GLOBALIZATION

• Smith argues that globalization is “one of those faddish neologisms that is frequently invoked but rarely
defined” (2007: Robertson 1992). The lack of conceptual clarity is also due to contradictory usage, the
failure to distinguish globalization from related terms (e.g., Kearney 1995; Sklair 1999), and a split between
those who emphasize the economic dimension of globalization and those who define it more broadly
(Robertson and White 2007).
• The economic dimension is important to political sociologists because of the potential impact on the state.
The social or cultural dimensions are also important but ironically have not received as much attention
from sociologists (Robertson and White 2007).
• There are several sociological definitions of globalization but many emphasize that globalization:
a. is a combination of several processes (Ritzer 2008; Robertson and White 2007);
b. involves different societal facets or dimensions (e.g., cultural, social, economic, political, and
demographic [Manning 1999; Robertson and White 2007; Robinson 2007; Turner 2007]);
c. transcends political nation-state boundaries with cross-border exchanges involving people, goods,
money, and culture (Guillen 2001; Held, McGrew, Goldblatt, and Perraton 1999; Robinson 2007;
Staples 2008);
d. results in an increasing level and depth of interconnectedness (Robertson and White 2007; Turner
2007);
e. is a decoupling between space and time (Giddens 1990) or alternatively the compression of both
time and space (Arrighi 1999; Harvey 1989; Robertson 1992; Smith 2007); and
f. results in an increasing consciousness of the world as a single space (Robertson 1992; Robertson
and White 2007; Turner 2007).
• It is a process that encompasses the causes, course and consequences of transnational and transcultural
integration of human and non-human activities. (Al-Rodhand & Stoudmann 2006)

Components of Globalization
INTERDEPENDENCE
• Interdependence simply means we live in an interconnected world where we need each other to survive.
Interdependence is not a new phenomenon. In The Division of Labor in Society, Emile Durkheim
argued that the shift from mechanical to organic solidarity as a basis of social order was due to a division of
labor that led to interdependence, exchange of services, and reciprocity of obligations (Durkheim
1964[1893]).
• Everyone is more vulnerable when depending on others, and interdependence due to globalization is
more fragile and easily disrupted (Piven 2008).
• With interdependence comes interconnectedness, which can result in problems that were once localized
or isolated spreading to other areas.
• Interdependence also has a cultural component as the ability to communicate and interact depends upon
having a common language.

LIBERALIZATION
• Liberalization or neoliberalism is not globalization, but the ideological justification of economic
globalization or the free movement of capital and goods without governmental inference in the forms of
tariffs, price controls, taxes, and the like (Chomsky 2003; Robertson and White 2007). This has political
implications because economic globalization is often seen as an “irreversible, law-like global process” to
which there is no alternative but to enact neoliberal policies (Alasuutari 2000: 262).
• It is a libertarian ideology more influential in the fields of economics and political science that became
prominent in the 1980s and promotes the rights of individuals against the coercive state (Scott and
Marshall 2005). The state is viewed as the enemy of the free market because in addition to interference, it
often competes by providing services (e.g., postal delivery, education, Social Security) considered best left
to the private sector.
• On the international side, neo-liberalization is associated with the spread of capitalism and free market
ideologies. Some perceive International Financial Institutions (IFIs) such as the International Monetary
Fund (IMF), the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization (WTO) as promoting American
neoliberalism at the expense of less-developed economies through the endorsement of the “Washington
Consensus” (WC).
UNIVERSALIZATION
• Nassar (2005) terms universalization as the potential weakening of state sovereignty with corporations and
nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) challenging the state. However, this terminology contradicts the
fact that corporations depend on states to enforce treaties and trade agreements (Nassar 2005) and also
need a strong state for capital accumulation and to both repress and appease dangerous classes
(Wallerstein 2003).

WESTERNIZATION
• Globalization is accused of homogenizing culture with Hollywood films, television shows, and Western
music distributed worldwide. This is related to Waters’ (1995) notion of an emerging global culture albeit
a Westernized one.
• Although scholars do not believe a global culture is emerging, many non-Westerners resent
Westernization and this is cited as a grievance justifying terrorism. The diffusion of culture is not a new or
unique phenomenon. Culture changes over time and is influenced by ideas and practices developed by
others.
• Galkin (2006) argues that Westernization has a corrosive impact on religious, cultural, and linguistic
traditions and, specifically, that Islamic countries have been some of the prime victims of globalization. A
competing view contends that instead of global influences overpowering the local or more traditional, the
global and local combine creating something new or “glocal” (Robertson 1992).

