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Well, globalization
by most accounts
is a relatively old phenomenon.
In other words, it
goes back a couple
of hundred years--
in some accounts,
even thousands of years.
And it might be
useful, then, to think
about the most recent wave or
phenomenon of globalization,
which has one case
that's accelerated
a lot since the
early to mid-1990s
with the end of the Soviet
Union and the Cold War.
Certainly, there was
also a striking degree
of increasing globalization
in the 1920s and the Interwar
period and leading
up to World War II.
And then it could be
argued that there was also
some substantial
globalization per se
in the 18th and 19th centuries.
And David Northrup, in
our history department,
has written about it as
a phenomenon thousands
of years ago, as well.
And some scholars
have emphasized
that, while the current type
of globalization is new,
many aspects of
it are not so new.
So there is certainly
some important historical
perspective to cast on it.
But most people would say that
over the last 30 to 40 years,
from a political science,
political economy
point of view, especially,
we noticed from 1969,
'70, '71, from the
early 1970s, there
was an increasing degree of
integration or interconnection
internationally.
One version of that
[INAUDIBLE] and I
called "complex
interdependence,"
and globalization is a
little different than that.
Most people would say
globalization is increasing
speed and depth and breadth of
connections across societies
intercontinentally,
across continents.
Another way of thinking about
it would be that actions,
decisions taken in one country
or one region of the world
have increasing effects
and interactive effects
in other parts of the world.
And we know that it has
technological aspects
and military and
political, economic,
financial, and of course, even
social and cultural elements
to it, too.
So depending on one's point
of view or discipline,
globalization can be more about
technology and The World Is
Flat, as written about
by Thomas Friedman,
or it could be more
about cultures,
the Clash Of Civilizations
that Huntington wrote about,
that I think is probably less
explanatory of globalization--
and more the way in which
cultures meld and become
more similar over time.
I think, analytically,
it's helpful to distinguish
globalization as a process, as
a series of events and processes
that take place over
time, on the one hand,
from globalization as an
outcome or effects or things
that we can measure that
have actually happened partly
as a result of globalization.
So effects, for example,
would be the increasing number
of international economic,
financial, banking, or currency
crises that we've experienced
in the last 20 years--
an increasing number and an
increasing frequency of them.
An example of the process of
globalization as a process
would be, for example, that
more and more countries are
lowering their barriers
to trade and allowing
international trade to become
a more important aspect
of their economic activity, of
their national economic income.
And so the
liberalization of trade
is itself an aspect of, a
component of globalization.
But it's more a process
that's carried out
by government officials,
making decisions,
deciding that they want
to embrace globalization
rather than to limit
it or restrict it.
Another way of thinking
about globalization
is that it's uneven.
It certainly is
much more prominent
in more highly economically,
financially advanced
societies and economies.
And a lot of globalization was
for a long time North America,
Eastern, and Central and
especially Western Europe
and Northeast Asia, and
those three countries--
those three regions
or kind of the triad
was geographically
more globalization.
Today it's embracing, of course,
Brazil and Argentina and India
and other parts of
the world, as well.
So there is a kind
of, if you want,
an unevenness to globalization.
There is also an
asymmetry to it.
That is, countries that are
better positioned financially
and technologically probably
gain more from globalization,
whereas countries that
are not as well positioned
are more on the
defensive, trying
to determine how to gain and
make benefits for their people
from it rather than only
to be disadvantaged by it.
And third, I think
you could say there
is a kind of management
problem for governments,
that globalization in
some ways accelerates
the challenges and the
difficulties of managing
national economies.
And it heightens
budget difficulties,
budget constraints.
It has accelerated the
role of the private sector
in capitalism and helped to
spread capitalism worldwide.
And so there are new actors,
new markets, and new challenges
to government, along
with new ideologies.
So part of globalization
also has been the idea
that one should manage
the public sector
with a balanced
budget or at least
to have adequate resources
to take on debt, but to have
adequate resources to
keep up with that debt
and not to let the debt and
deficit of the government
spending get out of hand.
