Sociology. Anthony Giddens
that define that school’s approach. We will take each wave in turn.
Hyperglobalizers
First-wave hyperglobalizers view globalization as a very real, ongoing process with wide-ranging consequences that is producing a new global order, swept along by powerful flows of cross-border trade and production. Ohmae (1990, 1995) sees globalization leading to a ‘borderless world’ in which market forces are more powerful than national governments. A large part of this argument rests on the idea that nation-states are losing the power to control their own destiny. Rodrik (2011) argues that individual countries no longer oversee their economies because of the vast growth in world trade, while governments are increasingly unable to exercise authority over volatile world financial markets, investment decisions, increasing migration, environmental dangers or terrorist networks. Citizens also recognize that politicians have limited ability to address these problems and, as a result, lose faith in existing systems of national governance.
The hyperglobalization argument suggests that national governments are caught in a pincer movement, being challenged from above (by regional and international institutions, such as the European Union and the World Trade Organization) and from below (by international protest movements, global terrorism and a lot of talk about something that is quite longstanding, while many of the changes described are not ‘global’ at all (Hirst et al., 2009). For example, current levels of economic interdependence are not unprecedented. Nineteenth-century statistics on world trade and investment lead some to argue that contemporary globalization differs from the past only in the intensity of interactions between nation-states. If so, then it is more accurate to talk of ‘internationalization’ rather than globalization, and this also preserves the idea that nation-states have been and are likely to continue as the central political actors. For instance, Thompson (in Hirst et al., 2009) argues that, during the 2008 ‘global’ financial crisis, it was actually national governments and citizens’ initiatives). Taken together, these shifts signal the dawning of an age in which a global consciousness develops and the influence of national governments declines (Albrow 1997). One consequence is that sociologists will have to be weaned off the concept of ‘society’, which has conventionally meant the bounded nation-state. Urry (2000) has argued that sociology needs to develop a ‘post-societal’ agenda rooted in the study of global networks and multiple flows across national borders.
Table 4.4 Conceptualizing globalization: three tendencies/waves
Source: Adapted from Held et al. (1999: 10).
Sceptics
Second-wave arguments are rooted in the sceptical view that globalization is overstated. Most globalization theories, say sceptics, amount to regulatory systems that stepped in as ‘lender-of-last-resort’ to protect their own economies. National governments remain key players because they are involved in regulating and coordinating economic activity, and some are driving through trade agreements and policies to promote economic liberalization.
Sceptics agree that there may be more contact between countries than in previous eras, but there is insufficient integration to constitute a single, global economy. This is because the bulk of trade occurs within just three regional groups – Europe, Japan/East Asia and North America – rather than in a genuinely global context. The countries of the European Union, for example, trade predominantly among themselves, and the same is true of the other regional groups, thereby invalidating the concept of a global economy (Hirst 1997).
As a result, many sceptics focus on processes of regionalization within the world economy, including the emergence of regional financial and trading blocs. Indeed, the growth of regionalization is evidence that the world economy has become less rather than more integrated (Boyer and Drache 1996; Hirst et al. 2009). Compared with the patterns of trade that prevailed a century ago, the world economy is actually less global in its geographical scope and more concentrated in intense pockets of activity. In this sense, hyperglobalizers are just misreading the historical evidence.
Transformationalists
Transformationalists take a position somewhere between those of sceptics and hyperglobalizers, contending that globalization is breaking down established boundaries between the internal and the external, the international and the domestic. Yet many older patterns remain, and national governments retain a good deal of power and influence. Rather than losing sovereignty, nation-states are restructuring and pooling it in response to new forms of economic and social organization that are non-territorial (Thomas 2007). These include corporations, social movements and international bodies. The transformationalist argument is that we no longer live in a state-centric world, but states are adopting a more active, outward-looking stance towards governance under complex conditions of globalization (Rosenau 1997).
On this argument, it is also wrong to see fullblown globalization as inevitable or beyond the control of citizens and governments. In fact, globalization is a dynamic, open process that is subject to many influences and is constantly changing. On this view, globalization proceeds in an uneven and often contradictory fashion, encompassing tendencies that operate in opposition to each another (Randeria 2007). There is a two-way flow of images, information and influences from the global to the local, but also in the opposite direction. Global migration, international tourism, mass media and telecommunications contribute to the diffusion of widely varying cultural influences, and the world’s vibrant ‘global cities’, such as London, New York and Tokyo, are thoroughly multicultural, with ethnic groups and cultures intersecting, sharing and living side by side (Sassen 1991).
In summary, transformationalists view globalization as a decentred, reflexive process characterized by links and cultural flows that work in a multidirectional way. Because it is the outcome of numerous intertwined global networks, it is not driven by the USA (Americanization), ‘the West’ (Westernization) or any other part of the world (Held et al. 1999). Nor is globalization a new form of colonialism or imperialism, as the process is open to influence from every part of the world. However, Osterhammel and Petersson (2005) argue that we should use the term ‘globalization’ only when relations across the world have acquired ‘a certain degree of regularity and stability and where they affect more than tiny numbers of people.’ In the future, global networks and relationships must develop into global institutions if the process is to become more permanent and the dominant factor in shaping human affairs.
Globalization, regionalization or something else?
The 2008 global financial crisis brought home some of the risks inherent in an emerging ‘borderless economy’. In the European Union, huge economic bailouts of the Republic of Ireland, Cyprus, Greece and Portugal led to renewed questioning of the single currency and the logic of ‘ever closer union’. Is this an early sign that a gradual centrifugal tendency towards looser integration has begun to take hold in the EU? Have two major global crises of the twenty-first century – the 2008 financial crash and the 2019–20 pandemic – shown that citizens still turn to their own nation-states for solutions rather than relying on supranational bodies?
In many European countries there has been a backlash against increasing migration into Europe and the principle of freedom of movement within the EU. Recent years have seen the rise and electoral success of populist, nationalist parties in Hungary, Slovakia, Poland and the Czech Republic (Gosling 2019). In 2016, concern about large-scale immigration from EU countries was also a factor in the UK’s vote to leave the EU, as many voters favoured additional controls over the level and type of inward migration. The kind of borderless world forecast by hyberglobalizers is at odds with a continuing identification with ‘the nation’ and rising nationalist sentiment in politics.
Right-wing political movements and parties prioritize national identity over any benefits globalization may bring,