Latest revision as of 12:06, 17 July 2018

Abstract

This paper surveys opposing interpretations of globalization of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. Since there are multiple definitions of globalization it focuses mainly on economic globalization and political globalization. It argues that the economic benefits of globalization are not evenly distributed, with China being among the winners within the developing world. Unskilled workers in the de-industrializing developed nations are among the losers; they fuel protectionist political discourses and have helped Trump become the US President. This paper also argues that in a globalized world liberal democracy has two main competitors as ideal types of political regimes, namely Chinese market-oriented authoritarianism and Russian/Turkish style illiberalism. This paper also reasserts the prevalence of the State. Nationalist movements in Europe, such as the ones in Scotland or Catalonia, desire their own states for reasons that are not alien to globalization. Also the State seems to be the necessary instrument to fight effectively against the main negative effects of economic globalization: climate change and the destruction of the environment.

1. Introduction

Introductory Ex Cursus on Catalonia

As we prepare our papers for the 3^rd Congress of Economy and Business of Catalonia, this autonomous region is without government—several months after an election called by the government of Spain under article 155 of the Spanish Constitution—and is ruled directly from Madrid. Several companies formerly headquartered in Catalonia have fled. All last year the autonomous government and parliament of Catalonia argued for independence, a process that crystalized in a referendum held October 1^st that was ruled illegal by the Spanish judiciary, for which Catalan political leaders are currently being prosecuted in Spanish courts for rebellion, sedition and misappropriation of funds. The rise of the independence movement in Catalonia, and the consequent clash with the Spanish state, can be seen through the lenses of Spanish history, which would let us either consider it as the result of recurrent tensions between the center and the periphery in Spain and an unsuccessful development of federal solutions or try to relate it to a series of events in Europe and elsewhere in which the affirmation of identity, and the local vs. the global, become essential for many people. These phenomena of “local anchorage” are not all the same: some are benign, espousing non-violence and democratic values, while others are more sinister and exclusionary, but – I will argue -- they all share the angst created by some aspects of globalization and the global economic and political crises that are related to it. While this paper does not particularly wish to address the issues of Catalonia, but some of the reflections it fosters might help better understand some of the issues at the core of this present conflict.

A first approach to Globalization

The Seattle WTO Ministerial Conference of 1999 was supposed to be a relatively sedate meeting of trade experts and politicians. Instead it became known to history as the Battle of Seattle.³ It was the first major face-to-face between angry groups of anti-globalists and the political and economic establishment. Francis Fukuyama, towards the end of the Cold War, proclaimed the “end of history”.⁴ To many it seemed that there was no alternative to the triumphant march of the liberal political and economic order with ever-increasing free trade and the expansion of democracy as the dominant regime for the conduct of human affairs. Yet today protectionism is increasingly compelling, in democracies, and promulgated by elements of both the right or the left.

In the last US Presidential election there was much correspondence, for example, between protectionist measures on trade proposed by the winner, Donald Trump, and also by Democratic contender Bernie Sanders. Trump’s recent pressures on Mexico and Canada for a renegotiation of NAFTA and his moves to impose tariffs on steel and aluminum illustrate an attachment— symbolic, if not particularly effective—to a protectionist outlook on the welfare of nations and on the welfare of the United States. In Europe several indicators of preference for what is not global have arisen both in the fields of economics and in politics. In economics, the resistance to the TTIP from trade unions, environmental groups and civil society has been steady. In politics, the rise of anti-EU sentiment either through Brexiteers in the UK or right-wing political movements on the continent is not negligible. Interestingly enough, the drive for statehood of nationalist political movements in Scotland and Catalonia, while focusing on bringing the state closer to the citizen, have not rejected the EU but rather believe that its existence provides an opportunity for redefining national boundaries without losing unity with their neighbors.

In developing nations, where globalization has lifted millions out of poverty, the challenge is to make sure trade is fair but also that the newly created wealth does not cause huge inequalities. Finally, we should address the globalization of political systems: the 90s seemed to favor the irreversible expansion of democratic forms of government. Today that is less certain; China offers a model of successful economic development combined with an authoritarian regime; Russia has evolved towards an illiberal democracy if not a hybrid regime where authoritarianism combines with elections and corruption. Turkey, Hungary, the Philippines seem to favor some form of this hybrid combination of a democratic façade, illiberalism, and the weakening of the rule of law.