So again, another way of
thinking about globalization
is that it's challenged the
nature of the nation-state,
and it would seem to have
pushed a lot of decisions
more down to the
regional and local level
within nation-states,
but also up
to the regional and
multilateral and even global
level across nation-states.
Finally, I think it's important
to say what globalization
is not because there
is a lot of writing
and a little bit of hype
around globalization
being everything or
responsible for everything.
And sometimes it's
like it's scapegoated
for things which are
really more caused
at the local or
the national level.
So for example, the aging
of populations across Japan,
much of Western Europe,
the United States,
North America is not
due to globalization.
In large measure,
the re-shifting
of the nature of
economic activity
across the triad toward
more service sector activity
rather than manufacturing
and hands-on production
is not due, in the
first instance,
to globalization per se.
And a lot of the difficulties
of managing national budgets
and expenditures have to do with
local and national priorities--
are not due, in the first
instance, to globalization.
So there's a lot about national
and local economic activity
that's still
extremely important,
and globalization is
not about everything
or the cause of everything or
the causing of all asymmetries
across nations and societies,
which are fundamentally
begun for other reasons.
Often, I think
globalization these days--
as opposed to,
say, 10 years ago--
is seen as more of a difficulty,
a challenge, and even a problem
or even, really, a force
for bad things if not evil.
And so often globalization
is seen, again,
as a cause of things which
are difficulties or even
bad outcomes and that
it's a bad process,
in some ways, leading
to bad outcomes.
In other ways, Kofi
Annan, for example,
when he was secretary
general of the UN
is well known for
saying that there
was too little globalization
for most developing countries,
not too much.
In other words, there
are certain benefits
of globalization
and particularly
if governments manage it well.
And therefore, it's
not so much a question
about good and bad but
about how well it's managed.
And frankly, I think
that's a more productive
and probably a more
useful way of thinking
about globalization.
It's not so much
inherently bad or good.
It can challenge
individual identity
and cause us to
rethink our identity.
It certainly challenges
cultures and national languages
and identities, and it
certainly challenges
old ways of forging ties
between two or three
or multiple nation-states.
So in that sense, since it
tends to shake up old ideas
and patterns and
inclinations, it's
potentially not just a
challenge but a difficulty.
But I think most
people would agree
that it's about the way
in which it's managed.
And so, for example, if
nation-states capitalize
on the potential benefits
of globalization,
most people would agree that
increasing international trade
across countries is
good for economic growth
and even important
for poverty reduction.
In addition, most
political economists,
most economists agree that
the multi-nationalization
of production, the
fact that production
of any particular good,
not just automobiles
or aircraft, but lots
of more basic goods
now are in multiple locations
across multiple countries,
and then come together sometimes
even in multiple locations
and are then
distributed worldwide.
So that internationalization
of production
is also generally seen as a
positive, good as a net benefit
to societies and one
that actually accelerates
growth and makes more resources
available to be allocated
across societies.
The movement of capital,
especially short term
as opposed to
longer-term capital--
portfolio-type funds-- is
much more controversial.
And what has been known as
the Washington Consensus,
or the set of 12
or so principles
about how to manage
one's economy if you want
to follow the model of the
Western political, economic,
liberal model--
the Washington
Consensus has been
modified in the
last 10 or 12 years
to drop the idea that short-term
portfolio capital movement is
necessarily beneficial
and to embrace
the idea of regulating it.
Longer-term financial
flows and capital flows,
like foreign direct
investment, are generally seen
as positive and
encouraged, like trade
and the multi-nationalization
of production.
The flow of technology is
generally seen as positive.
Unfortunately, these days, the
idea of the flow of people--
immigrants, immigration, formal,
informal, legal, illegal--
is increasingly challenging
a lot of nation-states
and regions around the world.
And so whereas the
trade in people,
if you will-- sending
workers from Bangladesh
to Saudi Arabia or Pakistan
to Kuwait and Saudi Arabia
is generally seen
as a good thing
because there are
lots of countries
that need workers
and lots of countries
that have extra workers.
But again, in the last 5 or 10
years, the movement of people
has become an issue.
It's become a political problem.
