Use 3 particual examples to talk about democratization and globalization such as: The falling of the Berlin Wall, the G8 in Geneve 2001 and the arab spring.
as sources: Collins, Alan, Contemporary Security Studies, 3rd Edition, Oxford University Press,
Williams, Paul, D., Security Studies: An Introduction, 2nd Edition, Routledge, 2013.
Jeff Haynes, Peter Hough, Shahin Malik and Lloyd Pettiford, World Politics, International Relations and Globalisation in the 21st Century, Longman, 2011.
Catherine Eschele,Bice Maiguashca, Critical theories, International relations and the Anti-globalization movement, the politics of global resistence. routledge 2005.
Lecture 2: Security and Globalisation
Most of you will be familiar with definitions of globalisation denoting the expanding scale, growing magnitude, speeding up and deepening impact of transcontinental flows and patterns of social interaction; to a shift or transformation in the scale of human organisation that links distant communities and expands the reach of power relations across the world?s regions and continents.
However, globalisation does not necessarily suggest the emergence of a harmonious world society or a universal process of global integration in which there is a growing convergence of cultures and civilizations. This is, in part, because evidence shows us that awareness of growing interconnectedness can create new animosities and conflicts, and can fuel reactionary politics and deep-seated xenophobia, for example the reaction of some religious extremists to the spread of ?Western? ideas.
Because many people are excluded from the benefits of globalisation, it is a deeply divisive and vigorously contested process. The unevenness of globalisation ensures it is far from a universal process experienced uniformly across the entire planet. The remains a significant gap between the rich and poor remains in place, whether within states or between states.
It is for this reason that a discussion of the controversy surrounding globalisation is important in helping contextualise what this module is about.
Interestingly, although the term globalisation has acquired the status of a popular clich?, the concept itself is not new. For example, during the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century many intellectuals, such as Karl Marx, recognized how modernity, especially capitalism, was integrating the world.
But it was not until the 1980s that the term ?globalisation? acquired wider academic currency. This was a ?golden age? of rapidly expanding politic and economic interdependence between Western states that demonstrated the inadequacies of orthodox thinking about politics, economics and culture which presumed a strict separation between internal and external affairs, the domestic and international arena and the local and the global. In a more interdependent world events abroad readily acquired impacts at home, while developments at home had consequences abroad.
Following the collapse of state socialism and the consolidation of capitalism worldwide, public awareness of globalisation intensified dramatically in the 1990s. Coinciding with the information revolution, these developments appeared to confirm the belief that the world was becoming a shared social and economic space ? at least for its more affluent inhabitants.
Historically, globalisation encompasses three distinct, yet interlinked processes.
First, moulded by European imperialism and colonialism, a global states system developed from the sixteenth century. This produced forms of government and state around the world based on western models, whether presidential, monarchical or Marxist.
Second, a global capitalist economy began to develop at the same time. This arguably served to divide the world economically into ?core?, ?intermediate? and ?peripheral? areas (with each characterised by a certain level of industrialisation). Recently, there have been not only major increases in international economic interactions involving states and transnational corporations (?economic globalisation?) but also the absorption of the former Eastern European communist bloc to produce a truly global capitalist economy.
Third, from the eighteenth century, both political and economic globalisation were underpinned by technological and industrial revolutions that collectively influenced global patterns of both industrialisation and communications.
However, though the history is known, it is important to ask whether contemporary globalisation processes and relationships collectively amount to something qualitatively different compared to what existed before? And, if so, to what extent are they significant?
It is common in the literature to see references to various kinds of globalisation, including economic, political, technological and cultural globalisation. For Mittelman, an early globalisation theorist, (1994: 429), globalisation links domestic, international and transnational levels of analysis.
Spatial reorganisation of production, the interpenetration of industries across borders, the spread of financial markets, the diffusion of identical consumer goods to distant countries, massive transfers of population within the South as well as from the South and the East to the West, resultant conflicts between immigrant and established communities in formerly tight-knit neighbourhoods, an emerging worldwide preference for democracy.
This suggests that globalisation can usefully be thought of as a multi-dimensional process, informed by significant intensification of global interconnectedness between both states and non-state actors. Potentially, globalisation implies a diminution of the significance of territorial boundaries and, theoretically, of state-directed political and economic structures and processes.
Technological globalisation
Woods argues that:
The technological revolution is a [key] aspect of globalisation, describing the effect of new electronic communication which permits firms and other actors to operate globally with much less regard for location, distance, and border (Woods 2001: 290)
You are all aware of the positives ? not least the benefits of the internet. The impact of this technological revolution is apparent in key areas of political globalisation, especially democratisation but also negatively in terms of terrorism. In short, it has influenced fundamental security concerns.
