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‘Clear, intelligent, accessible and interesting – Heywood and Whitham represent the gold standard in global
politics textbooks.’
–Jane Verbitsky, Associate Professor, Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand
‘Global Politics is a clinical treatment of diverse themes and issues in global studies, international relations, and
the vast array of cultural dynamics in a fast-changing world. The authors’ interdisciplinary skills and unrelenting
quest for excellence manifest in the demonstrated awareness of time and space. This book is an invaluable
companion in the noble quest to transform our students into high-flying graduates and practitioners with
proven intellectual acuities. I strongly recommend it to anyone passionate about training tomorrow’s scholars,
practitioners, and truly global citizens.’
–Dr Raphael Chijioke Njoku, Professor of History and Global Studies, Idaho State University, USA
‘Among the many university textbooks on international relations, Global Politics by Andrew Heywood stands
out for its clarity, readability and balance. This new edition with Ben Whitham has been considerably expanded
and updated, taking into account new developments in global politics and the academic study of International
Relations. Global Politics remains an ideal guide for students to navigate their way through the complexities and
uncertainties of world affairs.’
–André W.M. Gerrits, Professor of International Studies, Leiden University, Netherlands
‘This is an exciting and comprehensive introduction to the study and practice of global politics. Heywood and
Whitham have done a superb job updating the text so that the theories, concepts, topics, and recent events of
global politics are clearly relevant to students. Pedagogically, they have managed to present the material in a way
that facilitates understanding and critical thinking. In a crowded market, Global Politics clearly stands out as a
textbook that has distinct advantages over the others.’
–Brian C. Schmidt, Professor of Political Science, Carleton University, Canada
‘The third edition of Global Politics is an impressive achievement. Managing to be both comprehensive and
accessible, Heywood and Whitham thoroughly cover the key theoretical and empirical debates of the field,
illustrating complex ideas with relevant examples and case studies, and taking account of the true globality of
international politics. This is an essential textbook that will bring international relations to life, for students and
teachers alike.’
–Leonie Jackson, Assistant Professor, Northumbria University, UK
‘Global Politics provides an extensive and critical approach to the field. It marshals vignettes, comparative
theoretical perspectives, and illustrations to apply the student to the implications of each chapter. It takes
seriously postcolonial and critical theories that question the received wisdom of western scholars. As a result, it
lays strong claim to being a truly global textbook for students of global politics.’
–Paul S. Rowe, Professor of Political and International Studies, Trinity Western University, Canada
‘Heywood and Whitham do an excellent job in this third edition of Global Politics. The text has been revised
and updated to be far more thorough and truly global. It now has a much broader range of themes and debates,
and focuses on a wide range of theories and current developments. With its well-illustrated text enriched with
key concepts, thinkers, figures, introducing diverse approaches, global actors, case studies, and perspectives, it
is much more than an introductory textbook of international relations. This new edition will undoubtedly be an
important book, inspiring students all over the world to pursue further studies.’
–Tuba Kancı, Associate Professor of Political Science, Kocaeli University, Turkey
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GLOBAL
POLITICS
THIRD EDITION
6. THE STATE, THE INDIVIDUAL AND FOREIGN POLICY IN A GLOBAL AGE 169
v
CONTENTS
vi
Contents vii
FIGURES
1.1 The domain of global politics 2 10.2 GDP of India, 2000–2020
2.1 The growth of the world population since (in trillions of USD) 312
1700 33 12.1 Accumulation of nuclear warheads by the
2.2 Growth of membership of the United States and the Soviet Union, 1945–90 357
United Nations, 1945 to present 48 12.2 Number of warheads held by nuclear
3.1 Realism’s core theme and two powers, 2020 (estimates of deployed and
main approaches 74 non-deployed weapons) 362
5.1 The Great Recession and the globalization 16.1 Maslow’s hierarchy of needs 459
of crisis 166 16.2 World Bank data showing the reduction in
6.1 Multilevel governance 191 the proportion of China’s population living in
8.1 Refugees worldwide, by region 244 absolute poverty 470
10.1 Hard, soft, and smart power 294 22.1 World military expenditure 635
TABLES
6.1 Examples of localization 192 18.1 Top ten and bottom ten countries in the
10.1 Extending spheres of influence 297 Gender Inequality Index (GII) league tables 540
14.1 Three generations of human rights 404 19.1 Liberal and realist perspectives on
16.1 Top ten and bottom ten countries in terms international organizations 547
of Human Development Indicators (HDI) 20.1 Competing models of global politics 576
rankings 471 21.1 Key regional organizations and groupings
of the world 607
MAPS
2.1 Colonial holdings, circa 1914 35 10.1 The BRICS emerging powers 311
CONCEPTS
Arms Race 356 Consumerism 216 Ethnicity 270
Balance of Power 343 Cultural Globalization 217 Failed State 185
Chaos Theory 94 Culture 258 Federalism 193
Collective Security 555 Ecology 493 Fordism/Post-Fordism 203
Confucianism 283 Economic Globalization 147 Foreign Policy 196
xi
xii GLOBAL POLITICS
FEATURED FIGURES
Carr, E. H. (1892–1982) 45 Ayatollah Khomeini Wallerstein, Immanuel
Confucius (551–479 BCE) 34 (1900–1989) 275 (1930–2019) 154
Foucault, Michel (1926–84) 19 Cabral, Amílcar (1924–73) 325 Queer Theorists of
Garvey, Marcus (1887–1940) 40 Carmichael, Stokely/ Global Politics 542
Hobbes, Thomas (1588–1679) 16 Kwame Ture (1941–98) 292 Held, David (1951–2019) 577
Kant, Immanuel (1724–1804) 17 Chomsky, Noam (1928–) 307 Keohane, Robert (1941–) 548
Ling, L. H. M. (1955–2018) 14 Fanon, Frantz (1925–61) 282 Stiglitz, Joseph (1943–) 585
Morgenthau, Hans Mearsheimer, John (1947–) 318 Wilson, Woodrow
(1904–80) 79 Nye, Joseph S. (1937–) 295 (1856–1924) 551
Rosenau, James (1924–2011) 93 Qutb, Sayyid (1906–66) 285 Regional Integration, Key
Waltz, Kenneth (1924–2013) 80 Said, Edward (1935–2003) 268 Theorists609
