International Political Sociology (2007) 1, 165–182

‘‘Globalization Theory’’: Yesterday’s Fad

or More Lively than Ever?
MATHIAS ALBERT
University of Bielefeld

This article argues that while globalization theory is far from being past
its most productive phase, as some of its critics claim, it does exhibit a
number of shortcomings, particularly when it comes to identifying a
clear point of reference for what is taken to be globalized and applying
theoretical concepts developed in the analysis of national societies to a
global level. This article argues that globalization theory stands on solid
ground in that globalization theory has developed four strands of
research, which are fairly well developed and which distinguish it as a
separate field of inquiry, these four strands being the understanding
of globalization as inherently varied globalization, global governance
research, global history, and global/world society research. It argues that
in order to redress some of the problems of globalization theory, it is
necessary to build on these four strands and merge them with the tra-
ditional sociological concepts of functional differentiation and rational-
ization as well as with insights from complexity theories.

An increasing number of social and political structures emerge on a global rather

than on a regionally or nationally limited scale, and these structures increasingly
impact the way in which politics operates on various layers. At first glance, this
observation hardly appears to be original, given that it has stood at the center of
globalization diagnoses since at least the early 1990s. However, while it is recog-
nized that the vast field of ‘‘globalization research’’ has succeeded in mapping out
many facets of the newly emerging global social and political structures empirically,
the argument here is that is has largely and persistently failed to provide convincing
theoretical accounts of sufficient analytical rigor to explain and understand these
structures in the context of modern social and political theory. To develop this
argument, the present contribution first reads advanced globalization research as
converging around the four main strands of ‘‘varied globalization,’’ ‘‘global gov-
ernance,’’ ‘‘global history,’’ and ‘‘global/world society’’ in order to then argue that
those strands need to be combined in a more systematic fashion. However, it also
argues that combining existing research will not suffice to remedy more substantial
theoretical shortcomings which have recently been succinctly outlined in Justin
Rosenberg’s (2005) ‘‘post-mortem’’ on globalization theory. The most notable point
of criticism here is that globalization theory has not managed to successfully relate
and give innovative answers to the traditional questions of social theory. However,
the present contribution parts with Rosenberg’s recommendation for a basically
Marxian remedy to the problem and offers a different account of the achievements
and failures of, as well as on, the prospects for globalization research and theory. It
argues that any ‘‘globalization theory,’’ which takes seriously its own claims to pro-
vide comprehensive accounts of global social and political change, must address not

r 2007 International Studies Association.

Published by Blackwell Publishing, 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA, and 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK.
166 ‘‘Globalization Theory’’: Yesterday’s Fad or More Lively than Ever?

only both traditional questions of social theory about social integration, differen-
tiation, and rationalization and more recent questions about forms of complexity in
social life but also questions about whether core concepts of social theory, which
were formulated with national societies in mind, such as social ‘‘integration’’ or
large-scale collective identity, can be usefully applied on a global scale.
The argument will proceed in three steps. The next section will summarize the
four strands which distinctively characterize advanced diagnoses of globalization,
namely the understanding of globalization as an inherently ‘‘varied’’ process, the
emergence of structures of global governance, the reading of history as global
history, as well as the evolution of a global/world society. The following section will
then briefly rehearse some of Rosenberg’s criticism of ‘‘globalization theory’’ mostly
in an affirmative sense, yet argue that Rosenberg does in fact draw the wrong
conclusions in seeking to remedy the shortcomings of globalization theory through
an approach that seeks to embed it in the framework of Marxian political economy.
The subsequent section will then argue that the basic problems identified by
Rosenberg can nonetheless be addressed and globalization theory could be resitu-
ated by bringing together the contributions identified in the four different strands
of globalization research under the umbrella of the key themes of social theory,
most notably functional differentiation and rationalization. The aim of the present
contribution is thus both ambitious and modest at the same time. On the one hand,
it is ambitious in the sense that it seeks to devise an outlook for research perspec-
tives in a field that some have come to think of as rather outmoded by showing that
globalization theory may in fact be more at the beginning than at the end of its
intellectual journey in the context of social theory. On the other hand, the aim is
modest in that what can be accomplished here is at most a suggestion about where
globalization theory might be going rather than to outline a full-fledged theoretical
research program.

Main Strands of Globalization Research: Varied Globalization,

Global Governance, Global History, and Global/World Society
Any attempt to provide a concise overview over globalization research must nec-
essarily fail. Of course, such overviews have been attempted at various levels of
aggregation and to various degrees of intellectual sophistication against different
disciplinary backgrounds.1 Yet, all these attempts cannot hide the fact that there
never has beenFand probably never will beFan uncontested and shared under-
standing of what ‘‘globalization’’ ‘‘is.’’ However, globalization by no means serves as
an ‘‘empty signifier’’ to which almost any meaning could be attached. Rather, both
semantically as well as in terms of historical-intellectual succession, it resembles the
notion and concept of ‘‘development,’’ that is, an open and varying term whose
meaning can extend in different directions and sometimes even become contra-
dictory, yet which shapes and structures a discourse of vast proportions on a global
scale (i.e., a ‘‘cluster concept’’).2
Recognizing the limits of any brief overview, it is nevertheless possible to identify
at least four strands around which globalization research has begun to crystallize:
globalization as a varied globalization of the social world; the emergence of struc-
tures of global governance; the writing of global history; and the evolution of some
form of global or world society. Of course, the identification of these strands among
the entire body of globalization research remains somewhat selective and subjective,
yet they arguably constitute those strands of research which most notably set

1
Rather than point to the vast number of works, it may suffice here to refer to the Encyclopedia of Globalization
(Robertson and Scholte 2006) as an attempt to provide just such a comprehensive overview.
2
On development as a cluster concept, see Tenbruck (1987); on the similarity of the semantic careers of de-
velopment and globalization, see Tyrell (2005).
 MATHIAS ALBERT 167

globalization research apart from more traditional forms of research particularly in

the field of international relations (IR).3
In the following, the purpose of briefly outlining these four strands of contem-
porary globalization research is not to scrutinize in any detail what are vast research
areas in themselves. Rather, it is to prepare the ground for an observation and an
argument to be developed over the subsequent sections of the article. The obser-
vation here is that both globalization theory and its critics regularly eschew at least
one, if not more, of these strands in their account of globalization. The argument
that follows, however, is that all these strands depict a dimension of a complex social
process of globalization and none can be excluded if globalization theory is to be
developed more closely along the lines of fundamental questions of social theory. Of
course, such a development requires more than merely pegging different strands of
inquiry together. We need to be able to structure them around pertinent guiding
questions and broader developments in social theory.

