Abstract
Globalisation is a multidimensional phenomenon and should be conceptualised as a process rather than an outcome. Economic, political, cultural and societal elements are involved in the complex set of interactions we can-define as globalisation. However, a key factor, which is frequently ignored is the importance of politics in shaping and guiding this process. For example economic liberalisation and deregulation, the form which economic globalisation has thus far taken, did not emerge from impersonal market and technological forces. Governments, especially those of the United States and Great Britain, followed explicit policies of currency controls relaxation, the reduction in trade barriers, and the retreat in the role of the state in the economy generally. Despite the power of the economic forces thus released, politics remains a key potential player and globalisation is not necessarily irreversible. Given the indeterminacy of the outcomes of globalisation, four alternative theories of the future are presented and analysed.
Highlights
Globalisation has since the early 1990s become one of the most frequently used concepts in the social sciences! and is a strong contender for the most commonly used term in the public debates
Social science methodology confirms that a concept that purports to explain everything explains nothing
Protestors representing a wide range of diverse views and operating from such geographically distant cities as Seattle and Genoa, mobilise against its alleged evils while bureaucrats from the International Monetary Fund
Summary
Globalisation has since the early 1990s become one of the most frequently used concepts in the social sciences! and is a strong contender for the most commonly used term in the public debates. The most important of the existing trends can be said to be: the discontinuities between economic globalisation and the state system; the rapid pace of technological change; the power and spread of Western ideas; and the tentative emergence ofa nascent global civil society While all of these would require a rigorous analysis, this is not possible for the scope of this article. Neo-realists see the contemporary world as in large part the creation of the major players, especially the United States and Great Britain To put it in the words of Susan Strange, these major powers had "structural power", i.e., ''the power to decide how things shall be done, the power to shape frameworks within which states relate to each other, relate to people, or relate to corporate enterprises"13 With the end of the cold war they perceived that their interests, and those of their citizens, would be served by a liberal economic order. Thirty six of the sixty states required for its establishment have ratified the proposaL I f it is established it will represent a major advance in giving meaning, through possible retribution, to the commitment to the protection of global human rights
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