One should also remark that globalization is a beast with multiple heads which adds to the complexity of putting it into a box. Albert Breton notes that “there is economic globalization, cultural globalization, technological globalization, terrorist globalization, human rights globalization, and so on”.⁵

2. Defining Globalization

There is disagreement about what we mean by globalization. In a broad way it can signify the “expansion and intensification of all kinds of social relations across borders”.⁶ But such a broad definition could also apply to the internalization of exchanges around the Mediterranean region in the Middle Ages or the age of Empires in the XIXth century. What is unique about “globalization” in modern times is the almost immediate influence that one event thousands of miles away can have on political and economical phenomena back home. Giddens’ definition seems much more appropriate to understand what has happened to the world of politics and economics since the 1980’s:

Globalization can be defined as the intensification of worldwide social relations which link distant localities in such a way that local happenings are shaped by events occurring many miles away and vice versa.⁷

Thomas Friedman sees speed as a main component of globalization: “While the defining measurement of the Cold War was weight—particularly the throw weight of missiles—the defining measurement of the globalization system is speed—speed of commerce, travel, communication and innovation”.⁸

Kofi Annan, in 1998, described globalization as what for many “distinguishes our era from any other. Globalization, we are told, is redefining not only the way we engage the world, but how we communicate with each other (…) Globalization is commonly understood to describe those advances in technology and communications that have made possible an unprecedented degree of financial and economic interdependence and growth. As markets are integrated, investments flow more easily, competition is enhanced, prices are lowered and living standards everywhere are improved”.⁹

For Political Science, what is important in globalization is its effect on the State as a unit of analysis, since “as a result of globalization, a process of state transformation is taking place. States are becoming stronger in some respects and weaker in others”.¹⁰ Sorensen points out four aspects of statehood that are being transformed by globalization: the political-administrative institutions of government; the economic basis of the state; nationhood and identity and the institution of sovereignty.¹¹

Some authors go to great lengths to demonstrate that globalization—at least in its expected economic effects—is more a myth than a reality. Paul Hirst and Grahame Thompson, for example, question “the validity and accuracy of many of the strong claims made about ‘globalization’”. They remark that “few exponents of globalization develop a coherent concept of the world economy in which supra-national forces and agents are decisive”, and that “pointing to evidence of the enhanced internationalization of economic relationships since the 1970’s is not in itself proof of the emergence of a distinctly ‘global’ economic structure”. They add that “truly global Trans National Corporations (TNCs) are relatively few and that most successful multinational corporations continue to operate from distinct national bases”.¹² But if globalization is not game-changing, what does it do? A consensus seems to be forming that globalization represents an acceleration of world exchanges in economic, cultural, and even criminal matters that is at least game-influencing. Again, Kofi Annan points out that “globalization challenges [the ability of states] to perform their historic function of providing security to their citizens, in all three of its aspects—physical security, economic security and psychological security” and that it “makes well-organized states if anything more necessary, not less”.¹³

Rather than elaborating definitions of globalization that are so general that it becomes difficult to apprehend the term, Ian Goldin and Kenneth Reinert tackle globalization in a practical manner. They specify a global policy checklist on issues concerning trade (market access, trade-related capacity building, arms trade, forced labor), finance (macro-prudential policies to reduce systemic risk, standards for multinational enterprises), foreign aid (meeting commitments on aid flows, untying aid, harmonization and alignment, evaluation and knowledge sharing, debt relief), migration (multilateral coordination of migration policy, temporary movement of persons, brain drain, brain waste and diaspora, remittances, research and data), ideas (knowledge management, intellectual property harmonization, access to medicines, increased technology transfer to developing countries) and what they call global commons (insurance for climate related risks, combating anti-microbial resistance, agricultural development for food security and enhancing human security).¹⁴ Although their checklist is geared towards globalization for development, it is very useful to help us focus on some concrete aspects of globalization and its multidirectional flows.

3. The Economics of Globalization

Is Globalization a matter of winners and losers? The perception is certainly there. And there are, in developed countries, quite a number of jobs that have been lost to free trade. Guillermo de la Dehesa recounts that “lower-skilled workers in developed countries will have a very high probability of being net losers, given that they encounter difficulties in adapting to new technologies and productive internationalization and will be forced to accept lower productivity and lower wage jobs, if their labor markets are flexible. Or alternatively, they may become unemployed if their labor markets are rigid or if they work for low skill labor-intensive firms, which have to compete with firms in developing countries (…)”.¹⁵ Donald Trump should be credited with having had the political flair to appeal to some of those displaced by delocalization in Michigan or Pennsylvania, for example, and win their electoral votes. It is paradoxical that a billionaire whose trademark was coined in the vanities of the 80s has been able to become the conduit for the lament of those left-behind by globalization. Petras and Veltmeyer argue that “the world ascendancy of globalist classes has provoked a serious social crisis affecting wage workers, peasants, employees, and the self-employed throughout the world. The growth and penetration of globalist policies have engendered a significant increase in inequality between the minority within the globalist loop and those exploited by it”.¹⁶ The US President, a member of these ‘globalist classes, has become the spokesman for those affected by globalization in the developed world, not unlike the Perons of the 1940s in Argentina.

On the other hand, there are those such as Bhargava and Gurkan who argue that globalization is a system of exploitation of the planet and of the dispossessed. “The global compacts adopted by the international community in recent years have created a historic common ground for setting clear and measurable international development goals. (…) As the developing countries see it, the proposals put forward by the rich nations have failed to correspond to the developing countries’ central demands in agriculture, on which two-thirds of the world’s poor depend for their livelihood”.¹⁷

Brecher, Childs and Cutler distinguish between two kinds of globalization: the one from above, exploitative, and the one from below where the ordinary man exercises power for the good. “Globalization-from-above extracts resources from the natural world and from local communities in order to increase the wealth and power of the wealthy and powerful. (…) Globalization-from-below, in contrast to globalization-from-above, aims to restore to communities the power to nurture their environments; to enhance the access of ordinary people to the resources they need; to democratize local, national, and transnational political institutions; and to impose pacification on conflicting power centers”.¹⁸ This binary vision of bad vs. good globalizations is somewhat simplistic and rather than an explanation of what globalization is, it presents a call to agency for grassroots groups and possible social movements to counter the ill effects of globalization. Theodore Panayotou indicates that “globalization brings with it potentially large benefits as well as risks” and that “the challenge is to manage the process of globalization in such a way that it promotes environmental sustainability and equitable human development”.¹⁹ The issue is that globalization is laden with externalities. Some are good—lifting people out of poverty in developing nations, some are bad—affecting the environment—and the response for those concerned is to exercise agency and combat the ill effects.²⁰ Global warming, for example, is anthropogenic and, as Judith Lean and David Rind have demonstrated, is closely related to the last 150 years of human activity, a time when two big waves of globalization have transformed the planet.²¹ This global life-threatening externality will not resolve itself. It will need decisive action from governments and peoples to mitigate and adapt to its effects.

The Greening of Globalization

The biggest threat of globalization for future generations is the environmental threat. Making the world richer and creating large middle classes in China and India implies an expansion of unsustainable Western style consumer patterns in new parts of the world. Kaplinsky asserts that all of the global sourcing “is at a cost to the environment. Some of this is a direct outcome of global transport, as in the case of the Exxon Valdez oil-spillage in Alaska during the 1990s. But the bulk of this negative environmental impact is indirect, particularly through the link between increased energy consumption and global warming”.²² Is there a remedy? Can we reap the benefits of globalization and at the same time protect the environment? Only a holistic approach will do. Dale Colver is clear that “it is legitimate to incorporate environmental provisions in trade agreements as one means to prevent environmental degradation and to contribute positively to environmental improvement. However this approach should not be conducted in isolation from other endeavors to improve environmental conditions, including the multilateral environmental agreements, domestic environmental laws and private-sector approaches, including NGOs, corporations and private citizens”.²³ Neither market forces nor international organizations alone can resolve the environmental problems posed by globalization. Only a concerted and sustained effort of sovereign states, in the framework of transnational agreements, aided by strong activism and engagement from large social movements among the populations can expect to be—relatively—successful in this endeavor. In this respect it is remarkable that in China, where dissent is deeply restricted, fearless environment demonstrations have occurred.²⁴

New Protectionism in Developed Nations.

