The Contemporary World 2020

UNIT II THE STRUCTURES OF GLOBALIZATION

Coverage: Week 3, 4, and 5

Duration:9 hours

The Global Economy (2.25 hours; week 3)

Market Integration (2.25 hours; week 3 and 4)
The Global Interstate System (2.25 hours; week 4 and 5)
Contemporary Global Governance (2.25 hours; week 5)
Learning Objectives: After studying the unit, the students should be able to:

 define economic globalization

 explain the two major driving forces of global economy
 differentiate economic globalization from internationalization
 trace the origin of economic globalization

1.The Global Economy

2. Market Integration
3.The Global Interstate System

4. Contemporary Global Governance

The Contemporary Global Governance

Global governance or world governance is a product of neo-liberal paradigm

shifts in international political and economic relations (107). It is a movement towards
political integration of transnational actors aimed at negotiating responses to problems
that affect more than one state or region. It tends to involve institutionalization. These
institutions of global governance – the United Nations, the International Criminal Court,
the World Bank, etc. – tend to have limited or demarcated power to enforce compliance
(108)
.
Global governance is a tool to identify solutions to problems created by neo-
liberal globalization. Its concept relates to the interaction of myriad collective or
individual entities emanating from various societal and professional orientations,
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which form networks that engage to address issues that threaten local and global
communities. It is concerned with issues that have become too complex for a single
state to address alone. Humanitarian crises, military conflicts between and within
states, climate change and economic volatility pose serious threats to human security
in all societies; therefore, a variety of actors and expertise is necessary to properly
frame threats, devise pertinent policy, implement effectively and evaluate results
accurately to alleviate such threats (109).
Global governance can be thus understood as the sum of laws, norms, policies,
and institutions that define, constitute, and mediate trans-border relations between
states, cultures, citizens, intergovernmental and nongovernmental organizations, and
the market. It embraces the totality of institutions, policies, rules practices, norms,
procedures, and initiatives by which states and citizens try to bring more predictability,
stability, and order to their responses to transnational challenges-such as climate
change and environmental degradation, nuclear proliferation, and terrorism which go
beyond the capacity of a single state to solve (110).
Global governance is viewed as the sum of governance processes operating in
the absence of world government. Both the international organizations (lOs) and the
United Nations (UN) being the only universal membership and general-purpose
international organization, are essential to the understanding of contemporary global
governance (111). The two types of International Organizations are those with universal
membership and those with limited membership. Examples of IOs with universal
membership include: UN, Bretton Woods institutions and World Trade Organization
(WTO). Limited membership includes European Union (EU) and the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization (NATO).

The Roles and Functions of the United Nations

As an intergovernmental organization, the United Nation is tasked to promote
international co-operation and to create and maintain international order. It is the largest,
most familiar, most internationally represented and most powerful intergovernmental
organization in the world (112).
The United Nations (UN) in the world of politics has the roles of preventing and
managing conflicts, regulating armaments, championing human rights and international
humanitarian law, liberating the colonized, providing economic and technical aid in
newly liberated countries, organizing elections, empowering women, educating children,
feeding the hungry, sheltering the disposed and displaced, housing the refugees,
tending the sick and coordinating disaster relief and assistance. In policy motivation,
peacekeeping is the most important feature of UN activity in peace and security.
The UN aims to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war; to
reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights; to establish conditions under which justice
and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international
law can be maintained; and to promote social progress and better standards of life in
larger freedom (113).
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Four Main Purposes of the UN Charter (114)- a written grant by a country's

legislative or sovereign power, by which an institution such as a company, college, or
city is created and its rights and privileges defined.

1. Maintaining worldwide peace and security

2. Developing relations among nations
3. Fostering cooperation between nations in order to solve economic, social,
cultural, or humanitarian international problems
4. Providing a forum for bringing countries together to meet the UN's purposes and
goals

There were five stages or main gaps meet by UN in the 21st century. These are
knowledge, norms, policy, institutions and compliance. A critical hole in any of the five
stages can cause efforts at problem solving to collapse.

