Globalism Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Globalism is a ubiquitous term often used in a sloppy manner to describe general globalizing trends as well as particular systems of ideas and values connected to various globalization processes. For purposes of analytical clarity, however, it is useful to distinguish between globalism, a political ideology that endows globalization with certain norms, values, and meanings—and globalization, a multidimensional set of social processes that extend and intensify social interdependencies across the globe. This distinction is not meant to suggest that globalism (the ideational package) exists in isolation from globalization (the material process). The complexity of actual social life admits to no such thing as political ideas and values isolated from their socioeconomic context and their institutional manifestations. But it is crucial not to lose sight of the considerable role played by ideas, beliefs, language, and symbols in shaping the conditions of the social world. A focus on the ideological dimensions of globalization allows a more extensive analysis of the production and worldwide circulation of ideas and norms.

Globalism, then, refers to powerful ideologies ranging across the left-right political spectrum both in support of and in opposition to the project of extending a free-market model of capitalism to all regions of the world. The dominant variant of globalism focuses on the concept of the “market.” To be sure, the wide-ranging preeminence of “market” harkens back to the heyday of liberalism in mid-Victorian England. And yet, the fundamental difference is that the idea of the market has moved beyond the political framework of national economies to an expanded vision of an integrated global economic exchange. In other words, while the grand ideologies of modernity—liberalism, conservatism, socialism—expressed a largely prereflexive national imaginary in compressed form as explicit political doctrine, the focus of the political belief systems in the early twenty-first century is the political articulation of a global imaginary. Naturally, the principal types of globalism contain some ideational components of the grand ideologies. However, most of these old concepts have been rearranged and hybridized with new concepts into novel ideational structures.

The public interpretation of the origin, direction, and meaning of the profound social changes that go by the name of globalization has fallen disproportionately to global social elites composed of executives of large transnational firms, corporate lobbyists, journalists, public relations specialists, intellectuals writing to a large public audience, state bureaucrats, politicians, and cultural celebrities. The public advocacy of market globalism involves five ideological claims that recur with great regularity.

Claim #1: Globalization is about the liberalization and global integration of markets. This claim is anchored in the liberal ideal of the self-regulating market as the normative basis for a future global order. The liberalization and integration of global markets are presented as both desirable and “natural” phenomena that promote individual liberty and material progress in the world.

Claim #2: Globalization is inevitable and irreversible. According to this assertion, globalization involves a spread of irreversible market forces driven by technological innovations that make the worldwide integration of national economies inevitable. The portrayal of globalization as some sort of natural force suggests that people must adapt to the discipline of the market if they are to survive and prosper.

Claim #3: Nobody is in charge of globalization. The claim of inevitability contains yet another implication. If the natural laws of the market have indeed preordained the course of history, then globalization does not reflect the arbitrary agenda of a particular social class or group. In that case, certain social elites are not in charge of globalization, but markets and technology are.

Claim #4: Globalization benefits everyone. This claim lies at the very core of market globalism, because it provides an affirmative answer to the crucial normative question of whether globalization should be considered a good or a bad thing. Market globalists assert that free trade and open markets provide the best prospect for creating jobs, spurring economic growth, and raising living standards around the world. While market globalists typically acknowledge the existence of unequal global distribution patterns, they insist that the market itself will eventually correct some of these “irregularities.”

Claim #5: Globalization furthers the spread of democracy in the world. This claim is rooted in the assertion that free markets and democracy are two sides of the same coin. Persistently affirmed as “common sense,” the actual compatibility of these two conditions remains nonetheless an open question.

The five central claims of market globalism constitute the foundation of a powerful wide-ranging regime that bestows political meaning on the process of globalization. Although market globalism has become the preeminent ideology of our time, it is worth remembering that no single ideational system ever enjoys absolute dominance. Even a hegemonic ideology contains small fissures and contradictions that threaten to turn into major cracks when confronted by persistent dissent. As both the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and the massive ant globalist protests since the late 1990s have shown, market globalism is increasingly challenged by social justice globalism and populist globalism—two ideologies that disseminate alternative meanings of globalization. And yet, these ideological challengers share with market globalism their common embeddedness in an overarching social imaginary centered on the global rather than the national. And so it appears that far from moving toward an “end of ideology,” the twenty-first century constitutes a teeming battlefield of clashing globalisms.

Bibliography:

Barber, Benjamin. Jihad vs. McWorld: How Globalism and Tribalism are Reshaping the World. New York: Ballantine Books, 1996.
Friedman,Thomas L. The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization. New York: Anchor Books, 2000.
Hovden, Eivind, and Edward Keene, eds. The Globalization of Liberalism. New York: Palgrave, 2002.
Rupert, Mark. Ideologies of Globalization: Contending Visions of a New World Order. London: Routledge, 2000.
Saul, John Ralston. The Collapse of Globalism. New York: Penguin, 2005.
Steger, Manfred B. Globalisms:The Great Ideological Struggle of the Twenty-First Century. 3rd ed. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2009.
Rethinking Globalism. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2004.
Yergin, Daniel, and Joseph Stanislaw. The Commanding Heights: The Battle Between Government and the Marketplace That Is Remaking the Modern World. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1998.

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