NAFTA is being renegotiated. The United States is no longer a partner in the TTP that could not enter into force, although it does not rule out joining the new Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership. The closed-doors TTIP negotiations suffer criticism and misgivings on both sides of the Atlantic. The fashionable new protectionism in Western nations embodied by Trump’s campaign promises and those of the Marine Le Pens of Western Europe—those same nations that were the core countries promoting the post World War II order encompassing the Bretton Woods institutions, the GATT and later the WTO—might have dire consequences if pursued emphatically. Indeed, Krugman warned early that “if the West throws up barriers to imports out of a misguided belief that they will protect Western living standards, the effect could be to destroy the most promising aspect of today’s world economy: the beginning of widespread economic development, of hopes for a decent living standard for hundreds of millions, even billions, of human beings” and that “the view that competition from the Third World is a major problem for advanced countries is questionable in theory and flatly rejected by the data”.²⁵ The World Bank in its well-known study Globalization, Growth and Poverty: Building an Inclusive World Economy of 2002 corroborated Krugman’s predictions but also warned of winners and losers in both the developed and the developing world: “while integration has on average been a positive force for growth and poverty reduction in developing countries, there are inevitably specific winners and losers, especially in the short run. This is true in rich and poor countries. The firm-level evidence shows that much of the dynamic benefit of open trade and investment comes from more "churning" of plants—less efficient ones die, and new ones start up and expand. With this comes more labor market churning as well probably the key reason why globalization is so controversial. It raises wages on average in both rich and poor countries, but there are some significant losers”.²⁶ In spite of the protests of the anti-globalists, the wider consensus in the political community up to Trump’s victory has been one that has given validity to the data that showed globalization having a positive effect on poverty alleviation and income growth at the world level. If this is true, liberals, who favor democracies, should be avid supporters of globalization. Carles Boix has concluded, in an analysis of sovereign countries going back to the beginning of the nineteenth century that “per capita income is statistically associated with the process of democratization” and that “development has a causal effect on democracy”.²⁷

Some scholars, like Robert Hunter Wade. are more cautious in their assessments of the positive effects of globalization. Although he asserts that “it is plausible, and important, that the proportion of the world’s population living in extreme poverty has probably fallen over the past two decades or so, having been rising for decades before then,” he is wary of the large margin of error that affect World Bank numbers and make the trend look rosier than it really is; he also distinguishes the large effect that China has on measures of inequality: “one combination of inequality measures does yield the conclusion that income inequality has been falling—PPP-income per capita weighted by population, measured by an averaging coefficient such as the Gini” but “ take out China and even this measure shows widening inequality”.²⁸

4. The Politics of Globalization

Susan Strange links “a pace of change more rapid than human society had ever before experienced” with the disillusion with national leaders whose peoples “no longer believe them”.²⁹ Harold James posits that corruption scandals have increased the disenchantment with politics and politicians: “it is no longer simply a matter of corruption as a way of life in the peculiar circumstances of post-Communist transition economies, notably Russia. In Western Europe, the end of the Cold War broke some bands that had previously held political systems together. Ideology became less important, and many people began cynically to see in politics just a mechanism for distributing the spoils of political power”.³⁰ Certainly, in relation to our beginning ex cursus on Catalonia, the sorry state of affairs regarding corruption in Spain in general—and Catalonia not being much different in this respect—must be factored in to understand the rise of new political parties untainted by corruption and the appeal for the citizenry of political solutions that imply a break with the past.