Challenges of Global Governance in the Twenty-first Century

Global governance can be understood as the sum of laws, norms, policies, and
institutions that define, constitute, and mediate trans-border relations between states,
cultures, citizens, intergovernmental and nongovernmental organizations, and the
market. It is a process which allows interconnectivity across different borders and
sovereign territories. Global governance is governing, without sovereign authority,
relationships that transcend national frontiers. Global governance has evolved as one of
the most influencing tools for globalization which has led to the foundation of
sustainable development projects around the globe. (115).
Issues that involve interwoven domestic and foreign challenges include threats at
the beginning of the century which include ethnic conflicts, infectious diseases, and
terrorism as well as a new generation of global challenges including climate change,
energy security, food and water scarcity, international migration flows and new
technologies. The multiple links among climate change and resources issues, the
economic crisis, and state fragility – ‘hubs’ of risks for the future – illustrate the
interconnected nature of the challenges on the international agenda today. Domestic
politics creates tight constraints on international cooperation and reduces the scope for
compromise. Diverse perspectives on and suspicions about global governance, which is
seen as a Western concept, add to the difficulties of effectively mastering the growing
number of challenges (116).
The new governance challenges in the 21st century being related to globalization
entail multiple trajectories of change within states, among actors inside and outside
nation states, as well as new forms of resource mobilization and risk allocation. Within
states the first trajectory or path is the depoliticization which can be observed in the
form of delegating decisions to independent regulators and experts, central banks, or
judiciaries. A second trajectory is the rescaling of economic and social relations well
beyond the territorial boundaries of nation states, facilitated by transnational legal
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arrangements that have their roots in national law. Law is also a critical ingredient for
transforming real assets into commodities and ultimately financial assets, that is, the
third path which is the capitalization of assets (117). Different effects are expected on
different constituencies within and across domestic polities (an organized society; a
state as a political entity). Direct participation or inclusion in these processes are
benefitted by some though others face exclusion. Considered important for effective
governance include recognition of these paths or trajectories and their potentially
destabilizing effects for polities.

The Role of the Nation -State in Globalization

Basic Elements of a State

1. Territory
2. People
3. Sovereign Power

Nation- state role in globalization is complex. Since nation-states are divided by

physical and economic boundaries, reduced barriers in international commerce and
communication are considered their potential threat. Sovereignty of individual nations is
not abolished by expanded trade among countries, instead globalization is a force that
changed the way nation-states deal with one another, particularly in the area of
international commerce (118a).

Globalization has potential effects to globalization. These include favoring

Westernization which means that other nation-states are at a disadvantage when
dealing with the Americas and Europe, most especially in the agricultural industry, in
which second- and third-world nations face competition from Western companies (118b)
and another is that nation-states are forced to examine their economic policies in light
of the many challenges and opportunities that multinational corporations and other
entities of international commerce present.

Nation-states are challenged by multinational corporations to address the issue

of foreign direct investments to force nation-states to ascertain the allowable
international influence in their economies. A sense of interdependence is created by
globalization among nations to create among nations of differing economic strengths an
imbalance of power.

The role of the nation-state in a global world is largely a regulatory one as the
chief factor in global interdependence (118c). In setting international commerce policies,
isolated states are forced to engage to one another, while nation-state’s domestic role is

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unchanged. Roles of some states were diminished while others have exalted roles due
to interactions of various economic imbalances.

Globalization’s Impact on the State

Factors which lead to the increase and acceleration of movement of people,

information, commodities and capital.

1. Lifting of trade barriers

2. Liberalization of world capital markets
3. Swift technological progress (information technology, transportation and
communication)

Problems afflicting the world today which are increasingly transnational in nature-
those that cannot be solved at the national level or State to State negotiations.

1. Poverty
2. Environmental pollution
3. Economic crisis
4. Organized crime and terrorism

Effects of greater economic and social interdependence to national decision-

making processes.

1. It calls for a transfer of decisions to the international level

2. It requires many decisions to be transferred to local levels of government due
to an increase in the demand for participation.

Decision making processes in globalization is complex as it takes place in

various levels such as sub-national, national, and global which lead to the growth of a
multi-layered system of governance. The following are guaranteed by nation-State:
internal and external security, law established, national welfare systems funding,
structures provided for popular representation, public accountability instituted, and
framework for economic and social activities built.

