APPROACHES TO UNDERSTANDING

GLOBALISATION

Radical approach
 Opening up of business for foreign investors under strict
government control.
 Government is active in all the decision making and planning.
 Integration and communication among states under strict
governmental rules and regulation.
 Believe in import substitution to protect domestic industry, so they are
not in support of globalization freely.
 Decline of state as an autonomous decision making body.
 Transnational capital and structure are inexorable to erode the state
and national sovereignty.
 Globalisation promotes uniformity and capital is no longer nationally
based so the 3rd world nations will have equal/favourable treatment
from international investors and equality among nations will exist.
 Innovations in IT increased the mobility of capital and have made
expertise in engineering, medicine more widely available across
states borders using sophisticated platforms.
 According to Ohmae, the key development is the rapid expansion of
the global economy, it increased prosperity and opportunities across
and within national cultures
 Ohmae defines global change in in 4 I’s – investment, industry,
information technology, and individual consumers. He argues that
investment via financial markets has grown rapidly in recent years,
as technology has greatly increased the opportunity for
speculators to bypass national government controls.

 The sheer speed of technological advancement is creating a deep

change in the mind-set of those exposed to it. Ohmae cites the
example of Japan, where a new generation of ‘Nintendo kids’ is
becoming resistant to rules handed down by their parents and
grandparents whose thinking was shaped by Japan’s experience
in the Second World War. Life opportunities can, like the
interactive computer games that have reshaped their
consciousness.

 Ohmae welcomes the change bought by multimedia and echoing

the positions of evolutionary liberals.
The radical globalisation perspective stresses the following
factors:

1. The development and wide availability of low-cost telecommu-

nications technology such as fibre-optic cables, fax machines,
digital transmission and satellites, which has meant that the
populations of states are increasingly becoming subjected to a
‘global culture’ that is beyond the power of individual governments
to control.

2. The rise of MNCs which now have the resources to rival many
states, but unlike states are not rooted in geography and are easily
able to relocate their plants according to shifting demand and the
availability of local advantages such as cheap wage costs, low
business taxes and weak trade unions

3. The increasingly global nature of trade, which has rendered states

unable to develop effective economic policies. States increasingly
have to respond to factors beyond their control such as impera-
tives of MNCs and the fluctuations of the world’s financial markets.
Overall, it is claimed that world markets and MNCs are more
powerful forces in international affairs than states and that these
new forces of globalisation cannot be effectively governed.

Liberal approach
 For liberals – globalization is seen as the end product of the long
running transformation of the world.
 Lesser government interference in the business activities of foreign
investors. (states are no longer central actors)
 The rules are pretty simpler and government has no role in
decision making.
 Free market economy trade, less tariffs and trade barriers are
present.
 Belief in cooperation between nation-states in order to achieve
mutually beneficial outcomes by focusing on absolute rather than
relative gain.
 If you look from an economic perspective, the concept of
globalization itself is liberal i.e. free trade and free movement of
goods, services and labour.
 Allowing nations to cooperate without focusing on violent solutions
to global problems. This aspect of liberalism is promoted by
Immanuel Kant, who theorised a cosmopolitan world in which
countries could cooperate to reduce international divisions.
 Liberals interested in revolution in technology and communication
in globalisation (increased interconnection between societies)
 According to them globalisation brings social and political benefits.
 Free flow of information – widens opportunity for self-development
and creates dynamic and vigorous societies.
 Globalisation will lead to dissemination of global political identity
and creation of global civil society.
 Tendency towards peace and international cooperation, and
dispersal of global power due to the emergence of global civil
society and growing importance of international organisations.
 Important historical events during globalisation in this perspective
are
1. Agricultural and industrial revolution.
2. Discovery of market institutions and free trade rules that
propelled Pax Britannica.
3. Bretton woods institutions and their spillovers or path
dependence effects that characterized the first phase of Pax
Americana.
 4. The internet or information revolution that extended Pax
Americana to the developing world.

 The liberal approach to global politics focuses on the individual in

two ways
1) Their Sovereignty – Liberal philosopher John Locke was a
heavy proponent of individual sovereignty. “Every man has a
property in his own person”. This has been seen in more
modern times in the emergence of human rights and
globalisation eroding national sovereignty in favour of the rights
of sovereignty of the individual.
2) Their Non-aggressive human nature – This is more optimistic
than that of realist theories. Unlike Thomas Hobbes’s
pessimistic view that the state of nature is “nasty, brutish and
short”, liberals focus on the fact that we may cooperate naturally
and that – when translated to the international sphere – nations
are not in a constant ‘state of war’. This was seen in the Cuban
Missile Crisis, where two opposed super powers avoided
nuclear war, despite having no common ground. As such,
liberal theorist insist that war is not inevitable, and that a
peaceful human nature may prevent such conflicts from arising.