Although Susan Strange was right to acknowledge the doubts that citizens have vis-à-vis politicians, it is difficult to agree with her overall argument that States are retreating, if only because there does not seem to be an alternative to States. Non-state actors such as NGOs, transnational corporations, or even cross-boundary criminal and terrorist organizations play a large role in shaping policy and state responses to new challenges, but the state is still the indispensable component of world order.³¹ Barrie Axford argues that “the persistence of the nation-state form, and its enduring appeal to nationalist and separatist political forces in this consciously ‘interdependent’ world, should not come as a surprise. (…) Through its links with the most powerful myth of political identity in the modern world, the narrative of nation, the state occupies a privileged place in the institutional dimensions of modernity and, as a ‘system’ of states, still offers a convenient shorthand for a world political system (Heller and Feher, 1988)”.³² In fact, what the strong Scottish and Catalan independent movements prove, rather than the weakening of the State as the unit of reference, is the indispensability of the State.³³ Moreover, in Western Europe where, in contrast with a century ago, the welfare state is all-encompassing, what matters more even than the control of legitimate violence, is the control of the purse which allows the State to set the policy agenda, formulate it, adopt it, implement it and evaluate it in full. Beyond the Imagined Communities of Benedict Anderson, --who explained the romantic rise of nationalism in the XIXth century as a new creed—in a globalized world where interdependence is queen, and especially in the context of European integration, controlling the distributive side of economic policy gives a sense of anchor to communities that, rightly or wrongly, feel dispossessed of elements of sovereignty.³⁴ The positioning of both the Scottish and Catalan sovereignist movements as embodiments of left-of-center distributive models vs. austerity measures carried out by Britain and Spain highlight the fact that at least in Europe, controlling the state has become a matter of choosing the economic model of the state as an act of sovereignty facing the powers of globalization.

The different reactions of the British State and the Spanish State to the tensions created by Scottish and Catalan nationalisms shed light upon the limits of globalization as an explanatory phenomenon for the behavior of states. As Robert Davies posits: “globalization matters. It creates new pressures for states to confront and reinforces longstanding ones. Globalization does not, however, determine how states will respond to those pressures. States’ domestic institutions mediate their responses. These institutions create opportunities and constraints on state action, affect the likelihood that states will reconstitute themselves and influence policy success”.³⁵ Thus states and their institutions are still central to the understanding of political events even when these events at least partly are responses to the tensions created by globalization.

Non-Democratic Models

The idea of a globalized world of liberal values and democratic institutions created expectations at the end of the cold war. The United States as a hegemon spearheaded the 1948 universal declaration of human rights and the expansion of democracy around the world, even if the actions of the hegemon did not always agree with the regime model it wanted to represent.³⁶ It has been so long since the global hegemon was a different one that we have forgotten that for most of human history human beings have been governed by non-democratic forms of government and that democracy is not the only model. With the rise of China, where a successful market economy is allied with an authoritarian regime, an alternative model of political organization for a globalized world has become available, if not yet popular, since China is still lagging in projection of soft power and culturally the global world is still almost entirely American. This notwithstanding, Davies asserts that “China’s approach to the management of economic growth is gaining in popularity and is seen by many as the only viable and tested alternative to the Western economic formula, that is popularly called the ‘Washington Consensus’”.³⁷ This same Washington consensus of the 1980s, favoring development through opening the economy and expanding the market, which has been promoted by the IMF and the World Bank, has been used as a miracle cure for all. However, Stiglitz reminds us that those countries that controlled themselves the terms of engagement with the global economy, such as those in East Asia, have fared much better than those who have not. “The problem is thus not with globalization but with how it has been managed”³⁸ And China has managed quite well and therefore has become an attractive economic model and a political model as well.

On the other hand, another political alternative to Western style democracy has been taking shape for a while and has even seduced voters in countries that are member states of the European Union, such as the Hungary of Viktor Orbán. Alexander Cooley argues that “it is clear that counternorms to liberal democracy have taken root and are helping authoritarians to retain power”.³⁹ Today, Russia, Turkey, the Philippines, and Hungary are all to a greater or lesser extent users of the illiberal model. This illiberal model borrows from democracy the use of regular elections and from non-democratic regimes the erosion of freedom of expression and of the rule of law—eliminating viable political opponents through thuggish means, and governing with recourse to populist excitement of the masses, uniting them against predictable scapegoats.

