The Concept of Globalisation

at that place be a plethora of f characterizationors that permit played a role in influencing adult male government in the twentieth deoxycytidine monophosphate. There atomic number 18 the governmental ideologies, each with their own agenda, opposed or similar, such as Communism, Fascism, Nationalism, roofism and Socialism. There ar the various general treaties and agreements, such as the Treaty of Versailles, the group discussion of Nations and the United Nations.Accompanying these be economic agreements, which deem an ever-increasing role in world politics, like the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), the World Trade establishment (WTO), the World Bank, the Inter subject field Monetary line (IMF), plus regional trade agreements and impost unions such as the North Ameri cigargont Free Trade Area (NAFTA), the European Union (EU) and the Asia Pacific Economic club (APEC). Even the two World Wars absorb had an influence. However, the single force that h as had the longest match on world politics in the 20th century is world-wideization. globalization is a concept with many a(prenominal) differing definitions.Bayliss & smith (1998, p. 15) define globalization as the intensification of worldwide sociable relations which link opposed localities in such a bureau that local happenings atomic number 18 shaped by events occurring many miles away and v starter versa. world-wideisation is a process that entails the thrust of capital, goods, operate and labour around the world. Globalisation is the grand control of the worlds deliverance by big business, transcending national boundaries. The fundamental factors in built-inly of these definitions are that globalisation involves worldwide desegregation of both form _or_ trunk of government-making and economic i plugs.Further much, Strachan (1998, p. 159) argues that it involves legal and ethnic integration also. exclusively does such integration bring down a coun trys reign? Can such integration be achieved with turn out violence and passage of arms? In sound out to answer these questions, this essay will pick up the driving forces behind globalisation, its downfalls and cultural adapt aptitude. Globalisation is an ever-increasing force, even today, as technological advances literally make the world smaller by increasing communication and decreasing give-up the ghost cartridge holders, or what mint be referred to as the Communication Revolution (Durst, 2000, p. 5).Through massive and rapid improvements in the Information engine room industry telecommunications, exponential increases in computation power coup take with lower cost and the development of electronic communications and kat onceledge networks such as the Internet, communications are now possible almost immediately amidst any two points on the globe. The threads of global web are computers, facsimile machines, satellites, monitors and modems-all of them linking designe rs, engineers, contractors, licensees and dealers worldwide (Sims, 1989, p. 21).Physical master(prenominal)tain is now irrelevant. This improvement of communications this century from sailing ship to satellite has contri anded immediately to the globalisation of the worlds economies and political systems (Rimmer, 2000, p. 3). This has taken place across cultural and physical boundaries, powerfully eliminating the talent of countries to impound themselves from the rest of the world. A prime employment of this is mainland China. For most of its existence, China has kept its doors disagreeable to the rest of the world. No outside influences reached China and it remained unchanged and untouched.In recent times however, China has relaxed its lawmaking to accommodate unconnected investment and trade. Its economy has improved and impudent information on how to do things more efficiently has been introduced. Borders no longer act as boundaries, especially with respect to the move ment of information and finance. Furthermore, borders are becoming more and more difficult for governments to define and maintain. Regional conflicts are arising everywhere Sierra Leone, the coup in Fiji, Chechnya, Southern Lebanon and Kosovo. As a result, national governments are being forced to delimit their roles, responsibilities and policy relationships.Thus, globalisation has raised fears that the reign of nation states is being undermined. If sovereignty can be defined as the ability to exercise control without outside interference, hence nation states are clearly experiencing pocket-size sovereignty. Governments have no choice but to recognise and work on the premiss that most issues they are inevitable to deal with are affected by or will affect the international conflict of the country. Governments own responses to globalisation or the search for joint solutions to global line of works have further effects on sovereignty.Participation in international organisations or the adoption of international agreements puts limits on policy options available to governments (Rimmer, 2000, p. 5). preferably of independence, the world is now pursuing interdependence. Proponents of globalisation argue that unilateral action is not the most effective way to achieve policy goals. In combating environmental problems and international crime, the interests of individual nations can only be protected by collective action. This belief has led to contest between countries on almost all fronts.International investment is encouraged by the activities and mobility of multinational corporations, meaning that most national policies such as education and training, taxation, social protection, economic regulation and labour legislation have become international. Even a countrys domestic charge policy is a matter of great concern to its trading rivals, be start out this will at long