Globalization as Varied Globalization

If, save in some remaining parts of neo-liberal/globalist rhetoric,4 there is one
agreement upon understanding in the social sciences of what ‘‘globalization’’ en-
tails, it is that it is to be distinguished from a process of internationalization, which
refers to a mere quantitative increase in contacts and flows across nation-state
boundaries or an increasing outward-orientation of the nation-state and its adop-
tion of and reference to international norms, rules, and standards in domestic
affairs. ‘‘Globalization’’ invariably means more than just internationalization in that
it refers to a new quality of social arrangements (for an overview, see Held 2003).
This new quality is usually taken to consist in a spatio-temporal realignment which
influences and structures processes of economic production and exchange, political
authority, the formation of individual and collective identities, or cultural frames of
reference. Basically, this spatio-temporal realignment does take the form, in the
famous expression coined by David Harvey (1990), of a ‘‘time–space compression.’’
Based on the advances of modern technology, an acceleration of processes of com-
munication and exchange folds together and diminishes the importance of geo-
graphic distance. It is the main defining characteristic of this strand of research that
it has constantly attempted to qualify and differentiate this ‘‘basic’’ line of seeing
globalization as time–space compression, particularly by pointing out that what is
implied here is a process that is neither linear nor necessarily leads to higher
degrees of homogeneity or similarity.5 One of the most influential qualifications in
this respect pertains to the observation that globalization processes always require
to be articulated in and are in turn influenced by local social, political, and cultural
settings, leading Robertson to rephrase globalization into ‘‘glocalization’’ (see
Robertson 1992).
In addressing the issue of glocalization, Robertson draws attention to the fact that
discussions about the nature of globalization as a coherent versus a varied process
are not new in the sense that they play on one of the most pertinent themes of social
theory, that is, on the relation between the homogeneity and the heterogeneity of
the social world. At the heart of all differentiation theories in sociology since
Herbert Spencer (1966, original 1877–1896), the question of whether the social

3
‘‘Crystallization’’ in this case then primarily refers to a maturing of scientific debates, that is the establishment of
‘‘nodal points’’ in the discourse, the same subjects appearing in discussions over again, but of course also insti-
tutionalization of research along such strands through book series, journals (e.g., Globalizations), learned societies
(e.g., the ‘‘Globalization Studies Network’’), etc.
4
On ‘‘globalism’’ as ideology, see Beck (2000).
5
This is not to suggest that Harvey makes the argument in this simple form; rather, it is developed in reference to
and in further development of the structuralist concept of the relation between abstract and concrete space; see
Lefèbvre (1974).
168 ‘‘Globalization Theory’’: Yesterday’s Fad or More Lively than Ever?

world functions and/or can be imagined more as an (incoherent) homogeneity or as

a (coherent) heterogeneity becomes particularly pressing once the restraining con-
dition of the territorial limits of the social realm (i.e., as a national society) is re-
moved and the interest shifts to a global social entity. While (most notably in
contrast to the cosmopolitan view which relies on the imagination of the possibility
of a global homogeneity produced by means of normative-integrative community
formation) functional theorizing after Parsons would tend to see functional differ-
entiation as underlying a global system, which can only be depicted as a funda-
mentally heterogeneous one, Robertson adds an interesting twist to the
homogeneity–heterogeneity debate by pointing out that global heterogeneity is
not produced (and constrained!) by functional differentiation alone, but also by new
forms of nonsegmentary spatial differentiations across and between different scales
from local to global. Somewhat differently and with a less-pronounced reference to
the geographic scale, this observation is also expressed in Giddens’ (1990) concept
of the disembedding characteristics of abstract systems and the corresponding
processes of reembedding in specific social constellations. Particularly at this latter
point, theoretical accounts of globalization become tightly interwoven with diag-
noses of an emerging second or reflexive modernity (see Beck, Giddens, and Lash
1995; also Dirlik 2003) and meet with sociological world society studies in the
traditions of Peter Heintz (1972), John Meyer et al. (1997), and Luhman (1997; for
an overview of these three literatures, see Albert 2006). This point can hardly be
over-emphasized: more than four decades after Wilbert Moore (1966) issued a
passionate call to transform (in this case particularly Parsonian) social theory into a
‘‘global sociology,’’ and despite Ulrich Beck’s (2002) more recent argument that
much of social theorizing still remains entrapped in a ‘‘national perspective,’’ a
significant part of social theorizing has transformed or reconstituted itself as global
social theory.
That this has happened in many different ways, and that global social theory is
variably articulated as, for example, global systems theory (Luhmann), a theory of
global uneven development (Heintz), a theory of global rationalization (Meyer), a
theory of globalization (Roberston) and so on should hardly come as a surprise. The
main point here is however that despite varying individual emphases, globalization
theory over the years has produced a body of literatureFnot only of main the-
oretical contributions but also of many individual empirical studies which take those
theoretical contributions as points of reference6Fwhich has broadly rearticulated
globalization as a complex and comprehensive process of social change on a global
scale, which is all but a global ‘‘homogenizing’’ or an ‘‘integrating’’ force. Such
articulations of globalization as a process tightly or indeed inextricably interwoven
with social change in a broader sense do of course raise some doubts as to whether a
‘‘globalization theory’’ is feasible on its own or whether any theoretical account of
globalization always needs to be embedded in a broader context of social theory
trying to make sense of comprehensive change in the social world (this being a
point forcefully raised in Rosenberg’s critique of globalization theory).

Global Governance
While globalization, and particularly also globalization understood as a varied
process, refers to comprehensive transformations in the social world, often openly
calling into question established disciplinary boundaries, the study of political glo-
balization has centered on the emergence of processes and structures of global
governance. Analyses of what global governance entails cover a broad spectrum:
they range from IR accounts of the development of more ‘‘robust,’’ legalized
international regimes in the tradition of neoliberal institutionalism (see Goldstein

6
And which in this sense forms a ‘‘dialogue’’ of globalization studies; see Scholte (2004).
 MATHIAS ALBERT 169

et al. 2001); over the establishment of patterns of ‘‘private’’ or ‘‘civil’’ authority

(Hall 2002; Cutler 2003), often linked with a normative focus on goals of global
redistribution in the tradition of development theory; to the analysis of emerging
patterns and symbolic systems of self-regulation in complex global systems in the
tradition of sociological systems theory (see Willke 2005, 2006).
All these versions of global governance, however, share an understanding ac-
cording to which capacities for collectively binding decision making as a central
function of modern government have at least partly and in various forms been
‘‘disembedded’’ from the institutional structures of decision making within and
between nation-states, and relocated to the global level where they have been in-
stitutionally transformed or even reinvented in new institutional designs. It is an
open and disputed issue whether the establishment of global governance structures
is also accompanied by significant trends of polity-formation on a global scale, thus
possibly indicating the emergence of some sort of global (quasi-)government (see
Shaw 2000; Higgott and Ougaard 2002; Albert and Stichweh 2007). However,
irrespective of global polity formation, global governance indicates a globalization
of the political system in that it establishes forms of exercising political authority in
addition to, yet also including, traditional forms of political regulation and decision
making between nation-states. In its function as providing capacities of collectively
binding decision making on a global level, global governance cannot be disentan-
gled from processes of legalization and the evolution of a global legal system within
as much as beyond the boundaries of international law.
However, this necessary co-evolution of the global political and a global legal
system as such says nothing about either the legitimacy or the effectiveness of global
governance. What it does show is that the global political system increasingly
resembles a complex texture in which locales of decision making are dispersed
between and concentrated on various layers of political order as much as they are
dispersed and concentrated geographically, with some regions playing more prom-
inent role than others (see Katzenstein 2005).
On such a general level of abstraction, global governance can hardly be seen as a
notion which is immediately enabling analytically in the sense that it would convey
an immediate sense of where and how locales of political decision making are
located and operate on a global level; however, it is disabling analytically in the sense
that the vast literature on global governance has shown that neither can global
governance today be reduced to nation-state and international politics nor is there a
discernible concentration of collective decision making on a global level, which
would resemble the bundling of political authority under the sovereignty of the
nation-state.