5. Conclusion

This paper has surveyed multiple and often opposing interpretations of globalization as descriptors of a constellation of late twentieth and early twenty-first century phenomena. I have also argued that globalization has profoundly morphed classical interpretations of capitalism, from both left and right. So too models of nationalism have been at once dissolved and simultaneously underscored by these same phenomena.

From this perspective, it is tempting to view debates on globalization as theoretically unproductive, and globalization an object of analysis that obscures, intentionally or not, classic objects of analysis for political science – namely economics and the nation state. Yet such a dismissal of globalization is of course one more “theory” of globalization – as a form of false consciousness. It is also to dismiss the pressing questions that accompany debates concerning globalization– questions of economic migration, of international (cyber) terrorism, developed and developing countries, of industrial and service economies.

I have argued that globalization is multifaceted, and it is this very complexity that makes it resist any simple definition. My analysis has been confined to two central aspects of globalization: the economic and the political. In my analysis I did not enter into the workings of economic globalization, but rather noted its effects – both positive and negative. If the positive effect of globalization lies in lifting the poor out of rural subsistence into urban productivity, the great negative effect of economic globalization is environmental. Globalization has as terrible externality in that it ravages the natural resources of the planet. To counter this, the state must act, willfully to resolve these perilous depredations.

In economic globalization, there are winners and losers. The losers are the workers in the de-industrializing developed nations, while the winners are, apparently, the workers in the newly industrialized developing nations. Although it seems there is a consensus that many people have been lifted out of poverty by globalization, statistical analysis reveals how China has skewed the analysis, and when we leave out China it is no longer clear that developing nations have benefited from globalization. Thus the global economic benefits of globalization become more muted.

Secondly I examined political globalization. Globalization seemed on the one hand to be the extension, an avatar, of democratic liberalism as the triumphant world model. Yet three decades after the fall of the Berlin wall we realize there are other increasingly powerful non-democratic models – models that do not participate in the liberal cultural model. Both China’s authoritarian state-run capitalism and the illiberal models of Russia and Turkey are systems that appear to thrive under globalization. Even as globalization creates a model that supersedes the nation state, its inherent tensions and pressures revivify nationalism. The complexity of any analysis – namely the case of Catalonia with which I began this paper – lies in distinguishing “old” questions at once historical and political – from these new questions of globalization as a formative pressure to national identity.

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⁽²⁾ Associate Professor of Political Science, Chair of LatinX and Latin American Studies and Associate Director of the International Studies Institute, University of La Verne, California. -President of Liberal International. - Licence in Economics and Social Sciences, University of Fribourg. Political Science Ph. D., Yale University. -

⁽³⁾ The author was a participant in the WTO 1999 Seattle meeting as diplomatic representative of the Principality of Andorra.

⁽⁴⁾ See Francis Fukuyama, “The End of History” in The National Interest, No. 16 (Summer 1989), 3

⁽⁵⁾ Raymond Breton and Jeffrey G. Reitz, Globalization and Society – Processes of Differentiation Examined (Wesport: Praeger, 2003), 273.

⁽⁶⁾ Georg Sorensen, “Globalization and the Nation-State” inDaniele Caramani, ed. Comparative Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 454.

⁽⁷⁾ Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990).

⁽⁸⁾ Thomas L. Friedman, The Lexus and the Olive Tree (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999) , 9

⁽⁹⁾ Kofi Annan, “The Politics of Globalization”, Address to Harvard University, Cambridge MA, September 17 1998

⁽¹⁰⁾ Sorensen, op. cit., 454.

⁽¹¹⁾ Sorensen, op. cit., 454.

⁽¹²⁾ Paul Hirst and Grahame Thompson, Globalization in Question (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1996), 195.