Contemporary Economics, Key von Clausewitz, Carl Baldwin, James (1924–87) 633
Theorists 163 (1780–1831) 329 Bull, Hedley (1932–85) 643
Cox, Robert (1926–2018) 180 Theorists of Race and Class 105 Fukuyama, Francis (1952–) 640
Christine Chinkin (1949–) 442 Hayek, Friedrich (1899–1992) 144 Monnet, Jean (1888–1979) 617
Development, Key Theorists 485 hooks, bell (1952–2021) 110 Sociology of Globalization,
Ecofeminist Theorists 514 Tickner, J. Ann (1937–) 110 Key Theorists 212
Enloe, Cynthia (1938–) 539 Maynard Keynes, John Klein, Naomi (1970–) 216
Green Politics, Key Theorists 496 (1883–1946) 160 War, Key Theorists 336
Nationalism, Key Theorists 238 Smith, Adam (1723–90) 135
Illustrative Material xiii
Gandhi, Mohandas Karamchand Jackson, Richard (1967–) 386 Walzer, Michael (1935–) 345
(1869–1948) 349 Tate, Merze (1905–96) 356
Grotius, Hugo (1583–1645) 433
GLOBAL ACTORS
Amnesty International 411 International Court of Justice 445 The United Nations 565
Black Lives Matter 103 International Monetary Fund 586 The United States of America 58
China 314 Non-Governmental The Women’s Movement 524
Google 211 Organizations 8 The World Bank 480
Group of Twenty 177 North Atlantic Treaty The World Trade Organization 638
India 251 Organization 340 The ‘Islamic State’ in Iraq
Intergovernmental Panel on The European Union 623 and Syria (Isis) 390
Climate Change 506 The Muslim Brotherhood 284 Transnational Corporations 149
APPROACHES TO
Development 462 International Law 440 The 2020 Global Coronavirus
Gender 528 International Organization 549 Pandemic 20
Global Economic International Political The Balance of Power 359
Governance 582 Economy 139 The End of the Cold War 298
History 37 Nationalism 234 The Natural Environment 500
Human Nature 76 Social Structure and Agency 122 The State 183
Human Rights 406 Society 206 War and Peace 330
Identity 263 Terrorism 384
DEBATING
Was the Cold War Inevitable? 51 Are Interstate Wars a Thing of Can Only Radical Action
Do Moral Obligations Extend the Past? 333 Tackle the Problem of Climate
to the Whole of Humanity? 92 Do Nuclear Weapons Promote Change? 515
Does Economic Globalization Peace and Stability? 364 Would a Matriarchal Society
Promote Prosperity and Does the Need to Counter Be More Peaceful? 535
Opportunity for All? 152 Terrorism Justify Is the UN Obsolete and
Is State Sovereignty Now an Restricting Human Rights and Unnecessary? 566
Outdated Concept? 187 Basic Freedoms? 396 Does Free Trade Ensure
Is Globalization Producing Is Humanitarian Intervention Prosperity and Peace? 592
a Global Monoculture? 222 Justified? 427 Does the Advance of
Is Nationalism Inherently Is the International Criminal Regionalism Threaten Global
Aggressive and Oppressive? 239 Court an Effective Means of Order and Stability? 612
Does the United States Upholding Order and Justice? 454
Remain a Global Hegemon? 309 Does International Aid Work? 488
xiv GLOBAL POLITICS
FOCUS ON
Defining Global Politics? 3 Pre-emptive Attack 307 Sustainable Development:
The Westphalian States System 6 Hegemonic Stability Theory 308 Reconciling Growth with
Hitler’s War? 46 Offensive or Defensive Ecology? 499
Invading Afghanistan: Learning Realism? 317 The Anthropocene 503
from History? 57 To Balance or to Bandwagon? 319 The Thunberg Effect? 505
Neorealist Stability Theory: The The Iraq War As a ‘New’ War? 337 The Paradox of Plenty:
Logic of Numbers? 73 The Rise and Fall of Counter- Resources As a Curse? 519
The Democratic Peace Thesis 87 Insurgency? 341 Human Security: Individuals at
The Global Colour Line 106 Principles of a Just War 344 Risk? 533
‘Fake News’: A Post-truth State Uses of Chemical WMD ‘Trans-exclusionary’, or
World Order? 119 in the Twenty-First Century 354 ‘Gender Critical’? 537
A Chinese Economic Model? 142 North Korea: A ‘Rogue’ Reforming the UN Security
The ‘Washington Consensus’ 145 Nuclear State? 371 Council? 554
From the ‘Knowledge Economy’ Suicide Terrorism: Religious The G7/8: An Abandoned
to a Global ‘Gig’ Economy? 146 Martyrdom or Political Project? 596
Russia Resurgent? 186 Strategy? 382 The BRICS and the New
Indigenous Rights 403 Development Bank: An
Society of the Spectacle? 218
The USA: A ‘Rogue State’? 453 Alternative to Bretton Woods? 597
International Migration: Are
The North–South Divide 464 Regionalism in Asia: Replicating
People Pulled or Pushed? 242
European Experience? 613
The Two Nationalisms: Good The Zapatistas in Mexico:
Alternative Development in Europe as a Racist Project? 617
and Bad? 248
Action? 465 How the European Union Works 618
Promoting Democracy: For or
Against? 279 The Tragedy of the Commons? 495 Crisis after Crisis: Can the EU
Survive? 625
ANDREW HEYWOOD
Andrew Heywood is a freelance author who caters to the needs of students studying
political science and international relations. His bestselling textbooks, including Politics
(2019), Key Concepts in Politics and International Relations (2015), Political Ideologies
(2012), and Political Theory, have been used by hundreds of thousands of students
around the world, and translated into more than twenty languages. A teacher of politics
for over twenty-five years, Andrew also worked as Vice Principal of Croydon College and
was for many years a Chief Examiner in A-Level government and politics. He currently
lives in Cornwall.
DR BEN WHITHAM
Dr Ben Whitham researches, teaches, and writes about global politics. He has held
lectureships in International Relations at De Montfort University (2016–2021) and SOAS,
University of London (2021–present). Ben’s research approach is rooted in political
sociology and critical social theory, and explores issues relating to global intersecting
inequalities and cultural politics – from the theory and practice of neoliberalism, to
Islamophobia, austerity, and the dynamics of racial capitalism. His research has been
published in leading scholarly journals and edited volumes. Ben was awarded his PhD from the University of
Reading in 2015, is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA), and in 2019 won the Political Studies
Association’s Bernard Crick Prize for Outstanding Teaching. He lives in Brighton and is a keen student of
traditional Chinese martial arts.
xv
TOUR OF THE BOOK
The pedagogical features found in this book allow important events, concepts, and theoretical issues to be
examined in greater depth or detail, whilst also maintaining the flow of the main body of the text. They are,
moreover, designed to encourage readers to think critically and independently about the key issues in political
analysis.
