State (often understood as ‘nations’, hence ‘international’) are taken to be the essential building blocks of world politics, meaning that world affairs boil down, essentially, to the relations between states. However, since the 1980s, an alternative globalization paradigm has become fashionable. This reflects the belief that world affairs have been transformed in recent decades by the growth of global interconnectedness and interdependence. In this view, the world no longer operates as a disaggregated collection of states, or ‘units’, but rather as an integrated whole, as ‘one world’.
Global politics is therefore an arena of ongoing and, many would argue, accelerating change. And yet, certain aspects of global politics appear to have an enduring character. The term ‘global’ has two meanings, and these have quite different implications as far as global politics is concerned. In the first, global means worldwide, having planetary (not merely regional or national) significance. The globe is, in effect, the world. Global politics, in this sense, refers to politics that is conducted at a global rather than a national or regional level. There is no doubt that the global or worldwide dimension of politics has, in recent decades, become more significant. There has been a growth of international organizations.
This particularly applies in the case of the environment, often seen as the paradigm example of a ‘global’ issue, because nature operates as an interconnected whole, in which everything affects everything else. The same, we are often told, applies to the economy, where it is commonplace to refer to the ‘global economy’ or ‘global capitalism’, in that fewer and fewer countries now remain outside the international trading system and are unaffected by external investment and the integration of financial markets. For theorists of globalization[1], this trend towards global interconnectedness is not only perhaps the defining feature of modern existence, but also requires that traditional approaches to learning need to be rethought, in this case by adopting a ‘borderless’ or ‘transplanetary’ approach to politics.
The claim that we live in a ‘borderless world’, or the assertion that the state[2] is dead and sovereignty is irrelevant (Ohmae 1990, 1996), remain distinctly fanciful ideas. In no meaningful sense has politics at the global level transcended politics at the national, local or, for that matter, any other level. This is why the notion of global politics, as used in this book, draws on the second meaning of ‘global’. In this view, global means comprehensive; it refers to all elements within a system, not just to the system as a whole.
From this perspective, the advent of global politics does not imply that international politics should be consigned to the dustbin of history. Rather, ‘the global’ and ‘the international’ coexist: they complement one another and should not be seen as rival or incompatible modes of understanding. At the same time, however, particular attention is given to International Relations, as this is the field in which most of the relevant research and theorizing has been done, especially in view of theoretical developments in the discipline in recent decades.
From international politics to global politics
The most significant changes include the following:
1. New actors on the world stage
2. Increased interdependence and interconnectedness
3. The trend towards global governance.
The state and new global actors
World politics has conventionally been understood in international terms. Although the larger phenomenon of patterns of conflict and co-operation between and among territorially-based political units has existed throughout history, the term ‘international relations’ was not coined until the UK philosopher and legal reformer, Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832), used it in his Principles of Morals and Legislation ([1789] 1968). By the late eighteenth century, territorially-based political units were coming to have a more clearly national character, making relations between them appear genuinely ‘inter-national’. However, although most modern states are either nation-states (see p. 164) or aspire to be nation states, it is their possession of statehood rather than nationhood that allows them to act effectively on the world stage. ‘International’ politics should thus, more properly, be described as ‘inter-state’ politics.
. In this view, states, or countries (the terms can be used interchangeably in this context), are taken to be the key actors on the world stage, and perhaps the only ones that warrant serious consideration. This is why the conventional approach to world politics is seen as state-centric[3], and why the international system is often portrayed as a state-system[4]. The origins of this view of international politics are usually traced back to the Peace of Westphalia (1648), which established sovereignty as the distinguishing feature of the state. State sovereignty thus became the primary organizing principle of international politics. However, the state-centric approach to world politics has become increasingly difficult to sustain. This has happened, in part, because it is no longer possible to treat states as the only significant actors on the world stage.
Transnational corporations (TNCs) non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and a host of other non-state bodies have come to exert influence. In different ways and to different degrees groups and organizations ranging from al-Qaeda, the anti-capitalist movement and Greenpeace to Google, General Motors and the Papacy contribute to shaping world politics. Since the 1970s, indeed, pluralist theorists have advocated a mixed-actor model[5] of world politics. However, although it is widely accepted that states and national governments are merely one category of actor amongst many on the world stage, they may still remain the most important actors. No TNC or NGOs, for instance, can rival the state’s coercive power, either its capacity to enforce order within its borders or its ability to deal militarily with other states.
Increased interdependence and interconnectedness
To study international politics traditionally meant to study the implications of the international system being divided into a collection of states. This state-centric approach has often been illustrated through the so-called ‘billiard ball model’, which dominated thinking about international relations in the 1950s and later, and was particularly associated with realist theory. This suggested that states, like billiard balls, are impermeable and self-contained units, which influence each other through external pressure. Sovereign states interacting within the state-system are thus seen to behave like a collection of billiard balls moving over the table and colliding with each other. In this view, interactions between and amongst states, or ‘collisions’, are linked, in most cases to military and security matters, reflecting the assumption that power and survival are the primary concerns of the state.