Global History
Research on globalization has been characterized and accompanied by a notable
resurgence of historical inquiry. Within history as a discipline, the field of ‘‘global
history’’ was established in order to chart the history of globalization itself, pro-
grammatically setting itself apart from the well-established traditions of ‘‘world
history’’ or long-range historical studies about the evolution of world systems.7
Although often framed as a largely epochal understanding of globalization, it seems
that more recently contributions in global history have tended to treat globalization
less as a distinct phenomenon in epochal terms but rather as a process whose
historical roots need to be traced back at least to the consolidation of the modern

7
See Mazlish (2001); for a view which emphasizesFagainst MazlishFthat ideas analogous to the modern notion
of ‘‘globality’’ can be traced back much further in history to Graeco-Roman concepts of the world, see Robertson
and Inglis (2006); also Brague (1999); see also in particular the second chapter in Holton (2005) and Robertson
(1998).
170 ‘‘Globalization Theory’’: Yesterday’s Fad or More Lively than Ever?

system of states itself (incidentally, also leading to more overlaps between traditions
of global and world history; see Gills and Thompson 2006). Global history in this
sense has led to the establishment of the view that globalization cannot be seen as a
post-World War II creation ex nihilo, but includes and continues long-term historical
trends. This awareness of history in globalization studies did not arguably occur in
an intellectual vacuum. Rather, it seems to have been stimulated to a significant
degree by the massive (re-)discovery of ‘‘historical sociology’’ in the field of IR
which scrutinizes the historical conditions and processes behind the emergence of
forms of the international political system, which are still more often than not
treated as ‘‘givens’’ in IR theory (for an overview, see Hobden and Hobson 2002).
This is probably best exemplified by the notion of a ‘‘Westphalian system,’’ which
continues to be taken as a shorthand form for the establishment of a system of
sovereign territorial states through the Treaties concluding the Thirty Years’ War in
1648. In contrast to many approaches in IR, which take the Westphalian Peace as a
starting date of the modern system of states, historical studies have increasingly
pointed out that there never was such a point of origin of the modern system of
states; rather, the treaties of Münster and Osnabrück only laid down some prin-
ciples that were later to be referred to as regulative and to some degree constitutive
norms of the European system of states (see Aalberts 2006; and also Teschke 2003).
Most of the norms associated with the ‘‘Westphalian system’’ today, such as the
notion of a strict and exclusive territorial sovereignty arguably only, were estab-
lished to full extent on the basis of the principle of nationalism and thus, if any-
thing, are more characteristic of the late nineteenth and early twenteith centuries’
system of European (plus later North American) system of states than anything to
be witnessed between the late 17th and the 19th century. While thus historical
sociology has helped to demystify the theoretical myth of Westphalia somewhat, the
fact that what is often taken to be a Westphalian system started its demise in Europe
at the same time when it started to emerge in other parts of the world as a con-
sequence of the decolonization process, also points to an increasing realization that
global history must also be written as a history of asynchroneous developments.
In history as a discipline, it still seems that global/world history is sometimes hotly
contested as it turns against a still highly influential tradition of national histori-
ography. In globalization studies, however, there has been a remarkable turn to-
ward studies of the historical dimension of globalization, which see globalization as
the result of multiple long-term developments which proceed in neither a linear
nor a synchroneous fashion. It could in fact be argued that it is this massive
(re-)turn to history which most notably sets globalization research apart from a
massive de-historicization of the international system in theories of IR since the
1960s (in both the behavioralist and later neorealist-dominated theoretical agendas).

Global/World Society
Globalization research is increasingly permeated by notions that the process of glo-
balization has led the global system to a state in which it resembles or in fact must be
seen as a society. Descriptions vary as to whether that society should be described as
a ‘‘global’’ or a ‘‘world’’ society, and there are many conceptual overlaps and ‘‘grey
zones’’ regarding the relation between these and similar notions of, for example, a
‘‘global civil society,’’ a ‘‘world polity,’’ or the more traditional ‘‘international so-
ciety.’’8 What the notion of ‘‘society’’ entails on a global level reflects the wide
variety of contemporary and classical sociological thought on the subject, ranging
from the idea of society forming an integrated social body supported by some form
of community (and thus transplanting the traditional image of a ‘‘national society’’
to the global level) on the one hand, to highly abstract notions of world society as a

8
For an overview over the different notions, see the chapters in the first part of Albert and Hilkermeier (2004).
 MATHIAS ALBERT 171

comprehensive social system constituted by communicative connectivity on the

other. The important point here though is not that notions and uses of ‘‘society’’ on
a global level as well as their theoretical underpinnings vary widely. Rather, it is that
in globalization research there is an increasing awareness and serious consideration
of the idea that globalization is not only a bottom-up process that leads to global
networks and structures that connect preexistent entities on sub-global levels: the
notion of ‘‘society’’ on a global level invariably implies that there is something like a
global social ‘‘whole’’ in a meaningful analytical sense as well. Rather than norma-
tive projections of a global commons or a global community, on the one hand, or a
mere addition of sub-global entities and their interconnections to a diffuse global
system on the other, the idea of a ‘‘global’’ or ‘‘world’’ society implies that global
social, political, economic, etc. processes can and must be analyzed as processes
internal to the evolution of a society. While at first glance this may appear like a
marginal semantic shift, it nonetheless results in far-reaching analytical consequen-
ces in that it opens up and arguably necessitates systematic inquiry into whether the
tools of social theoryFor, more specifically, of theories of societyFare applicable to
a global realm. Guiding questions for the analysis of ‘‘global’’ society thus are less
questions of constitution (i.e., about what constitutes globality), and more questions
about evolution (about how global society is held together, integrated, differenti-
ated, and so on). While this is the point at which globalization research overlaps
most visibly with social theory beyond the realm of IR research, it is somewhat
surprising that many attempts to bring globalization research and social theory
together (see next section) have done so by trying to theorize globalization as a
somewhat ‘‘isolated’’ process rather than by taking the seemingly obvious entry
point via notions of global or world society.
The strands described above represent those parts of globalization research that
have consolidated themselves into discursive segments, which most visibly set
globalization research apart as a maturing field of research of its own, operating
increasingly autonomously fromFthough not unconnected toFtraditional disci-
plinary debates; also, and perhaps more important, within the broad area of glo-
balization research, it is exactly these four strands that show that globalization
research as an academic field has by and large emancipated itself from popular and/
or purely economic images of globalization as a process of uniform, linear, ‘‘genu-
inely new’’ internationalization.
This is also to suggest that globalization research now provides a well-prepared
field for anyone seeking to ground such research in or even to join it together with
many approaches to and aspects of social theory, as will be further outlined below.
The forceful critique of globalization theory to be outlined in the next section needs
to be approached with this observation in mind, namely that it is a critique not about
the many efforts to understand facets and dimensions of globalization with the help
of social theory, and vice versa, but a critique only of attempts to situate global-
ization as the central process driving contemporary social change.

