< Back - Article List - Next > 1.2. POLITICAL GLOBALISATION Economic globalization has not occurred in a political vacuum, although it is too often interpreted as if it has. Alongside processes of global economic transformation there have been parallel but distinct political changes. Two terms - 'political globalization' and 'global politics' - can usefully be clarified to help understand these developments. By political globalization is meant shifting processes of political power, authority and forms of rule which reach across space and time, while the term 'global politics' captures the increasingly extensive or 'stretched' form of political relations and political activity. Political decisions and actions in one part of the world can rapidly acquire world-wide ramifications. In addition, sites of political action and/or decision-making can become linked through rapid communications into complex networks of decision-making and political interaction. Associated with this 'stretching' is a frequent 'deepening' impact of global political processes such that, unlike in ancient or modern empires, 'action at a distance' permeates with greater intensity the social conditions and cognitive worlds of specific places or policy communities. As a consequence, developments at the global level - whether economic, social or environmental - can frequently acquire almost instantaneous local consequences and vice versa. The idea of 'global politics' challenges the traditional distinctions between the domestic/international, inside/outside, territorial/non-territorial politics, as embedded in conventional conceptions of 'the political'. It also highlights the richness and complexity of the interconnections which transcend states and societies in the global order. Although governments and states remain, of course, powerful actors, they now share the global arena with an array of other agencies and organizations. The state is confronted by an enormous number of intergovernmental organizations (IGOs), international agencies and regimes which operate across different spatial reaches, and by quasi-supranational institutions, like the European Union. Non-state actors or transnational bodies, such as multinational corporations, transnational pressure groups, transnational professional associations, social movements and so on, also participate intensively in global politics. So too do many subnational actors and national pressure groups, whose activities often spill over into the international arena. Global politics today, moreover, is anchored not just in traditional geopolitical concerns, but also in a large diversity of economic, social and ecological questions. Pollution, drugs, human rights and terrorism are amongst an increasing number of transnational policy issues which cut across territorial jurisdictions and existing political alignments, and which require international co-operation for their effective resolution. Defence and security issues no longer dominate the global agenda or even the political agendas of many national governments. These developments, accordingly, challenge the conventional Westphalian (and realist) principles of world political order. Nations, peoples and organizations are linked by many new forms of communication and media which range in and across borders. The revolution in microelectronics, in information technology and in computers has established virtually instantaneous world wide links which, when combined with the technologies of the telephone, television, cable, satellite and jet transportation, have dramatically altered the nature of political communication. The new forms of communication enable individuals and groups to 'overcome' geographical boundaries which once might have prevented contact; and they create access to a range of social and political experiences with which the individual or group may never have had an opportunity to engage directly. The intimate connection between 'physical setting', 'social situation' and politics which has distinguished most political associations from pre-modern to modern times has been ruptured; the new communication systems create new experiences, new modes of understanding and new frames of political reference independently of direct contact with particular peoples or issues. At the same time, unequal access to these new modes of communication has created novel patterns of political inclusion and exclusion in global politics. The development of new communication systems generates a world in which the particularities of place and individuality are constantly re-presented and re-interpreted by regional and global communication networks. But the relevance of these systems goes far beyond this, for they are fundamental to the possibility of organizing political action and exercising political power across vast distances. For example, the expansion of international and transnational organizations, the extension of international rules and legal mechanisms - their construction and monitoring - have all received an impetus from the new communication systems and all depend on them as a means to further their aims. The present era of global politics marks a shift towards a system of multilayered global and regional governance. Although it by no means replaces the sedimentation of political rule into state structures, this system is marked by the internationalization and transnationalization of politics, the development of regional and global organizations and institutions, and the emergence of regional and global law. States are increasingly enmeshed in novel forms of international legal and juridical regimes. As Crawford and Marks remark, 'international law, with its enlarging normative scope, extending writ and growing institutionalization, exemplifies the phenomenon of globalization'. Increasingly aspects of international law are acquiring a cosmopolitan form. By cosmopolitan law, or global law, or global humanitarian law, is meant here a domain of law different in kind from the law of states and the law made between one state and another for the mutual enhancement of their geopolitical interests. Cosmopolitan law refers to those elements of law - albeit created by states - which create powers and constraints, and rights and duties, which transcend the claims of nation-states and which have far-reaching national consequences. Elements of such laws define and seek to protect basic humanitarian values which can come into conflict, and sometimes contradiction, with national laws. These values set down basic standards or boundaries which no political agent, whether a representative of a government or state, should, in principle, be able to cross. Human rights regimes and human rights law, for example, sit uneasily with the idea of accepting state sovereignty alone as the sole principle for the organization of relations within and between political communities. They can be thought of as an element of an emerging cosmopolitan legal framework, along with the law of war, the law governing war crimes and environmental law (for example, the Convention on the Law of the Sea and elements of the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development). Together, these domains of law constitute a developing set of standards and constraints which bear upon and qualify the notion of an untrammelled principle of state sovereignty. While commitment to these standards often remains weak, they signal a change affecting the concept of legitimate state power in regional and global law. For the rules of war, laws governing crimes against humanity, the innovations in legal thinking concerning the use of resources and human rights regimes all mark out a shift in the direction of the subject and scope of international law. Opinion has shifted against the doctrine that international law must be a law 'between states only and exclusively' (Oppenheim). At issue, is the emergence of a vast body of rules, quasirules and legal changes which are beginning to alter the basis of co-existence and cooperation in the global order. The legal innovations referred to challenge the idea that the supreme normative principle of the political organization of humankind can and should remain simply that of sovereign statehood. Most recently, proposals put forward for the establishment of an International Criminal Court add further testimony to the gradual shift toward a 'universal constitutional order'. The new legal frameworks aim to curtail and to delimit state sovereignty, and set basic standards and values for the treatment of all, during war and peace. Of course, this body of law is by no means subscribed to systematically; but it points to the development of a post-Westphalian order - setting down a new regulatory framework for the conduct of relations among political communities. At the end of the second millennium, political communities and civilizations can no longer be characterized simply as 'discrete worlds'; they are enmeshed and entrenched in complex structures of overlapping forces, relations and movements. Clearly, these are often structured by inequality and hierarchy. But even the most powerful among them - including, the most powerful nation-states - do not remain unaffected by the changing conditions and processes of regional and global entrenchment. A few points can be emphasized to clarify further the changing relations between political globalization and modern nation-states. All indicate an increase in the extensiveness, intensity, velocity and impact of political globalization, and all suggest important questions about the evolving character of the democratic political community in particular. Today the locus of effective political power can no longer be assumed to be national governments - effective power is shared and bartered by diverse forces and agencies at national, regional and international levels. Furthermore the idea of a political community of fate - of a self-determining collectivity - can no longer meaningfully be located within the boundaries of a single nation-state alone. Some of the most fundamental forces and processes which determine the nature of life-chances within and across political communities are now beyond the reach of individual nation-states. The late twentieth century political world is marked by a significant series of new types of 'boundary problem'. In the past, of course, nation-states principally resolved their differences over boundary matters by pursuing reasons of state backed by diplomatic initiatives and, ultimately, by coercive means. But this power logic is singularly inadequate and inappropriate to resolve the many complex issues, from economic regulation to resource depletion and environmental degradation, which engender - at seemingly ever greater speeds -an intermeshing of 'national fortunes'. In a world where powerful states make decisions not just for their peoples but for others as well, and where transnational actors and forces cut across the boundaries of national communities in diverse ways, the questions of who should be accountable to whom, and on what basis, do not easily resolve themselves. Political space for the development and pursuit of effective government and the accountability of power is no longer coterminous with a delimited political territory. Contemporary forms of political globalization involve a complex deterritorialization and reterritorialization of political authority. < Back - Article List - Next > |