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UNIT 1 Module 2 Political Dimension

Introduction
Political globalization refers to the intensification and expansion of political
interrelations across the globe. ‘The political dimension of globalization’ considers how
these processes raise an important set of political issues pertaining to the principle of
state sovereignty, the growing impact of intergovernmental organizations, and the future
prospects for regional and global governance, global migration flows, and environmental
policies affecting our planet. Contemporary globalization has led to a permeation of the
traditional territorial borders of nation-states and fostered the growth of supraterritorial
social spaces and institutions that, in turn, unsettle both familiar political arrangements
and cultural traditions.

LEARNING OUTCOMES

At the end of this module, you should be able to:

1. Discuss the political dimension of globalization.
2. Give examples on political dimension
3. Discuss the advantages of globalization to nation-states

Globalization: Political Dimension

This type of globalization focuses on how the leaders of nations have integrated
their laws and built alliances for their mutual benefit.
Some features of political globalization include:

• The rise of International Bodies like the WMF and WTO.

• The rise of Free Trade.
• The rise of Multinational Agreements to develop Shared Norms.
• The emergence of the Concept of the Global Citizen.
Aspects of political globalization has been around in some form or another for a long
time (e.g. the complex political relationships in the Roman Empire). But generally, when
talking about political globalization, we’re referring to the increasing political integration of
nation-states since the 2nd World War.
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The most widespread definition of political globalization comes from William R.

Thompson who defined it as: “The expansion of a global political system, and its
institutions, in which inter-regional transactions (including, but certainly not limited to
trade) are managed.”
Primarily, it has involved the blurring of the boundaries between nation-states to
decrease friction between nations. This can reach all areas of political and social life,
including:

• Lowering barriers to migration.

• Lowering barriers to the movement of goods and services.
• Agreeing on common standards for labor, intellectual property and environmental
protection.
Some have argued that it has also led to a declining role of nation-states, which
have ceded some power and responsibility to international bodies or political
globalization. For example, many nations agree to accept the rulings of the international
court of arbitration even if they disagree with them.

Examples of Political Globalization

1. European Union
The European Union is a trade and treaty bloc comprising of 27 nation-states on the
continent of Europe. It is the successor of several other political agreements established
after World War 2 to help integrate the European continent after the war. Supporters of
the EU say that the union has made Europe a safer and more harmonious place. Each
nation’s economic success is more dependent on others in the bloc than ever before. This
interdependence makes resorting to wars to solve disputes less likely. The bloc also has
the goal of spreading freedom and human rights across the continent. Here, you can see
that there are both economic and political goals built into this union.
2. NATO
The North American Treaty Organization is another multi-national political treaty
established after World War 2. NATO’s primary goal is to contain Russian aggression by
creating a military pact. If one NATO nation is attacked, then the rest will (supposedly)
come to their defense. This deters potential Russian aggression.

3. Belt and Road Initiative

The Belt and Road Initiative is a trade initiative established by China designed to
spread China’s sphere of influence across Asia and the Middle East. The initiative creates
trade routes through over 70 nations and is the centerpiece of China’s foreign policy.
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Critics say China’s foreign affairs strategy often puts small nations in debt to China so
China can leverage political power and favors in the future.

4. War Games
Many allied nations engage in yearly war games in a bid to strengthen military ties
and protect their interests. The United States and South Korea do this regularly, for
example, as a sign of strength against potential North Korean aggression. This sort of
political diplomacy is designed to strengthen allied blocs of nations and deter foreign
attacks.

5. NAFTA
NAFTA was a flashpoint of anti-globalization sentiment in the 1990s because it was
seen to decrease labor standards and would lead to the exodus of blue-collar jobs from
the United States. The trade deal between the United States, Canada and Mexico was
eventually replaced by protectionist-leaning president Donald Trump and replaced by the
USMCA agreement which had reinstated some provisions to strengthen the power of
nation-states to protect their industries.

Advantages of Political Globalization

1. Establishment of International Norms

When nation-states sign treaties with international bodies, it’s an agreement to
operate within a set of norms and standards that all signatories will adhere to. This rule-
based order can help prevent a race to the bottom in regards to labor standards,
intellectual property theft, and environmental standards. An example of this is the
establishment of war crimes standards that are policed by the international criminal court
in Brussels.
2. Ease of Movement

Often, political agreements between nations lead to relaxing of the movement of

labor across boundaries. This can lead to immigration and emigration opportunities for
millions of people. The most dramatic example of this is the freedom of movement of
people around the 27 European Union nation-states, leading to the development of a
transnational European identity. However, in many other cases, this ease of movement
is often limited to highly educated professionals and locks out working-class people from
the benefits of globalization.
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3. Ease of Trade
One of the key goals of political globalization is to create better trade routes around
the world (in effect, to support and promote economic globalization). The premise here is
that free trade creates more efficient economies of scale. In a free trade situation, nations
that are excellent at producing a certain product or service will become global ‘hubs’,
producing their product of expertise with great efficiency and at scale. This can free up
other nations to produce other products more efficiently also because they will be able to
re-allocate resources to industries they’re more efficient at working within.