Each chapter starts with a Preview that outlines the major themes and a series of questions that highlight the
central themes and issues addressed in the chapter. At the end of each chapter there is a Summary of its major
points, a list of Questions for discussion, and suggestions for Further reading. Additional material is provided
throughout the text in the form of glossary panels and boxed information. These boxes are comprehensively
cross-referenced throughout the text. The most significant features are the following:
CHAPTER PREVIEW
The preview outlines the major themes and issues
of each topic, and sets forth the broad ideas that
the chapter will articulate and explore.
KEY ISSUES
A series of questions that will provoke further
thought around this topic. The chapter will
provide you with the skills to answer and examine
these questions thoughtfully.
FURTHER READING
A useful lists of books providing more
information or ideas on the topic, with a
small summary of each recommended
book and how it relates to the chapter.
ONLINE RESOURCES
A wealth of online resources accompanies this book, including a password-protected instructor area and a
freely accessible student site. The student site offers additional debating prompts, case studies, chapter guides,
a searchable glossary, self-test questions, web links, and suggested further reading. It is available at:
bloomsbury.pub/heywood-global-politics-3e.
xvi
Tour of the Book xvii
KEY CONCEPTS
These boxes describe in detail and analyse key concepts
GLOSSARY
relevant to each topic covered, offering examples of
Definitions for key words
how the concept may work or setting it in context.
highlighted in red within the text.
FOCUS ON
These boxes provide either further insight into
theoretical issues or additional material about
the topics under discussion.
KEY FIGURES
Focus on boxes provide brief biographical material for
key figures or major thinkers. Some of these boxes group
together a number of influential theorists in a related area.
DEBATING
The Debating boxes examine major
controversies in global politics and
highlight arguments for and against
each particular proposition.
ABOUT THE WEBSITE
xviii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Ben Whitham would first like to thank Andrew Heywood for the opportunity to write this new edition of
Global Politics with him, and the editors who commissioned and supported the writing of a revised edition –
particularly Milly Weaver at Bloomsbury, and Andrew Malvern and Niki Arulanandam who worked on the text
during their time at Macmillan. Their comments on drafts and suggestions on pedagogy were invaluable. The
input and support of Becky Mutton, Liz Holmes, Deborah Maloney and others at Bloomsbury was also much
appreciated. Ben is immensely grateful to the many people with whom he discussed the issues and ideas behind
the new material in this edition, including, but not limited to: Lizzie Barker, Adam Beach, Andreas Behnke, Linda
Bishai, Dan Bulley, Erika Cudworth, Dave Cudworth, Adam Fishwick, Bal Sokhi-Bulley, Jon Traynor, and many
undergraduate and postgraduate students at DMU and SOAS, along with Sam Solomon and Arabella Stanger
who generously read and commented on chapter drafts in a series of 2020 lockdown writing retreats. Ben is also
indebted to the teaching of Dave Courtney-Jones, who has profoundly influenced his own pedagogical approach
and therefore also the thinking that informs this book. Finally, Nadya Ali read, commented on, and discussed
many sections of the new material, and provided crucial support and encouragement throughout the preparation
of the manuscript for which Ben is eternally grateful.
xix
xx
PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION
The third edition of Global Politics provides a comprehensive and up-to-date introduction to the study
of politics at the global level, and is newly co-authored by Andrew Heywood and Ben Whitham. The book
has been significantly revised to account for major changes in both the theory and practice of international
relations. It features an entirely new chapter on critical theories of global politics, in recognition of the much
increased – and still growing – influence of such approaches within both the academic discipline of international
relations and the wider public sphere. Postcolonial, decolonial, anti-racist, and feminist approaches now feature
more prominently and in greater depth in the critical theories chapter and throughout the text. A wider
range of key global political thinkers, concepts, and analysis is now covered to better represent the state of
the art today. Discussion and analysis of global social movements, from Black Lives Matter to #MeToo, are
embedded throughout the book to reflect their increased significance in world politics. The book’s discussion
of nationalisms now includes both more material on emancipatory, anti-colonial nationalisms and analysis of
the twenty-first-century rise of global white nationalism. The chapter on weapons of mass destruction has been
broadened to include chemical weapons, which have been more frequently used in recent history. The chapter
on the global politics of the environment has been updated to incorporate recent events and new environmental
protest movements. And the third edition considers the seismic geopolitical, social, and economic shifts in
world order that have characterized the early decades of the twenty-first century, from 9/11 and the global
financial crisis to the anti-globalist turn, the rebalancing of relations between China, Russia, and the United
States, the global Covid-19 pandemic, and the conflict in Ukraine. These are but a few key features of the new
edition, and we hope that you find the book sheds light on how these, and a wide range of other issues, can be
explained, analysed, and even practically addressed, with the help of pivotal concepts, theories, and theorists of
global politics.
xxi
xxii
INTRODUCING
GLOBAL POLITICS 1
PREVIEW
How should we study politics? Traditionally, there was a tendency to focus on political actors and institutions at
the local and national levels. Beyond this, students and scholars in the political subfield of international relations
(IR) tend to consider ‘the international’ as the political space in which these local and national political interests are
represented in the form of interaction between states, regions of states, and a worldwide ‘states system’. But since
the late twentieth century, the concept of globalization has challenged these narrow, state-centric ways of thinking
about politics. This book is about global politics, which is to say it is about how politics – struggles over power, how it
should be distributed, and how we might best organize ourselves and live together as societies – works at the global
level.
But what is ‘the global’ when it comes to politics, and why does it matter? How does it differ from ‘the international’
as a way of seeing or imagining our world? What kinds of actors, institutions, and processes contribute the most
to the globalization of politics, and which ones try to hold back its tide, and why? This chapter explores the rise of
a global imaginary in discussions of politics and international relations, considers its implications for the study and
practice of world politics – including issues ranging from state sovereignty to the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic –
and reflects upon continuity and change in global politics.
KEY ISSUES
z What is ‘the global’ and how does it relate to ‘the international’?
z How have the contours of world politics changed in recent decades?
z What have been the implications of globalization for world politics?
z How do mainstream approaches to global politics differ from critical approaches?
z Which aspects of world politics are changed by globalization, and which remain the same?