The terrorists who planned the 9/11 attacks on the USA used the Internet to assist in planning, coordination and fundraising for the attacks. They used the tools of international travel ? the airplane ? as their weapon, and the medium of international media coverage to get their message across. They also hit specific representations of globalisation- the World Trade Centre, which contained global multinational companies, the Pentagon, that represented America?s worldwide military power, and the White House/Pentagon, which represented its political decision making. All represented together the forces of globalisation, or what some call Westernisation or Americanisation.
Political globalisation
The sudden, spectacular collapse of the Soviet Union and its regional communist allies in the mid-1980s encouraged many people living under authoritarian regimes around the world to demand democracy.
Whereas during the cold war (late 1940s-late 1980s), Western governments tended, in the name of fighting communism, to turn a blind eye to their allies? often poor democratic records, once state communism in Europe collapsed, both democracy and ?good governance? became key foci of concern.
Political globalisation centres on what Mittelman (1994: 429) identified a decade ago as the ?emerging worldwide preference for democracy?. During the 1980s and 1990s, authoritarian regimes collapsed in numerous developing and former communist countries, to be followed in some cases by democratically elected governments, in what Samuel Huntington called the ?third wave of democratisation?.
However, as we will see later in the course, it is clear that democratisation did not often occur solely as the result of spontaneous, fragmented efforts by individual civil societies and opposition political parties. In many cases it was also the result of the interaction of domestic and external factors.
Initially, most comparativists sought to explain democratisation by a primarily domestic focus. Often the role of external actors ? states, intergovernmental organisations and international nongovernmental organisations ? were either ignored or viewed as marginal.
More recently, some comparative analyses of democratisation outcomes were more interested in the impact of external actors in both country-specific and regional contexts. This reflected the fact that both Western governments and various international organisations, such as the EU, not only proclaimed a general and theoretical commitment to encourage democracy around the world but also, in some cases, were able to back up their rhetoric with hard cash. That is, they developed strategies of political and economic conditionality, i.e. a state could only join the EU if it embraced a number of democratic values.
In other words, to understand recent democratisation processes in various countries we need to take into account external actors and their interaction with domestic agents. Look, for example at the events in Libya where external political and military support was crucial in the collapse of the Gadaffi regime. That the West has been criticised for taking so long to become involved in Syria, and continues to remain distant from events in Bahrain, highlights the controversy surrounding how external actors are now expected to act to promote democracy in other states and uphold principles of human security.
Economic globalisation
How geographically extensive is economic globalisation? Just over a decade ago, Hirst and Thompson (1999) argued that economic globalisation was not global but a triangular phenomenon, of most importance to North America, Western Europe and Japan. In their view, as a consequence, economically more marginal regions, such as sub-Saharan Africa and Central Asia, are comparatively little affected by economic globalisation.
But to this we need to add the rising economies of China, Brazil, Russia, India and South Africa. It is unclear whether this triangle remains, particularly as we may be moving into what Richard Haas (2012) has described as a ?non-polar? world.
Others suggest that the effects of economic globalisation, around the world, include generally negative attitudes towards neo-liberal economic development programmes in many countries (Schulz et al 2001).
The concept of economic globalisation has three main components: (1) ?the spatial reorganisation of production? (2) ?the interpenetration of industries across borders? (3) and the worldwide ?spread of financial markets? (Mittleman 1994: 429).
This, in turn, has various ? political and social, as well as economic ? connotations for people in numerous countries, such as recurrent fears over the stability of the multilateral trading order and the impact on jobs of the sales of national assets to foreigners consequent to privatisations of formerly state-owned assets.
Like political globalisation, economic globalisation was facilitated by the demise of the Soviet bloc. Whereas the USSR had developed, since the late 1940s, a parallel non-capitalist economic system, its demise favoured the movement of capital, labour and goods across national boundaries while increasing international economic competition.
Economic changes were also reflected in transformation of production systems and labour markets, and a general weakening of the power of organised labour to pressurise governments to enforce labour standards, such as minimum wage legislation.
As we will see, there is much agreement, however, that the already weak economic position of many poor people worsened as a result of economic globalisation (Held and McGrew 2002).
Chief among the presumed culprits in this regard were the structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) adopted in numerous countries from the 1980s at the behest of the IMF. A common outcome of SAPs was reduced welfare programmes that disadvantaged the poor even further (Haynes 2002). As a result of their involvement in SAPs, both the IMF and its partner organisation, the World Bank, acquired increased economic and developmental influence in numerous countries.
A vast and growing literature points to what many see as declining state control of national economies ? and subsequent effects on national political arrangements ? in many such countries.
