POLITICAL GLOBALIZATION

Prepared by:Geraldine B. Relles

IV-6 BEED

Political Globalization

- refers to an increasing trend toward multilateralism (in which the United Nations plays a key role), toward an emerging ‘transnational state apparatus,’ and toward the emergence of national and international nongovernmental organizations that act as watchdogs over governments and have increased their activities and influence”

Political Globalization involves various actors like Global Political Institutions and Non-Governmental Organizations that try to deal with Global Issues.

Global Political Issues • Terrorism• Climate Change• Disease• International Business• International Crime

Obviously, these issues are beyond state control. Each state can only do so much by itself, and cooperating with other states can be difficult at times. For this reason, global political institutions are developed in an effort to help create global goals for all states and to coordinate or manage international efforts. Some of these institutions include:

• The International Monetary Fund• The World Health Organization• The World Trade Organization• The United Nations

NON-GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS (NGOS)In addition to international institutions, many non-

governmental organizations (NGOs) have emerged in the wake of Globalization. Some of the more well-known organizations include:

• Amnesty International• Free The Children• Greenpeace• Oxfam

THE EFFECTS OF POLITICAL GLOBALIZATION

The effects of Political Globalization are also argued to cause harm towards Democracy and the state’s ability to Govern. As Globalization continues, international institutions emerge like the United Nations, World Health Organization, and International Monetary Fund.Large institutions such as these are created in an effort to help deal with worldwide problems. The issue with them is the fact that they are not accountable to any specific group of individuals. This means that the decisions they make may impact certain individuals in a harmful way, yet the people will not be able to use any political powers to take action against such decisions.

TECHNOLOGICAL GLOBALIZATION

In nearly every corner of the world, from Mumbai to Madrid, one cannot enter a café or walk down the street without seeing someone talking, texting, or surfing the Internet on their cell phones, laptop or PDA. Information Technology (IT) has become ubiquitous and is changing every aspect of how people live their lives. Recent advances in our ability to communicate and process information in digital form— a series of developments sometimes described as an "IT revolution"— are reshaping the economies and societies of many countries around the world.

The spread of IT and its applications has been extraordinarily rapid.

- Just 20 years ago, for example, the use of desktop personal computers was still limited to a fairly small number of technologically advanced people. The overwhelming majority of people still produced documents with typewriters, which permit no manipulation of text and offer no storage.

- 15 years ago, large and bulky mobile telephones were carried only by a small number of users in just a few U.S. cities. Today, half of all Americans use a mobile phone, and in some developing countries, mobile phones are used by more people than the fixed line telephone network.

- But perhaps most dramatically, just ten years ago, only scientists were using, or had even heard about, the Internet, the World Wide Web was not up and running and the browsers that help users navigate the web had not even been invented yet.

- Today, of course, the Internet and the Web have transformed commerce, creating entirely new ways for retailers and their customers to make transactions, for businesses to manage the flow of production inputs and market products, and for job seekers and job-recruiters to find each other.

The IT revolution has been driven by the extraordinarily rapid decline in the cost and rapid increase in the processing power of digital technologies.

Technology plays an important role in contemporary globalization. Most observers argue that technology is a force for integration, making the world a smaller, better place. Technology, it is said, brings "good things to life." This is true, but only in part. New technology also plays a role that few people consider. It may contribute to integration, but it also may result in economic and political disintegration, a process that distances people living in different parts of the world. A brief review of some recent developments illustrates the diverse social consequences of contemporary technology.

Consider the technological developments associated with the communications revolution. Fiber-optic cable and wireless technologies have transformed telecommunications in recent years. By most accounts, these technologies have made it easier and less expensive for people to talk with family, friends, and business associates, and to do so while on the move, from great distances. Many have argued that they have contributed to what Marshall McLuhan called the "global village." But these technologies have had other, less obvious consequences. The introduction of new communications technologies contributed to the substitution of these technologies for old ones and resulted in the dematerialization of the raw materials used in their manufacture. And this trend in turn has resulted in falling prices and a whole series of economic and social problems for the producers of raw materials in the periphery, that is poor countries across Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, and South Asia.

EXAMPLES OF SUBSTITUTION AND DEMATERIALIZATION

For more than a century, communication technology relied on copper cable to carry the electric impulses generated by telegraph and telephone machines. Then in the 1970s, scientists at Corning Glass began developing glass fiber that could transmit laser light efficiently enough to make wave guides, what we now call fiber-optic cables, that could carry telephone, television, and computer transmissions. More recently, in the 1980s and 1990s, microwave cell-phone and satellite technologies made it possible to communicate without wires made of either copper or fiber-glass. Fiber-optic and wireless technologies contributed to the process of technological substitution, replacing old, copperwire-based systems with new glass and microwave mediums.Not surprisingly, the advent of new communications technologies reduced the demand for copper, a mineral mined in countries such as Chile and Zambia. At about the same time, during the 1970s and 1980s, environmental advocates and business leaders began worrying about the use of nonrenewable resources such as copper and oil and adopted recycling technologies as a strategy to preserve and prolong the use of natural resources.

In general, new technologies have weakened or reduced the global demand for many minerals, raw materials, and agricultural products. As demand for these goods has fallen, either as a result of substitution or dematerialization or both, prices have fallen. Since the 1980s, worldwide commodity prices for raw materials have fallen by more than half. This is the biggest decline since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Falling prices are a problem for producers in any country, but they are a particular problem when these revenues are a country's only source of income. Zambia does not produce and export anything of value besides copper. The Dominican Republic and the Philippines rely almost exclusively on sugar cane and tropical oils to earn money overseas. Oil is the only export of value for Nigeria and Saudi Arabia. So when world demand for raw materials weakens and prices fall, these countries face a series of problems.

Falling prices and the decline of raw-materials industries also contributed to a second set of related problems. Countries sell goods abroad not because they enjoy it, but because they use the money that they earn from sales of copper, oil, or sugar to purchase goods which they cannot make themselves. So when export earnings decline, they have to reduce their purchases of foreign goods, some of them - food, medicine, machinery, or oil - essential to their health and well-being. They might try to borrow money from international banks and lending agencies to purchase goods that they need, but their ability to repay their debts depends on their capacity to sell the stuff that they can export. The problem is that the value of their exports has steadily fallen in recent years. Under these conditions, it is difficult for them to borrow money or repay debt.

No one doubts that new technologies have provided real and substantial benefits: mobile and inexpensive phone systems; fuel efficiency and energy conservation; cheap and, in some cases, healthier food products. It is easy to imagine, then, that because these new technologies benefit businesses and consumers in the core, they must also benefit others. But this is not necessarily the case. To appreciate why this difference might be so, it is important to consider the economic and social consequences of technologies that allow widespread substitution and dematerialization.