Citizens, Society and Politics: Globalization, Governance, and Geopolitics

Globalisation, Global Governance and the EU

Citizens, Society and Politics Lecture 1 Globalisation, Global Governance and the EU 'Globalisation', 'Interdependence', 'Mondalisasion' are words we use every day to describe a continuous phenomenon of world politics. Globalisation emerged as a buzz-word in the 1990s, meaning everyone has been using it to convey an increased sense of vulnerability to distant causes.

Example: Fears of "bioinvasion" led some environmental groups to call for a reduction in global trade and travel.

Like all popular concepts meant to cover a variety of phenomena, both 'interdependence' and 'globalization' have many meanings, which are not exactly parallel:

Interdependence = refers to situations characterized by reciprocal effects among countries or among actors in different countries, that can increase or decline (e.g. economically with Great Depression); Globalism = definition of globalisation starts with globalism, meaning involving networks of interdependence at multi continental distances through flows and influences of capital, goods, ideas, etc. Therefore globalisation equals to increase of globalism, on the opposite, deglobalisation is decline of globalism.

Hence, globalism is a type of interdependence, but with two special characteristics:

• Globalism refers to networks of connections and not single linkages
• To be considered global it must include multi continental distances, not simply regional networks.

Distance is a continuous variable, ranging from adjacency to opposite sides of the globe, and the authors Keohane & Nye use the shrinkage of distance on a large scale to define globalisation; which can be contrasted with nationalisation, localisation or regionalisation.

Example: Islam's rapid diffusion from Arabia across Asia to what is now Indonesia was a clear instance of globalization, but the initial movement of Hinduism across the Indian subcontinent was not.

Is this always the case? Thinking about elections, not all countries are able to collect votes from their nationals living abroad. So, globalism does not imply universality.

Example: Most people in the world today do not have telephones; hundreds of millions live as peasants in remote villages with only slight connections to world markets or the global flow of ideas.

Indeed, globalization is accompanied by increasing gaps, in many respects, between the rich and the poor. It implies neither homogenization nor equity.

The authors also classify globalism into:

• Military = long-distance interdependence of force and threat of its use (e.g. balance of terror);
• Economic = long-distance flows of consumption products or informations for market exchange;
• Environmental = transport of material in the atmosphere or oceans that affect human health;
• Social and Cultural = movements of ideas, images and people affecting people's consciousness, identity and attitudes (e.g. 'isomorphism').

This division of globalism into separate dimensions is inevitably somewhat arbitrary. Nonetheless, it is useful for analysis, because changes in the various dimensions of globalization do not necessarily occur unfortunately (Keohane/Nye 2000, 107).

Contemporary Globalism

CONTEMPORARY GLOBALISM It is defined as intensive, or thick, network interconnections that have systemic effects, often unanticipated and unpredictable, creating competition between increased complexity and uncertainty. In this light, unless some of its aspects can be effectively governed, globalization may be unsustainable in its current form. The issue is not how old globalism is, but rather how thin/thick it is at any given time.

Example: Silk Road = thin globalisation whereas global financial market = thick.

But such thick globalism is not uniform as it always come with transformations to society and individual citizens, therefore it takes new dynamics and effects.

Is there anything about globalism that is fundamentally different from just 20 years ago?

1It can't be said that there are fundamentally differences because human history does not entail discontinuities and there are always precursors for phenomena of the presents.

The degree of thickening of globalism may be giving rise to three changes not in degree but in kind:

• increased density of networks = product becomes more valuable once many use it, triggering spillover effects and further innovation (e.g. internet, trade). As interdependence and globalism have become thicker, systemic relationships among different networks intersect deeply at more points.
• increased institutional velocity = biggest change came with steamship and the telegraph, but the real difference was in the velocity but in the reduced cost of communicating. Markets react quicker.
• increased transnational participation = Pluralisation of technology, finance, and information, together with reduced costs, have increased the number of participating actors (e.g. massive protests) and increased the relevance of complex interdependence, in which levels of economic, environmental, and social globalism are high and military globalism is low. However, this does not represent reality as, for instance, military force is still quite diffused today, implying that power remains important.

Therefore, complex interdependence is not a description of the world, but rather an ideal concept abstracting from reality, that increasingly corresponds to reality in many parts of the world (i.e. information-era democracies).

In this light, state and non-state actors often come up with new regulation to regulate transborder challenges, which actually pose limit to global common goods having repercussions both domestically and in extra-territorial countries. This falls within the domain of global governance, still not a new phenomenon, as stated by Murphy (2014), since it goes back to UN Era, which provided a new formula of bringing countries together to solve global problems. On this regards, often the UN is portrayed as unsuccessful. Recent issues:

• Environmental
• Developing World
• Lassaiz-faire income equality
• Demand for peacekeeping

Example: Unbounded distribution of fake news and propaganda, which Trump defines freedom of speech.