Some now argue that the Credit Crunch of 2008 and the subsequent recession has seen the globalised economy come back to bite Western countries. Though true to some extent, it is the poorer countries that continue to lose out as they struggle to maintain a place in a contracting market place.
Cultural globalisation
For some, the idea of cultural globalisation is strongly associated with ?Americanisation? or more generally ?Westernisation?. A key issue here is the pressures experienced by numerous countries in recent years to install liberal democracy, regarded by some as a Western phenomenon of little relevance to non-Western societies. Others perceive cultural globalisation in the global dissemination of identical consumer goods and associated dissemination of American-style consumer culture.
This American-style consumerism is said to erode particularistic cultures and values and replace them with a uniform culture of Disney, McDonald?s, Coca-Cola, Microsoft and Starbucks. Spread by predominantly US-based transnational corporations, such ?Americanisation? is believed to subvert many non-Western, local cultures by not only encouraging people to buy American goods and services but also to adopt what are sometimes perceived as ?American? political norms, including liberal democracy and individualistic conceptions of human rights.
Some East Asian and Muslim countries have sought to meet the perceived onslaught of ?Americanisation? by articulating defiantly anti-individualistic worldviews: popularised, respectively, via a focus on ?Asian values? and Islamism or ?Islamic fundamentalism?.
Taken together ? as they sometimes are (Huntington 1996) ? ?Asian values? and Islamism are believed to represent a significant challenge to Western-style globalisation. Influential constituencies in both East Asian and Muslim countries dislike the presumption that their own collective-orientated societies should supinely accept an individualistic, ?Americanised? global culture that would likely undermine deep-rooted communal values.
When we look at globalisation overall, we can say that the debate surrounding it often seems to be polarised: Is globalisation ?good? or ?bad??
One group, the ?globalists?, express a generally ?positive? perception of globalisation. This is in line with the belief, briefly prevalent in the post-cold war early 1990s, that a benign ?new world order? would develop after the cold war. It would be characterised by enhanced international cooperation and progress on a range of peace and development goals, an initiative directed by but not restricted to the United Nations.
The aim would be to address a range of perennial concerns and injustices, such as political, economic, social, developmental, environmental, gender, and human rights. Globalists believe that to address such concerns it is necessary to develop a range of dedicated ? state and non-state ? global institutions and organisations. For some, the key for success in this regard is to be found in the coming together of local groups and grassroots organisations from various parts to form an important component of transnational civil society.
Globalists reject the assertion that globalisation is a synonym for Americanization or for Western imperialism. While they do not deny that the discourse of globalisation may well serve the interests of powerful economic and social forces in the West, the globalist account emphasizes that globalisation is an expression of deeper structural changes in the scale of modern social organization.
Such changes are evident in, among other developments, the growth of transnational corporations (MNCs), world financial markets, the diffusion of popular culture and the importance of global environmental degradation.
Globalists argue that globalisation is not typically conceived in hierarchical, or mutually exclusive, terms, but is a fluid phenomenon with constantly changing relationships.
In opposition to the globalists, we have the sceptics or anti-globalists. What, they ask, is ?global? about globalisation? If the global cannot be interpreted literally, as a universal phenomenon, then the concept of globalisation seems to be little more than a synonym for Westernization or Americanization.
Some argue that, rather than globalisation, current trends reflect a process of ?internationalization? ? that is, growing links between essentially discrete national economies or societies ? and ?regionalization? or ?triadization?.
Some studies go further to argue that the world has ?imploded? economically, politically and culturally. Globally, empires have given way to nation-states, while the majority of the world?s population is excluded from the benefits of economic development. This argument highlights the continued primacy of territory, borders, place and national governments to the distribution and location of power, production and wealth in the contemporary world order.
There is a clear disjuncture between the widespread discourse of globalisation and a world in which, for the most part, the routines of everyday lives are dominated by national and local circumstances.
Instead of providing an insight into the forces shaping the contemporary world order, the idea of globalisation, argue many sceptics, performs a rather different function. In essence, the discourse of globalisation helps justify and legitimize the neoliberal global project: the creation of a global free market and the consolidation of Anglo-American capitalism within the world?s major economic regions.
In this respect, the ideology of globalisation operates as a ?necessary myth?, through which politicians and governments discipline their citizens to meet the requirements of the global marketplace.
It is, thus, unsurprising that the globalisation debate became so widespread just as the neoliberal project ? the Washington consensus of deregulation, privatization, structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) and limited government ? consolidated its hold within key Western capitals and global institutions such as the IMF. A consensus which has now been seriously undermined by the crash of 2008.