last affect a countrys efficiency and competitiveness. Therefore, government policies must increasingly be made more lucid with, or competitive to, those of their trading rivals.Robert Reich is a strong supporter of globalisation, publishing the record book entitled The Work of Nations. In his book, Reich argues that it is already too late to stop globalisation. His visit is support by Joan Spero, US nether Secretary of State for Economic Affairs, who states that capital now moves around the world with blow out of the water speed. Each day over US $1 trillion is traded in a global hostile exchange food market that never closes. (Spero in Strachan, 1998, p. 156). Reich (1991, p. 112) argues that there is no such thing as an American product anymore, giving the example of an ice hockey stick.It is designed in Sweden, financed in Canada, assembled in Cleveland and Denmark out of alloys patented in Delaware and fabricated in Japan and at last distributed in North America and Europe. There are many criticisms of globalisation and Edward Herman (1999, pp. 3-5) class ifies his criticisms into a number of categories. Two of those are that, firstly, globalisation is undemocratic and secondly, that it is an assault on labour. In the United States, public opinion canvas showed the general public was against NAFTA, even after(prenominal) incessant propaganda, but the mass media supported it and it was passed.In Europe as well, canvas have shown persistent majorities opposed to the existence of the Euro, but a powerful discerned supports it, so it moves forward. Globalisation has been a slam serving elite interests. This contradicts the democratic and egalitarian utopia that these regions have been relentlessly encouraging during the 20th century. Globalisation has also steadily shortened democracy because the containment of labour costs and leveling down of the welfare state has required the business minority to establish hard control of the state and remove its capacity to respond to the demands of the majority (Herman, 1999, p. ).One of t he main objectives of Transnational Corporations (TNCs) movement abroad, for example Nike manufacturing berth in Korea, has been to tap cheaper labour sources. proletariat is often cheapest, and least prone to cause employer problems, in authoritarian states that curb unions and insert into virtual joint venture arrangements with foreign capital, as in Suhartos Indonesia and PRIs Mexico. Once again, this straightaway contradicts governments agendas.Publicly, politicians speak out in support of foreign aid, charitable rights and equality, while behind closed doors they are endorsing and funding TNCs operations that endeavor cheap labour in trey world countries. Another criticism of globalisation is that it is against the very nature of culture. Culture derives its renewing from the differences between different human communities and the distinctions between their respective geographical roots and diachronic experiences.Globalisation disregards these factors and ultimately ai ms to treat the entire world population as if they have the same tastes, personalities, customs, traditions and language, through a commonplace government system. If this were to be so, the world would be a very boring, robotic, monotonous place, stark of any form of culture. The ramifications of this are wide-ranging. Diversity, strain and room for change are lose and forgotten. Identities of oneself are lost I is replaced with we. index number is placed into the hands of a select elite few, very oligarchic and undemocratic.If a group of countries were to unite under a common government, equality would not be established. Such a grouping would overcompensate a wide spectrum of political views, ideologies, religions, races and colours. Instead of one whole body, there would be many minority groups. This transfers an unequal parallelism of power throughout the states. As the regional conflicts in East Timor, Yugoslavia and Chechnya have shown, conflict shall arise. There are t oo many barriers to overcome which only leads to frustration and violence. A Commission on Global memorial tablet (COGG) has been established since 1992.In a musical theme published in 1995 entitled Our Global Neighbourhood, the commission argued that countries have to hold that in certain fields, sovereignty has to be exercised collectively (Strachan, 1998, p. 155). Once again we have a contradiction in impairment by definition, collective and sovereign are exact opposites that are mutually exclusive. Having give tongue to all the above criticisms, it is important to relate that there is no perfect system in society today that is open(a) of running a country suddenly efficiently.In fact, conflicting ideologies often slide down each other. Communism corrects the equality problem of democracy and democracy corrects the problem of efficiency of communism. By choosing one system or the other, up risal and discontent from the people is inevitable. But is it possible to combine the two? Hitler and Mussolini argued that fascism was the leash way an alternative to capitalism and socialism. However, fascism led to the death of more than six one million million Jewish people, so it nearifiable to be wary of anyone offering a one-third alternative.So globalisation has had the greatest touch on world politics in the 20th century, mainly because of the technological advances in telecommunications and information technology. This is most likely to inhabit through this the 21st century. The criticisms of globalisation are that it undermines sovereignty, exploits third word countries and is undemocratic. However, there is no feasible alternative at this time and globalisation is already well-spread and embedded in economics and politics. For now, the world will just have to go with it.