Globalization and the Contentious Politics of Unemployment: Towards Denationalization and Convergence?

Abstract

We are all inclined to think today that processes of globalization have a strong impact on national political structures and processes. Most commonly, we refer to a gradual transnationalization of economic, political and cultural reality at the national and local level that poses a challenge to national political institutions and public policies, political contentions and national identities. As scholarly literature in sociology and political science has argued recurrently, these processes do not necessarily threaten established nation-states as such, but undermine their political autonomy and power. The nation-state seems to lose its ability to set policy agendas and to define, formulate and implement related public policies, due to the increasing importance of international institutions and regimes on the global and European level (e.g. the United Nations, the World Trade Organization or the World Bank, or the European Union). This development entails a trend toward increasing similarities across countries in certain political fields. The former issue can be referred to as the denationalization thesis, the latter as the convergence thesis. Both issues are assumed to be aspects of a more general trend toward the transnationalization of political processes and structures at the national level.