Globalization and Decline of State

According to constructivism “The world of international relations is not just the world of material capabilities and materialistic opportunities it is also a social world”. Constructivists believe that actor states are occupied with both normative and material factors. They do not deny that the material world shapes their structure, but they believe that through reflections and discourse, actor states are malleable and influenced by each other. Constructivism thus deals with the process through which principled ideals become social norms. In being so, constructivism becomes a critical component for the international recognition of a state. This becomes crucial for actors, as the internationalization of social norms will ensure compliance over external pressure. Thus, democracy promotion can be subsumed under the socialization and internalization by actors. The persistence of democratic international institutions after the cold war as well as the mass identification of states as democracies and the absence of a strong alternative political ideology have contributed to a process of socialization promoting democratic cooperation. Therefore, after the Cold

The era of globalization has witnessed the growing influence of a number of unconventional international actors, from non-governmental organizations, to multi-national corporations, to global political movements. Traditional, state-centric definitions of foreign policy

Globalization is not a new idea at all. Many intellectuals including most social scientists agree of its deep origin by referring to it as a “phenomenon of long term historical process…” ⁶

The influence of the desire of the “World State” to have stability among its members is

In many aspects globalization is usually described as a process where due to an increase in trade, technology and cultural exchange the world is getting more interconnected making distances less and less which is giving rise to a capitalist economy. According to (Wallerstein 2004), “world economy has always been capitalist”. It’s like everyone is specialized to perform a certain task and that’s how the idea of division of labour is built within us which ties us to the system of capitalism. Competition and the will to earn more is ingrained which creates state subsidies and makes strong states to use their power to prevent weaker states from succeeding.

In the 19th and early 20th century, the world's economies grew interconnected and entangled as trade, capital, investment, migration and technology thrived. This international integration forms the basis for globalization and arises from exchange and interbreeding of perspectives, ideas and aspects of culture. This modern economic and global point of view posits that globalization increases trade, raises wages, heightens living standards, and betters the market discipline. With its roots in free market capitalism, the critics of this perspective declare globalization to be detrimental to the vast majority of the working class and poor since most of the labor and work goes to the lowest bidder; proper regulation and working conditions are often

Globalization involves a variety of links expanding and tightening a web of political, economic and cultural inter-connections. Most attention has been devoted to merchandise trade as it has had the most immediate (or most visible) consequences, but capital, in and of itself, has come to play an arguably even larger role than the trade in material goods. Human movements also link previously separate communities. Finally, there is the cultural connection. All the individual data would indicate that we are undergoing a process of compression of international time and space and an intensification of international relations. The separation of production and consumption that is the heart of modern capitalism appears to have

The historical process of state and the modern state is compiled by the issues that arose in order to overthrow old rules and norms to then replace them with new ones better suited and accepted (O’neil 36). The state is a “monopoly of force over a given territory but also a set of political institutions that help create and implement policy to resolve conflict”

‘Globalization: What’s new? What’s not? (And so what)’, portrays the speed in which globalism has increased through many different factors; economically, military, environmentally and socially. This is an idealist analytic approach, not set in stone. This leads on to

There are two, key conflicting theories in the study of international relations, idealism and realism, known to scholars as the ‘Great Debate’. Realism, offers an account of international affairs through four central ideas; that states are the key players in international relations, the decentralised international stage is anarchic, actors are rational and self-interested

The concept of globalization is a complex and peculiar one, failing to be definable by a single, precise definition. Centrally, globalization involves information and goods being exchanged amongst different countries. These interactions and interchanges among countries globally over time is due to an increase in communication and transport networks. Globalization is often divided into three main areas being economic globalization, cultural globalization and political globalization. All three are vital areas to one’s life and globalization is said to have a large impact on each. Although globalization is controversial in the aspect that it cannot be declared just how much of an influence the notion has in the world. Political scientists such as Muhammad Ijaz Latif, Anton Pelinka and Martin Wolf all discuss this issue in their respective pieces as well as differing aspects of globalization such as the role the European Union plays in relation to globalization, the different perspectives of globalization and the challenges of the nation-state in regards to globalization.

For Realism in particular, this criticism is primarily focused on its state-centric approach. One of Realism’s main assertions is that the states are best unit of analysis (John, 132). Critical Theorists believe that in the context of Globalization, this view is “increasingly problematic” (Beck, 463). According to Ulrich Beck, the “mistakes of the national perspective are recognizable to the extent that boundaries have become permeable and interdependences, which transcend all borders, are growing exponentially” (463). Realists continue to analyze (only) the State, despite mounting evidence that the state may not always be the most influential actor. By focusing so much on the Nation-state, and discounting the role of Globalization, Realism fails to account for large-scale transformation. In other words, Realism “is a kind of political irrealism because it neglects the possibility and reality of a second ‘Great Transformation’ of the global power game” (Beck 457). It believes that the world will stay as it currently is forever.

Many historians and sociologists have identified a transformation in the economic processes of the world and society in recent times. There has been an extensive increase in developments in technology and the economy as a whole in the twentieth century. Globalization has been recognized as a new age in which the world has developed into what Giddens identifies to be a “single social system” (Anthony Giddens: 1993 ‘Sociology’ pg 528), due to the rise of interdependence of various countries on one another, therefore affecting practically everyone within society.

The contemporary international system is one of multipolarity, leaning towards non-polarity. The conclusion of the Cold War saw the international system shift from one motivated by ideology to one motivated by strategy — an underlying feature of multipolarity. A multipolar system exhibits a ‘balance of power’ mechanism, in which many states ally to maintain power, without a single force dominating. The current international system exhibits all of the key characteristics of a multipolar system — multiple nation-states of influence, alliances which shift on the basis of power and stability, and international decisions made primarily for strategic terms. Facilitated by the advent of globalisation, non-state actors possess an unprecedented level of economic, military, and cultural influence. Their expanded influence in the international system has helped shift it from the bipolarity of the Cold War era. The advent of globalisation has also introduced a real-time effect into international relations which has permanently altered the interactions between state and non-state actors, and the influence they have on the world.

The role of states has forever been evolving but the impact that the last four decades of transformation create on states is both drastic and exceptional. States have been empowered by varied economic, political and social powers from the very inception of human society. They developed into strong agents of influence but this role soon changed after the Second World War and the cold war. The Capitalist and the Communist stood amidst tussle under the umbrella of super powers- USSR and the USA, focused only on its military and domestic power. The inception of UN Charter developed out of need for regulated peaceful international order after the Second World War didn’t gain much momentum till the end of Cold War. Initially, it was USA and the USSR regulating the limited economic and political interaction. However, the end of Cold war in the 1990s led to political division of the world into powerful modern states.