Political Globalization - Jang Yerim

 1.     Summary

Political Globalization refers to the multidimensional, accelerated and interconnected organization of space and time across national borders. For some, processes of political globalization open up new emancipatory possibilities, while for others globalization leads to a loss of autonomy and the fragmentation of the social world. Political globalization can be understood as a tension between three processes which interact to produce the complex field of global politics: global geopolitics, global normative culture and polycentric networks.

One of the most pervasive forms of political globalization is the worldwide spread of democracy based on the parliamentary nationstate. Democratic government exists in some form in most parts of the world and where it does not, as in China, there is a considerable demand for it by democratic movements.

Despite the rise of the United States as a global power, global geopolitics is not, as it is often portrayed to be, a Pax Americana, or what Carl Schmitt called a new ‘Nomos of the Earth’, a Western world order (Schmitt 2003). The United States will not be able to establish global supremacy and will be challenged by many centres of power centres that are mostly states. Thus, the first dimension of political globalization is the geopolitics of global power.

A second dimension of political globalization refers to the rise of a global normative culture. One of the main expressions of this is human rights, which lies at the centre of a global cosmopolitanism, but it also includes environmental concerns, which are now global. National politics is increasingly framed in terms of global discourses. Coupled with the global diffusion of democracy, political communication has become the basis of a global normative culture that has arisen as much in opposition to geopolitics as in support of it.

States were once the main agents of global norms, but today a global normative culture has come into existence beyond the state system and exists in a relation of tension with states. This global normative culture provides normative reference points for states and an orientation for political actors. As John Meyer and his colleagues have argued, for the first time in history there is now a global culture which provides a frame of reference for all societies (Meyer et al. 1997, 2004; Boli and Lechner 2005). For politics this means that political struggles and legitimation are ever more connected to global issues. It means that counterpublics as well as states will be shaped by it.

 While globalization requires the existence of global players such as powerful states to diffuse and implement global geopolitics, there is another dimension of globalization that is less related to states and which is not reducible to global normative culture. This may be termed polycentric networks, that is, forms of nonterritorial politics which emanate from a multiplicity of sites and which cannot be reduced to a single centre. polycentric networks are associated with emerging forms of global governance.

 The concept of civil society is much contested and for present purposes it simply refers to the political domain between the state and the market where informal politics takes place. One of the distinctive features of global civil society is that it does not have one space but many. It must be stressed that these three dimensions of globalization do not exist separately from each other, for all are products of globalization and are interrelated. Global civil society, for example, is not separate from geopolitics, but occupies a separate space beyond the state and global market.

🍎 THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE NATION-STATE, NATIONALITY AND CITIZENSHIP

 The notion of the decline of the nation-state in a post-statist world of governance without government should be replaced by the idea of the continued transformation of the nation-state. States continue to be powerful actors but exist in a more globally connected world that they do not fully control (see Sorensen 2004). According to Susan Strange (1996), states have been usurped by global markets. With the transition from a world economy dominated by national economies to a global economy new economic forces come into play challenging the power of the nation-state.

 According to Majone (1996) the transnationalization of the state in Europe is best seen in terms of a regulatory kind of governance rather than the creation of a new state system that challenges the nation-state. The European Union possesses a large number of independent regulatory authorities, working in fields such as the environment, drugs and drug addiction, vocational training, health and safety at work, the internal market, racism and xenophobia, food safety, aviation safety. States have always had regulatory functions; what is different today is simply these functions are being performed at a transnational level through cooperation with other states.

🍏 THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE PUBLIC SPHERE AND COMMUNICATION

 Communication is central to politics. If the Enlightenment public was based on alleged free discussion, the public today is based on professional political communication and mass persuasion through systematic advertising and lobbying. However, as argued by Habermas (1989), communication is an open site of political and cultural contestation and is never fully institutionalized by the state or entirely controlled by elites and their organs of political communication. The public sphere is the site of politics; it is not merely a spatial location but a process of discursive contestation (see Calhoun 1992; Crossley and Roberts 2004).

 While debates continue on the question of the global public sphere as a transnational space, what is more important is the emergence of a global public discourse, which is less a spatially defined entity than a manifestation of discourse (Delanty, 2006). The global public is the always ever present sphere of discourse that contextualizes political communication and public discourse today. In terms of the three-fold conceptualization of globalization discussed earlier, it may be suggested that global normative culture is playing a leading role in shaping political communication.

🍋 THE CENTRALITY OF CILVIL SOCIETY

We have seen how political globalization is associated with the changing relationships between state, society and the individual, and the new transnational or global communities, networks and publics which have come into existence and which are in turn driving new forms of politics. The ‘civil societalization’ of politics both reinforces the idea that politics is increasingly informed by a normative global culture and points to the transformation of the nation-state as a site of political struggle. In other words, the ‘civil societalization’ of politics signifies a commonality of political forms which link the local and the global, the national and the transnational, and mobilizes a range of actors around common political codes: competitiveness, sustainability, personhood rights and social justice.

 The idea of civil society resonates most strongly with the democratic need for checks and balances, in particular the need to ensure that the state does not become too intrusive or controlling: totalitarianism implies the elimination of civil society. Thus for Krishan Kumar, the popularity and importance of the idea of civil society is that it promises to combine democratic pluralism with state regulation and guidance (Kumar 1993: 375). it is not adequate to view global civil society as an aggregate of previously existing national civil societies: global civil society is founded upon a non-territorial political imaginary.

🍊 THE TRANSFORMATION OF SPACES AND BORDERS

The image of a ‘borderless world’ has long been associated with thinking about globalization. It has also led to an interesting paradox.

We are increasingly conscious of the shrinking dimensions or compression of an increasingly interconnected world and the way in which this renders the globe meaningful and brings it within the grasp of all individuals.

At the same time the frictionless flows and untrammelled mobilities constitutive of globalization are commonly held to represent a threat to the nation-state, as a result of which economic and political processes are taken beyond the reach of democratically elected polities, and the individuals that constitute them.

2.     Interesting point

What was interesting was that opinions were divided whether or not political globalization meant the decline of a nation-state. Hyperglobalists claim that globalization has covered the world today in ways that national boundaries begin to lose meaning. But skeptics believe that national state remains the best player in international relations.

And, now, political globalization relies on advanced communication technologies. If so, political globalization will be greatly influenced by American technology factors. That global politics is under the influence of the U.S. and other powers can mean inequality for other countries.

3.     Discussion

What does the revival of extreme nationalism mean? There may be an anti-globalization movement, but it cannot happen that globalization regresses. What does the revival of nationalism mean in an ever-globalized world?