Module 4: Political Globalization

What is political globalization? Again, let us begin by taking our working definition of globalization, the expansion and intensification of social relations and consciousness across world-time and world-space. Now, defining politics is a bit more difficult. Politics in the domestic sphere is defined as the authoritative allocation of scarce resources in a given political community. It is essentially who gets what, when, why and how. But in international politics, there is a lack of defined authority. The Westphalian state system is anarchical in nature. By anarchical, we simply mean there is no overarching authority above the state, no global government, no single actor that can impose order. This particular anarchical system privileges one particular actor: sovereign states – actors that are recognized as having exclusive jurisdiction within bounded geographical borders. However, the problems that states need to address are not constrained within such bounded geographical borders, necessitating international politics. These are issues of conflict, environmental degradation, economic prosperity, poverty, justice, human rights, migration… the list goes on. However, the situation is complicated by the increased role of other actors. As we saw in module three, TNCs are one of these actors. In future modules we will see other actors such as NGOs that are challenging the privileged position of sovereign states. Therefore, political globalization refers to the intensification and expansion of political interrelations in order to address issues that are global in nature. To understand contemporary political globalization, we need to examine the establishment of the modern state system, the rise of global and regional politics, and the global issues the system is facing today.

The modern state system has controversially been said to have emerged from the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. The argument is that the Peace of Westphalia was a watershed in European politics. The treaty ended the devastating religious wars of the 15^th century. Important for understanding the modern state system is that the treaty had both recognized the territorial boundaries between imperial states in the Holy Roman Empire and the right for the prince of each imperial state to independently determine whether they would worship in the Catholic or Protestant faith.

This has been interpreted by some to be a nascent form of sovereignty and principle of non-intervention. Sovereignty is defined as the supreme authority of a governing body over a given polity, without interference from external actors. Non-intervention, as stated in the UN Charter, is the prohibition of the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state. The Peace of Westphalia established that the princes of the imperial states were the supreme authority in their territories and external powers like the Roman Catholic Church or the Holy Roman Empire were not to intervene in their choice of religion. Critics argue this is giving too much significance to the Peace of Westphalia since the terms sovereignty and non-intervention were not used nor was the intent to legally establish what would become the modern state. However, what is less disputed is that the Peace of Westphalia marks the emergence of nascent states that pushed back the influence of the continental institutions, the Roman Catholic Church and the Holy Roman Empire, as well as powerful local city-states and feudal lords. While the name ‘Westphalian’ state system may be disputed, the defining characteristics of the system are not. What would emerge was a Europe constituted by sovereign states that did not recognize any higher authority. Sovereign states were legally equal in principle; however, the differential in power between states limited this principle in practice.

These early sovereign states were absolutist, locating sovereignty in the monarch who claimed the divine right to rule. The epitome of the absolute monarch is Louis XIV of France.

Key components of these new sovereign states were the ability to enforce order internally and to use force to defend its interests externally. This required a military, which was expensive, and thus required raising funds. In order to raise funds, states had to build a state bureaucracy that could tax their subjects. As Tilly famously argues, this early state making was therefore analogous to an ‘organized crime’ syndicate as they were running a protection racket. They provided security to their subjects in exchange for taxation when often the only threat to these subjects was the state itself. They would use this taxation to fight turf wars with other states to expand, defend, and solidify their borders. Over time, these states monopolized and institutionalized the legitimate use of coercion and taxation; these monopolies democratized, turning subjects into citizens through events like the French and American revolutions. This move from subject to citizen is famously portrayed in the painting Liberty Leading the People by Eugene Delacroix.

The state thus became depersonalized, with sovereignty shifting from the monarch to the state; rule became bureaucratized, rationalized, and institutionalized. Diplomacy between European states deepened and by the 19^th century, congresses and summits became routine means to solve issues between them. The most influential being the Congress of Vienna in 1815, which not only sought to settle the outstanding issues of the Napoleonic Wars, but also to consciously establish a new political order, the Concert of Europe. This is a picture of the delegates at the Congress of Vienna.

This created the long 19^th century of peace between the Great Powers in Europe. That did not mean that peace necessarily existed outside of Europe or vis-à-vis the non-Great Powers. Imperialism and colonialism was happening at the same time. This was a violent exercise in subjugation that spread the European political system around the globe. Early exploration by European states in the 15^th through 19^th centuries was driven by the pursuit of precious metals and luxury goods unavailable at home. Often this meant trading outposts and trade routes though more substantial colonization was occurring in the New World.

But it would evolve into a carving up of the globe into colonial possessions, most voraciously through the scramble for Africa. This map shows the extent of European colonial holdings around the world.

These later colonizing states sought resources, markets, and labour. As seen in previous modules, imperialism and colonization were partially driven by the industrial revolution and the increase of trade. But it was also political, as the European powers became competitive and used colonial possessions and resource extraction as a means to fuel this competition, particularly as the Concert of Europe began to break down. Through the process of colonization, the European state system expanded to encompass the entire globe.