1
2 GLOBAL POLITICS
The worldwide
The The
international regional
The subnational
However, if the international paradigm, in which world affairs boil down, essentially,
to relations between and among states, no longer constitutes an adequate basis for
understanding, what has changed, and how profound have these changes been? How
have the contours of world politics changed in recent years? The most significant
changes have been the following:
z the emergence of new global actors;
z the growth of interdependence and interconnectedness;
z the erosion of the domestic/international divide; and
z the rise of global governance.
INTRODUCING GLOBAL POLITICS 3
1
FOCUS ON . . .
DEFINING GLOBAL POLITICS?
What does it mean to suggest that politics has ‘gone global’? How does ‘global’ politics differ from ‘international’
politics? The term ‘international’ means between nations, and is today commonly understood to mean between nation
states or simply ‘states’. The term ‘global’, on the other hand, has two meanings. In the first, global means worldwide,
having planetary (not merely regional or national) significance. The globe is, in effect, the world. Global politics, in
this sense, refers to politics that is conducted at a global rather than a local, national, or regional level. It therefore
focuses primarily on the work of organizations such as the United Nations (UN) and the World Trade Organization
(WTO), which have a near universal membership, and on issues (such as the environment and the economy) where
interconnectedness has gone so far that events and developments affect, actually or potentially, all parts of the world
and so all people on the planet.
In the second meaning (the one used in this book), global means comprehensive; it refers to all elements within a
system, not just to the system as a whole. While such an approach acknowledges that a significant (and, perhaps,
growing) range of political interactions now takes place at the global level, it rejects the idea that the global level has,
in any sense, transcended politics at the national, local, or, for that matter, any other level. In particular, the advent of
global politics does not imply that international politics should be consigned to the dustbin of history. This is important
because the notion that politics has been caught up in a swirl of interconnectedness that effectively absorbs all of its
parts, or ‘units’, into an indivisible, global whole is difficult to sustain.
State-centrism: An In this view, states or countries (the terms can be used interchangeably in this context)
approach to political are taken to be the key actors on the world stage, and perhaps the only ones that warrant
analysis that takes the
serious consideration. This is why the conventional approach to world politics is seen
state to be the most
important actor in the as state-centric, and why the international system is often portrayed as a states system.
domestic realm and on The origins of this view of international politics are usually traced back to the Peace of
the world stage. Westphalia (1648), which established sovereignty as the distinguishing feature of the
state. State sovereignty thus became the primary organizing principle of international
politics.
C E PT
CON
SOVEREIGNTY
Sovereignty is the principle of supreme and unquestionable authority, reflected in the claim by the state to be
the sole author of laws within its territory. External sovereignty (sometimes called ‘state sovereignty’ or ‘national
sovereignty’) refers to the capacity of the state to act independently and autonomously on the world stage. This
implies that states are legally equal and that the territorial integrity and political independence of a state are
inviolable. Internal sovereignty refers to the location of supreme power or authority within the state. The institution
of sovereignty is nevertheless developing and changing, both as new concepts of sovereignty emerge (‘economic
sovereignty’, ‘food sovereignty’, and so on) and as sovereignty is adapted to new circumstances (‘pooled sovereignty’,
‘responsible sovereignty’, and so forth).
However, the state-centric approach to world politics has become increasingly difficult
States system: A pattern to sustain. This has happened, in part, because it is no longer possible to treat states as
of relationships between the only significant actors on the world stage. Transnational corporations (TNCs) (see
and amongst states that
p. 149), non-governmental organizations (NGOs) (see p. 8), and a host of other non-
establishes a measure of
order and predictability state bodies have come to exert influence. In different ways and to different degrees,
(see p. 170). groups and organizations ranging from ISIS (see p. 390), the #MeToo movement (see
Mixed-actor model: The
p. 107), and Black Lives Matter (see p. 103) to Google (see p. 211) contribute to shaping
theory that, while not world politics. Since the 1970s, indeed, pluralist theorists have advocated a mixed-actor
ignoring the role of states model of world politics. However, although it is widely accepted that states and national
and national governments, governments are merely one category of actor amongst many on the world stage, they
international politics is may still remain the most important actors. No TNC or NGO, for instance, can rival the
shaped by a much broader
range of interests and
state’s coercive power, either its capacity to enforce order within its borders or its ability
groups. to deal militarily with other states. (The changing role and significance of the state are
examined in depth in Chapter 5.)
‘Billiard ball’ model:
A way of seeing global While the state unquestionably retains a significant degree of power in global politics as
politics, particularly compared to other actors, the so-called ‘billiard ball’ model – according to which states
among ‘realist’ thinkers,
as a set of interactions are essentially discrete, bounded entities interacting with (or ‘bouncing off ’) one another
between territorially in international relations – is less sustainable. This model, traditionally advocated by
bounded, discrete states; ‘realist’ thinkers has lost ground to the ‘neoliberal institutionalist’ (see p. 88) claim that
it is a state-centric model global politics is in fact characterized by ‘complex interdependence’ (Keohane and Nye
(see p. 171). 1977), but also to ‘critical’ explanations (see Chapter 4) that suggest the international
INTRODUCING GLOBAL POLITICS 5
relations are really social relations, and thus were never entirely contained by the state. Global imaginary: An 1
The mixture of actors and the range of issues over which they interact, the non-state and ‘imaginary’ is a way of
seeing or imagining things.
substate channels of interaction, and the increasing primacy of economic activity have
A global imaginary is a
all brought the global imaginary of a state-centric ‘Westphalian’ order (see p. 6) into holistic way of imagining
question. social, political, and
economic life, at the level
of the whole world rather
than the local, national, or
even international.
C E PT
CON
INTERDEPENDENCE
Interdependence refers to a relationship between two parties in which each is affected by decisions that are taken
by the other. Interdependence implies mutual influence, even a rough equality between the parties in question,
usually arising from a sense of mutual vulnerability. Interdependence, then, is usually associated with a trend
towards cooperation and integration in world affairs. Keohane and Nye (1977) advanced the idea of ‘complex
interdependence’ as an alternative to the realist model of international politics. This highlighted the extent to which
(1) states have ceased to be autonomous international actors; (2) economic and other issues have become more
prominent in world affairs; and (3) military force has become a less reliable and less important policy option.
Some argue that the state’s special status as a global actor is preserved because it
retains what the political sociologist Max Weber famously called the ‘monopoly of
the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory’ (Weber [1919] 1948).
