Globalization and Democracy: At Odds or In Concert (original) (raw)
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My contribution focuses on the impact of globalization on the national state and civil society and its implications for democratic governance. It is important to note at the outset that globalization is not some kind of fateful, inevitable force of nature that impinges on the state and state system and civil society from outside, without having been promoted in many respects by certain economic and political forces (often through the active encouragement or passive activities of one or more states) and/or realized through the individual or group decisions in civil society at scales ranging from the local to the global. It is also important to note that the criteria chosen for assessing the impact of globalization on democratic governance should not be anachronistic – a problem that can also be observed in recent debates on the European Union. This it would be wrong to take an idealized, nineteenth-century liberal representative democracy as the benchmark in an era when even national states are marked by growing authoritarian statism. This said, I will address the topic proposed by the editors in three steps: first, indicate the complexities of globalization, second, consider its impact on the state and civil society in the light of other changes occurring in these interconnected aspects of political and social order, and, third, address questions of democratic renewal. While my analysis will focus on globalization and the transformation of the state and civil society, it will also raise broader issues of political economy, political ecology, and governance failure. This leads eventually to some important questions about democratic governance and global solidarity and the prerequisites of a sustainable social and natural order.
Globalization and Politics, Vol. 1: Global Political and Legal Governance (2014)
2014
Despite the long history of globalizing political relations, world politics can still not be described as a comfortably integrated system. There is, for example, little possibility—even on the far horizon—of the emergence of a single global government. Neither can it be simply said that there is a single co-ordinated system of global governance. Even the United Nations, for all its globalizing reach, does not constitute the overriding locus of global governance. The closest we have come to an integrated system in the political-cultural domain is the global system of nation-states organized around the now-global principle of state sovereignty. However, in narrow political terms, each nation-state continues to treats its own political and legal foundations as self-generated and self-constituting. The faltering political (including legal) co-ordination between the world’s nation-states continues to mean that it is possible to negotiate many different political (and economic) outcomes by moving either between different nation-states or between different levels of jurisdiction—national, regional and global. This is, for example, the modus operandi of globalizing corporations as they optimize their situations by constant legal adjustment and movement of capital. How then is the global governance system best described?
Globalization and the erosion of democracy
European Journal of Political Research, 1999
Despite the apparent development and spread of liberal democratic state forms in the 1980s and 1990s, possibilities for genuine democratic governance overall are declining. Firstly, the emergence and consolidation of modern liberal democracy was inextricably intertwined with the development of the nation-state and is profoundly socially embedded in that structural context. Secondly, in today's globalizing world, cross-cutting and overlapping governance structures and processes increasingly take private, oligarchic (and mixed public/private) forms; hegemonic neoliberal norms are delegitimizing state-based governance in general; and democratic states are losing the policy capacity necessary for transforming democratically generated inputs into authoritative outputs. Consequently, robust constraints limit the potential for (a) reinstitutionalizing the 'democratic chain' between accountability and effectiveness, (b) rearticulating the multitasking character of authoritative institutions and (c) renewing the capacity of authoritative agents to make the side-payments and to undertake the monitoring necessary to control free-riding and assimilate alienated groups. Rather than a new pluralistic global civil society, globalization is more likely to lead to a growth in inequalities, a fragmentation of effective governance structures and the multiplication of quasi-fiefdoms reminiscent of the Middle Ages.
Democracy, Globalization, and the Problem of the State
Polity, 2001
Globalizationk effectson democracy have received much attention recently, though there is little consensusabout what precisely those effectsare or how they should be addressed. Criiics are almost evenly divided among those who propose cosmopolitan solutions and those who favor reinvigorating democracy at the state level. This article argues that we are not prepared to decide such issues because current analyses of the problem confuseglobalizationk effectson states with its effectson democracy and rest on problematic assumptions about the relationship between states and democracy.An alternativeapproach that uses globalization as a lens through which to focus on this relationship reveals that the problem is deeper and more cornplex than either ofthe existing accounts recognizes.A sound analysis o f the problem must begin with a better understanding of the origins. nature,and implicationsofdernocracyk spatial and normativeties to the state and its entanglement with the modern discourse ofsovereignty.
The great trilemma: are globalization, democracy, and sovereignty compatible?
