Deconstructing Globalization?

Stuart Lenig

International Political Economy

Professor Harris

UNG

November 29, 2018

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Deconstructing Globalization?

The other day my wife asked me to install a security light in the garage. She

wanted her elderly father to have light to see as he climbed the steps out of the garage.

Dutifully, I climbed a ladder, positioned the screws for the light, and in the midst of

screwing in the screws, they broke. We were stunned. I muttered, “cheap Chinese parts

from Walmart, I guess.” I thought about my complaint. I contemplated, ‘was this the

fault or dilemma of globalization?’, a diminishing of products to the cheapest level

possible, carried out by the poorest people on Earth, or an inexorable race to the bottom,

problematically dragging down average wages, eroding the middle class, and ending

Western Hegemony? A bit dire. At the same time I recognized that, on the other hand,

our global supply chain makes it possible to create complex products (like the Apple

IMac that I am currently using, and other computers), build and assemble them in

multiple locations, reduce costs, efficiently use resources, quickly ship them to

international markets, feed our knowledge-based society, and keep the Western-

developed countries competitive. Clearly, understanding globalization is difficult and

made more distressing by the many various and contrasting definitions of what exactly,

constitutes globalization. Professors Armstrong-Williams and Harris described the

problematic complexity of the issue when they wrote that, “globalization as a theory is

such a large undertaking, a meta-theory, which attempts to explain social, cultural,

geographic, economic, and political characteristics of the present international system.”

(2) Attempting to unpack such a complex and integrated series of concerns in some

reasonable and comprehensible package is difficult and arriving at a common meaning,

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nearly impossible.

Still many have tried to define globalization and its multifaceted dimensions.

What do different people mean by the term? Simon Reich pursues the idea of

globalization from four different perspectives in his, “What is Globalization?” for the

Kellogg Institute. He begins with the notion that globalization is a historical epoch

dating, “from the end of the 1970s and the beginning of the ensuing decade.’ (Reich, 9)

He sees this as a time of transition to the Reagan/Thatcher era after a time of “political

paralysis and lethargy.” (Reich 9) Secondly, he refers to globalization as “a confluence of

economic phenomena,” that can be described by multiple effects on the world economy

including, “the liberalization and deregulation of markets… and the integration of capital

markets.” (Reich, 10) Most of these seem like practical effects of countries operating

under the same market conditions and rules in a world-trading regime. The third

definition is, “the convergence…towards liberal democracy and modernity defined as

industrialized economic development—one that involves the characteristic features of a

limited state apparatus.” (Reich 13) He refers to this as a hegemony of American cultural

values. His final definition is of a social and technological revolutionary time in which,

“this is a comprehensive and complex vision: of globally integrated production; … of the

rapid privatization of state assets; and of the inextricable linkage of technology across

conventional national borders.” (Reich 18)

Still Reich’s massive vision of globalization invokes Armstrong-Williams and

Harris’ concept of a ‘meta-theory,’ something so mythic, inclusive, and monumental as to

be difficult to define and explain simply. Thus consequences of a global economy are far-

reaching and too complex to address well in a short paper, but here I wanted to look at

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the impact of the terms globalism and globalization as they are used by two scholars.

Then I wanted to consider how these ideas might impact our knowledge-based economy.

First, let’s consider Robert Gilpin’s state-centric realist vision of globalization and

compare it to L. M. H. Ling’s globalist/worldist, feminist, and post-colonial vision of

globalism. I have chosen these two scholars for several reasons. Both recently passed on,

but they cast long shadows on the study of global economies and IR cultures. Secondly,

they wrote widely and articulated strong views on the globalization issue. And finally

their ideas are extremely divergent and uniquely their own, they wrote well, and

expressed themselves clearly, and oddly, they held some commonalities in their opinions.