The state’s role as the entity that wages war, and maintains domestic law and order,
is supposed to render it unique. But even this seems less certain in the early twenty-
first century, with the rise of private military and security companies (PMSCs) –
the modern form of what have been known as ‘mercenaries’ – on the one hand,
and the increasing privatization of policing and prisons, on the other. In their
international relations, states have increasingly relied on PMSCs in armed conflicts,
such as the United States in the Iraq War, while PMSCs have also been involved as
paramilitary and covert forces in attempted coups d’état. An example of the latter
is the unsuccessful attempt by former US Special Forces soldiers employed by a
PMSC called Silvercorp USA to overthrow Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro
in May 2020 (these mercenaries were ultimately captured and jailed by Venezuelan
forces). Within states, meanwhile, armed and state-sanctioned private security firms
have offered everything from the guarding of majority-white ‘gated communities’
in Johannesburg, South Africa, to the routine running of prisons and immigration
detention centres in the United States and the United Kingdom. While states may
retain the greatest quantity, and perhaps quality, of the means of ‘legitimate’ violence,
they no longer appear to have a monopoly. The expanded role of substate and private
actors in expressions of ‘war power’ and ‘police power’ (Neocleous 2014) lends further
weight to the claim that we live in a ‘post-Westphalian’, global order characterized by
complexity and interdependence.
6 GLOBAL POLITICS
FOCUS ON . . .
THE WESTPHALIAN STATES SYSTEM
The Peace of Westphalia (1648) is commonly said to mark the beginning of modern international politics. The Peace
was a series of treaties that brought an end to the Thirty Years’ War (1618–48), which consisted of a series of declared
and undeclared wars throughout central Europe involving the Holy Roman Empire and various opponents, including
the Danes, the Dutch, and, above all, France and Sweden. Although the transition occurred over a much longer period
of time, these treaties helped to transform a medieval Europe of overlapping authorities, loyalties, and identities into a
modern states system. The so-called ‘Westphalian system’ was based on two key principles:
z States enjoy sovereign jurisdiction, in the sense that they have independent control over what happens within their
territory (all other institutions and groups, spiritual and temporal, are therefore subordinate to the state).
z Relations between and among states are structured by the acceptance of the sovereign independence of all states
(thus implying that states are legally equal).
internet) that national governments find difficult to control. It is also notable that issues 1
that are prominent in world affairs, such as environmental politics and human rights, tend
to have an intrinsically transnational character. However, claims that the modern world
is effectively ‘borderless’ are manifestly absurd, and, in some ways, territorial divisions
are becoming more important, not less important. This is evident, for instance, in the
greater emphasis on national or ‘homeland’ security in many parts of the world since the
terrorist attacks of September 11, and in attempts to constrain international migration by
strengthening border and other immigration controls.
A non-governmental organization (NGO) is a private, alone, registered 11,262 new NGOs between 2001
non-commercial group or body that seeks to achieve and 2019. The major international NGOs have
its ends through non-violent means. The World Bank developed into huge organizations. For example, Care
(see p. 480) defines NGOs as ‘private organizations International, dedicated to the worldwide reduction
that pursue activities to relieve suffering, promote of poverty, controls a budget worth more than $970
the interests of the poor, protect the environment, million, Greenpeace has a membership of 2.8 million
provide basic social services, or undertake community and a staff of over 2,400, and Amnesty International
development’. Very early examples of such bodies were is better resourced than the human rights arm of
the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade (formed the UN.
by William Wilberforce in 1787) and the International
There can be little doubt that major international
Committee of the Red Cross, founded in 1863. The
NGOs and the NGO sector as a whole now constitute
first official recognition of NGOs was by the United
significant actors on the global stage. Although lacking
Nations (UN) in 1948, when forty-one NGOs were
the economic leverage that TNCs can exert, advocacy
granted consultative status following the establishment
NGOs have proved highly adept at mobilizing ‘soft’
of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (indeed,
power and popular pressure. In this respect, they have a
some NGO activists believe that only groups formally
number of advantages. These include that leading NGOs
acknowledged by the UN should be regarded as
have cultivated high public profiles, often linked to public
‘true’ NGOs). A distinction is often drawn between
protests and demonstrations that attract eager media
operational NGOs and advocacy NGOs:
attention; that their typically altruistic and humanitarian
z Operational NGOs are those whose primary objectives enable them to mobilize public support
purpose is the design and implementation of and exert moral pressure in a way that conventional
development-related projects; they may be either politicians and political parties struggle to rival; and that,
relief-orientated or development-orientated, over a wide range of issues, the views of NGOs are
and they may be community-based, national, or taken to be both authoritative and disinterested, based
international. on the use of specialists and academics. Operational
NGOs, for their part, have come to deliver about 15 per
z Advocacy NGOs exist to promote or defend a cent of international aid, often demonstrating a greater
particular cause; they are sometimes termed speed of response and level of operational effectiveness
‘promotional pressure groups’ or ‘public interest than governmental bodies, national or international, can
groups’. muster. Relief- and development-orientated NGOs
may also be able to operate in politically sensitive areas
Significance: Since the 1990s, the steady growth
where national governments, or even the UN, would be
in the number of NGOs has become a veritable
unwelcome.
explosion. By 2021, 5,593 groups had been granted
consultative status by the UN, with estimates Nevertheless, the rise of the NGO has provoked
suggesting a total of around 50 large (multi-country, considerable political controversy. Supporters of NGOs
multi-mandate) international NGOs and as many argue that they benefit and enrich global politics.
as 300,000 smaller internationally focused NGOs They counterbalance corporate power, challenging
globally. If national and local NGOs are taken into the influence of TNCs; democratize global politics by
account, the number grows enormously: as of articulating the interests of people and groups who have
2021, the United States has an estimated 1.5 million been disempowered by the globalization process; and
NGOs; in 2017, Russia reportedly had 224,500 act as a moral force, widening people’s sense of civic
NGOs; and Kenya, to take one developing country responsibility and even promoting global citizenship. In
9
these respects, they are a vital component of emergent scandals, some major Western international NGOs have
global civil society (see p. 221). Critics, however, argue been found to be involved in sexual exploitation and
that NGOs are really self-appointed ‘pressure’ or violence in developing countries and institutionally racist,
‘interest’ groups that have limited democratic credentials. bullying and abusive employment practices in their home
NGOs have also faced criticism for cynical fund-raising countries, spawning the social media hashtag campaign
and campaigning tactics, and for blunting the radical #CharitySoWhite in 2019. (The impact and significance
edge of social movements. Amid a series of recent of NGOs are examined further in Chapter 6.)