Political agreements that create free trade agreements can help increase
participatory nations’ prosperity significantly, although this often comes at the cost of jobs
in vulnerable sectors.

4. Establishment of Blocs of Influence

Multinational political agreements are often designed to create a bloc of allies that
are stronger than the sum of their parts. One example of this is when small African and
Pacific nations gather together to vote as blocs in the United Nations. Similarly, the West
spent the 2nd half of the 20th Century holding significant leverage over multinational
organizations such as the United Nations and World Trade Organizations because they
effectively created a strong trans-Atlantic alliance.
5. Solve Global Problems like Climate Change

As the 21st Century progresses, the problem of climate change becomes more
and more pressing to solve. Many nations claim that they alone can do very little to solve
climate change. They will often cite that they’re only responsible for a tiny percentage of
global carbon emissions (this is very common to hear in Australian politics). In this
context, an effective way to solve climate change is to create a global pact where all
nations (which each account for only a small amount of carbon emissions) come together
and agree to targets and standards for reducing emissions.
Attempts have been made to address this – such as in the Copenhagen and Paris
climate accords, although it’s widely believed that these accords fall far too short and will
not prevent catastrophic climate change. Nonetheless, if this problem will be solved, it’s
likely to only occur at a global multinational level.
Disadvantages of Political Globalization

1. Loss of Power at the Nation-State Level

When nation-states make multinational agreements, they often make concessions
in order to reach a middle ground that’s satisfactory to all parties. They also sign-off on
certain norms and standards that restrict their abilities to unilaterally take action.
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One of the many reasons Britain chose to leave the European Union was that they
were unhappy that they were tied to European rules around – among other things – fishing
quotas in UK waters. While within the trade block, the UK had to stick to requirements
that they felt restricted their fishing industry.
Nevertheless, most European nations make the calculation that this loss of power
is outweighed by the great rewards that come from being in an enormous free trade bloc.
2. Levels of Bureaucracy
Multinational political agreements can add extra layers of bureaucracy to everyday
activities of businesses and citizens. For example, many global political agreements put
in place standards that you need to ‘tick off’ before sending a product to market.
Another way they increase bureaucracy is through the very fact the running and
administration of multinational agreements is a burden. For example, the European
Union’s budget is €157.9 billion, which needs to be paid into by each nation-state.
While some don’t support many of the claims made, it covers many compelling
arguments about the problems with unelected bureaucrats:
3. Decreased Political Accountability
One of the biggest critiques of bodies like the WTO, the EU and United Nations is
that they are full of unelected bureaucrats. The administrators who make decisions and
recommendations, and administer programs, are not directly accountable to the people
who their decisions impact.
Similarly, the decisions made in multinational agreements are (by their very nature)
made not only by citizens of your nation but also leaders of competitor nations. These
foreign leaders are in no way accountable to you or your fellow citizens.

Other concepts of Political Globalization

Political globalization describes the ways political decisions are increasingly made
at a global rather than national level. While it has enabled some significant advancements
in human rights and growing prosperity thanks to free trade, many people have been
displaced and harmed by multinational agreements, also.
There will always be a pull-and-push as political globalization displaces and upsets
people and causes backlash. There are legitimate and genuine arguments on both sides
of the advantages and disadvantages of political globalization arguments.
The world-systems perspective has shown that inter-societal geopolitics and geo-
economics have been the relevant arena of competition for national-states, firms, and
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classes for hundreds of years. However, the term globalization can refer to many different
things. In fact, there is no single definition of the term. Central to the idea of globalization
is the notion that contemporary problems cannot be adequately assessed at the nation-
state level. Instead, they need to be thought of in the context of global processes, or a
world system. The usage of the term also generally implies the recent changes in
information technology that have occurred over the last decade or so, which have enabled
the global market as opposed to nation-state or local level markets to become the relevant
arena for economic competition. The impact of globalization on public administration
directly impacts the government’s policy-making process, in that it can expand the arena
of issue search and discussion as well as adding many more constraints, variables, and
people to the process and analysis. For example, international trade agreements provide
constraints on individual states from taking certain actions, thus reducing the alternatives
available to policy makers in that particular area. Similarly, transnational firms can
threaten to relocate to another jurisdiction, further constraining the choices of individual
states. While globalization is arguably not a new phenomenon, what is new is the speed
with which it is happening and the impact that it is having on governing.
Political globalization addresses the institutionalization of international political
structures. Currently, the world is based on an inter-state system, following a Europe-
centered world-system. It is a system of conflicting and allying states and empires. In
earlier world-systems, accumulation was mainly accomplished by means of
institutionalized coercive power and occurred in a cyclical fashion, by way of both inter-
state systems and core-wide world empires, where a single state conquered all or most
of the core states in a region. The modern world-system is multi-centric in its core. This
is due to the shift from the previous type accumulation towards capitalism, which is based
on the production and profitable sale of commodities. The leaders have been capitalist
states that follow a strategy of controlling trade and access to raw material imports from
periphery states rather than conquering other core states for taxes or resources.
Since the early nineteenth century the European inter-state system increasingly
has been developing a set of international political structures that regulate many different
interactions. Craig Murphy (1994) refers to this development as “global governance.” The
term refers to the growth of both specialized and general international organizations.
Some examples of general organizations that have emerged include the League of
Nations and the United Nations. These organizations are involved in a process of
institution building with the leadership and implicit involvement of core states. The
proceeding outlines the many dimensions of globalization. More importantly, however,
are the implications of these dimensions that are fundamentally changing governance.
On the economic front, the production economy has moved from national to global, with
transnational firms treated like domestic firms. The regulation that firms are subjected to
is increasingly international as opposed to national. The loyalty of these firms is to their
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shareholders as opposed to the nation. On the political front, the authority of the nation-
state is either moving upward due to the signing of international agreements, or is leaking
downward to the region. The rise of global governance is exemplified by the growing
importance of such institutions as the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, the World
Trade Organization, the European Union, as well as international non-governmental
organizations, and formal and quasigovernmental groups. The information revolution
means that government no longer has a monopoly on information; communication is easy
and instant. With this comes the homogenization of culture. But more importantly, the IT
revolution is contributing to the decline of deference of the citizen to the state, as the
relevance of the state to the lives of the citizen declines. Just as the power of the state is
becoming fragmented and diffuse, so too is the opposition to unpopular policies.