One issue, before we proceed is deleting things that are often ascribed to

globalization but often do not fit. Professors Armstrong-Williams and Harris explain

what globalization was not. To them it avoided westernization, it was not a liberalizing of

trade, nor did it function to universalize or internationalize the IPE, and in the end they

concluded that it really wasn’t even that new. For them, the convergence of international

economies has been a factor, “since the beginning of time.” (9)

Also before addressing these scholars, it might benefit us to see globalization in a

simpler but more positive light. Thomas Friedman’s The World is Flat postulated that

elements of globalization, while often annoying, (like my security light incident) could

benefit the world through unforeseen alliances and the reduction of conflict. Friedman

postulated a MacDonald’s theory of war avoidance. He wrote that, “the Golden Arches

Theory stipulated that when a country reached the level of economic development where

it had a middle class big enough to support a network of McDonald’s, it became a

McDonald’s country. And people in MacDonald’s countries didn’t like to fight wars

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anymore.” (586) Friedman argues that while it is too early to tell, there may be a definite

connection between international supply chains and global threats. The down side might

be collusion between bad actors like Putin’s Russia who seems bent on territorial

expansion and some entrepreneurs like Trump who would turn a blind eye to naked

aggression by Saudi princes and Russian dictators if it suited a world economy, and

perhaps their own entrepreneurial interests. The negative outcome of supply chain

international relations might be appeasement and tolerance of issues that could tread on

human rights. But many scholars are vigilant about the negative aspects of globalization,

and have addressed how globalization can move societies in multiple directions at the

same time. Often these effects are puzzling and unpredictable.

Robert Gilpin situates the concept of globalism as part of an economic system that

is managed by nation-states, enforced by rules created by those same nation-states, but

incorporating technologies and economic forces that, “shape the policies and interests of

individual states and the political relations among states.”(24) Gilpin sees himself as a

state-centric realist viewing the interaction of economic forces and political forces

working together to create stable trade and economic policies. He sees this as a rational

system where rational actors serve their own interests, but cooperate in a world system,

always seeking advantage for their culture and economic system. Such a system prevents

a state of anarchy, and Gilpin believes the system works best when there is a hegemon, a

leading economic power that guides and sets standards for the broader economic system.

He sees the U. S. playing such a role in a global economy. He writes, “although it may be

possible to create a stable liberal international order through cooperation but without a

hegemon, this has never happened,(95) So while he is not against another kind of system

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leading a world economic order, he simply hasn’t seen evidence that it could happen.

But the road to globalization, whatever it turns out to be has often been

complicated with many paths turning to dead ends. Gilpin and others have seen the

disillusionment of many with globalization. Issues of borders open to trade, the potential

for a decline in nation-states, and a neo-liberal emphasis on hegemonic economies and

their often unfavorable investment plans for developing countries, have soured many on

the idea of globalizing economies. Many have concluded that globalization can have a

very negative impact on workers, the environment, and less developed countries. Gilpin

wrote that, “although most economists and many others welcome this development,

critics emphasize the ‘high costs’ of economic globalization, including growing income

inequality both among and within nations, high chronic levels of unemployment in

Western Europe and elsewhere, and, most of all, environmental degradation, widespread

exploitation, and the devastating consequences for national economies wrought by

unregulated international financial flows.” (Gilpin, 9)

Where Gilpin’s thinking was advanced and engaged current events was his

understanding that conditions constantly were changing and that practices and technology

were subject to alteration, transforming the landscape of this same economy. Gilpin’s

text, Global Political Economy from 2001 recites some of the restless rumblings that

arose in the move to modern globalization. As a realist, Gilpin understood the controlling

power of states and recognized that such power was not always exercised in the most

altruistic manner. He wrote, “my interpretation of international political economy

assumes that the interests and policies of states are determined by the governing political

elite, the pressures of powerful groups within a national society, and the nature of the

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‘national system of political economy.’ “(18) Many, like Gilpin, respond to the critique

that globalization hurts workers, small countries, and the environment, but they offer

counter-arguments. Gilpin and others are quick to retort that technology, bad governance,

and bad programs fostered by poor governments (Gilpin, 9) are at least as much to blame

as emerging forms and varieties of globalization. In Gilpin’s mind, you couldn’t

necessarily hold globalization responsible for bad government ideas. Yet it is easy for

critics to point to the consolidation of markets, outsourcing, and global capital investment

as fueling rough times for developing nations while benefiting developed nations and

their banking systems. Gilpin (from his perspective 15 years ago) likens the term to a

reaction to the fall of the USSR and the transformation of those post-cold war alliances

that, “provided the framework within which the world economy functioned.” (Gilpin, 5)

For Gilpin the globalism project was a product sponsored by a benign hegemon, the

United States, leading a global marketplace.