The extension of politics from the state to a globalized form really began in earnest after the First World War. However, the roots of globalized politics were set in the 19^th century. We already introduced the first 19^th century source of globalized politics, The Concert of Europe. The Concert of Europe, which emerged out of the Congress in Vienna in 1815, was a nascent form of global governance. It was not democratic since decision making was in practice restricted to the five Great Powers of Austria, Prussia, Russia, Great Britain, and eventually France. However, the Congress of Vienna and the subsequent Concert of Europe routinized multilateralism, collective diplomacy, and a privileged position for the Great Powers. Another important 19^th century influence on the globalization of politics was the rise of functional agencies to deal with concrete problems including health standards, international mail, and international communications; for example, this led to the creation of the International Telegraph Union in 1865 and the International Postal Union in 1874.

In terms of disarmament, the first Hague Convention was held at the end of the 19^th century. It was attended by both European and non-European powers and for the first time sought to explore options for preventing war in the absence of a pressing conflict. The Hague Conventions would later be supplemented through the Geneva Protocol to prohibit the use of chemical and biological weapons.

In the 20^th century, the first significant extension of politics into the global frame was the establishment of the League of Nations at the close of the First World War in 1919. The League was an intergovernmental organization with three important implications for globalized politics. First, the League was global in that any state could join and remain as long as they followed the rules. Some states like the US never joined, others like Germany and Japan joined but later quit, and still others like the USSR joined but were kicked out. But it was still global in scope.

Second, it introduced the concept of collective security: the idea that world peace could be achieved if all members collectively renounce the use of force; that all agreed an aggressor against one member would be considered an aggressor against all; and that all the members would come to the defence of the one attacked. Third, while the Second World War was evidence of the League’s failure, it had significant successes. It was successful in mitigating non-Great Power territorial conflicts, ranging from Åland (6,500 Islands in the Baltic) to Mosul and as far as away as the border between Columbia and Peru. The League also established standing functional bodies, some of which would survive into the UN, like the Health Organization that would become the WHO, the Permanent Court of International Justice that would become the International Court of Justice, and the International Labour Organization.

The UN would further entrench the extension of politics in the global frame by continuing the quest for political solutions to global issues via intergovernmental institutions. This is summed up in the preamble of the UN Charter:

WE THE PEOPLES OF THE UNITED NATIONS DETERMINED

• to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and
• to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, and
• to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained, and
• to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,

AND FOR THESE ENDS

• to practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbours, and
• to unite our strength to maintain international peace and security, and
• to ensure, by the acceptance of principles and the institution of methods, that armed force shall not be used, save in the common interest, and
• to employ international machinery for the promotion of the economic and social advancement of all peoples,

HAVE RESOLVED TO COMBINE OUR EFFORTS TO ACCOMPLISH THESE AIMS

Accordingly, our respective Governments, through representatives assembled in the city of San Francisco, who have exhibited their full powers found to be in good and due form, have agreed to the present Charter of the United Nations and do hereby establish an international organization to be known as the United Nations.

The UN is composed of six Principal Organs and they map the primary functions of the UN: the Security Council is tasked with the maintenance of international peace and security; the General Assembly which is a universal body and is the main deliberative body within the UN; the Economic and Social Council which recommends economic and social policy to the member states and UN bodies; the International Court of Justice which can settle disputes which members submit to its jurisdiction; the Secretariat which supports the Secretary General and the administration of the UN; and finally, while no longer playing a meaningful role, the Trusteeship Council which was tasked with overseeing the decolonization of dependent territories. These principal organs have set up and in turn been supported by 13 programmes like the UN Development Program, the World Food Program, and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees as well as 15 Specialized Agencies such as the International Labour Organization, the World Health Organization and, the more loosely associated, World Bank Group.

While this all sounds very progressive, the UN has a chequered record of success. Peace and security has not been maintained. Economic development has been marked by striking inequality. Environmental stewardship has been too slow and ineffective. There have been endemic issues of corruption. Some point to the bureaucracy of the UN as the problem; others point to the inconsistency of the mandate between the entrenchment of state sovereignty and the promotion of human rights. One of the main impediments has been the intergovernmental nature of the UN. This means that while the UN provides a platform to discuss and seek solutions to global issues, the decision makers are state representatives who by political necessity view these problems through the lens of national priorities of their respective governments. Nevertheless, it is the most extensive effort to stretch politics into the global frame. There have been meaningful successes, through the World Food Program, the World Health Organization, UNESCO and UNICEF, to name just a few. Each has made significant functional advances in human welfare.

While the UN has been the most global form of politics, there have been regional efforts that have been more transformative. Some regional organizations, like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Mercosur, or the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), are firmly intergovernmental efforts at achieving regional goals, mostly economic in nature.