And in some countries,
it's raising
the number of votes,
the number of people
that are willing to support
right-wing parties that
take this on as a major issue,
opposing immigrants, per se,
or immigration, per
se, and focusing
on the kind of nature
of the people that
make up their population.
So in that sense, one could
say that globalization
can be a good thing even
for the movement of people.
But again, it requires careful
regulation of the border.
It requires governments
convincing people
that immigrants have
always been part
of an economy and a society,
and that can be done carefully
and thoughtfully.
It doesn't have to
overwhelm school systems
and social welfare
programs and so forth.
Finally, culturally,
of course, cultures
themselves are challenged
by globalization
and especially challenged by
the idea of Westernization
or even more Americanization--
the spread of Disney
World, Disney Lands,
and American
movies, pop culture,
and so forth, much of which
is welcomed around the world
until it comes to deeper values
around religion, the secular
nature of the
state, and so forth
that cause tensions and
sometimes even conflicts
and disputes across cultures.
So again, the challenge to
cultures of globalization
can be seen as a
negative thing, can
be seen as undermining use
of the local language--
writing books and materials
in the local language
and using English worldwide
as a second language.
And so there are a lot
of challenges there.
But looked at from
the other way,
cultures are also very good
at absorbing ideas, absorbing
people, and absorbing elements
and reinventing themselves.
And so when I look carefully
at what "Americanization" means
today, it's not what
"Americanization"
meant 10 or never mine
20 or 30 years ago.
America itself has changed--
the nature of our population,
the nature of our economy.
Even the nature of our
culture has changed.
And despite 9/11 and the
pushback against some aspects
of Islam and so forth in
some parts of the country,
I think in general
we're a country now
that understands other cultures,
languages, and even religions
better--
hopefully has more respect
for diversity and toleration
for what our culture
is doing in any case,
which is undergoing
major changes,
absorbing aspects of other
cultures-- cultures, languages,
foods, and so forth--
and then in turn passing
those on to the people that
live here longer
term temporarily,
and in some senses
exporting them
as Americans travel abroad,
live and work and teach abroad.
And so, in the
larger sense, Even
in terms of bads and
goods, globalization is--
it's well worth analyzing,
but it's really hard to make,
concrete and effective,
persuasive generalizations
across lots of different
countries and cultures and time
periods.
The implications
of globalization
are to think about it
in a political sense,
that from the point of
view of political sciences
or sociology,
individual identities
and societal identities,
culture identities are certainly
challenged.
But to think about it
for a moment at the level
of the nation-states, one
important aspect that was
noticed--
very nicely, actually,
by an economist
named Richard Cooper,
who is still associated
with Harvard University--
way back more than
40 years ago is
that nation-states, for example,
in managing their economies,
are increasingly less able
to do that on their own,
pursuing their own
priorities and policies.
In other words, the autonomy
of nation-states, the ability
of a nation-state to
pursue its own policies
for its own purposes on its
own, has decreased over time.
So one implication of that is
that some policies, some goals,
some priorities need
to be coordinated
with other
nation-states in order
to be done effectively or fully.
And increasingly
over time, that's
going to become
more and more true.
So when a banking crisis
or a currency crisis
or other types of financial
or economic crises
strike one country, reverberate
increasingly quickly
to other countries,
one implication
is that governments would need
to work together more smoothly,
more quickly, sometimes
even more quietly
in order to deter or mitigate
these types of causes that can
lead to substantial crises--
that we realized in 2008
can begin right here
in the United States and
reverberate very seriously
around the world.
So one implication is that
it does require coordination,
if not even more active
out there cooperation,
internationally in order
to deal with problems.
Another implication, in terms
of international relations
and international
political economy,
is what political scientists
sometimes call multi-level
governance--
in other words, simply
the idea that in order
to get things done which
used to be done at, say,
the national level and the state
level in the United States now
need to be done more flexibly.
We need to do them with Canada
and Mexico in North America,
or we need to do
them trans-Pacific--
with China and Japan and other
major countries of the Pacific
basin.
Or we need to do it with
the European Union nations.
Or in some cases, like global
trade rules and negotiations
or dispute settlement, they have
to be done at the global level.