CAPITALISM
• Some see globalization as simply a way to expand the reach of capitalism by exploiting less wealthy
countries by building sweatshop factories where workers are paid only pennies a day or extracting cheap
raw materials at the expense of the environment.
• Globalization also allows developed countries to flood external markets with cheap imports such as food,
forcing indigenous farmers out of business and increasing inequality.
• One of the engines of global capitalism is the transnational corporation (TNC), also known as the MNC or
multinational corporation. TNCs are involved in cross-border exchanges and their global reach has
dramatically increased (Sklair 1999).

Theoretical Perspectives on Globalization

World Systems Theory (WST)

• World Systems Theory is a predecessor of more recent theories of globalization (Robinson 2007). The
first volume of The Modern World System (Wallerstein 1974) is a “milestone” by recognizing that nation-
states are components of a larger system (Kearney 1995).
• Although Wallerstein does not approve of the concept of globalization (Robinson 2007; Wallerstein
2000), WST is a “cohesive theory of globalization organized around a 500 year time scale corresponding
to the rise of a capitalist world-economy in Europe and its spread around the world” (Robinson 2007: 5 of
16).
• A key structure of the capitalist world-system is the division of the world into three great regions, or
geographically based and hierarchically organized tiers. The first is the CORE, or the powerful and
developed centers of the system, originally comprised of Western Europe and later expanded to include
North America and Japan. The second is the PERIPHERY, those regions that have been forcibly
subordinated to the core through colonialism or other means, and in the formative years of the capitalist
world-system would include Latin America, Africa, Asia the Middle East and Eastern Europe. Third is the
SEMI-PERIPHERY, comprised of those states and regions that were previously in the periphery and are
moving up.
• Values flow from the periphery to the semi-periphery, and then to the core, as each region plays a
functionally specific role within an international division of labor that produces this basic structure of
exploitation and inequality.
• The world-system paradigm does not see any transcendence of the nation-state system or the centrality of
nation-states as the principal component units of a larger global system.

Theories of Global Capitalism (GC)

• Global Capitalism theorists share with WST an emphasis on historical analysis of large-scale
macroprocesses and are critical of capitalism.
• Robinson (2007) argues that GC differs from WST in three fundamental ways. First, GC theorists argue
that globalization is a new stage in the evolution of capitalism. Second, GC theorists perceive a new global
system of production and finance fundamentally different from earlier forms of capitalism. Finally, GC
 theorists argue that globalization cannot be understood with a framework that emphasizes the nation-state
or an inter-state system.
• Rather, national states (as opposed to nation-states) are linked into a transnational state (TNS) network
with a transnational global capitalist class. This group consists of executives of transnational corporations
(TNC), global bureaucrats (e.g., IMF and World Bank heads), politicians, and other business elites (Sklair
2000).
• TNCs have advantages in global trade with the ability to provide both material rewards and sanctions and
have ideological dominance. For example, defenders of the interests of the transnational class use terms
such as free trade, intellectual property rights, and competitiveness in ways that frame TNCs as working
for the common good rather than for stockholders.
• Robinson’s (2007) GC theory emphasizes the transnational state apparatus or network of both
supranational political and economic institutions (e.g., Trilateral Commission, WTO) and national state
apparatuses “that have been penetrated and transformed by transnational forces”.

Postmodern Views on Globalization

• Postmodernists believe that capitalism is being defined by post-Fordism (Kellner 2002) or the ways in
which work has been reorganized to adapt to the technological and market environment of the late
twentieth and twenty-first centuries (Scott and Marshall 2005).
• Post-Fordism is associated with the decline of state regulation and the rise of global markets and
corporations and is characterized by different patterns of consumption and production (Milani 2000).
• Corporations operating in a postmodern world must be flexible by adapting to a constantly changing
market.
• Because of information technology (IT), “postmodernity has no need for physical movement. These
changes have a significant effect upon the nature of economic, cultural, and political life. The world is
being reconstituted into a single social space and life has become delocalized” (Best 2002: 204).
• The use of IT dramatically increases “the flow, rapidity, intensity, and volume of communications” and
greatly expands the number of international arenas in which we participate (Karp, Yoels, and Vann 2004:
376).

Network Society
• Manuel Castells’ groundbreaking trilogy, The Rise of the Network Society (1996, 1997, 1998), exemplifies
a ‘technologistic’ approach to globalization. While his theory shares with world-system and global
capitalism approaches an analysis of the capitalist system and its dynamics, it is not the logic of capitalist
development but that of technological change that is seen to exercise underlying causal determination in
the myriad of processes referred to as globalization.
• Castells’ approach has been closely associated with the notion of globalization as representing a new ‘age of
information’. In his construct, two analytically separate processes came together in the latter decades of the
twentieth century to result in the rise of the network society. One was the development of new information
technology (IT), in particular, computers and the Internet, representing a new technological paradigm and
leading to a new ‘mode of development’ that Castells terms ‘informationalism’. The other was capitalist
retooling using the power of this technology and ushering in a new system of ‘information capitalism’, what
Castells and others have alternatively referred to as the ‘new economy’.
• This new economy is: (1) informational, knowledge-based; (2) global, in that production is organized on a
global scale; and (3) networked, in that productivity is generated through global networks of interaction.
• Castells’ definition of the global economy is an ‘economy with the capacity to work as a unit in real time,
or to choose time, on a planetary scale’, and involving global financial markets, the globalization of trade,
the spread of international production networks, and the selective globalization of science and technology.
• A key institution of this new economy is the ‘networked enterprise’, which Castells sees as the vanguard of
a more general form of social organization, the network society itself.