⁽¹³⁾ Kofi Annan, “Keynote Address to the Conference on Globalization and International Relations in the Twenty-First Century”, Graduate Institute of International Studies, Press Release SG/SM/8264, Geneva, 7 June 2002 https://www.un.org/press/en/2002/sgsm8264.doc.htm

⁽¹⁴⁾ Ian Goldin and Kenneth Reinert, Globalization for Development – Meeting New Challenges (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 250-252.

⁽¹⁵⁾ Guillermo de la Dehesa, Winners and Losers in Globalization (Malden MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2006), 180-181

James Petras and Henry Veltmeyer, “Globalization Unmasked: The Dynamics and Contradictions of Global Capitalism” in Berch Berberoglu, Globalization and Change (London: Lexington Books, 2005), 58 See also Guillermo de la Dehesa, What Do We Know About Globalization (Malden MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2007), 131: On inequality, Guillermo de la Dehesa considers two long waves of globalization over the course of one and a half centuries: one between 1870 and 1914, halted by the Great War, and one starting after the end of World War II, separated by what he terms a “dark age of strong protectionism” in the interwar period. He compares the two periods and -in spite of similar acceleration of exchanges- finds striking differences, one being the much larger migration patterns present in the first wave, and in contrast a much greater liberalization and reduction of barriers to the trade of manufactures now, the latter showing that “the growing integration of developing countries with the world’s economy has been a clear route for them to move from poverty to prosperity by starting to export traditional goods and later becoming more and more specialized bin higher technology goods and services”. Although he acknowledges that there is a global tendency toward greater intra-nation inequality he states that it cannot be attributed to globalization itself “since there are many other factors which have a greater effect –particularly the impact of the strong technological development in the developed countries and the strong regional growth of some major developing countries, most notably China and India, where growth has been unevenly distributed between the inland and rural regions, which have grown more slowly, and the coastal and manufacturing regions , which have grown more quickly”.

⁽¹⁷⁾ Vinay Bhargava and Asli Gurkan, “Global Compacts: Building a Better World for All” in Vinay Bhargava Ed., Global Issues for Global Citizens (Washington D.C.: The World Bank, 2006), 431-432

⁽¹⁸⁾ Jeremy Brecher, John Brown Childs, and Jill Cutler eds., Global Visions (Boston: South End Press, 1993), xi and xv

⁽¹⁹⁾ Theodore Panayotou, “Globalization and Environment” , Center for International Development at Harvard University, CID Working Paper No. 53, July 2000

⁽²⁰⁾ Trans-national corporations are observed with suspicion by anti-globalists who see in them a profit-maximizing unethical force engaged in a zero-sum game with the planet and the poor. Jeffrey Haynes acknowledges their ascendancy since “two aspects of economic globalization have been central to TNCs recent growth in numbers and significance: the internationalization of production and the internationalization of financial transactions as a result of freeing of trade barriers and general growth of the global economy” and that countries now depend on TNCs’ decisions about the location of their facilities for their levels of employment, investment and revenue and that it seems clear that “governmental capacity to pursue independent macroeconomic strategies is everywhere circumscribed”. Since they are important external actors that influence domestic policies of states, their capacity for good or evil is indeed real. See Jeffrey Hanes, Comparative Politics in a Globalizing World (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2005), 110.

⁽²¹⁾ See Judith L. Lean and David H. Rind, “How Natural and Anthropogenic Influences Alter Global and Regional Surface Temperatures”, Geophysical Research letters, Vol. 35, L18701, 2008, 5 “Natural changes cannot account for the significant long-term warming in the historical global surface temperature anomalies. Linear trends in temperature attributed to ENSO, volcanic aerosols and solar irradiance over the past

118 years (depicted by the lines in Figure 2) are, respectively, 0.002, 0.001 and 0.007 K per decade. Only by associating the surface warming with anthropogenic forcing is it possible to reconstruct the observed temperature anomalies”.