So multi-level
governance-- simply meaning
that some decisions are now
having to be pushed down
to the states or provinces
or even the city, global city
level or municipal level,
and other decisions
need to be pushed up or
taken in other areas.
Another application that's
important is that different
issue areas, in the past,
like environmental pollution--
or today, we call it, generally,
environmental sustainability--
are increasingly
seen as connected
with other issue areas
of political economy
and technology and so forth.
So there has been
an interconnection
of issue areas, which
has made decision
making more challenging,
more complicated sometimes.
There's certainly an
interconnection of new actors.
We know that, again, that the
private sector, that companies
have become more prominent
in international relations,
and the private
sector has become
more prominent for many
countries around the world,
even in the United States.
We've tried to deregulate or
be creative about allowing
small- and medium-sized
companies to start up,
encouraging private
sector growth.
That's where a lot of the job--
employment, job creation is.
And other countries
have tried to embrace
that more thoroughly.
And generally, outside of the
most authoritarian countries
in the world, most
countries are trying
to have active private sectors.
But it's not just
companies and firms,
it's also non-governmental
organizations, civil society
that's become much more active.
And part of
globalization these days
is transnational or
non-governmental connections
across countries that link
climate scientists or water
and air scientists,
or they link people
who are very concerned about
nuclear weapons proliferation.
All kinds of different groups--
professional, more societal,
registering and
enrolling voters--
are connected across societies
sort of transnationally.
And those transnational actors
now sometimes bring pressure
on governments directly,
on groups of governments,
on public international
organizations
like the World Bank.
So multi-level governance means
interconnection of issues,
different types of actors--
civil society, corporate,
as well as government and
global and regional public
international organizations.
But it also means different
levels of governance
within countries, as well.
So that would be one way of
looking at the implications
politically.
And economically,
I think most people
understand the
implications, especially
of capital and financial
markets broadening and deepening
and accelerating and speed.
Technologically,
again, I think there's
a pretty good understanding
that technology
tends to spread
faster, and it tends
to play a larger role in
economic and even social
activities these days.
And again, I guess,
finally, culturally,
what's the implication
really for cultures is that
for elements of globalization
that challenge one's culture
or more importantly maybe
challenge individual identity--
it challenges us to rethink
who we are, how we identify,
what we identify with, and
how we define ourselves--
it may mean that a
young Italian now
is perfectly comfortable
thinking of herself as European
as well as Italian.
It may mean that an American is
perfectly comfortable thinking
of him or herself as a--
if not a global
citizen, a citizen
with a global
consciousness who is at
ardently opposed to human
slavery any place in the world.
So to the extent the ways
in which citizens pick up
new aspects of
identity and especially
the extent to which they're
comfortable picking up
aspects of identity that
go beyond their own culture
or their own nation-state
or their own immediate
international region,
that tends to erode
the role of the nation-state.
It tends to erode a bit the
role of our national cultures.
And so that certainly
is going on.
But at the same time, there
are aspects of globalization
that challenge our
identity, cause
us to reassert our
identity, and whether it's
in terms of fundamentalism
or re-assertiveness
of our national
cultural practices
or heritage or
languages, there are
things which reinforce the
role of national and local
and societal values
and cultures, as well.
So again, it's hard,
I think, and not
so smart to generalize
broadly about the implications
of globalization for
cultures or societies
or economies or polities
because, in fact,
the implications really matter
a lot according to how they're
managed, the role of
government on the unevenness,
the asymmetries, and so forth.
Predicting the future
of globalization
is risky, of course.
But certainly, we understand
a few important things
about the directions
that the world
or that multiple societies
and cultures are moving in.
And I would start
with one idea, which
is that governments
around the world
have certainly been
challenged with the notion--
some people would call an
emerging norm, perhaps even
an existent new norm--
that the ruler or the
regime, the political regime
in any given country,
has a responsibility
to improve the standard
of living, the well-being
of his or her citizens.
Now the nation-state's
always been
defined as providing
security for its citizens,
a sense of economic
well-being, and a sense
of cultural identity
or nationalism
or national identity.
