What Is the relation between politics and globalization?
The topic of blog post 3 assignment is the 'What is the relation between politics and globalization?' This time, let's look deep into political globalization and talk about that question. Above all, let's look over the article written by Gerard Delanty and Chris Rumford.
The writers said that globalization refers to the multidimensional, accelerated and interconnected organization of space and time across national borders. It concerns an approach to the social world that stresses not postnational and transnational process, but also a consciousness of the compressed nature of space and time. According to their argument, political globalization is a tension between three processes- global geopolitics, global normative culture and polycentric networks. These interact to produce the complex field of global politics.
The first dimension of political globalization refer to 'the geopolitics of global power'. Despite the rise of the United States as a global power, the US will be challenged by many centres of power. The second dimension of political globalization is 'the rise of a global normative culture'. This is diffused in global political communication. Human rights lies at the centre of a global cosmopolitanism and it also includes environmental concerns such as sustainable development. As a result of global communication, political communication is now global in scope, not confined to national borders. And the political communication has become the basis of a global normative culture. This global normative culture has come into existence beyond the state system and exists in a relation of tension with states.
The third dimension of political globalization is polycentric networks. The processes of political globalization is associated with networks and flows, new sources of mobility and communication. And it means new relationships between the individual, state and society. For example, global civil society could be a different kind of global political order. Global society features polycentrism. It does not have one space but many. It is not based on any single principle of organization. So polycentric networks like this create new opportunities for autonomy and the recognition of a range of new actors and new modes of governance.
These three dimension of political globalization can be examined around four social transformations. The first one is the transformation of the nation-state, nationality and citizenship. According to Susan Strange, new economic forces come into play challenging the power of the nation-state, with the transition from a world economy dominated by national economies to a global economy. As a result, the nation-state must to share sovereignty with other global players like non-governmental actors leading to multi-governance. The movement towards transnational authority allows a more functional state system to operate. During the processes, nationality and citizenship are decoupled. And this is attributed to the impact of global normative culture. The second thing is the transformation of the public sphere and political communication. Habermas said the public sphere is the site of politics. The writers said the global normative culture is diffused in many ways within public spheres and is carried by many different kinds of social agents. Third, it is the transformation of civil society. With increasing opportunities for interaction between domestic and international politics, the global civil society can grow. Lastly, it is the transformation of space and borders. It means that spaces and borders do not have to be conceived as unitary and exclusive.
The interesting things in this article are the contradiction of the political globalization and the role of civil society. The writers point out one contradiction is that between the tendency of globalization to homogenize and increasing emphasis on and respect for difference. It is easy to think that political globalization means only the proliferation of liberal democracy and as the thesis of the 'end of history' written by Francis Fukuyama, it means the end of ideology. I thought so before reading this article. But the authors said it is the spread of more and different kinds of ideology. They argue the globalization just gives the democratic nation-state worldwide acceptability. The democratic nation-state in the world has given rise to very different kinds of political cultures. I think this misconception comes from overemphasis on interconnection and transnational processes of globalization. Also It is because of lack of understanding for mid-progress of political globalization.
In the same vein, It was impressive(although this is what many people know well) that the importance of civil society to political globalization lies in its potential to organize resistance to the global hegemony of capitalism or the United States. At this part, I think the globalization is not just mean the alignment with and combination to strong and global flow, a unified form like capitalism or democracy.
In conclusion, this article made me think deeply about 'What is the globalization?' Now, one question arises. Are all these processes of political globalization inevitable and natural consequence in human history? (Think of Capitalism in economic dimension or democracy in political dimension.) Are things like global civil society and phenomena like polycentic networks already foresighted to appear? In other words, is this direction of globalization steady or flexible, inevitable or evitable(there are another directions)? I wonder this, so I want to think about this with other students.
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