Cultural Theories of Globalization

• There is no such thing as “Globalization Theory” (McGrew 2007), yet there are theories of global culture
(Robinson 2007) that seek to explain cultural aspects of globalization.
• Robertson (1992), one of the main proponents of cultural theories of globalization, argues that economic
globalization has received most of the attention and that other important social and cultural dimensions,
especially religion, have been ignored.
• There are different kinds of cultural theories, which are divided into subcategories, including
homogeneity, heterogeneity, and hybridization (Robinson 2007). Global capitalism promotes both
homogeneity and heterogeneity (Robertson 1992). While homogeneity emphasizes global sameness,
heterogeneity emphasizes difference.
• Non- Westerners often feel threatened by the potential homogenization of culture brought about through
Westernization. Even hybridization or the fusion of two different cultural practices may be seen as
threatening and contributing to the loss of cultural distinctiveness.
• Proponents of homogenization agree that convergence is taking place or that the world is becoming more
uniform or similar. For example, Ritzer coined the term McDonaldization to refer to “the process by
which the principles of the fast-food industry are coming to dominate more and more sectors of the
American society as well as the rest of the world” (2008: 1). In contrast, heterogeneity highlights cultural
clash (e.g., Huntington and Barber) and resistance to globalization. Finally, hybridization emphasizes the
continual evolution of culture and the melding of different cultural forms (Appadurai 1996). For example,
how democracy is practiced is influenced by other factors, including culture.
• Robertson (1992, 1994) has contributed to the heterogeneity–homogeneity discussion through his concept
of “glocalization”: an interaction between the local and the global to produce highly localized responses to
global phenomena. He defines glocalization as “‘real world’ endeavors to recontextualize global
phenomena or macroscopic processes with respect to local cultures” (1992: 173–147), in other words, how
human beings reconstitute and redefine a global phenomenon and give it a local flavor.
• Ritzer argues that glocalization minimizes or dismisses fear about homogenization or the loss of cultural
distinctiveness and proposes “grobalization,” a combination of globalization and growth. Grobalization is
driven by three subprocesses, including Americanization, capitalism, and McDonaldization. In contrast to
glocalization, grobalization is a deterministic force, where the global overpowers and dominates the local
and limits the ability of individuals to act and react.
• Central to Ritzer’s ideas is McDonaldization, which is not globalization in itself but is one of the “major
motor forces of globalization” (2008: 166) and has four elements: efficiency, calculability, predictability,
and control.
GLOBALIZATION DEBATES
Clearly, world systems, postmodern, and cultural globalization theories emphasize different aspects of
globalization and therefore provide different answers to the many different questions asked by globalization
researchers. In the next section, we review some of the main points of contention and debate, including (1) is
globalization occurring? (2) what is the evidence? and (3) what is the impact? These questions have been
extensively debated in the social science literature (Guillen 2001; Robinson 2007), and there is no shortage of
opinions depending on what aspect of globalization is considered and the theoretical perspective of the
researcher.

What Is the Evidence for Globalization?

• Some of the globalization indicators cited by Waters (1995) include
a. the recognition of the world as a single place or shared consciousness (Robertson and White 2007);
b. the proliferation of global organizations (e.g., WTO, UN, IMF, Catholic Church) and events (e.g.,
Olympics, IKA Culinary Olympics, World Games);
c. global patterns of consumption or the worldwide importing and exporting of goods and services;
d. the spread of world tourism;
e. cooperation among many nations to provide solutions to world problems (e.g., global warming,
pollution, AIDS, crime, and human trafficking); and
f. the emergence of a global, cultural system.
Competing Globalization Camps
The skeptic, hyperglobalist, and transformationalist camps also take a stance on the question of
diminishing state power. Ba，skan (2006) describes skeptics as denying that the state is being undermined due to
the increasing internationalization of the economy. In direct opposition, hyperglobalists such as Ohmae (1995)
believe the state is in decline because it no longer is able to control economic activities. Baskan describes
hyperglobalists as pointing to the increasing influence of IFIs and global elite that are not controlled by any single
nation-state as evidence of the decline in state power.
Contrary to the hyperglobalists, Brady et al. (2007) note that many studies have concluded that
international financial managers are not effectively monitoring or responding to states engaged in fiscally
questionable policies (Mosley 2003) and that the influence of these managers is overstated (Wilensky 2002).
Transformationalists (e.g., Giddens 1998) take a position somewhere in the middle. They agree with skeptics that
the state power is not being diminished but argue that state power is being transformed precisely because of the
rise in the number of IFIs and other international governance institutions.
The state is still important precisely because there is currently no other alternative to the nation-state (Smith
1995).

