on
it: Globalists,
Inter-nationalists and Transformationalists.
I believe that a fourth
approach has much to
teach students of globalization: that of constructivism.
Briefly, globalists believe globalization is
an inevitable development to which
resistance by
traditional political actors such as the nation-state is futile. The world wide
expansion of market
forces and in information and communications technology will
eventually bypass the state and increased
inter-connectedness will lead to a more
homogenous global
village. “Positive Globalists” view
globalization as beneficial as
‘rising tides will raise all boats” meaning
that it will improve the quotidian of humanity’s
prosperity and
potential. Neo-liberal proponents of
this view propound a particularly
positive narrative of
globalization (Ritzer, ed.:pp.67-83). On
the other hand,
“Pessimistic
Globalists” tell a story of globalization as the driver of dominant economic
and political interests and of the erosion of
national identities and sovereignty.
Prominent in these
are accounts of “Americanisation” from the Left
(Held & McGrew, 2007) but also laments
from the populist Right about the
effects of large-scale migration to Europe.
Transformationalists recognize the significance of globalization but do not accept the
inevitability of its
impact as the state remains a powerful actor but its scope to act is
constrained by
unaccountable global forces. They call
for an accountable and
democratic modes of
global governance to address this democratic deficit. “Inter-
nationalists” argue
that the globalization process can be traced back to at least the 19th
century, that most
economic and social activity is regional rather than global and that
regional actors
derive benefit from globalization.
Furthermore the state retains its
legitimacy and
military capacities on the world stage. (Held. Ed: pp.135 – 142). Lastly,
social constructivism
allows a critical view of many of the seemingly immutability of
many globalization
discourses and emphasizes the possibility of change rather than the
inevitability of
global processes.
As this essay asks us
to focus on internationalist perspectives on globalization, it is
necessary to site
internationalism in wider debates within International Relations theory.
Classical
internationalism is premised upon a depiction of the sovereign state as not
only a still viable form of human community,
but that remains more an aspiration than a
reality for millions
of people and whose dissolution is greeted with foreboding by millions
more. (Iraq post 2003
invasion may be a case in point). (Lawler, 2005). Three distinct
strands of
contemporary internationalism can be identified: liberal internationalism,
reform internationalism and radical
internationalism.
The current world
system is based on the geo-political understanding of the nation-
state established by
the Treaty of Westphalia (1648). Within
this world of sovereign,
territorially defined
states, there is no superior authority above the state and law
making and enforcement are largely the
functions of individual states. States
are
equal before the law
and, above all, foreign powers should not interfere in the
internal affairs of
other states (Held, ed.: p.131).
However global
politics is no longer concerned only with security but with a large
range of
socio-economic and environmental issues such as climate change, drugs,
organized crime and
human rights which transcend national jurisdictions and require
international
cooperation for their solution. A global
polity of sorts has emerged with a
suprastate layer of global agencies such the UN, IMF, World Bank and WTO and
regional regulatory
schemes such as the EU and NAFTA; a transnational
layer of
transnational civil
society organisations such as Amnesty International, Greenpeace and
World Wildlife Fund and a substate layer of governance involving devolution from
central to the subsidiary or local level with local
municipalities taking on cross frontier initiatives on economic cooperation and
crime control.
In response to the
question of in whose interests this system of global governance
works in aid of, Inter-nationalists assert
that we are living in an era of global
governance. They emphasise the critical importance of the
dominant powers in shaping
the contours of
global governance, viewing the US as the main actor having emerged
from the Cold War as
the sole superpower with the capacity to determine outcomes in
its own
interests. However superpowers do not
directly control the institutions of global
governance. Rather they do it through “hegemonic
governance”; their capacity to veto
and bypass
international bodies such as the UN enables them to wield huge sway over
the management of
global affairs as the US did in going to war in Iraq in 2003 and the
Russia did in
preventing no-fly zones in the current civil war in Syria.
Internationalist
perspectives on globalization are best viewed through the prism of the
Good State. At a minimum the Good State is simply a state
committed to moral
purposes beyond
itself, to a robust internationalism in its foreign policy. By
Internationalism is
meant a philosophy of foreign policy constructed around an ethical
Obligation on the
part of states actively to pursue authentically other-regarding values
and interests. In other words, the Good State is an idea
that takes seriously the
ascription of moral
responsibilities such as the state (Lawler, 2005: pp.441-42). The
internationalization
of the state was evident at the 1998 G8 Birmingham Summit where
the G8 leaders agreed
to an action plan to coordinate their national programmes with
respect to drug
trafficking and organised crime which was followed by the
announcement at the
UN General Assembly of a new war on illicit drugs. The
internationalization
of the state is also evident by the international offices attached to
almost every
Whitehall department which deal directly with their counterparts
in foreign
governments.
Globalists do
not see this hegemonic process as something related to the US or any
other powerful state
but to global corporate capital which has managed to form a new
capitalist global
order. According to this account, the
institutions of global governance
such as the IMF and
World Bank and the apparatus of nation-states are in essence
used by corporate
capital for gaining control of and managing the global capitalist order
for their own benefit. Globalists argue that while national
governments are too small to
deal with global
problems affecting their citizens such as global warming and the drugs
trade they are too
big to deal with matters like recycling.