These policies imposed macroeconomic measures on debtor countries to make

them more market oriented. Government services were cut due to austerity, and as a
result social security and welfare systems were weakened as resources were transferred
to foreign countries and/or national elites. The measures also resulted in devaluation of
currency, inflation, increasing income inequality, and poverty. So while the global
emphasis on creating optimal conditions for markets has created great wealth, this wealth
has not been equitably distributed. Ironically, however, this does not mean the distance
between the wealth of the global north and south is growing, rather the economic distance
between various groups within countries is growing, irrespective of their location in the
global north or south. Shrivastava’s (2014) analysis of the situation in the US is indicative
of this trend: From 1992 to 2007 the top 400 earners in the U.S. saw their income increase
392% and their average tax rate reduced by 37%. The share of total income in America
going to the top 1% of American households (also after federal taxes and income
transfers) increased from 11.3% in 1979 to 20.9% in 2007. During the recession of 2007-
2009, inequality declined, with total income of the bottom 99 percent of Americans
declining by 11.6%, but falling faster (36.3%) for the top 1%. However, disparity in income
increased again during the 2009-2010 recovery, with the top 1% of income earners
capturing 11.6% of income and capital gains, while the income of the other 99% remained
flat, growing by only 0.2% (Shrivastava, 2014).

You may take a break and comprehend our discussion before answering the
following activity.
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ACTIVITY

1. Using the above-discussed examples, make an article about globalization’s

impact on Philippine government.

References

1. Steger, M.B. (2009). Globalization: A very short introduction. Oxford: Oxford

University Press

2. Waters, Malcolm. 2001. Globalization (2nd edition). London, New York: Routledge.
3. Ocaña et. al, (The Contemporary World, 2nd ed.. Mutya Publishing Inc.

4. Farazmand, Ali. 1999. ‘Globalization and Public Administration’, Public Administration Review,
59 (6, November–December): 509–22, 2007. ‘Globalization: A Theoretical Analysis with
Implications for Governance and Public Administration’, in Ali Farazmand and Jack Pinkowski
(eds), Handbook of Globalization, Governance, and Public Administration. London, New York:
Taylor & Francis.
5. Savas, E.S. 1987. Privatization: The Key to Better Government. New Delhi: Tata McGraw-Hill.

6. Sen, S. and Bhattacharya, C.B. (2001) Does Doing Good Always Lead to Doing Better
Consumer Reactions to Corporate Social Responsibility. Journal of ... Accessed online: 3rd
August 2023. https://plato.stanford.edu

7. Bennis, Warren B. 1968. ‘Beyond Bureaucracy’, in Warren B. Bennis and Philip Slater (eds),
The Temporary Society. Harper and Row Publishers. Reprinted in an abridged version in Nigro,
F. and G. Nigro. 1983. Readings in Public Administration. New York: Harper and Row Publishers.

8. Macmillan International Higher Education, 28 May 2009 - Political Science Accessed on the
28th/07/2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRzcqI_1Gkw

9. Cuterela, S. (2012). Globalization: Definition, processes and concepts. Romanian Statistical

Review.

10. Lechner, F. J., & Boli, J. (Eds.). (2020). The globalization reader. New York: John Wiley &
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