Introduction
While there is little consensus on a precise definition, globalization usually refers to a multidimensional process whereby markets, firms, production, and national financial systems are integrated on a global scale (Brawley 2008, p. 12). This definition, however, emphasizes the economic aspects of globalization.
Globalization in other areas of life such as communication, has ramifications in non-economic too, as in cultural affairs, and these can have subsequent political consequences. According to Müller (2003, p. 7), globalization may be described as a new social architecture of cross border human interactions. It breaks down the old international division of labor and the associated hierarchy of rich and poor countries.
Through the process of globalization, the integrity of the national territorial state as a more or less coherent political economy is eroded, and the functions of the state become reorganized to adjust domestic economic and social policies to fit the exigencies of the global market and global capitalist accumulation.
Foundations of Globalization
Although theoretical concepts offer useful insights and directions for inquiry, specific social arrangements are always historical. That is to say, in inquiring into the issues of that have been resolved in the building of globalization; it is important to remember that what exists today has emanated from previous experience.
Among the conditions that have supported the concept of globalization include power, institutions, authority, and democracy. As the fundamental concept of politics, power has been thought of in many ways. One prominent conceptualization stresses the domination of one person or entity over others, whereas another emphasizes the construction of power through interactive speech that leads to acting together.
A favorite of political scientists focuses on the specific acts by which one individual or group induces another to do things that the other would not otherwise do. In addition to power and identification of interests in a global context, different nations have desired to lead the way and gain the cooperation of other states through institutional arrangements that make the coordination of policies easier and steadier.
According to Prechel (2007, p. 35), institutionalization has followed a practical and quite diverse course. In the late nineteenth century, the United States helped to found the Pan American Union as a means of gaining the cooperation of western hemisphere states. At the same time, the United States retained its discretion to intervene in those same states when its interests led it to at unilaterally. Authority has also been considered a key pillar of globalization.
When power is exercised by some people over others in circumstances in which both sides agree that there is an obligation to obey, one party has a right to act with authority (Cohen 2001, p. 21). In states with established governments and ordered societies based on justice, authority tends to be recognized to such an extent that citizens obey laws even when they disagree with them, and violators of law recognize that they are doing wrong in the face of legitimate authority.
The basis upon which those running a political system claim authority to rule and those subject to it find an obligation to obey forms one important line of inquiry in political philosophy as well as an important practical issue for political leaders and followers. Finally, there is democracy. In an ideal democratic society, power rests with the people. As a result, governments are often pushed to act in a way that takes public interest into consideration.
Globalization and Politics
The politics of globalization includes two dimensions. The first embodies the efficient distribution of power and the constraints imposed by existing arrangements. Ordinarily, these constraints flow from choices that have established and now manage existing structures and processes.
The second dimension embraces a more visionary quest for alternative arrangements in the future. As is true of all politics, both cooperation and struggle are involved, domination and resistance are evident, and contestation abounds. To a large extent, globalization is most commonly presented as an inexorable process that consists in bringing the world together through technology.
Although the fundamental processes bringing human beings into contact with one another have been at work for millennia, high-speed transport and especially the computer have speeded up the process in the last quarter-century or so (Lindquist & Handelman 2012). Travel, trade, and financial flows now characteristically flow across the globe in voluminous amounts and at rapid rates.
Although the developments resulting from globalization are commonly regarded as transforming the world in which we live, there are four basic assertions about globalization that either restate or modify received ideas about open-minded thought. Foremost among the claims is that the state is losing power to the market and has been or will be changed in fundamental ways. This contention restates the Lockean position that society and market relations precede the state.
Another claim holds that communities are breaking down and that individuals are becoming increasing isolated. Traditional liberalism is founded on the notion that rational individuals formed contracts and constituted civil society, which Locke equated with the state. With the increase of the market and other contractual relations, traditional communities and societies faded before free thought in which different ideas of morality and reason emerged, and individuals were no longer constrained by social conventions and traditions.
Another assertion promotes the formation of new identities and novel social and political formations, indeed the creation of a transnational civil society. Given both the absence of constraints and the individualistic origins of society and government, aspirations for universal freedom of association, identity, and contractual relations have always been implicit in the liberal consensus, and aspects of the globalization debate claim that these aspirations are now being brought to fruition.
Still another assertion foresees the development of a broad human project of global governance that includes a universal legal system and intervention nearly everywhere on behalf of human rights or humanitarian principles. Although consistent with the universalizing tendencies of traditional liberalism, in some ways this last claim flies I the face of others, for governance requires state power both for its formulation and its enforcement.
Whatever diversity exists among those regarding globalization as inexorable, the primary argument tends to treat politics mostly with an outlook geared to the future. However, two implications flow from this treatment (Lentner 2004, p. 2). Analysis tends to have an ideological or at least normative orientation, and analysts tend to assume that politics in the future will less and less resemble what has gone before.
Furthermore, as the very term globalization itself suggests, many analysts assume that a politics of the globe, however fragmented, has already emerged and that the world can be treated, at least to some extent, as a unit in which some sort of new form of politics is already being practiced.
In my view, developments in the world are not inevitable. Without denying that technology has an impact on the lives of people all over the world, I argue that the arrangements for channeling and using resources are chosen by people who act within political and social contexts, all of which exist within conditions structured by power.
That means that people, using their material resources and ideas, have conflicted and cooperated with others to establish existing arrangements. Moreover, they continue to contend to preserve, modify, or drastically alter the arrangements. Thus, to understand the conditions of globalization, one needs to examine the array of power underlying them, the agents who propel and contend over them, and the values and aspirations at work in contentions over managing the arrangements.
The fundamental problem of politics stems from the simultaneous existence of human striving for autonomy and community. Aristotle’s assertion that man is by nature a political animal includes the notion that individuals seek to lead a good life, but they are enabled to do so only within a good state.
Such a state requires institutions, the rule of law, citizenship in which recognition is accorded individuals, justice which in the first place entails equality, and some purpose or end. Although ultimately the purposes of the individual are served by the political community, the purposes are not merely matters of human needs for food, clothing, shelter, and so forth, but encompass something larger.
Conclusion
The view of globalization and politics presented in this paper has tried to illuminate the conditions and choices that underlie current arrangements and to provide a glimpse into the political consequences of globalization. Current circumstances prevail because of the dominant, unchallenged power position of some powerful countries in the world, such as the United States. Although not everyone may agree, the discourse on globalization is quite varied.
Reference List
Brawley, MR 2008, The Politics of Globalization: Gaining Perspective, Assessing Consequences, University of Toronto Press, Ontario, Canada.
Cohen, ES 2001, The politics of globalization in the United States, Georgetown University Press, Washington, D.C.
Lentner, HH 2004, Power and Politics in Globalization: The Indispensible State, Routledge, New York, NY.
Lindquist, G & Handelman, D 2012, Religion, Politics, and Globalization: Anthropological Approaches, Berghahn Books, Oxford, NY.
Müller, PS 2003, Unearthing the politics of globalization, LIT Verlag Münster, Piscataway, NJ.
Prechel, H 2007, Politics and Globalization, Elsevier, Amsterdam.