The ‘‘Poverty’’ of Globalization Theory

In a long article published in International Politics in 2005, Justin Rosenberg delivers
a full-blown critique not of the many individual empirical diagnoses of globalizing
tendencies but of what he summarizes as the ‘‘globalization theory’’ most prom-
inently espoused by such thinkers like, among others, Anthony Giddens, Ulrich
Beck, and David Held. The main thrust of Rosenberg’s argument is that global-
ization theory fails to deliver what it sets out to do, namely to provide a theory of
globalization as a theory of the driving force behind contemporary social change,
and that this failure is unavoidable given some rather fundamental flaws in thinking
about globalization. Out of Rosenberg’s points of criticism, a few stand out as rather
fundamental. First, he argues that globalization theories persistently confuse
172 ‘‘Globalization Theory’’: Yesterday’s Fad or More Lively than Ever?

explanans and explanandum given that they fail to identify what it is that is
globalized. Thus, globalization theory must either ‘‘incorporate a social theory
drawn from elsewhere, of what is being ‘globalized,’ ’’ or ‘‘consciously or otherwise
claim that the necessary social theory can after all be derived within the term,
because space and time themselves are the foundational parameters of social ex-
planation’’ (Rosenberg 2005:12). In Rosenberg’s view, the difficulties in coming to
terms with the fundamental problem, yet trying to still claim a ‘‘globalization the-
ory,’’ led to a move in which ‘‘the social theoretical assumption about the centrality of
space and time to social explanation was necessarily supplemented by a historical
sociological assumption about the nature of modern societies and their political inter-
relation’’ (Rosenberg 2005:14). Summarizing the argument somewhat crudely, the
allegation here is that globalization theorists, by emphasizing that globalization
constitutes a massive trend toward transcending the Westphalian, sovereignty-cum-
territoriality principle of the state, in fact reproduce a methodological nationalism
by falsely assuming the existence of a ‘‘preglobalization’’ era without significant
transnational ties. In Rosenberg’s view, these shortcomings of globalization theory
can partly be explained by the fact that globalization as a theme itself and the hype
that began to surround it in the early to mid-1990s are the result of a larger
conceptual vacuum created in the space of social and political thought as a result of a
conjunction between, on the one hand, the restructuring of the Western world (e.g.,
in the form of the ascendancy of ‘‘neo-liberal’’ ideology and politics) and, on the
other hand, the collapse of the Soviet Union. The argument here is not that glo-
balization theory would present a conscious misreading of the turn of events. Rather,
it basically seems to be that most globalization theorists were not able to detach their
observations from the discursive and cognitive framework set by this conjunction
and were thus not able to ground their diagnoses in central questions of social
theory which, after all, did not simply cease to exist with the end of the Cold War.
Rosenberg’s criticism is convincing on a number of accounts. The most convin-
cing of these is his observation that most globalization theories do in fact lack a
reference point, a clear account of what it is that is globalized. Of course, there is
broad agreement among those theories that globalization is about social relations in
a broad sense (i.e., encompassing political, cultural, economic etc. relations) and
that notions of an ‘‘international system’’ fail to capture but one segment of con-
temporary global reality. Yet there is more often than not no attempt to actually
spell out what such a global reality might in fact be: a ‘‘social system,’’ a ‘‘society,’’ or
even an agglomeration of incommensurable social orders. This observation is dir-
ectly connected to the one made in the preceding section of this article, namely that
while research on ‘‘global’’ or ‘‘world’’ society has evolved into a rather specialized
strand of globalization research, globalization theorists have by and large abstained
from taking part in discussions about or refrained from identifying their social
theories as theories of (global/world) society. In addition to this criticism about a
lack of a well-defined reference points of globalization theory, Rosenberg is correct
in arguing that it is hardly convincing to treat time–space compression as the main
driving motor of social relationsFan idea that, as Rosenberg argues, lies at the
beginning of many globalization theories yet which all seem to somehow abandon
tacitly along the way given that time and space can either form epistemological
preconditions for knowing the social (in the Kantian sense) or refer to empirical
results (compression), yet can hardly be seen as the driving and main explanatory
force behind the comprehensive shift in social relations under the condition of
globalization.9
The purpose here however is not to rehearse the many large and small points of
Rosenberg’s criticism of globalization theory, which seem to be convincing. The

9
See also James (2005) for the need to change the very understandings of temporality and spatiality as a result of
the globalization process.
 MATHIAS ALBERT 173

point is rather to argue that Rosenberg’s critique needs to be reformulated and

extended in some respects. Leaving the points about a missing point of reference
and the central status of time–space compression aside for the moment, globali-
zation theory’s main flaw is arguably not, as Rosenberg argues, that it has failed to
address central questions of social theory. Quite to the contrary, many treatments of
the subject are closely intertwined with such questions, such as Giddens’ with the
agent-structure problem or as Beck’s with the notion of reflexive (or ‘‘second’’)
modernity. However, what these contributions do arguably not do (or attempt to
do) is to provide full-fledged theories of globalization as comprehensive social the-
ories or theories of society nor, for that matter, do they seek to reformulate tra-
ditional social theories and their basic notions in order to adapt them to a globalized
world.10 And they do largely leave aside strands and advances in social theory over
the last decades, which provide a number of conceptual tools and vocabularies
allowing us to do just that: namely to adapt central categories of social analysis and
social theory to the reality of one globally interconnected world in such a way that
this global interconnectedness is not the empirical diagnosis of a recent develop-
ment that must be explained, but rather forms the very background condition of
the social world, its conditio orbis, from which every social theory must start in the
first place. Examples of such relatively neglected approaches range from the many
advances in research on macrolevel complex social systems, including advances in
their modeling,11 over various forms of systemic theorizing particularly in soci-
ology, to different theories of global or world society presented in sociology and IR
since the early 1970s.
The main argument to be developed during the remainder of this article follows
from these observations and is thus twofold: building on the observation that
‘‘grand’’ globalization theories have largely failed to deliver comprehensive ac-
counts of global social change, yet that globalization research has matured in a way
so that it provides many useful building blocs for such a comprehensive account, it
first argues that the four research strands identified above need to be linked to-
gether systematically12; and second it argues that such a systematic link can usefully
be achieved by taking fundamental questions of social theory pertaining to social
‘‘wholes’’ as lines of orientation. Against this background, it is an open question yet
somewhat unlikely whether such a proposed theoretical trajectory will in the end
lead to a theory of globalization in a more narrow sense; more likely, it will lead to
theories of global or world society, which assign specific places to globalization
processes.
The first part of this argument can be developed very briefly here, while the
second part will be elaborated in the next section. The rationale behind the ar-
gument that all of the four strands mentioned above need to be systematically
linked first emanates from a point also raised by Rosenberg, that a comprehensive
theoretical account of globalization needs to identify its point of reference, be it a
‘‘system’’ or a ‘‘society.’’ If this point of reference is some whole hanging together in
a meaningful (yet by no means in a noncontradictory or in a nonparadoxical) way,
then it needs to provide an account of what this meaningful whole is and in which
respect this is so (i.e., what constitutes its totality respectively its boundary). This
basically translates into a request for globalization theories to explicate whether
their main point of reference is, for example, a global system, a capitalist world
system, or an international society of states. It almost goes without saying that such
a ‘‘global whole’’ can only be a relatively abstract entity or system and thus can also
only be accounted for on a relatively high level of theoretical abstraction. This

10
Ulrich Beck calls for such a move in a programmatic fashion in Beck (2002).
11
Advances in computational capabilities have particularly led to the increasing use of agent-based modeling
techniques (as opposed to equation-based modeling) see, for example, Cederman (forthcoming).
12
This is of course not to deny that numerous individual contributions establish such links already.
174 ‘‘Globalization Theory’’: Yesterday’s Fad or More Lively than Ever?