Obviously the UN does not represent a world government, instead it represents global governance. It is a collective system of sovereign states, in this sense the UN system is always dependent on finding substance on the most suitable and efficient local level (=subsidiarity). If we cannot provide for regional solution, only then, we try to tackle and find agreement on the global level (e.g. climate change). An essential addition to this level is inclusivity, meaning that not only states take part to the discussion but also non-state actors, whose intervention can be very influential; mostly given the fact that globalisation moves strictly with capitalism.

Example: Bill Gates Foundation is the 2nd largest investor in WHO.

Ferguson & Mansbridge gave the essentials of globalisation:

• Spreading capitalism
• Global Civil Society & Cultural Homogenization
• Triumph of Democracy
• English as lingua Franca
• Global Governance
• Diffusion of Global power
• Collective Environmental Degradation
• Human Security and the changes of military security
• Globalisation is undermining democratic decision-making process.

Globalisation: What's New? What's Not?

Lecture 1, seminar GLOBALIZATION: WHAT'S NEW? WHAT'S NOT? (AND SO WHAT?) BY ROBERT 0. KEOHANE AND JOSEPH S. NYE JR.

Although the text cover quite well the content of globalisation, the insight proposed date back to 2000 and since then things pretty much changed. The text is analysed through an historical-comparative approach, for instance by bringing the example of islam. Indeed, G. Is not new but have deep historical roots and changes happen in scale, speed and complexity.

One of the main founding is that globalism is multidimensional and these factors do not necessrly change together.

2The main question therefor is related to what's new and the authos answer to this question with thickening of globalism, institutional velocity and network effect. Also, globalisation is not even as we rather expect to have winner and loser.

• Paris Climate Agreemetn (2015) -> global problem requiring global solutions
• Social media and pop culture -> social and Cultural Globalism
• Russia's invasion -> created new crisis and new alliances.

Munich Conference intervention about democracy in europe should be much more opened to certain populist parties who should not be left behind under the shadow of global network.

Did globalisation make war less likely, is it for economic motifs? Democratic Peace Theory, while McDonalds theory has been left out more recently. US plan to bring democracy to Afganistan failed and yet there are too many war around the war to agree with this affirmation.

Power Shifts

POWER SHIFTS BY JESSICA T. MATHEWS

Research method used varies from historical analysis, comperatitve and empirical. The text presents multiple case studies such as Chiapas Uprising (1994), NGOs influence on NAFTA and UN GA's declaration (1991). This last example was meant to favour humanitarian intervention.

The main findings of the text is that state power is declining in favour of international non-state actors and new security threats are rising. Statistics don't even manage to show exact figures on NGOs, which nowadays also as social media to use at their advantage. According to the text, the future will see NGOs as the predominant figures to solve problems of the world, but evidence on this regards are lacking.

Some criticism is that national identity is still quite important in the word and lots of time NGOs are undermined by governments, making their job harder and harder.

NGOs yet today very likely have not reached the levels of influence predicted by the governments.

This text is pointing the finger towards hyper-globalist, whereas the first one was more transnationalists.

The world is essential changing cutting out the power of state's interventions. States have also invited non-state actors to their territories and use their tools. For instance, MNCs such as Amazon have been exploiting state system in their advantage. The power of the new oligarchs (mentioned also by Joe Biden), not only MNCs but also single individuals have highly command on new technologies making us connected into social networks, making us wonder how influential they could be, how much power their detein converting institutions into executives.

Global Governance: Three Futures

GLOBAL GOVERNANCE: THREE FUTURES BY MILES KAHLER

Global governence is the system of rules and coordinated efforts to shape and regulate global issues. Such governance took the form of leagues of nations, BW system and finally UN.

EU External Action and Global Governance

Lecture 2 EU External action and global governance

Treaties

TREATIES 1951 1986 1997 2007 Treaty of Single Treaty of Amsterdam European Act Lisbon With the Lisbon Treaty, the EU has a legal personality, which means that it can act independently in the Schuman Declaration ECSC international arena. The EU can sign treaties with non-EU countries that are binding to all of its member states. For a long time, the institutional set-up of the EU and its policy initiatives in the field of foreign policy were uneven developed. Early on, the EU established itself as a 'civilian' Treaty of Rome Euratom Treaty of Treaty of Nice Maastricht EEC power, with capabilities in areas such as development aid and trade, more than a military power. To chair initiatives in this area the EU introduce the High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy (Foreign Affairs Coucnil), but it 1957 1992 2001 is also vice-president of the Commission. The dual appointment is meant to enhance the consistency of EU policy in this field. These Foreign policies constitute the corpus of EU External Action, formally launced in 2011 and currently working on 140 diplomatic missions (=delegations) around the world. Under the guidance of the High Representative, Foreign Affairs Council = Defence and security aspects; Commission = Trade, aid and economic sanctions.

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