1. SUMMARY
Gerard Delanty
and Chris Rumford
INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
The concept of
globalization as used in this chapter refers to the multidimensional,
accelerated and interconnected organization of space and time across national
borders. There can be little doubt that one of the most pervasive forms of
political globalization is the worldwide spread of democracy based on the
parliamentary nationstate. Democratic government exists in some form in most
parts of the world and where it does not, as in China, there is a considerable
demand for it by democratic movements. A second dimension of political
globalization refers to the rise of a global normative culture. Polycentric
networks is forms of nonterritorial politics which emanate from a multiplicity
of sites and which cannot be reduced to a single centre. The concept of civil
society is a new spaces beyond the state and the inter-governmental domain and
which are independent of global capitalism. A global civil society has come
into existence around international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs),
various grass-roots organizations and social movements of all kinds ranging
from globally organized anti-capitalist protests and global civil society
movements such as the World Social Form, anti-sweat shop movements to terrorist
movements
THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE NATION-STATE, NATIONALITY AND CITIZENSHIP
The notion of
the decline of the nation-state in a post-statist world of governance without
government – or in a ‘new medievalism’ of regional economies (Ohmae 1996) –
should be replaced by the idea of the continued transformation of the
nation-state. The state is only one source of political power. According to
Robinson (2001) a transnational state has come into existence. This is a
multilayered and multicentred linking together on a transnational level of many
of the functions of statehood.
It is evident
that what is being discussed here is a transformation of the nationstate rather
than its demise. The two most powerful actors in the world today, the United
States and China, are nation-states. As Martin Shaw has argued, after 1989 and
the removal of the Iron Curtain, the bifurcation of global space ceased with
the result that the Western state system has become a global power (Shaw 1997).
In other words the state has become more diffuse.
It is clearly
the case that states are changing in response to globalization. States are more
flexible in responding to globalization than nations with the result that
globalization has exercised tremendous pressure on nationstates, that is, on the
relationship between political community and the exercise of legitimate
violence.
THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE PUBLIC SPHERE AND COMMUNICATION
Communication is
central to politics. If the Enlightenment public was based on alleged free
discussion, the public today is based on professional political communication
and mass persuasion through systematic advertising and lobbying: for Mayhew
this amounts to a ‘new public’ (Mayhew 1997).
The public
sphere is now pervaded by what can be called a global public. By this is not
meant a specific public but the global context in which communication is
filtered.
The global is
not outside the social world but is inside it in numerous ways. So it is
possible to see political communication in the public sphere as increasingly
framed by global issues. Political globalization is most visible in terms of
changes in political communication and in the wider transformation of the
public sphere.
THE CENTRALITY OF CIVIL SOCIETY
The ‘civil
societalization’ of politics both reinforces the idea that politics is
increasingly informed by a normative global culture and points to the
transformation of the nation-state as a site of political struggle. In other
words, the ‘civil societalization’ of politics signifies a commonality of
political forms which link the local and the global, the national and the
transnational, and mobilizes a range of actors around common political codes:
competitiveness, sustainability, personhood rights and social justice.
The idea of
civil society resonates most strongly with the democratic need for checks and
balances, in particular the need to ensure that the state does not become too
intrusive or controlling: totalitarianism implies the elimination of civil
society.
Of course,
global civil society is not defi ned in relation to a state. Although there is
no simple consensus on the nature and dynamics of global civil society, we can
say that it commonly refers to a complex of NGO-led political campaigns,
transborder social movements and transnational advocacy networks which have
developed global reach and/or address issues of global concern.
In one sense,
the globalization of civil society follows the same pattern as for democracy,
the nation-state and citizenship: globalization has resulted in the
universalization of territorial norms and practices. In short, the growth of
global civil society is the result of increasing opportunities for interaction
between domestic and international politics.
THE TRANSFORMATION OF SPACES AND BORDERS
The image of a
‘borderless world’ has long been associated with thinking about globalization.
The power of global processes to transcend national borders, annihilate
distance and unite through global catastrophe has provided the globalization
literature with a range of powerful metaphors: the ‘global village’; ‘world
polity’; ‘fragile earth’.
The rescaling of
politics as a consequence of globalization has caused a major reassessment of
the role and meaning of borders and spaces in the construction of polities.
Awareness of the
transformative potential of globalization has encouraged a ‘spatial turn’ in
the social and political sciences (Castells 2000a, 2000b; Thrift 1996). The
idea of a spatial turn denotes an increasing interest in the processes by which
social space is constructed and the way space is constitutive of social and
political relations.
The management
of space is no longer seen as an essential component of polity-building.
Borderlands are
zones of interpenetration which ‘cut across discontinuous systems’ in Sassen’s
(2002) terms. Borders do not necessarily map directly onto territory and states
and they are becoming ‘dispersed’ throughout society (Balibar 2004).
CONCLUSION
In the three
processes outlined here – the universalization of nationally contained models
of democracy, the onset of a global normative culture and the ‘civil
societalization’ of governance structures – we can point to three dilemmas to
which these complex relationships give rise and the implications for the
tension between autonomy and fragmentation.
First, the
globalization of the nation-state, and its model of political membership and
institutionalized governance, has given form to the universal aspiration for
democracy. Wherever democracy exists, democratic deficits are being discovered.
Second, global
normative culture, which has been disseminated by INGOs over a long period of
time and has scripted the development of the nation-state as a global form, has
also acted as a vector for global norms of personhood positing a world of
individuals sustained by human rights law.
Third,
polycentric networks, and in particular the development of global civil
society, create new opportunities for autonomy and the recognition of a range
of new actors and new modes of governance, but, at the same time, can create
new instabilities and dangers.
2. INTERSTING POINT
While studying
in Korea, I had many opportunities to think about the Polycentric
Globalization. South Korea is a divided country, North Korea is socialism and
South Korea is democracy. The interesting thing is that the country has been
divided due to the conflict between the Soviet Union and the United States, and
has been divided into two countries and taking on a different form of political
system. In socialism, even political and civic rights are suppressed, and it is
surprising that South Korea, just below them, is free to speak politics.
3. DISCUSSION
Despite having
such a different political system, South Korea is communicating with each other
physically over the Internet. Currently, South Korea is promising unification
to work together in order to have power around the world, and it is also being
hampered by powerful nations. I want to talk to you about how the superpowers
feel about getting stronger.
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