C E PT
CON
GLOBALIZATION
Globalization is the emergence of a complex web of interconnectedness that means that our lives are increasingly
shaped by events that occur, and decisions that are made, at a great distance from us. The central feature of
globalization is therefore that geographical distance is of declining relevance and that territorial borders, such as
those between nation states, are becoming less significant. By no means, however, does globalization imply that ‘the
local’ and ‘the national’ are subordinated to ‘the global’. Rather, it highlights the deepening as well as the broadening
of the political process, in the sense that local, national, and global events (or perhaps local, regional, national,
international, and global events) constantly interact.
10 GLOBAL POLITICS
Globality: A totally z ‘A reconfiguration of social geography marked by the growth of transplanetary and
interconnected whole, supraterritorial connections between people’ (Scholte 2005).
such as the global
economy; the social z ‘A process of time-space compression – literally a shrinking world – in which the
domain created by sources of even very local developments, from unemployment to ethnic conflict, may
globalization.
be traced to distant conditions or decisions’ (McGrew 2017).
z ‘[T]he fad of the 1990s, and […] made in America’ (Waltz 1999).
ANTI-GLOBALIZATION POLITICS
Globalization has been subject not only to intellectual critiques by those who would
suggest it does not exist, or is not what we think it is, but also to opposition in practice
by a range of global political movements and actors opposed to its perceived ill-effects.
There have been two broad trends in this politics of anti-globalization. The first is
12 GLOBAL POLITICS
associated loosely with the transnational political left: activists, politicians, and NGOs
arguing that globalization is really an intensification of the exploitation and violence
done to working-class and marginalized people, and to the environment, around the
world. The second is associated with a broadly right-wing tradition that can, ironically,
be characterized as a ‘transnational nationalist’ movement. This right-wing movement
opposes the immigration and racial mixing enabled by globalization, and laments how
particular social groups it identifies with ‘the nation’ have ‘lost out’ or been ‘left behind’
by economic globalization.
Left-Wing Anti-globalization
The first wave of left-wing anti-globalization politics coalesced around mass
demonstrations against the institutions of ‘global governance’ (see Chapter 20) at
the turn of the millennium. Precipitated by the Zapatista uprising in Mexico in the
mid-1990s (see p. 465), this transnational social movement was partly enabled by the
rise of the internet, which provided new channels for activist organization and the
planning and promotion of direct action and protest. Major demonstrations included
those against the World Trade Organization (WTO) at the ‘Battle of Seattle’ in 1999,
and at the ‘Group of Eight’ (G8) major economies meeting in Genoa in 2001. Each of
these demonstrations attracted many tens of thousands of protestors from around the
world, campaigning across a huge range of issues, from ecological protection to the
need to replace capitalism with a more humane economic system. This movement was
associated with the World Social Forum (WSF), an alternative to the World Economic
Forum (WEF), which was seen as a key global governance institution bringing the
global economic and political elite together in Davos, Switzerland each year to discuss
the future of the global economy. The WSF has instead met each year from 2001 in
the ‘Global South’ (see p. 464), initially in Porto Alegre, Brazil, and brings together
activists concerned with achieving ‘global social justice’ for workers, marginalized
and minoritized groups, indigenous peoples, and the natural environment. As the
movement developed in the 2000s and 2010s it became more closely associated with
‘alter-globalizations’ – recognizing that globalization may be both inevitable and a
force for good, but emphasizing that the US-led, corporate, culturally homogenizing,
and violently militaristic model of globalization, associated with undemocratic and
unaccountable elites and their global governance institutions, is the ‘wrong’ kind of
globalization. This broadly left-wing anti-globalization movement instead advocates a
more open global immigration regime, or even an end to national borders altogether,
more global cooperation to slow or reverse climate change and environmental
degradation, and global cross-racial and working-class solidarities. After the onset of
the 2008 global financial crisis, a series of related global movements and demonstrations
emerged to contest the targeting of the crisis’s costs at vulnerable populations in the
form of ‘austerity’ policies, often mirroring or overlapping the left-wing anti/alter-
globalization movement. These included the anti-austerity ‘Indignados’ movement
in Spain, the ‘Occupy’ movements, beginning with Occupy Wall Street, in 2011 and
spreading to cities around the world, and the rise of leftist anti-austerity parties such
as Syriza, which was elected to government in Greece in 2015. Between 2015 and
INTRODUCING GLOBAL POLITICS 13
Right-Wing Anti-globalization
The right-wing anti-globalization movement emerged as a relatively coherent, though
less united and coordinated, global network much more recently. While the idea of
transnational nationalist solidarity might appear contradictory or oxymoronic, given
the investment of nationalist groups in ‘their’ respective national identities, and their
hostility to foreigners, the situation is not so simple. In fact, historically speaking,
nationalists have been at least as oriented towards transnational organizing and
solidarity as liberal and left-wing global actors – think of the alliances and collaborations
between Germany, Italy, and Spain when those three countries were under fascist rule,
for example, and of the ‘Axis’ powers’ alliance in the Second World War (see p. 42).
In the 2010s, parallel to the anti/alter-globalization left’s anti-austerity movement,
there emerged an increasingly widespread and successful transnational right-wing
movement, which argued against globalization and especially against ‘globalism’ (see
p. 14). These consisted of local, national, and regional-level movements in Europe
and North America, including organizations and political parties such as the UK
Independence Party (UKIP) in Britain, Alternatif fur Deutshland (AfD) in Germany,
Generazione Identitaria (Generation Idenity) in Italy, and the movement around the
presidential candidacy of Donald Trump in the United States. Outside of the ‘West’
(see p. 33), similar movements emerged around the political leadership of Narendra
Modi in India and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil. While, like those involved in left-wing anti-
globalization movements, these global political actors differ over the details of precise
political goals and methods, they are united by the claims that ‘their’ people have lost out
in various ways through globalization and liberal, globalist policy, and by their advocacy
of racially or ‘ethnically’ defined concepts of national identity. Their politics at both the
national and the global level tends to centre on the demonization of the political left,
and of racialized, gendered, and sexual minorities, and especially on opposition to
‘mass’ immigration. If the first wave of left-wing anti-globalization politics was enabled
by the dawn of the internet – a technology so shrewdly exploited by the Zapatistas
and other parts of the anti-capitalist left – then the more right-wing turn against
globalization could not have happened without social media. The transformative effects
of social media, as internet content began to be created by individual users rather than
predominantly by big businesses, were so dramatic that the term ‘Web 2.0’ was coined
to describe the new social media model. Political organizing and political argument in
general became core features of social media, with platforms such as Twitter becoming
especially politicized. While both left and right organize and propagandize through
social media, the transnational anti-globalization right was really born through these
platforms, which allowed disparate and distant right-wing activists to communicate and
organize around the shared views discussed above, across their otherwise very different
national and local contexts.