International Theory, 2016
Current economic and political developments spotlight the relationship between domestic and global governance and the impact of globalization on both. A key question is whether a sovereign state system, democratic governments, and an integrated global marketplace can coexist. The paper assesses analytic materialist arguments for their incompatibility and the key assumptions on which they rest. The paper describes the extant pressures operating to limit each of the three: how sovereignty and democracy work to constrain globalization, how globalization and sovereignty generate a democratic deficit, and how globalization and democracy lead to limitations upon, and even the transcendence of, sovereignty. How to make the three compatible, and failing that, which facet to restrain, characterizes political contestation in a globalizing age. Global and domestic governance reflect the need to reconcile the combined implications of globalization, sovereignty, and democracy, and to do so by re...
How States Safeguard Their Sovereignty in the Context of Globalization
Globalization creates and changes complex legal configurations. As the global connectedness increase, cross border transactions and communications enlarge and therefore there is a demand to create transnational rules. Globalization appears to be eroding the Westphalian norms upon which the modern nation-state relation is constructed. State is not the only body that hold the monopoly authority in law making process. However in the practice, states are not simply given their sovereignty capacities.This essay seeks to discuss the challenge delivered by globalization to the conception of state sovereignty. The thesis is that globalization transformed the form of state sovereignty and therefore there are roles embraced by state in safeguarding their sovereignty.
Is globalization a challenge or a threat to nation-states as a dominant form of polity
Western Balkans Security Observer no.21
A true Nation-state has never yet existed in our diverse and vibrant world. For states to remain in the game, they need to understand they are no longer the only actor. The current policy arena is a kind of unstructured complexity in which a lot of actors are key for policy making. The descriptive label governance is used for the changing nature of the policy process. The dispersion of the power and activities of the state towards stakeholders at different spatial levels is the most visible change in the state, in a globalized world. The thesis about the end of the state is unsustainable. According to Poulantzas, a nation-state should be seen as 'self-replaceable'. Economic globalization is seen as the force which most threatens the authority of the nation-state. The state's ability to act in opposition to market forces is devastated by the fact that the state must reduce regulatory standards in order to attract capital. The theory which satisfactorily reflects the nexus of globalization and reduction of regulatory policy is the 'race-to-the-bottom' (RTB) hypothesis. In today's globalized states, there is a trend towards subordinating social policy to the needs of structural competitiveness and the flexibility of the labour market. Such a state is called a Schumpeterian workfare post-national regime. Globalization causes the state to be unable to protect its population. Contemporary security threats and challenges, which are by nature transnational and largely a product of globalization, make nation-states vulnerable and interdependent. The result of globalization is also new nonspace-based identities that do not derive from the nation-state.
Is Globalization undermining State Sovereignty?
There has been much debate about whether globalization is undermining state sovereignty in the study of world politics today. This is due to the fact that the term ‘globalization’ itself is rather subjective and broad. There are two rather distinct arguments used in this debate. Hyperglobalists, such as Ohmae and Scholte , hold a pessimistic view and argues that globalization brings about the demise of the sovereign nation state: global forces undermine the ability of governments to control their own economics and societies. In contrast, ‘the sceptics reject the idea of globalization as so much “globaloney”’ : by emphasizing the continuing importance of states in world politics, academics such as Krasner and Gilpin argue that states and geopolitics remain the principal agents and forces shaping world order today. In this essay, we will firstly define the terms ‘globalization’ and ‘state sovereignty’. Looking at the impact of globalisation domestically and internationally of a state, we will pin point which aspects of state sovereignty are being undermined before looking at the arguments proposed by the “sceptics”. Then we will conclude whether or not, or to what extent is globalization undermining state sovereignty.
Introduction: Globalization, Power, States, and the Role of Law
Boston College Law Review, 2013
On October 12, 2012 the Boston College Law Review and the Boston College International and Comparative Law Review held a joint Symposium entitled, "Filling Power Vacuums in the New Global Legal Order." In three panel discussions and a keynote address by Anne-Marie Slaughter, a lively discourse on the impact of globalization on state power, the law, and the law's ability to both reallocate and effectively restrain power ensued. This Introduction, and the works that follow in this symposium issue, document that discourse.