But the European Union is different. It combines inter-governmental bodies with supranational bodies. Supranationalism means establishing authority above the state. In the EU, sovereignty has been pooled so that certain EU bodies can make decisions in certain policy areas that are automatically incorporated into individual member state law. This is supranational since decision-making resides above the individual member states. An example of this is the European Single Market which was set up to facilitate the free movement of goods, capital, services, and labour across EU borders. Policy for the European Single Market is initiated by the European Commission, who then ask the European Parliament and European Council to draft and negotiate the legislation. Once passed, it automatically enters into the domestic law of the individual member states. However, since the basis of this supranational authority is pooled sovereignty, individual member states can leave the EU if they are unhappy with the arrangement. An example of this is the possible UK withdrawal from the EU, or as it is commonly referred to, BREXIT. While the EU may not be ‘global’, it is a novel regional organisation with supranational authority meant to cope with global issues. It was created to foster peace in Europe after two world wars. Its integration as been driven by a need to be economically competitive in a globalized world as well as to enhance its political and military clout. To these ends, it has been quite successful.

At a generic level, political globalization is a process that is driven by the need to address issues that transcend state borders. At its root, politics is about addressing issues with the resources available in a given community. The particular form of politics that has extended across the globe is rooted in the politics of the European state system that spread globally through imperialism and colonialism. Historically, it emerged out of the 15^th century religious wars, establishing nascent norms around sovereignty and non-intervention. Through European imperialism and globalization, the modern state has been exported to the world. As states began to confront problems that transcended their borders, politics globalized. Early political globalization could be found in the 19^th century organizations that sought to solve functional problems such as telecommunications or health. Later forms of political globalization were more universal and institutionalized, like the League of Nations and later the UN. They sought to pacify international relations and mitigate human misery. In a more limited form the EU was constituted for similar purposes. Today, the world faces a host of issues that transcend state borders. These include environmental degradation, terrorism, poverty, inequality, and human rights, just to name a few. Some of these issues will be discussed in subsequent modules. All of these issues contain an inherent tension between a world divided into bounded political sovereign units, or states, and the need for global political responses. While global institutions exist, some explicitly to deal with these issues, state leaders are responsible to their own population. They want to ensure that any policy will not disproportionately harm their own state’s interests. But when things go really wrong, who will respond? Issues of migration and refugees are a good example of this tension. Some migration is positive, it allows people to seek a better life, send remittances back home, all the while filling labour shortages in the recipient state. Even small crises can often be handled by neighbouring countries and/or UN bodies that provide protection, food, and shelter until they are able to return home. However, when migration turns into a human tsunami, who can help? What resources are available? When a state implodes, as contemporary Syria has, who picks up the pieces? What political solutions are operating at the global level? Too often we sit in the comfort of our homes and rationalize away the deprivations of ‘others’. We see terrible things happening in far away places but it is too big, too unfathomable to really comprehend. There will not be a technological solution to the Syrian refugee crisis nor an economic one. It must be a political response at the global level. The question of political globalization is how such a response will be crafted, why, by whom, and to what end.

The Peace of Westphalia was arguably a watershed in European politics. The treaty ended the devastating religious wars of the 15^th century. Important for understanding the modern state system is that the treaty had both recognized the territorial boundaries between imperial states in the Holy Roman Empire and the right for the prince of each imperial state to independently determine whether they would worship in the Catholic or Protestant faith. This has been interpreted by some to be a nascent form of sovereignty and principle of non-intervention.

As the early state carved out its power, authority, and legitimacy between the Roman Catholic Church and the Holy Roman Empire, it required a well-equipped military. This required money. The state institutionalized taxation and the bureaucracy needed to run it. The state justified this taxation by providing security to their subjects in exchange. However, often the only threat to these subjects was the state itself, in essence the state was running a classic protection racket: a scheme whereby a group, in this case the state, provides protection to businesses or other groups through violence.

Collective Security is the idea that world peace could be achieved if all members collectively renounce the use of force; that all agreed an aggressor against one member would be considered an aggressor against all; and that all the members would come to the defence of the one attacked. This was the first significant attempt to seek a global solution to conflict. It was ultimately unsuccessful as proven by World War Two.

The European Union is a regional organization that combines inter-governmental bodies with supranational bodies. Supranationalism means establishing authority above the state. In the EU, sovereignty has been pooled so that certain EU bodies can make decisions in certain policy areas that are automatically incorporated into individual member state law. This is supranational since decision-making resides above the individual member states. An example of this is the European Single Market which was set up to facilitate the free movement of goods, capital, services, and labour across EU borders. Policy for the European Single Market is initiated by the European Commission, who then ask the European Parliament and European Council to draft and negotiate the legislation. Once passed, it automatically enters into the domestic law of the individual member states. This is significant as it challenges the concept of European sovereignty.

The Syrian refugee crisis is an ultimate test of globalized politics. It stresses regional neighbours who have to disproportionately bear the refugee flows. However, it is such a large issue that it is impacting states as far away as Germany, the US, and Canada. The question becomes who is responsible to address this tsunami of humanity? Who has the resources to do so? Legally? The answer is… we don’t know. And that is the significance of the Syrian refugee crisis to political globalization. The global problems we face require global political solutions that we don’t have.