Advertising and Public Relations, Kang Ha Eun
WHAT IS POLITICAL GLOBALIZATION?
According to this article, the concept of globalization refers to the multidimensional, accelerated and interconnected organization of time and space across national borders. As globalization proceeds, the concept of national borders blurs, and this stimulates political change as well as economical one. Political globalization specially deals with an approach to the social world which emphasizes post-national and transnational processes. In the political sphere of globalization, it is thought to have made the nation-state decline under the power of global forces. This article describes political globalization as a relational dynamic and highlights the multi-faced nature of globalization. Thus, political globalization can be explained by the relationship between three dimensions; global geopolitics, global normative culture, and polycentric networks.
As for the geopolitics of global power, we can look at the history of democracy. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, democracy spread worldwide and became the universally acceptable form of government. This phenomenon led to the proliferation of more and different kinds of political cultures. Despite the fact that the United States seems to have more global power, because of the political globalization, it is constantly challenged by many centers of power. Global normative culture, which is a dimension not specifically Western, is no longer confined to national borders. It includes not only human rights but also environmental concerns and this is based on political communication. Political acts are ever more related to global issues. The last dimension of globalization, polycentric networks, is associated with emerging forms of global governance. United Nations sees global political order based on the level of the nation-state, but there are other kinds which are associated with the notion of global civil society. The civil society is independent of global capitalism and its distinctive characteristic is that it is polycentric. These three dimensions of political globalization are interrelated with each other and do not exist separately.
There are four social transformations which enable examination of the three dynamics of political globalization. The first one is the transformation of the nation-state, nationality, and citizenship. As the world becomes globalized, the notion of nation-state seems to decline, but it would be rather true to say that the idea is continuously transformed. It is not that states are losing its power, but in a globalized world, they just do not have a full control. And as global economy dominate a world economy, new economic forces, which have become a rival to states, are challenging the power of the nation-state. Sharing sovereignty with them leads to multi-governance, but it does not mean a loss of autonomy. In the transformation of nationality, global normative culture decoupled nationality and citizenship, and nationhood and statehood. International law is getting more power and the transformation of the nation-state increased subnational politics, for example, global cities resulted from the denationalization and the rise of non-territorial politics.
The public today, so-called a 'new public' is based on the open site of communication. The public sphere does not mean a mere spatial location but a discursive contestation process. It was originally conceived as a national public sphere, but with the rise of the commercial mass media, the new social theory arose. It viewed the public sphere wider as cosmopolitan and caused the emergence of the global public discourse in which the global public plays a key role. In this transformation of the public sphere and communication, global normative culture shapes political communication and makes it easier to see it in the public sphere.
The idea of civil society symbolizes the political potential of globalization and signals the onset of globalization. As Mary Robinson claims, the importance of the civil society lies in that democracy need pluralism and the civil society has a potential to regulate state not to become too intrusive or controlling. Moreover, global civil society is expected to resolve the contradiction arisen by globalization. First is the tendency to homogenize and to respect difference and the second is the power to individuate and to endow new communities with autonomy. As national norms have become universalized, the increase in transnational opportunities for interaction has activated and promoted growth in civil society. There is an ongoing debate, but global civil society is not just an aggregate of preexisting national civil society. The irony is the existence of a civil society is concertized by the ones who are skeptical about its efficiency. However, the civil society undermines the important aspect of territorial state and makes people feel less of the national citizen but also as cosmopolitan individuals.
As the world becomes globalized, the meaning of political spaces and borders needed to be reassessed. Acknowledging the transformative power of globalization has increased the interest in the way social space is constructed. This has been stimulated by the blurred boundary and rising non-territorially based political forms fostered by globalization. The relationship between globalization and new political spaces has two dynamics. First, the network society is constituted by the social practices without geographical contiguity which exists in tension with a territorially defined form of spatial organization. Second is the idea of cosmopolitanization. Knowing the relationship between spaces and borders is essential to understand political globalization. Space is constituted of social and political relations, so managing just space is no longer important as it was to the nation-state. While undergoing globalization, the quantitative relationship between territory and borders has been inverted. The idea of the borderless world cannot be realized. But rebordering of globalization is different from that of a preexisting notion of the nation-state.
INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT POLITICAL GLOBALIZATION
When I first thought of political globalization, it seemed so far from my life and assumed it to be difficult. But it was actually something closely related to my daily life. Especially it was interesting to know that the power of international law is getting stronger. International law does not possess a coercive power so I doubted its power. In the process of globalization, even the regional norms proliferate and the generalized norms begin to gain power. Norms about human right should definitely be followed by every people with no exception. But as even what most of the people around the globe think to be right might not be right, we should share one another's idea through public discussion. That is the reason why global communication is so important and political globalization is essential.
THINGS TO THINK ABOUT POLITICAL GLOBALIZATION
According to this article, the idea of the public sphere declined as commercial mass media arose. This was interesting because what I major is advertising and I take classes about the power of advertising and mass media. Usually, there is negative perspective about commercial mass media for in many times, manufacturer deceives and tries to manipulate people to buy their products, but there is another perspective that mass media's power on people is not that strong. People still have the power to think based on their reason. Even though I cannot deny mass media's negative effect on the public forum, but I still think that it has a positive power to make people know and care about the issues happening on the other parts of the globe.
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