Globalisation, dismantler of governments?

Recently, a friend and I have been talking about the effects of globalisation and whether this is a good or a bad thing. On the one hand, I held that it was a good thing, and that perhaps finally, globalisation could be a key control mechanism for creating a just economic equilibrium for the people of the world. My friend on the other hand, saw it as a limited control, and that the world would not change very much between now and the time that we depart it. Time, of course, will tell. Globalisation though, is a very complex subject, and not really one to have over a few beers on a wednesday night.

Related to this though, and not long after the conversation with my friend, I was tasked with writing about globalisation towards the degree that I'm studying for. During the course of this, running through the course materials, it seemed to me that another equally interesting story was unfolding, one which few people talk about - globalisation eroding the power of national governments. Rather than reiterate the whole story again here, I thought I'd just paste the original essay onto the page and save myself a whole heap of typing. So take a look, and shock yourselves at the lack of control that is developing within our nation states ...

Globalisation, although arguably a concept that has been around for centuries, has really come to the fore of popular thought during the last 50 years as its extent has grown beyond all expectation. It's a term that has become so popular that its use has often been misplaced, yet it does never-the-less accurately cover a huge number of global interactions between nation states.

People often think of globalisation in purely economic terms, but there is much more to globalisation than the stretching of economies across the globe. Globalisation is used to describe the transfer of trade, raw money, culture, pollution, information and indeed people all around the world. This, to some degree, has been done by humans for millennia, yet in the last 50 years this global activity has simply exploded in volume and has become a large part of everyday life.

Certain phenomena, such as the Internet, have few constraints and have become widespread simply because of their eminent practical uses with little or no interference from national governments. Other phenomena, such a trade agreements, require the explicit and detailed co-operation between governments in order to make global exchanges possible. In this, global, or geo politics has been born where the national politics of governments has grown to encompass the wider politics involved at the global level.

Such geo politics have introduced new structures and mechanisms within governments to make these global interactions possible, such as new departments at Whitehall in London specifically to deal with global issues - attached, but often operating independently to, equivalent domestic departments.

The command and control of these departments has become a major problem for most governments as the complexity of global issues is little understood outside of the specific government departments that deal directly with such issues - often leaving their domestic counterparts semi-blind to the global picture with a poor understanding of what is really going on at that level.

Further complicating the picture of control, with recent devolution occurring within the UK, new centres of power have emerged all around the UK that form their own global connections to the wider world. Taking the EU as an example, agents from other countries within the EU not only communicate with government departments, but also communicate separately with these new devolved powers within the UK, bypassing central government altogether.

In another step in the erosion of control, organisations completely separate to the government, such as inter-governmental organisations like UNICEF and the WHO, often hold international summits with representatives from different countries where agreements are made completely outside of direct government control.

All of these features of modern global co-operation and geo politics, though seemingly desirable by national governments as they evidently allow them to exist, have served to chip away at the power of central government control. The problem it seems is largely one of management - when it comes to global issues, central government just cannot handle the complexity of the issues concerned and therefore delegates power to those that can.

In addition to these problems of government control, the rise of non-governmental organisations and the sublime ease of international communications has led to a whole new era of co-operation between people in different countries; acting to solve problems and improve processes completely outside of any government involvement. In essence, it has become far more difficult now for any civilised government to control its population with respect to global relations than it was even perhaps only 25 years ago.

As a small example of this, Greenpeace recently enabled the global population, with the use of communications technology and the Internet, to protest at an individual level to the whaling people in Ulsan, South Korea, about their plans for increasing whaling activity. These individual protests from people from all around the globe were organised and funnelled by Greenpeace directly into Korea - effectively, and without any interference. Not only did the protest take place and gave people a voice, but indeed it resulted in changing the direction of Korea's whaling people, regardless of any national policies and strategies that individual governments may have had. The world's people spoke for themselves, irrespective of their governments, and changed the actions of a government halfway around the world.