In a world of expanded globalization, the need to supply collective public goods,

to manage externalities and to provide for minority needs persist (119). The State persists
because its need grows and because of its undiminished local resource pools and
socioeconomic problems on which States are based. The State remains the key actor in
the domestic as well as international arenas and that States which are effective are
essential for both tasks, and their capacity for both needs strengthening (120).

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The following can be guaranteed only by the States through independent courts:

1. Respect of human rights and justice

2. Promote the national welfare
3. Protect the general interest

The State has the roles in operating the intricate web of multi-lateral
arrangements and inter-governmental regimes, enter into agreements with other States,
make policies which shape national and global activities, agenda of integration by
clearly pronouncing the problem of capacity inadequacy of individual States.This
indicates political leverage of some States in shaping the international agenda while
developing countries have less active roles.

Though State is required by globalization to imrove its capacity to deal with

greater openness, it must remain central to the well-being of its citizens and to the
proper management of social and economic development. It should also be responsible
for adopting policies, which are conducive to greater economic integration not forgetting
that further global integration can be reversed by state policies inimical to openness, as
occurred between the two World Wars which means that globalization does not reduce
the role of the nation-State, but redefines it given the pressures and responses it must
give at the local, national and international levels (121).

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References:
Contemporary Global Governance
107.Jang, Jinseop, McSparren Jason & Rashchupkina.(2016). Nature.com Website. Global
governance: present and future. 2016 Retrieved from:
https://www.nature.com/articles/palcomms201545

108. Global Governance: The Strategy of Governance, Social welfare, and Exclusion? Retrieved from:
https://socialecologies. word press. com/ 2015/07/31/ global-governance-the-strategy-of-
governance-social-welfare-and-exclusion/ July 31, 2015

109. Bierman F. and Pattberg P. (2008) Global environmental governance: Taking stock, moving. Annual
Review of Environment and Resources.

110. Weiss, Thomas G. (2009) What happened to the Idea of World Government? International Studies
Quarterly 53(2):253-271

111. Weiss T.G., Kamran A.Z. (2009) Global Governance as International Organization. In: Whitman
J. (eds) Palgrave Advances in Global Governance. Palgrave Advances. Palgrave Macmillan,
London

112. Fomerand, J., Lynch, C.M., and Mingst, K. (2018). https://www.britannica.com/topic/United-Nations

103. Enotes.com Website (2018). What is the Function of the United Nation. Retrieved from:
https://www.enotes.com/homework-help/what-function-un-who-ruler-349667

114. Stephenson, Andrea. (2018). What is the United Nations? -Definition, History, Members & Purpose.
Retrieved from: https://study.com/academy/lesson/what-is-the-united-nations-definition-history-
members-purpose.html

115. Kumar, Kundan Jha. (2018). Global Governance in the 21st Century. Retrieved from:
http://english.lokaantar.com/articles/global-governance-21st-century/

116. Pramod, Mishra. (2013). Emerging Challenges to Global Governance in 21st Century. Academic
Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies. MCSER Publishing, Rome-Italy Vol 2 No 8.

117. Pistor, Katharina and Adaman Fikret. (2014).Governance Challenges in the 21st Century. Retrieved
from: https://globalcenters.columbia.edu/events/governance-challenges-21st-century

118 (a, b, c). Hall, Mary (2018). What is the Role of the nation-state in globalization. Retrieved from:
https://www. investopedia. com /ask/answer/022415/

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119. Jones, Barry R.J. (2000) The World turned upside down? Globalization and the future of the state,
p.268, St. Martin’s Press, New York.

120. United Nations (2000). Millennium Report of the Secretary-General. “We, the Peoples: The Role of
the United Nations in the 21st Century" A/54/2000. 25

121. Bertucci, G. And Alberti, A. Globalization and the Role of the State: Challenges and Perspectives.
Retrieved from: https: // pdfs. semantic scholar. org/9edd/ 97224 bb298453e6 ff5 c08afc 56dd9
e6064e. pdf.