So all three things
of those have
been aspects of how a
nation-state's defined
what it is.
But in the last
10 years, I would
say, that there is an emergent
norm-- or in some regions
of the world, an existing
norm-- that there
is a more direct and full
responsibility for the ruler
or the political regime
to provide increasing
levels of economic progress.
If you want economic
development,
not just in terms of growth, but
in terms of human development,
in terms of the longevity of the
population, how long kids stay
in school, how well
people can actually
live their lives in Russia or
China or Bangladesh or Mexico.
And in that sense, I
think globalization
has been a good thing because it
has imposed this responsibility
from the outside
and increasingly
from the expectations
of citizens from Myanmar
to Brazil that their
government should
be doing the right thing.
And if they're not,
there is something wrong.
Secondly, I think
you could argue
the future of globalization
also is about more participatory
political practice.
Everything from civil
society, social media,
social networking, younger
people and their expectations
about their ability
to use the internet
and use cell phones and
so forth and to stay
interconnected with
people worldwide, not
just within their country--
that has helped,
I think, to create
a kind of broad-based, quiet,
often bottom-up revolution
of expectations about the
nature of political governance,
not just that rulers owe their
populations an increasing
standard of human well-being,
but also that they
owe their populations
an increasing ability
to participate in the process
of defining what the values are,
that the society should
be pursuing them,
and how decisions are taken
and who should represent them.
So again, there are plenty of
authoritarian and autocratic
countries left in the world, and
a lot of the progress that was
made on democracy and
democratization took place from
the mid-'70s until
about the year 2000.
And the last 10 years has
been sort of up and down
and around without
major forward progress
worldwide in terms of the
number of democracies or new,
stable, emerging democracies.
But at the same time, I
think the basic expectation
is that rulers do owe
their people that,
and I think that
that's a good thing.
A final implication might be, in
terms of economics and finance,
if we look at what's been
going on in Greece, Spain,
Italy, the European Union--
one of the difficulties
that we know
of globalization and about
the future of globalization
is that the European
Union, if you looked at it
10 years ago was, for
an old person like me,
an incredible phenomenon.
It was-- for somebody who
does political science
and international relations--
it was simply incredible to
go from 1960 to 1985 or 1970
to 1995 and see this
rather substantial
political, economic,
technological,
and to some extent even social
integration of the European
Union--
more and more countries after
the collapse of the Soviet
Union wanting to
join the EU, and this
rush in bringing in new
states and so forth.
Some people would argue it
overreached and went too far,
and partly what we're seeing
now is the implications of that.
But regardless of what we're
seeing now, it was, I think,
quite an incredible phenomenon.
Now however, the
implication of globalization
seems to be that as economic,
technological, and, especially
in this case, financial markets
and financial decision making
and financial benchmarks race
ahead, the political and legal
and regulatory structures
that need to keep up with them
are inevitably behind.
But the implication now
is they can't remain
as behind as they have been.
In other words, they
need to keep pace,
and many people now
argue that what's
happened in Greece
and Spain and Italy
and even threatened
larger economies in Europe
is a phenomenon of not having
the political and regulatory
structures in place
that are needed
to govern the ever-increasing
interaction of finances
and financial and
economic values in the EU.
So the EU that was the
experiment that went way beyond
any other set of countries
in the world in terms
of political, economic, and
financial integration has now
become a clear example of where
you cannot let technological
and financial integration
drastically outpace
the political.
And so what's the
implication globally?
Some people are going to take
away the idea that, well, it
went too far and too fast,
and it wasn't a good idea.
Others are going to take away
the sense that there just
wasn't sufficient political
commitment to bringing
regulatory and governing
structures together
that were required to deal with
the euro, the single currency,
the single central bank,
and so forth and so on.
And so the fiscal decisions
were not adequately coordinated
at a regional level
and still left too much
at the national level.
So the EU, both as a huge
success in some sense
and now as a
fundamental challenge
to the whole international
financial system
and a big drag on
economic growth worldwide,
along with slower growth
right now in China,
is a particularly
important, I think,
implication in and of
itself of globalization.
It is the leading example,
in a way, of globalization.
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