The story is not all bad for government though - it does have some measure of control over global exchanges and these are often seen in the economic and trade arena. However, even when trans-national global agreements work well and governments agree to co-operate with each other to the benefit of all, this global co-operation is not without its problems. Trade agreements that open borders and banking procedures that ease the transfer of money can not only be used for the good of the countries concerned, but it can also abused in ways that perhaps were not anticipated by the original participants of the agreements. In the UK for example, relaxed border controls combined with the flexibility of modern banking systems have made is easier than ever to traffic drugs into the country and subsequently launder the profits away from prying eyes. In making trade with other countries easier, the UK government has effectively reduced its own ability to control the drugs problem within its borders.

Nation states that adopt globalisation then become part of what is generally known as 'global governance'. This term is related to the control issues that we've already discussed, and describes the dispersed government and control of global commodities and policies within and through nation states. The issue of who holds the power within global governance is contested between the three main ideological groups that are linked with globalisation - the inter-nationalists, the globalists and the transformationalists.

Inter-nationalists believe that global governance is mostly hegemonic, in that the most powerful nation states within the global arena continue to use their force and influence as if global structures didn't even exist and continue to behave as individual nation states. There have been many examples of where this sort of behaviour has been seen in recent years, especially in military matters. When in 1999 the UN Security Council failed to reach agreement and ruled out military intervention in the former Yugoslavia, the US and the UK used NATO as a political device in order for them to proceed with military force in that direction - irrespective of the UN and completely disregarding the organisation. Similarly, when there was much disagreement within the UN Security Council about whether to go to war with Iraq in 2003, again, the US and the UK proceeded with their own military action using very flimsy evidence and highly suspect legality when they invaded Iraq. Here we can see that the inter-nationalist view certainly holds water in most areas of globalisation, but it can be questionable when it comes to economic matters.

Globalists view the world economy, based on the capitalist model, as a force that is very difficult to control by individual governments, regardless of their power status. Global economic systems, whether trade, banking or otherwise, are so interconnected and bound up with one another on a continual basis, that problems in one area soon propagate around the world in an uninhibited manner. Decisions made within large corporate entities can also have massive effects upon a country, outside of any real government control. Taking the common practice within the UK of displacing work to countries where labour is cheap; when such jobs are transferred the losses within the UK may amount to many tens of thousands and affect the UK economy significantly. This of course is in complete contrast to the increased profits seen by the companies who transferred the work abroad. Therefore, the globalists' view of power being held by corporate empires whose only goal is profit-seeking fits the global economic picture very neatly - calling into question the inter-nationalists view in this particular area.

Transformationalists argue that power is in the hands of the people, not the governments, of both nation states and the world at large. While this is true to some degree of course, taking the whaling example we referred to earlier, it runs in parallel to other sources of power within global governance and it certainly does not tell the whole story in itself. Even within direct government control, governments are still accountable to their population, and highly unpopular policies will surely come back to haunt them. Therefore, people power can be heard both within and without individual governments and it plays a large part in global governance.

Whether a country opens itself up to global governance and avoids ineffective protectionism is a choice for each government to make, but it is becoming increasingly difficult for governments to do anything other than agree to accept it. Though with this acceptance must come resignation, in accepting globalisation into your government and country, you also relinquish control and agree to that compromise. Modern 'globalised' governments have to accept that control is taken from above in the form of inter-governmental organisations, from the side in the form of multi-lateral agreements with other countries which often involves compromise, and from below in the form of domestically devolved power involved in global exchanges. Paradoxically, while the initial choice for globalisation might seem to open up avenues for governments and give them more options, a government in this situation can eventually find itself too small to solve the big problems, while also being too large to solve the small ones.

As for the question regarding equilibrium for the world's population? Well, with little direct government control, who can tell? With power to control dispersed to so many locations, the answer to this question will likely only show itself through the passage of time.

[Posted 08/01/2006]