Adding to this sceptical argument, orthodox Marxist analysis asserts that capitalism, as a social order, has a pathological expansionist logic, since to maintain profits capital constantly has to exploit new markets. To survive, national capitalism must continuously expand the geographical reach of capitalist social relations. The history of the modern world order is the history of Western capitalist powers dividing up and re-dividing the world into exclusive economic zones.
Today, it is argued, imperialism has acquired a new form as formal empires have been replaced by new mechanisms of multilateral control and surveillance, such as the G7 group of leading industrial powers (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, UK, USA) and the World Bank. As such, the present epoch is described by many Marxists not in the language of globalisation, but instead as a new mode of Western imperialism dominated by the needs and requirements of finance capital within the world?s major capitalist states.
For many sceptics, geopolitics too is important. For the existing international order is constituted primarily by and through the actions of the major economic and militarily powerful states (and their agents). Accordingly, the internationalization of economic or political relations is argued to be contingent on the policies and preferences of the great powers of the day, since only they have sufficient military and economic muscle to create and maintain the conditions necessary for an open (liberal) international order.
Without the exercise of American hegemony, so the argument suggests, the existing liberal world order, which underpins the recent intensification of international interdependence, cannot be sustained. In this respect, globalisation is understood as little more than Americanization.
In short, anti-globalists? declare a pessimistic view of globalisation, regarding it as ?a force for oppression, exploitation and injustice? (Cook 2001). They point to what they see as unwelcome consequences of globalisation, including: restructuring of global trade, production and finance to disadvantage the poor; migratory and refugee movements in the developing world and the former Eastern European communist bloc; international terrorism; cultural clashes exemplified both by ?conflicts between immigrant and established communities in formerly tight-knit neighbourhoods? (Mittelman 1994: 429) and recent resurgence of right-wing populists in various Western European countries (for example, Austria, France, Germany and the Netherlands).
In sum, globalists see globalisation as a source of increased international stability and security, while anti-globalists see the opposite.
Table 1: Globalist and anti-globalist perceptions of globalisation
?Positive? consequences of globalisation (Globalist view)
?Negative? consequences of globalisation (Anti-globalist view)
POLITICAL
GLOBALISATION
Established democracies. Consolidated democratic systems, although some civil society groups may demand ?more? democracy.
Transitional democracies. Democratisation is the result of pressure from both domestic and external actors.
Non-democracies. No democratisation, despite domestic and external pressure.
Established democracies. Ultra-nationalist, xenophobic political leaders and parties
Transitional democracies. Ultra-nationalist, xenophobic, ethnic and/or religious fundamentalist parties and groups
Non-democracies. Ultra-nationalist, xenophobic, ethnic and/or religious fundamentalist groups
ECONOMIC
GLOBALISATION
Established democracies. Economic opportunities and constraints.
Transitional democracies. Economic opportunities and constraints.
Non-democracies. Economic opportunities and constraints.
Established democracies. Economic constraints and opportunities.
Transitional democracies. Economic constraints and opportunities.
Non-democracies. Economic constraints and opportunities.
CULTURAL GLOBALISATION
Established democracies. Little effect in most cases, as nearly all established democracies are already western or ?westernised?
Transitional democracies. Variable effects
Non-democracies. Variable effects
Established democracies. More ?Americanisation?.
Transitional democracies. Increased westernisation or ?Americanisation? leading to counter-forces, including, Islamic fundamentalism and ?Asian values?
Non-democracies. Increased westernisation or ?Americanisation? leading to counter-forces, including, Islamic fundamentalism and ?Asian values?
Conclusion
We began this lecture with a key presumption: the world has significantly changed since the 1980s, characterised by the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, the consequential demise of the Soviet bloc, and contemporaneous global emphasis on economic liberalisation, democratisation and the spread of ?Americanisation? or ?Western? values.
Various aspects of globalisation, driven by a technologically sophisticated communications revolution, have collectively impacted upon domestic political outcomes in countries around the world.
In transforming both the context of, and the conditions for, social interaction and organization, globalisation involves a reordering of the relationship between territory and socioeconomic and political space.
Put simply, as economic, social and political activities increasingly transcend regions and national frontiers, a direct challenge is mounted to the territorial principle which underpins the modern state. This does not mean that territory and place are becoming irrelevant, but rather that, under conditions of contemporary globalisation, they are reinvented and reconfigured, as new global regions and global cities emerge.
Nor, as we will see, does it mean that globalisation always produces positive results, or that it is always in the best interests of the West ? as events such as the 9/11 attacks and the credit crunch since 2008 have shown.
In short, to understand security you need to consider what globalisation is and how it is radically altering the world in which we live.
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