Thus in the UK, Whitehall
power is being
eclipsed by bodies above it (the EU), below it (Scottish and Welsh
Assemblies) and
bodies beside it (Held, ed.: p.130)
Transformationalists contest both accounts of political globalization. They argue that
rather than ceding
power as having to adjust to a new context in which decision making
and sovereignty is
pooled with many other public and private agencies in parallel to the
nation state. In the UK, this ‘powershift’ has expressed in
the continuing disputes about
national sovereignty
in relation to the EU and devolution (Held, ed.: pp, 148-51)
On economic
globalization, it is generally accepted that international trade and forms of
financial activity
(e.g. foreign direct investment (FDI), stock exchange transactions, etc.)
have increased
significantly in the last three decades.
Globalists emphasise such
structures as
multinational corporations (MNCs), transnational economy and the
emergence of a new
global division of labour. They argue
that the ability of nation
states to control
economic markets is steadily declining and in, for example, their
control is already
minimal (Ritzer and Dean, 2015).
Transformationalists
respond by arguing that within the economy there are few genuine
MNCs – most continue
to be in their original national locations (e.g. Daimler in Germany
and Toyota in
Japan). They argue that it is regional
blocs of nations as well as specific
nations – not MNCs-
that engage in new forms of economic imperialism. In addition
powerful
conglomerations of them, for example G-20 etc., continue and regulate and
exert great control
over the global economy (Ritzer and Dean: p.29). States do take
action to deal with
the negative effects of economic globalization e.g. French quotas on
US cultural products,
US restrictions on steel imports in 2002 and Malaysia’s restrictions
on capital movement
during the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98 (Held, ed.: pp.105-07)
Internationalists
argue that globalisation is no more than the strengthening of long
Term and deeply
entrenched patterns of inequality between rich and poor regions and
countries. International economic governance is still
directed by the stronger and richer
States for their own
benefit through global institutions established at the end of
World War Two and
GATT. Trade and investment is primarily
regional, while
companies and
consumer markets remain predominantly national; e.g. since 1985 the
US, Germany, Japan,
the UK and France have been the home of almost 70% and host
of 55% of all FDI
flows. (Held, ed., pp.110- 121)
Regarding culture,
globalization sceptics reject the idea of a global popular culture
especially one
dominated by the USA promoted by globalists.
They point to the
reassertion of
national and regional cultural independence (e.g. the Italian slow cooking
movement as
counterpoint to fast food culture), the growing nationalisation of the
Internet and, on a
related point, the resurgence of xenophobic national and regional
Movements such as the
French National Front and Legia Nord in Italy as evidence of
strong counter trends to a homogenous global popular
culture (Ritzer and Dean: p.30)
Social constructivism provides an interesting fourth
perspective on globalization. Constructivism is based on a social ontology
which insists that human agents do
not exist independently from their social environment
and its collectively shared systems of meaning or culture. Human agency creates, reproduces and changes
culture through our daily practices.
From a social constructivist viewpoint, there is very
little “given” about globalization. For example, depriving anonymous market
forces of human agency overlooks, for example, that the liberalization of
capital markets occurred at certain points in time by concrete political
decisions (e.g. deregulation of the London Stock Exchange in the “Big Bang” of
1986)). Thus human agency is involved
(Held &
McGrew: p.128).
Furthermore, social constructivists would likely
contend that the concept of “globalization” itself constitutes a particular
interpretation of a social reality
which itself being interpreted and reinterpreted by
social agents. In relation to one
particular account of globalization, it is hard to recognize a worldview of
American unipolar hegemony with globalization and inter-connectedness. (McGrew
and Held
: p.129)
They use the concepts of communicative action
developed by Jürgen Habermas and discursive practices as developed by Michel
Foucault to examine the means by which power relationships are established and
maintained to deconstruct received wisdom on globalization. In other words, who is allowed to speak in a
discursive arena, what is regarded as a sensible proposition and which meaning
constructions become so dominant that they become taken for granted? For example the all-pervasive neo-liberal discourse
on globalization in the 1990s generated a counter-discourse from the so-called
“anti-globalisation”, transnational social movements (which are actually
constituted by the globalization process, only “globalization from below”.
(McGrew and
Held: pp.131-32), Habermas and Foucault thus enable us
to introduce transformative potential into the supposed inevitability of
globalization (McGrew and Held: p.142).
In conclusion, this essay has argued that the story of
the “Good State” given in ‘classical’ internationalism married to the insights
of social constructivism offer the best analytical and normative accounts of
globalization. That the advent of the
Internet and other forms of social media has made the globe more accessible to
more people at least in the virtual sense is undeniable. But the world has not been homogenized to the
extent that globalists either welcome or decry and the capacity of states or
groups of states acting in concert has very much survived in parallel to the
multiple levels of governance that have emerged to deal with the contingencies
of globalization. The notions of agency
advanced by social constructivism provide powerful tools to those who challenge
“inevitability” narratives of globalization.
Bibliography
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