however means that internally such a whole will necessarily consist of many dif-
ferent structures, processes, and interactions. This then also means that a theory
trying to explain the evolution of this global ‘‘whole’’ must not stop with simply
taking note of this high degree of internal variety, but needs to account for the way
in which this variety is structured and how different realms interact and hang
together. This always also requires to take a long-range historical perspective as
macrotrends such as an increasingly autonomous operation of a global economic
against a global political system result from long-term processes of historical ev-
olution. Last but not least, any account of the evolution of a global social whole as
the point of reference of globalization theory would be incomplete without an
account on the role, the limits, and the possibilities of politics as the latter’s very
conditions change when disembedded from the context of nation-states and the
international system.
This is more than a call to somehow staple together different research strands
and to see them in conjunction inasmuch and whenever possible; rather, the ar-
gument here is that such a conjunction can only be achieved if these strands are tied
together by some of the major themes of social theory, which account for the
evolution and forms of order and disorder and structure-building of large-scale
social entities. It is exactly at this point where ‘‘globalization theory’’ needs to turn
to theories of society. Of course, such a turn needs to be taken with caution given
that it cannot merely mean an ‘‘application’’ of such theories. Most classical theories
of society were developed with national society in mind and need to be, if possible,
adapted to a global context. Arguably, such an adaptation eliminates many classical
theories of society, which were developed with national societies in mind and which
operate on the assumption that society forms an integrated whole, with ‘‘integra-
tion’’ being asserted variably on the grounds of common norms or values, a na-
tional identity, territorial demarcation, and so on. While it has and continues to be
argued at length in social theory what exactly ‘‘integration’’ means in this respect, it
becomes an almost counterintuitive term if applied to the level of a global society.
The main question regarding such a global society from a theoretical (as opposed to
a political) point of view cannot be how such a society is integrated, but how and to
which degree it is differentiated. While the question of differentiation is pertinent to
the global level, the question of integration arguably is not. Yet, while the analysis of
IR and global politics is full of at least implicit accounts of forms of social differ-
entiation on a global level, globalization theories largely tend to neglect this classical
subject of theories of society.13 If globalization theories turn to theories of society,
any account of differentiation needs to be accompanied by an account of the com-
plementary process of rationalization on a global scale. Unlike the differentiation of
a global society, the ground here is rather well-prepared, however, with the work in
the tradition of the so-called ‘‘world polity’’-school including and following the
work of John Meyer.
While the following section will first seek to demonstrate how differentiation and
rationalization as traditional themes of theories of society could be inserted into
globalization theory in a productive fashion, it will then proceed to briefly argue
that such an approach needs to be complemented by an understanding of global
society as a complex system.

Concepts for Analyzing World Society: Functional Differentiation

and Rationalization
Going back to the traditional sociological theorists of society, most notably Comte,
Spencer, and Durkheim, and later developed further by Parsons and Luhmann, the

13
One of the few contributions in IR theory which explicitly spell out that functional differentiation forms a
conceptual issue for describing the international system is Waltz (1979).
 MATHIAS ALBERT 175

main idea of functional differentiation of society is that society generates specific

sub-sectors or sub-systems that fulfill specific functions for society as a whole. In
modern society, functional differentiation becomes the main differentiating prin-
ciple, while this does of course not precludeFindeed to some extent requiresFthe
continuing existence of other forms of differentiationFmost notably segmentary,
stratificatory, and spatial (core-periphery) differentiation.
While, in contrast to classical sociological theories, Parsons repeatedly pointed
out that his analysis of a functionally differentiated society should equally apply to
national society as well as to the international realm, he never himself carried out a
study of the functional differentiation of a ‘‘society’’ beyond the nation-state (see
Stichweh 2005). In fact it could be argued that despite the claim that his concepts
could be applied beyond the national society, he ultimately remains unable to do so
given his insistence that ‘‘society,’’ because it is differentiated, also requires some
kind of integrative function which he assigned to the figure of the ‘‘societal com-
munity’’ (Parsons 1969:2). Luhmann (1983) later solved this puzzle by not taking
social action and the integration of society as points of reference, but communi-
cation and differentiation, that is the argument now is not that some kind of in-
tegrated, preexistent social identity is internally differentiated, but that it is only
through differentiation that any kind of unity can be claimed. The notion of func-
tional differentiation can thus be applied directly to the level of a world society
without requiring any notion of social cohesion or integration.
The notion of functional differentiation is quite widespread in analyses of inter-
national politics. It is implicitly reflected in the fact that differentiations between, for
example, an international political and an international economic system do not
usually need to be legitimized furtherFthey are recognized instantly as correct
descriptions of the functional differentiation of a global order. More explicitly, yet
frequently without allusion to the relevant sociological theories, some approaches
distinguish different ‘‘sectors’’ within the international social realm. Thus, for ex-
ample, the ‘‘Copenhagen School’’ of security studies argues that securitization
practices differ when they take place in the political, the economic, the ‘‘societal,’’
the environmental etc. sectors (Buzan et al. 1997). In a recent analysis of U.S.
imperial power, Peter Katzenstein (2005) points out that the logic of imperial power
is filtered and mediated not only regionally but also along the functional lines of
economy, security, and culture.
The point here is to say that while many theorists of IR and globalization describe
different forms of systemic differentiation, they mostly do so in an implicit way, or at
least in a way which does not recognize a theory of (functional) differentiation as a
powerful aid from the sociological toolbox, which could be applied to analyze the
global system in a more systematic fashion. However, the concept of differentiation
provides a useful vocabulary, which cuts across, for example, arguments about the
role of the state in a globalized world, and, rather than attribute structural change
to the ‘‘compression’’ of time and space, allows us to at least partly depict such
structural change in terms of different and changing forms of differentiation. While
thus the ‘‘Westphalian image’’ of the world basically implies a primacy of segmen-
tary differentiation of the global system (between spatial segments described as
territorial states), others have argued that the global system is characterized by a
primacy of stratificatory differentiation (global inequalities) or a combination of
stratificatory and segmentary differentiation (global inequalities combined with
core-periphery differentiation; see Wallerstein 1976; Heintz 1982). However, the
question is not only one about which form of differentiation prevails over others,
but also one about the interplay between different forms of differentiation. Thus, even if it
is acknowledged that like modern (national) society contemporary world society is
primarily differentiated functionally, this does by no means necessarily imply a
primacy of functional differentiation within the functionally differentiated realms of
world society themselves. Quite to the contrary, much of the maze of discussions
176 ‘‘Globalization Theory’’: Yesterday’s Fad or More Lively than Ever?

