Globalization and Politics

Abstract

Perhaps the most common claim associated with the literature around globalization is the assertion that globalization entails the demise of the nation-state, summarized in notions such as an emerging ‘borderless world’ and a ‘hollow state’ (Cohen and Kennedy, 2000). The power and mobility of global finance and multinational corporations, the cultural fragmentation of national populations, the emergence of powerful agents of governance at supra-national and local levels, citizen disaffection from electoral politics, and the growth of global civil society, are all viewed as wearing away at the power or efficacy of the state. In addition, a crucial problem pointed to by critics of globalization is that, as Martin and Schumann (1998: 211) put it, economics appears to be devouring politics. At the same time, many commentators find signs that growing world interconnectedness is bringing with it new and encouraging political tendencies that promise to invigorate democracy and cosmopolitanism. The questions of the fate of the political and of democracy in a globalizing world are, then, the pivotal considerations of this chapter.