International politics is thus orientated mainly around issues of war and peace, with diplomacy and possibly military action being the principal forms of state interaction. The billiard ball model of world politics has two key implications. First, it suggests a clear distinction between domestic politics, which is concerned with the state’s role in maintaining order and carrying out regulation within its own borders, and international politics, which is concerned with relations between and amongst states. Second, it implies that patterns of conflict and cooperation within the international system are largely determined by the distribution of power among states. Thus, although state-centric theorists acknowledged the formal, legal equality of states, each state being a sovereign entity, they also recognized that some states are more powerful than others, and, indeed, that strong states may sometimes intervene in the affairs of weak ones. Has nevertheless come under pressure as a result of recent trends and developments. Two of these have been particularly significant. The first is that there has been a substantial growth in cross-border, or transnational, flows and transactions – movements of people, good, money, information and ideas. In other words, state borders have become increasingly ‘porous’, and, as a result, the conventional domestic/international, or ‘inside/outside’, divide is increasingly difficult to sustain. This trend has been particularly associated with globalization, as discussed in the next main section. The second development, linked to the first, is that relations among states have come to be characterized by growing interdependence and interconnectedness. Tasks such as promoting economic growth and prosperity, tackling global warming, halting the spread of weapons of mass destruction and coping with pandemic diseases are impossible for any state to accomplish on its own,however powerful it might be.
In which states are drawn into cooperation and integration by forces such closer trading and other economic relationships. This is illustrated by what has been called the ‘cobweb model’ of world politics.For another, interdependence is by no means always associated with trends towards peace, cooperation and integration. Interdependence may be asymmetrical rather than symmetrical, in which case it can lead to domination and conflict rather than peace and harmony.
From international anarchy to global governance?
A key assumption of the traditional approach to international politics has been that the state-system operates in a context of anarchy. This reflects the notion that there is no higher authority than the state, meaning that external politics operates as an international ‘state of nature’, a pre-political society. In the absence of any other force attending to their interests, states are forced to rely on self-help. If international politics operates as a ‘self-help system’, the power-seeking inclinations of one state are only tempered by competing tendencies in other states, suggesting that conflict and war are inevitable features of the international system.
In this view, conflict is only constrained by a balance of power, developed either as a diplomatic strategy by peace-minded leaders or occurring through a happy coincidence. This image of anarchy has been modified by the idea that the international system operates more like an ‘international society’. Have become more difficult to sustain because of the emergence, especially since 1945, of a framework of global and sometimes regional governance. This is reflected in the growing importance of organizations such as the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Trade Organization (WTO), European Union and so on. The growing number and significance of international organizations has occurred for powerful and pressing reasons.
Notably, they reflect the fact that states are increasingly confronted by collective dilemmas, issues that are particularly taxing because they confound even the most powerful of states when acting alone. This first became apparent in relation to the development of technologized warfare and particularly the invention of nuclear weapons, but has since been reinforced by challenges such as financial crises, climate change, terrorism, crime, migration and development. While international organizations have undoubtedly become significant actors on the world stage, competing, at times, with states and other non-state actors, their impact should not be exaggerated.
Globalization and its implications
No development has challenged the conventional state-centric image of world politics more radically than the emergence of globalization. Globalization is a complex, elusive and controversial term. It has been used to refer to a process, a policy, a marketing strategy, a predicament or even an ideology. Globalization as a process or set of processes (highlighting the dynamics of transformation or change, in common with other words that end in the suffix ‘ ization’, such as modernization) and globality as a condition (indicating the set of circumstances that globalization has brought about, just as modernization has created a condition of modernity) (Steger 2003). The term globalism to refer to the ideology of globalization, the theories, values and assumptions that have guided or driven the process (Ralston Saul 2005). The problem with globalization is that it is not so much an ‘it’ as a ‘them’: it is not a single process but a complex of processes, sometimes overlapping and interlocking but also, at times, contradictory and oppositional ones. The various developments and manifestations that are associated with globalization, or indeed globality, can be traced back to the underlying phenomenon of interconnectedness. Globalization, regardless of its forms orimpact, forges connections between previously unconnected people, communities, institutions and societies. Held and McGrew (1999) thus defined globalization as ‘the widening, intensifying, speeding up, and growing impact of world-wide interconnectedness’.
The interconnectedness that globalization has spawned is multidimensional and operates through distinctive economic, cultural and political processes. Globalization has been interpreted in three main ways:
1. Economic globalization is the process through which national economies have, to a greater or lesser extent, been absorbed into a single global economy
2. Cultural globalization is the process whereby information, commodities and images that have been produced in one part of the world enter into a global flow that tends to ‘flatten out’ cultural differences between nations, regions and individuals
3. Political globalization is the process through which policymaking responsibilities have been passed from national governments to international organizations
[1] Globalization: The emergence of a complex web of interconnectedness that means that our lives are increasingly shaped by events that occur, and decisions that are made, at a great distance from us
[2] State : A political association that establishes sovereign jurisdiction within defined territorial borders
[3] State-centrism: An approach to political analysis that takes the state to be the key actor in the domestic realm and on the world stage.
[4] State-system: A pattern of relationships between and amongst states that established measure of order and predictability
[5] Mixed-actor model: The theory that, while not ignoring the role of states and national governments, international politics is shaped by a much broader range of interests and groups.
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