about the ‘‘end of the nation-state’’ or an increasing ‘‘porosity’’ of national bound-

aries as a result of globalization seems to stem exactly from a (at least initial) failure
of many globalization diagnoses to differentiate between the dynamics in different
functional realms or from a false projection of the primarily segmentary differen-
tiation of the global political system onto the level of world society as a whole. Only
with an increasing realization that globalization was happening unevenly was the
state then ‘‘rediscovered,’’ which from the perspective of a theory of differentiation
could hardly come as a surprise given that there would have been little reason to
conclude from an increasing autonomy of, for example, the global economic system
as a result of an ongoing functional differentiation that the internal form of dif-
ferentiation of the global political system would change as well. This internal form
of differentiation is of course also an important issue and it can be argued at length
whether the emergence of institutions and mechanisms of global governance
geared toward processing functionally defined problems could be read as an in-
dicator of a shift from segmentary to functional differentiation within the global
political system (Albert 2002). Similarly, much of the discussion about the evolution
of international and new forms of transnational law suggests an increasing func-
tional internal differentiation of the global legal system (Fischer-Lescano and
Teubner 2004). It is important not only to keep the issues of primary and secondary
forms of differentiation apart but also to utilize them as a prism through which it
becomes possible to read the evolution of the global system as a process of varied
and multilayered differentiation. To be very clear about this point: this by no means
necessarily implies a different empirical description of various globalization pro-
cesses. Yet, on the one hand, it does anchor them in a theoretical vocabulary more
geared to describe the systemic change of a global social whole, and, on the other
hand, suggest that in most cases globalization refers less to a changing form of
differentiation on a global scale and more to changing forms of differentiation
within functionally differentiated realms as well as within the changing forms of
interconnection between these realms. Global history in this respect then also, in
part, becomes a history of forms of differentiation, which characterized preglobal
societal systems. The intellectually most interesting question here then of course
becomes under which conditions long-term change in global systems can lead to
changes in the primary form of differentiation and whether world society can
evolve new forms of differentiation in addition to segmentary, stratificatory, or
functional differentiation.
The consequences of seeing the global system through the lens of forms of dif-
ferentiation for accounts of global governance are equally challenging. If the global
system is primarily differentiated functionally, this implies that there is no hierarchy
between functionally differentiated social systems with the political system occupy-
ing the top position14Fits function (to provide capacities for collectively binding
decisions) does not translate into a privileged position (i.e., a form of stratified
differentiation). Without going into any detail here, this basically means that self-
regulatory mechanisms in functionally differentiated realms assume more and
more importance and the political system is less and less able to directly influence
other functionally specified realms directly in order to achieve the intended effect, a
development described in the global governance literature variably as the emer-
gence of ‘‘private’’ forms of authority or the emergence of functionally specific
regimes.
To describe the global system as functionally differentiated is a description, that
operates on a relatively abstract level (yet arguably barely as abstract as notions
about a compression of space and time). It does however also seem to rule out
images of globalization leading to any kind of global ‘‘homogenization’’; quite to the

14
That is basically one of the main assumptions of occidental political thought.
 MATHIAS ALBERT 177

contrary, by pointing out that both different modes of differentiation within dif-
ferent functionally defined subsets of the global system as well as changes of modes
of differentiation need to be taken into account when describing the dynamics of
global change, the entire analytical vocabulary for describing globalization pro-
cesses is shifted from notions of homogeneity/heterogeneity to variations of and
between differentiations. Questions about whether the world becomes more
homogenous as a result of globalization and whether or which particularities
remain are replaced by questions about the changing forms of an irreducible het-
erogeneity.15
This is of course not to deny that standardizations, the worldwide spread of
specific institutional arrangements, norms, and so on form part and parcel of glo-
balization processes. Yet particularly because such processes arguably resemble
many of the formative processes, which could be observed in the consolidation of
the modern nation state-cum-society versus sub- or prenational forms of organ-
ization16 (yet without the accompanying symbolic markers and ideologies of col-
lective identity), it would seem more appropriate to identify such processes not as
indicators of an ongoing ‘‘homogenization’’ but as signs of an ongoing global proc-
ess of rationalization.
This rationalizing process has been extensively described and bolstered with
empirical studies from proponents of the so-called ‘‘world polity’’-school of socio-
logical neoinstitutionalism which basically argues that a world culture has emerged
that entails a rationalizing process (which basically is also a process of Westerniza-
tion in this respect) that defines the parameters of rational actorhood and rational
organizing on a global level. Remarkably, however, the argument here is not that a
world culture or a world polity has emerged as a structural feature on the global
level; rather, such a world culture is constituted and permanently re-created
through the practice of a local copying of global scripts and models. Global ration-
alization is thus neither homogenizing in the sense of the establishment of mac-
rostructures of world society, nor is it homogenizing in the sense that it would lead
to common policies and social practices in every locality. Rather, the idea is that
while institutional forms and norms are copied worldwide, it is still up to the spe-
cifics of place and context to fill them with practices.17 Both functional differen-
tiation as well as rationalization can be described as ‘‘mega-trends,’’ which describe
the evolution of societyFand which are of course not mutually exclusive of each
other (Thomas forthcoming). Although much intellectual capital has and still will be
invested in order to explore the relation between the two, particularly when it
comes to the level of a global society, as theoretical concepts both seem to be
reconcilable. While functional differentiation influences all kinds of socially relevant
interaction and communication (Luhmann 1997:316–358), rationalization in the
way described by the world polity school tends to primarily address the specific
social form of ‘‘organization’’ whose communications and actions in themselves are
also subject to the various logics of the functionally differentiated realms of society
as a whole.
A theory of differentiation and a theory of rationalization taken together provide
a powerful vocabulary to describe profound change on a global scale. This basically
means that concepts which proved useful in the analysis of the evolution of indi-
vidual societies are adapted to the context of a global/world society, whose evolution

15
For a critical recent treatment, see Herkenrath et al. (2005); for an early statement, see Mathisen (1959).
16
‘‘Nation-building and world-building have, in fact, gone hand in hand’’ (Boli 2005:387).
17
This means, for example, that while schooling and the development of curricula can be observed on a
worldwide scale as an expression of world culture, the contents of curricula can vary widely. For a recent overview
over the main theses of the world polity school, see Lechner and Boli (2005; although providing a good overview
over the theses of the world polity school, the book in the end argues much closer to the ‘‘Pittsburgh school’’; I owe
this observation to one of the referees of this article).
178 ‘‘Globalization Theory’’: Yesterday’s Fad or More Lively than Ever?

thus seems far less dramatic or novel at least in the abstract sense when it comes to
changing parameters of social structure and action (such as time and space). While
globalization processes then still can and need to be accounted for, they can be
resituated in far less ‘‘novel’’ theoretical contexts in order to systematically assess
their scope and consequences in the context of a larger, global, social system.
As theories of differentiation and rationalization suggest a high degree of vari-
ation and heterogeneity in global society, they seem to be fully compatible with the
idea that globalization is an inherently varied, spatially uneven and asynchronous
process. On a high level of abstraction, they however still suggest an orderly process
which is at least prey to be told according to a relatively lean narrative. In that
sense, replacing accounts of globalization as time–space compression with accounts
of a functional differentiation and rationalization of global society would establish
continuity to traditional themes of sociological theory, yet arguably ignore the in-
sights offered by another set of advances in social theory over the last two decades
or so, namely the applications and uses of as well as the fundamental conceptual
challenges posed by different theories of complexity. In contrast to their forerun-
ners in cybernetic systems theory in the 1960s and 1970s, complexity theories
have only scarcely been applied to the realms of IR or globalization.18 Yet any turn
toward or reconfiguration of globalization theory as a theory of society would be ill-
advised to ignore the fundamental changes necessitated by the ‘‘complexity turn.’’
A number of these fundamental changes stand out, particularly regarding a
global society: While already the introduction of theories of differentiation as a basic
pillar of conceptualizing a global societal context poses a significant challenge for
thinking in terms of homogeneity, with the introduction of complexity theory and
the idea of nonlinearity, heterogeneity becomes not only the normal state of affairs
to be expected but also constitutive of a complex global system. Like all complex
systems, global society thus must be thought of as ‘‘a world of avalanches, of
founder effects, self-restoring patterns, apparently stable regimes that suddenly
collapse, punctuated equilibria, ‘butterfly effects’ and thresholds as systems tip from
one state to another’’ (Urry 2005:237). This is not to deny that global society is
characterized by clearly discernible patterns, structures, and trajectories of devel-
opment. However, viewing global society as a complex system in itself means that
static notions of structure or (if only implicit) assumptions of linear causation may
more obscure rather than explain the processes through which the system evolves.
‘‘Varied globalization’’ in this sense refers not only to a relatively varied and mul-
tiple set of processes if compared with the simplistic ideal model of a single process
of globalization, but rather to a globalization which is so radically varied and het-
erogeneous that any attempt to reduce it to one overarching narrative of change
must necessarily fail. It is in this sense that many contributions have emphasized
that ‘‘the local’’ and ‘‘the global,’’ as well as a ‘‘regional’’ or a ‘‘nation-state’’-level in
between, are inextricably linked in many ways. Complexity theory radicalizes this
insight in that it becomes almost impossible to analytically isolate distinct system
levels. This is not to deny that there are such distinct levels, yet they are related to
each other in relations not of exclusive, but of inclusive hierarchy. Inclusive hier-
archy means that individual system elements can be addressed by and be part of
different system levels at the same time without this leading to a conflict. Different
levels of ‘‘statehood,’’ for example in the European Union, would be a case in
point.19 Almost by definition, such an understanding also challenges the common
understanding of the social world as being textured according to the distinction
between ‘‘micro’’- and ‘‘macro’’level phenomena. Although still sticking to this