Role of Globalization
Markoff (1996) contends that governing elites pay attention to what is happening to their counterparts in
other areas, sometimes resulting in political convergence. Weaker states may attempt to become successful by
modeling themselves after stronger ones or strong states may impose their political organization on weaker states.
To explain the “third wave,” Schwartzman (1998) contends that scholars examining the role of global connections
tend to focus on six main categories, including favorable international climate, global industrialization and
development, global shocks, a shifting global hegemon, world system cycles, and foreign intervention. The
next section is based mostly on Schwartzman’s (1998) summary.

FAVORABLE INTERNATIONAL CLIMATE

This is a type of domino argument suggesting that as one nation falls away from an authoritarian system of
government others follow suit. Clearly linking this to globalization, Huntington (1991) argues that expansion of
global communications and transportation started the domino cascade. Schwartzman criticizes this
argument because it fails to answer several questions, including what caused the first domino to fall, and why did
this not occur earlier after the Greeks first developed democracy? Further, Schwartzman contends that it
does not seriously consider social, economic, and political processes operating at both global and domestic
levels. She concludes that the international climate argument does not contribute much to our
understanding.

GLOBAL INDUSTRIALIZATION AND DEVELOPMENT

Global industrialization and development promotes democratization through technological
innovations in communication and transportation and industrialization, contributing to a growth in both the
middle and working classes and global growth undermining nondemocratic states. The role of communication
and transportation in spreading democracy is criticized because networks that can spread democratic ideal
can also spread fascism. In other words, networks are content neutral. Furthermore, this argument does not
explain the initial introduction of democratic ideas. However, the growth in middle and working classes has the
advantage of explaining why democracy is the preferred regime as “revolution and democracy offer the best
opportunities for workers to satisfy their material needs” (Schwartzman 1998: 167).

GLOBAL SHOCKS
This explanation posits that economic shocks create a legitimacy crisis for nondemocratic regimes because
an intolerable gap is created between what a state promises and what it is able to deliver, resulting in a loss of
legitimacy and possible overthrow. While democratic states also face a loss of legitimacy during economic crisis,
citizens do not overturn the state but vote incumbents out of office. How might the recent 2008–2009 economic
crisis impact democracy? Rather than arguing that shocks will put only nondemocratic states at risk with
democratic ones experiencing only a change in administration, Kekic (2007) argues that nations with “emerging
markets” and “fragile democratic institutions” face a higher risk of slipping back into authoritarianism because free
market capitalism and Western ideology may be blamed for the economic crisis.

SHIFTING GLOBAL HEGEMON

World Systems Theory posits that a shift in the global hegemon is one of the factors important for
understanding the third wave. Schmartzman notes that Wallerstein (1991) does not agree that the collapse of
Eastern Europe is a triumph of Western democracy. Rather, the breakup of the former Soviet bloc is the result of
the decline in the hegemonic power of the United States because the old war standoff allowed both the United
States and the Soviet Union to maintain dominance over their sphere of influence. German and Japanese
economic competition challenged U.S. hegemony. With U.S. decline, the Soviets also lost their hold on the
Eastern bloc, resulting in a wave of democratic transitions.

WORLD SYSTEM CYCLES

According to WST, democracy has occurred more in the semi-periphery than the periphery as the former
is impacted more severely by the shock waves of the B-phase. Summarizing Wallerstein (1984), the semi-
periphery had systems of labor control (e.g., tenancy or sharecropping) that were best maintained under
authoritarian regimes. Transitioning to democracy actually works to maintain the power of the capitalist class
because it provides a way to peacefully organize a contentious working class. Schwartzman argues that “the B-
phase world-system perspective seems to offer the greatest insights in deciphering the deeper significance of the
Third Wave of democraticization” (1998: 179).

FOREIGN INTERVENTION
This literature emphasizes the positive role played by the United States in promoting democracy and also
examines the historic cases of former British colonies. Schwartzman correctly notes that the United States has a
long history of ignoring nondemocratic regimes when there is a strategic interest at stake such as access to
resources or geographical positioning. Why then the democratic shift? The short answer is that it must meet the
needs of the hegemonic power. Yet, this leaves an important question unanswered: “from where comes this good
will?” (Schwartzman 1998: 172). This argument posits that a certain type of democracy provides a less contentious
method for dominant nations to control their interests. In the next section, we examine some arguments for why
the United States has shifted its foreign policy from supporting nondemocratic regimes to exporting democracy.