14 GLOBAL POLITICS
L. H. M. LING (1955–2018)
L. H. M. (Lily) Ling became a highly influential scholar of
postcolonial international relations theory (see p. 99) in the
early twenty-first century. Ling’s work challenged many of the
dominant, ‘traditional’ understandings of global politics in the
West, including what she called ‘Westphalia world’ – the view that
the world consists of a lot of territorially bounded states of various
sizes and capabilities interacting with one another under conditions
of anarchy. Importantly, whereas this vision of global politics was
rooted in exclusively Western sources, from Thucydides and
Thomas Hobbes to Immanuel Kant, Ling’s ‘worldist’ alternative
drew also upon Chinese sources, including Daoist philosophical
texts and dialectical reasoning. Ling was also a feminist scholar,
contributing to ‘non-Western’ feminist thinking on international
An extract from the Hereford ‘Mappa Mundi’
relations. In a 2015 interview Ling said: ‘I am a product of both (1280 CE), one of the first renderings of a
East and West. Growing up in this hybrid space has allowed me European ‘global imaginary’. The map included
to see the possibilities and drawbacks of both traditions; […] to places roughly equivalent to Europe, Asia, and
syncretize the best of both worlds, thereby leaving behind the North Africa, but not the Americas, which
worst of each.’ Her key works include Postcolonial International Europeans were yet to have any contact with at
Relations: Conquest and Desire between Asia and the West this point
(2002), Transforming World Politics: From Empire to Multiple Source: Universal History Archive/Getty Images
Worlds (2009, with Anna M. Agathangelou), The Dao of World
Politics (2014), and Imagining World Politics (2014).
INTRODUCING GLOBAL POLITICS 15
To think globally when we think about politics is to imagine the world as a world, rather Worlding: The process by 1
than simply as a set of states interacting in a system (see the ‘billiard ball’ model, p. 4). But which different societies
construct their imaginaries
this imaginative shift is not necessarily a ‘natural’, neutral, or inevitable process, simply
of the world, including
reflecting the emergence of the global as a ‘new’ space or domain of politics, and our how they envisage its
need to understand and explain it. Thinking globally is rather about adopting a particular structure and constituent
world view or ‘ontology’ (see p. 67) of social relations – including politics – and one that, parts, such as which are
as much as any other perspective on the social, is rooted in our own more local contexts. the key global actors and
processes.
One of the big questions that this chapter will return to is the extent to which it is possible
to truly ‘think globally’, given the profoundly different cultural and social contexts that Worldism: A theory of
exist in the world, into which we are all born and by which we are all conditioned and ‘multiple worlds’ – the
differing global visions that
constrained to think in particular, rather than universal, ways. For example, it has been have emerged from the
pointed out that in major Western studies of globalization, and ‘globalist’ theories, Africa different local, national,
either does not feature at all or, where it is discussed, is ‘almost always as a problem’ and regional processes of
(Kamola 2012: 183). The Western globalist imaginary therefore tends to deny African worlding.
people agency and significance in the making of the global world.
We must recognize that the ‘global imaginary’ might be very different for, say, Chinese
and American people, or Europeans and Africans, while there will also likely be
significant divergence over the meaning of the global within those national and regional
groupings. In recent years ‘postcolonial’ (see p. 99) thinkers have proposed alternate
paradigms to the ‘globalist’ vision, which is itself closely associated with a Western – and
especially North American – imaginary of the world. The concept of ‘worlding’ has
been used to describe the ways in which different societies imagine global politics, while
L. H. M. Ling (1955–2018) uses the term ‘worldism’, or ‘the theory of Multiple Worlds’,
to describe the existence of a plurality of visions of the world, among which Western
globalism is but one (Ling 2014a). Particular people and societies often seek to impose a
universal global imaginary on the world, based on their local, national, and/or regional
experiences, including their more ‘internal’ and spiritual life and imagination. Ling
offers an alternative to Western models, rooted in the Chinese philosophical traditions
of Daoism, along with the Chinese intellectual traditions bequeathed by the philosopher
Confucius (551–479 BCE) and the strategist Sun Tzu (544–496 BCE). She shows that
through these different lenses the nature and behaviour of people, societies, the earth,
and thus also ‘the global’, can be seen very differently than they are through the Western
paradigm. Among other things, this alternate vision of the global does not necessitate
viewing the ‘rise of China’ in world order as the intrinsic ‘threat’ it has been represented
as by Western, liberal, globalist rhetoric.
Power politics: An
approach to politics How do realists see global politics? Deriving from ideas that can be traced back to
based on the assumption thinkers such as Thucydides, Sun Tzu (author of The Art of War), Machiavelli (see p. 74),
that the pursuit of
and Thomas Hobbes, the realist vision is pessimistic: international politics is marked by
power is the principal
human goal; the term constant power struggles and conflict, and a wide range of obstacles standing in the way
is sometimes used of peaceful cooperation. Realism is grounded in an emphasis on power politics, based
descriptively. on the following assumptions:
INTRODUCING GLOBAL POLITICS 17
CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES
Since the late 1980s, the range of critical approaches to world affairs has expanded
considerably. Until that point, Marxism had constituted the principal alternative to
mainstream realist and liberal theories. What made the Marxist approach distinctive
was that it placed its emphasis not on patterns of conflict and cooperation between states
but on structures of economic power and the role played in world affairs by international
capital. It thus brought international political economy, sometimes seen as a subfield
within IR (see p. 139), into focus. However, hastened by the end of the Cold War, a wide
range of ‘new voices’ started to influence the study of world politics, notable examples
including social constructivism, critical theory, post-structuralism, postcolonialism,
feminism, and green politics. What do these new critical voices have in common, and in
what sense are they ‘critical’? In view of their diverse philosophical underpinnings and
contrasting political viewpoints, it is tempting to argue that the only thing that unites
these ‘new voices’ is a shared antipathy towards traditional thinking. However, two broad
similarities can be identified. The first is that, albeit in different ways and to different
degrees, they have tried to go beyond the positivism of traditional theory, emphasizing
instead the role of consciousness in shaping social conduct and, therefore, world affairs.