18
One of the most notable exceptions being Jervis (1997).
19
The argument here being that while the European Union resembles some form of ‘‘state,’’ it is not in a relation
of exlusive hierarchy to nation-statehood, that is, any strengthening of the former does not necessarily lead to the
demise of the latter. This argument has been applied to a global scale by Shaw (2000).
 MATHIAS ALBERT 179

distinction, its fragility has been convincingly demonstrated in a recent analysis

by Karin Knorr-Cetina, in which she argues that the ‘‘new terrorist societies’’
‘‘illustrate[s] the emergence of global microstructures; of forms of connectivity
that combine global reach with microstructural mechanisms that instantiate
self-organizing principles and patterns’’ (Knorr-Cetina 2005:214). The at first
seemingly paradoxical notion of ‘‘global microstructures’’ here only becomes un-
derstandable if the ‘‘micro’’ is read not as referring to (local) geographical scale but
to ‘‘principles of connectivity and association’’ (Knorr-Cetina 2005:231, footnote 4).
In other words, this means that micro-structures, with specific means of (self-)co-
ordination on a global scale, can influence macrostructures without themselves
relying on macrolevel organizing principles, thus in the end blurring the distinction
between ‘‘micro’’ and ‘‘macro’’ as meaningful analytical distinctions: ‘‘The linear
metaphor of scales, stretching from the local to the global, or from the micro level
to the macrolevel, does not seem plausible and should be replaced by analyses of
multiple systems of mobile connections’’ (Urry 2005:244).

Perspectives on Globalization Theory

This article has argued that positioning and configuring globalization theory as a
theory of a global social whole, that is, a ‘‘global system,’’ a ‘‘global society’’ and so
on, requires it to engage with basic questions of social theory about the coherence/
differentiation of such a social whole, about evolutionary mechanisms, about the
way patterns and structures emerge. However, such an engagement cannot take the
form of simply ‘‘applying’’ such questions of social theory to globalization, but
requires rigorous reflection upon their applicability in every case, given their origin
in theoretical traditions mostly geared toward the study of national societies. While
this might seem to require a far-reaching adaptation of classical questions and themes
of social theory at first, such an adaptation on the other hand also relinquishes some
of the burden bestowed upon globalization theory so far: it firmly (re-)contextualizes
globalization in social theory and identifies it as a main pattern of global social
change, yet does not require it take on the burden of being the ‘‘sui generis’’-process
driving that change. It is in this sense that the present contribution has argued for
the value of pursuing a configuration of globalization theory that uses processes of
differentiation and rationalization as analytic foci for analyzing world society, and in
so doing through which global change is analyzed as a starting point, yet refrains
from using the figures of differentiation and rationalization as neat analytical for-
mulae; rather, it has argued that such an adaptation of a more ‘‘traditional’’ toolbox
of social theory to the global realm needs to also account for some of the fundamental
conceptual challenges posed by theories of (social) complexity.
It is in this sense, however, that the present article, while subscribing to some of
the criticism of globalization theory offered by Rosenberg, does not argue for a full-
scale rejection or reinvention of the established body of globalization theorizing.
Rather, if the challenge for globalization theory is presented in such a fashion, then
the strands of globalization research outlined above have already prepared a solid
ground for a reconsolidation of globalization theory, which redresses some of its
fallacies outlined by Rosenberg.
Albeit often only implicitly, globalization research incorporates many of the in-
sights which result from seeing globalization as the expression of a global social
wholeFbe it called a system or a societyFcharacterized by an ongoing functional
differentiation and worldwide rationalization as well as by the properties of com-
plex systems: the near ‘‘consensus’’ of seeing globalization as an inherently varied
process acknowledges a constitutive heterogeneity of world society that leaves no
room for images of either forms of global ‘‘homogeneity’’ or, arguably, the pertinent
question of societal ‘‘integration’’ on a global scale. Advanced forms of research into
180 ‘‘Globalization Theory’’: Yesterday’s Fad or More Lively than Ever?

global governance describe the reconfiguration and reconstitution of politics in

world society as an emergent property of a complex social system, yet refrain from
the temptation to conceptualize global governance as a creatio ex nihilo: quite to the
contrary, global governance research in particular highlights the ongoing func-
tional differentiation between global politics and global law, with this differentiation
serving as a prerequisite for novel ways of their recombination and the expression
of such recombinations in new forms of ‘‘rational’’ organizing (i.e., the consolida-
tion of worldwide standards and practices of the world polity). Equally, the fact that
history is taken seriously in and is conceptualized as ‘‘global history’’ in globalization
research not only serves as a necessary corollary to studying a global social whole as
some form of an evolving society but also provides a safeguard against the
a-historical systems theorizing which has been particularly prominent in neo-realist
versions of IR theory over the past decades.
Taking globalization theory seriously by (re-)positioning it in traditional and re-
cent themes of social theory and seeing a global social whole as its point of reference
means that globalization theory is far from being an intellectual fad. Quite to the
contrary, it is still far from having reached its apex and continues to provide the
main ground of engagement with social and political change understood in a
‘‘global’’ sense.