⁽²²⁾ Raphael Kaplinsky, Globalization, Poverty and Inequality (Cambridge: Polity, 2005), 252

⁽²³⁾ Dale Colyer, Green Trade Agreements (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 253-254 Also on the increased capacity of NGOs action at the global level see Valentine M. Moghadam, Globalization & Social Movements (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2013), 162. One observable issue is the increasing relations and synergies between international NGOs created for different purposes. For example, “the global women’s movement and the global justice movement are internetworked social movements” and “many transnational feminist networks are active in the global justice movement and participate regularly in the World Social Forum (WSF)”. See also, Juli Minoves-Triquell, “ONG y pequeños estados en el establecimiento y consolidación de la CPI” in Revista CIDOB d’Afers Internacionals n.101, 177-193: In this paper I highlighted the pivotal role of NGOs in helping to establish the International Criminal Court at the Rome Conference in 1998.

⁽²⁴⁾ Jun Jing. “Environmental Protests in Rural China” in Elizabeth J. Perry and Mark Selden, Chinese Society, Change, Conflict and Resistance (New York: Routledge, 2010), 211 “The rise of environmental protests in China is emblematic of the growing consciousness of community and individual rights among ordinary citizens

as well as the cumulative effect of newly promulgated laws”.

⁽²⁵⁾ Paul Krugman, “Does Third World Growth Hurt First World Prosperity?” in Kenichi Ohmae, The Evolving Global Economy (Boston: Harvard Business Review Book, 1995), 125-126

⁽²⁶⁾ World Bank, “Globalization, growth, and poverty : building an inclusive world economy”, A World Bank policy research report, Washington, D.C. : The World Bank,2002, 157

http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/954071468778196576/Globalization-growth-and-poverty-building-an-inclusive-world-economy

⁽²⁷⁾ Carles Boix, “Democracy, Development and the International System”, in The American Political Science Review, Vol. 105, No.4 (November 2011), 827

⁽²⁸⁾ Robert Hunter Wade, “Is Globalization Reducing Poverty and Inequality?” in Frank J. Lechner and John Boli, The Globalization Reader (Malden MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), 193

⁽²⁹⁾ Susan Strange, The Retreat of the State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 3-4

⁽³⁰⁾ Harold James, The End of Globalization (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001), 215

⁽³¹⁾ Thomas Risse also remarks that there is an increasing interplay between non-state actors, domestic structures and international institutions. See Thomas Risse-Kappen, ed., Bringing Transnational Relations Back In: Non-State Actors, Domestic Structures and International Institutions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).

⁽³²⁾ Barrie Axford, The Global System (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995), 132

⁽³³⁾ See also Robert J. Holton, Globalization and the Nation-State (London: Macmillan Press Ltd, 1998), 105-106: “There is little doubt, then, that effective nation-statehood remains the political form to which most developing countries and many minorities within Western states, aspire. This in turn reflects the wish to have some kind of autonomy and effective sovereignty. Such aspirations may be found among peoples or nations that lack states, such as the Kurds or Chechnyans, as well as in national minorities within Europe, such as Basques and Scots. The general conclusion, therefore, is that while the state institutions and capacities of developing countries are often weak and undeveloped, effective nation-states possessing elements of sovereignty in domestic affairs still remain a major goal. This aspiration is as robust in the developing world as the fact of effective state capacity is in Europe, the USA and the advanced economic countries”.

⁽³⁴⁾ See Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflection on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 2016)

⁽³⁵⁾ Andrew P. Cortell, Mediating Globalization (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006), 196

⁽³⁶⁾ See Rhoda E. Howard-Hassmann, Can Globalization Promote Human Rights (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010), 83. She points out that “although the principle of human rights was first formally articulated in the Western World, it is now relevant everywhere; in that sense, it has leaped geographically over oceans and seas to affect domestic policy in nearly every country. From almost universal human rights lawlessness, global governance has evolved to universal human rights law. The principles supported by human rights laws have strong normative value, even when states attempt to sidestep them or ignore the very human rights treaties they sign”

⁽³⁷⁾ Robert W. Davies, The Era of Global Transition (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 128-129

⁽³⁸⁾ Joseph E. Stiglitz, “Globalism’s Discontents” in The American Prospect, 13, 1, January 2002, 1

⁽³⁹⁾ Alexander Cooley, “Countering Democratic Norms” in Journal of Democracy, Volume 26, Number 3, July 2015, 60