These so-called post-positivist theories are therefore ‘critical’ in that they not only take
issue with the conclusions of traditional theory but also subject these theories themselves
to critical scrutiny, exposing biases that operate within them and examining their
implications. The second similarity is linked to the first: critical perspectives are ‘critical’
in that, in their different ways, they oppose the dominant forces and interests in modern
world affairs, and so contest the global status quo by (usually) aligning themselves with
marginalized or oppressed groups. Each of them, thus, seeks to uncover inequalities and
asymmetries that traditional theories tend to ignore.
However, the inequalities and asymmetries to which critical theorists have drawn
attention are many and various:
z Postcolonial thinkers have highlighted the historical centrality of colonialism to
producing our present world order, and the ways in which its intellectual legacies
– including racism, as a system of both structural inequality and belief or ideology –
continue to shape global politics today.
z Feminists have drawn attention to systematic and pervasive structures of gender
inequality that characterize global and, indeed, all other forms of politics. In particular,
they have highlighted the extent to which mainstream, and especially realist, theories
are based on ‘masculinist’ assumptions about rivalry, competition, and inevitable
conflict.
z Marxists (who encompass a range of traditions and tendencies that in fact straddle the
positivist/post-positivist divide) highlight inequalities in the global capitalist system,
through which developed countries or areas, sometimes operating through TNCs
or linked to ‘hegemonic’ powers such as the United States, dominate and exploit
working-class populations overseas just as they do at home.
z Post-structuralists emphasize that all ideas and concepts are expressed in language
that itself is enmeshed in complex relations of power. Influenced particularly by the
INTRODUCING GLOBAL POLITICS 19
RE
FIG U
APPROACHES TO. . .
REALIST VIEW
Realists are state-centric thinkers. They are sceptical about globalization in general, and about the notion that it
reduces the power and significance of states as global political actors in particular. Following the outbreak of the
global Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic in early 2020, one of the most prominent American realists, Stephen
Walt, suggested that the virus showed that ‘the high water mark of contemporary globalization is now behind
us’ (Walt 2020). Drawing on the classical realist source, Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War, which
describes the effects of a lethal plague on the international relations of Athens with its neighbouring city states,
Walt argues that the more recent pandemic ‘reminds us that states are still the main actors in global politics’
(Thucydides 1963). Realists also suggest that the pandemic crisis will likely contribute, in the longer term, to
what they see as the decline of the trends others have labelled ‘globalization’, and that a consequence of the
pandemic will be, in Walt’s (2020) words: ‘borders between states will become a bit higher’.
LIBERAL VIEW
Liberals, who generally embrace globalization as a real and necessary process that they believe will lead
to greater security and stability in the world, were frustrated by state responses to the global coronavirus
pandemic but hopeful for a solution through global governance. For liberals, institutions such as the World
Health Organization are central to the ‘liberal world order’ and were designed precisely to provide the
necessary governance to guide societies through crises like this. Alleged state secrecy around the scale of
risk the pandemic posed, first in China and then elsewhere, was, on the liberal view, the enemy of effective
solutions. More open, democratic, global cooperation is the only means to solve collective action problems
(see p. 7) like a pandemic, from the liberal perspective. As the virus spread in 2020, the influential American
‘neoliberal institutionalist’ (see p. 88) Joseph Nye (2020) argued that:
On transnational threats like COVID-19 and climate change, it is not enough to think of American
power over other nations. The key to success is also learning the importance of power with others. Every
country puts its national interest first; the important question is how broadly or narrowly this interest is
defined. COVID-19 shows we are failing to adjust our strategy to this new world.
POSTCOLONIAL VIEW
From a postcolonial perspective, the global pandemic threw into even sharper relief the structural inequalities
that globalization has failed to resolve, or has even exacerbated. Like the global financial crisis that struck thirteen
years earlier, the societies that were positioned to be highly vulnerable were those with weaker economies and
infrastructure. These societies, largely located in the ‘Global South’ (see p. 464) are, for the most part, countries
that were once subjected to European colonialism (see p. 31), a major cause of their relative economic and
infrastructural problems. As it transpired, powerful ‘Global North’ countries with major economies also suffered
greatly, with Italy, the United States, and the UK seeing among the very highest proportions of deaths from
the virus in the world. But postcolonial analysis would point to the internal dynamics within these states, where
– especially in the United States and UK – official statistics showed that those racialized as minorities were far
more likely to die from the virus than the white majority. Postcolonial thinkers such as Gurminder Bhambra
21
MARXIST VIEW
For Marxists, the pandemic is another crisis of capitalism, and one that starkly highlights the structural
violence done in the name of capitalist ‘globalization’. The American Marxist historian Mike Davis published
a book fifteen years prior to the global pandemic, warning that global pharmaceutical corporations neglect
vaccine research as ‘unprofitable’, while the rise of factory farming and ‘megaslums’ provide fertile conditions
for a new global plague. Capitalism is an economic system driven by the profit motive alone and, in the
Marxist view, has something of a track record in degrading, endangering, and extinguishing human life in the
pursuit of profit. In 2020, Davis suggested that: ‘This new age of plagues, like previous pandemic epochs,
is directly the result of economic globalization’ (Davis 2020), since it was the global interconnectedness
necessitated by capitalist markets, industry, and trade that spread the virus.
FEMINIST VIEW
For feminists, the pandemic highlighted, first of all, the fact that a ‘human security’ lens, rather than narrowly
state-centric approaches to security, is necessitated by globalization. Feminist theorists of global politics
have long pointed out that patriarchal violence, including domestic abuse, is quantifiably a much greater
security threat to women than, say, terrorism. The pandemic intensified such violence, with a global surge in
reports of domestic abuse as women and girls were ‘locked down’ at home with abusive partners and families.
Feminists concerned with gender and sexuality also expressed concern at the impact of the pandemic on
transgender people. Some places, such as Panama City, operated gendered lockdown policies, where men
and women were allowed outside at separate times, and transgender people were subject to harassment
22
and abuse. In other countries, for instance Kenya and the United States, transgender people suffered as
hormone treatments and gender reassignment surgeries were deprioritized in favour of pandemic-related
health care. From a feminist perspective, this sort of reprioritization is a result of patriarchy (see p. 107)
and prevailing ‘heteronormative’ values, in which women’s, girls’, and LGBTQIA (lesbian, gay, bisexual,
transgender, queer, intersex, and asexual) people’s needs are systematically accorded less significance than
‘cishet’ (cisgendered – i.e. of the gender assigned at birth – and heterosexual) men. Black feminist thinkers,
meanwhile, including Kimberlé Crenshaw (see p. 111), highlighted the intersectional nature of racialized and
gendered experiences of the global pandemic.
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