References
AALBERTS, TANJA. (2006) Politics of Sovereignty. Amsterdam: Vrije Universiteit, PhD dissertation.
ALBERT, MATHIAS. (2002) Zur Politik der Weltgesellschaft. Politik und Recht im Kontext internationaler Verge-
sellschaftung. Weilerswist: Velbrück.
ALBERT, MATHIAS. (2006) World Society Theory. In Encyclopedia of Globalization, edited by R. Robertson
and J. A. Scholte. London: Routledge.
ALBERT, MATHIAS, AND LENA HILKERMEIER. (2004) Observing International Relations. Niklas Luhmann and
World Politics. London: Routledge.
ALBERT, MATHIAS, AND RUDOLF STICHWEH. (2007) Weltstaat und Weltstaatlichkeit. Beobachtungen globaler
politischer Strukturbildung. Wiesbaden: VS-Verlag.
BECK, ULRICH. (2000) What Is Globalization? Cambridge: Polity.
BECK, ULRICH. (2002) Macht und Gegenmacht im globalen Zeitalter. Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp.
BECK, ULRICH A GIDDENS, AND S. LASH. (1995) Reflexive Modernization: Politics, Tradition and Aesthetics in
the Modern Social Order. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
BOLI, JOHN. (2005) Contemporary Developments in World Culture. International Journal of Comparative
Sociology 46:383–404.
BRAGUE, RéMI. (1999) Histoire de L’experience Humaine de L’univers. Paris: Fayard.
BUZAN, BARRY, O WæVER, AND J DE WILDE. (1997) On Security. Boulder: Lynne Rienner.
CEDERMAN, LARS-ERIK. (forthcoming) Complexity and World Politics: Resurrecting Systems
Theory’, paper presented at the workshop on New Systems Theory of World Politics. In
New Macrotheories of World Politics, edited by M. Albert, L.-E. Cederman and A. Wendt (in prep-
aration).
CUTLER, CLAIRE. (2003) Private Power and Global Authority. Transnational Merchant Law in the Global
Political Economy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
DIRLIK, ARIF. (2003) Global Modernity in an Age of Global Capitalism. European Journal of Social Theory
6:275–292.
FISCHER-LESCANO, ANDREAS, AND G. TEUBNER. (2004) Fragmentation of Global Law. Michigan Journal of
International Law 25:999–1046.
GIDDENS, ANTHONY. (1990) The Consequences of Modernity. Cambridge: Polity.
GILLS, BARRY, AND W. R. THOMPSON. (2006) Globalization and Global History. London: Routledge.
GOLDSTEIN, JUDITH L., M. KAHLER, R. O. KEOHANE, AND A.-M. SLAUGHTER. (2001) Legalization and
World Politics. Cambridge: MIT Press.
HALL, RODNEY B. (2002) The Emergence of Private Authority in Global Governance. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
HARVEY, DAVID. (1990) The Condition of Postmodernity. An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change.
Oxford: Blackwell.
 MATHIAS ALBERT 181

HEINTZ, PETER. (1972) A Macrosociological Theory of Societal Systems. With Special Reference to the Inter-
national System (2 vols.). Bern: Huber.
HEINTZ, PETER. (1982) Introduction: A Sociological Code for the Description of World Society and Its
Change. International Social Science Journal 34:11–20.
HELD, DAVID. (2003) The Global Transformation Reader. 2nd edition. Cambridge: Polity.
HERKENRATH, MARK, C. KöNIG, H. SCHOLTZ, AND T. VOLKEN. (2005) Convergence and Divergence in
the Contemporary World System. An Introduction. International Journal of Comparative Sociology
46:363–382.
HIGGOTT, RICHARD, AND M. OUGAARD. (2002) Towards a Global Polity. London: Routledge.
HOBDEN, STEPHEN, AND J. H. HOBSON. (2002) Historical Sociology in International Relations. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
HOLTON, ROBERT J. (2005) Making Globalization. London: Macmillan.
JAMES, PAUL. (2005) Arguing Globalizations: Propositions Towards an Investigation of Global Forma-
tion. Globalizations 2:193–209.
JERVIS, ROBERT. (1997) System Effects. Complexity in Political and Social Life. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press.
KATZENSTEIN, PETER J. (2005) A World of Regions. Asia and Europe in the American Imperium. Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press.
KNORR-CETINA, KARIN. (2005) Complex Global Microstructures. The New Terrorist Societies. Theory,
Culture & Society 22:213–234.
LECHNER, FRANK J., AND JOHN BOLI. (2005) World Culture: Origins and Consequences. Oxford:
Blackwell.
LEFÈBVRE, HENRI. (1974) La Production de L’espace. Paris: Ed. Anthropos.
LUHMANN, NIKLAS. (1983) The Differentiation of Society. New York: Columbia University Press.
LUHMANN, NIKLAS. (1997) Die Gesellschaft der Gesellschaft (2 vols.). Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp.
MATHISEN, TRYGVE. (1959) Methodology in the Study of International Relations. Westport, CT: Greenwood.
MAZLISH, BRUCE. (2001) Global History and World History. In The Global History Reader, edited by
B. Mazlish and A. Irye. London: Routledge.
MEYER, JOHN, J. BOLI, F. RAMIREZ, AND G. THOMAS. (1997) World Society and the Nation-State. American
Journal of Sociology 103:144–181.
MOORE, WILBERT E. (1966) Global Sociology: The World as a Singular System. American Journal of
Sociology 71:475–482.
PARSONS, TALCOTT. (1969) Politics and Social Structure. New York: Free Press.
ROBERTSON, ROLAND. (1992) Globalization: Social Theory and Global Culture. London: Sage.
ROBERTSON, ROLAND. (1998) The New Global History: History in a Global Age. Cultural Values
2:368–384.
ROBERTSON, ROLAND, AND D. INGLIS. (2006) The Global Animus. In Globalization and Global History,
edited by B. K. Gills and W. R. Thompson. London: Routledge.
ROBERTSON, ROLAND, AND J. A. SCHOLTE. (2006) Encyclopedia of Globalization. London: Routledge.
ROSENBERG, JUSTIN. (2005) Globalization Theory: A Post Mortem. International Politics 42:2–74.
SCHOLTE, JAN AART. (2004) Globalization Studies: Past and Future: A Dialogue of Diversity. Globaliz-
ations 1:102–110.
SHAW, MARTIN. (2000) Theory of the Global State. Globality as an Unfinished Revolution. Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press.
SPENCER, HERBERT. (1966) The Principles of Sociology, reprint of the edition 1904. Osnabrück: Otto
Zeller.
STICHWEH, RUDOLF. (2005) Zum Gesellschaftsbegriff der Systemtheorie: Parsons und Luhmann und
die Hypothese der Weltgesellschaft. In Weltgesellschaft, edited by B. Heintz, R. Münch and H.
Tyrell. Stuttgart: Lucius & Lucius.
TENBRUCK, FRIEDRICH H. (1987) Der Traum der säkularen Ökumene. Sinn und Grenze der Ent-
wicklungsvision. Annali Di Sociologia 3:11–36.
TESCHKE, BENNO. (2003) The Myth of 1648: Class, Geopolitics and the Making of Modern International
Relations. London: Verso.
THOMAS, GEORGE. (forthcoming) Differentiation, Rationalization, and Actorhood in New Systems and
World Culture Theories. In New Macrotheories of World Politics, edited by M. Albert, L.-E.
Cederman and A. Wendt (in preparation).
TYRELL, HARTMANN. (2005) Singular Order Plural–Einleitende Bemerkungen zu Globalisierung und
Weltgesellschaft. In Weltgesellschaft, edited by B. Heintz, R. Münch and H. Tyrell. Stuttgart: Lucius
& Lucius.
URRY, JOHN. (2005) The Complexities of the Global. Theory, Culture & Society 22:235–254.
182 ‘‘Globalization Theory’’: Yesterday’s Fad or More Lively than Ever?

WALLERSTEIN, IMMANUEL. (1976) A World-System Perspective on the Social Sciences. British Journal of
Sociology 27:343–352.
WALTZ, KENNETH. (1979) Theory of International Politics. New York: Random House.
WILLKE, HELMUT. (2005) Symbolische Systeme: Grundriss einer soziologischen Theorie. Weilerswist: Velbrück.
WILLKE, HELMUT. (2006) Global Governance. Bielefeld: transcript.