An Evolutionary Theory of Globalization

Abstract

Two major flaws characterize most globalization studies: the tendency to interpret current social, economic, and political transformations as unique and unprecedented occurrences in human history as well as a limited focus on the perceived agents of these transformation. The lack of attention not only to a broader historical but also to a structural context is the reason why many existing globalization analyses misrepresent, misunderstand, and misinterpret current transformations. Another limitation concerns their focus on a limited set of actors or processes as a result of their paradigmatic orientation, especially in the International Relations literature. Whereas liberals will focus mostly on group actors such as multinational corporations, and other nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and intergovernmental organizations as primary actors of transformative change, realists will center their analysis of globalization around states as the core actors, just as Marxist and post-Marxist approaches will favor an analysis primarily based on the unequal structure of the world system. While all these approaches provide useful insights into individual parts of the globalization, they lack a comprehensive, multilayered view of the entire global system process.KeywordsEvolutionary TheoryGlobal SystemInternal NetworkExternal NetworkWorld SystemThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.