Strangely though, Gilpin seemed to understand the prevailing spirit of the

influence of a knowledge-based economy, and how this would reshape the structure of

global economies and play a major role in economic development. His ideas seem clearly

derived from the ‘knowledge based economy report’ of the Organization for Economic

Co-operation and Development that argued, “Government policies will need more stress

on upgrading human capital through promoting access to a range of skills, and especially

the capacity to learn; enhancing the knowledge distribution power of the economy

through collaborative networks and the diffusion of technology; and providing the

enabling conditions for organisational change at the firm level to maximise the benefits

of technology for productivity.” (7) Still more interestingly, Gilpin rejected many of the

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factors associated with increasing globalization, and argued that many states had

prospered purely by handling their own internal economies well, pricing products in line

with global norms, reducing spending and debt, and obtaining a good cash flow in

markets where they could compete well. He rejected the idea of an Asian miracle and

favored systems that featured strong regional partnerships that were comprehensible and

more related to local economies, and where there was a greater degree of certainty and

trustworthiness with trading partners. He wrote that, “growing numbers of participants

and the increasing complexity of the problems in international negotiations also

encourage the movement toward regional arrangements. For example, the large number

of participants in GATT/WTO trade negotiations has led groups of states to seek other

solutions frequently easier to find at the regional than at the global level.” (359)

In the end, Gilpin seems to see globalization as somewhat evolutionary, and

evolving like the notion of modernism versus postmodernism. Where modernism

increased experiments in art and literature, postmodernism seemed to accelerate that

trend. Similarly, globalization is seen as merely a consequence of society’s coming

together and trading goods and ideas. Gilpin wrote, “for thousands of years, ideas, artistic

styles, and other artifacts have diffused from one society to another and have given rise to

fears similar to those associated with economic globalization today.” (364) For Gilpin our

global economy is merely an extension of a historical process. What has changed is the

rapidity of this process and Gilpin sees that as coming faster at the end of the century. He

writes, “the rapid economic and technological integration of national societies that took

place in the final decades of the twentieth century, especially after the end of the Cold

War,” (364) and factors such as multinational corporations, international cash flows and,

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new technologies that sped up trading have made international societies often yoked

together by awareness of an emerging knowledge-rich economy across the globe.

One new factor that Gilpin sees arriving is a sense of a new medievalism that may

be impacting how matters of domestic states and sovereignty is defined. He writes that,

“new medievalists believe that the concept of national sovereignty, which has guided

international statecraft for three hundred and fifty years, is breaking down,” (390) and

with that the order, that state-centric realists like Gilpin accepted as the manner of world

economic organization. Gilpin’s word eerily mirror the thoughts of humanist scholar

Umberto Eco in his text, Adventures in Hyperreality in which he envisioned the West

entering a new medieval period. He wrote, “what is required to make a good Middle

Ages? First of all, a great peace that is breaking down, a great international power that

has unified the world in languages, customs, ideologies, religions, art and technology,

and then at a certain point, thanks to its own ungovernable complexity, collapses.” (Eco,

74) Despite the realist stance that hegemonic world orders help to prevent world wide

chaotic systems, both Eco and Gilpin may sense that the globalist era, at least challenges

the power of nation-states to be the sole unifier of economic systems. However, even

Gilpin considers the possibility that local and regional structures may be more resilient

than international bonds. He writes in an earlier work, The Political Economy of

International Relations that, “as ‘embedded liberalism’ seems less relevant, other

possible solutions are: increased policy coordination and international cooperation,

harmonization of domestic structures, and, in the event the first two options fail, a move

toward greater autonomy and the delinking of national economies.” (389) In such a

scenario even Gilpin, a state-centered thinker could argue that regional associations,

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something more akin to the middle ages perspective of localized trade might prevail as a

world economic system.

Ling’s work explores issues of power, post-colonialism, feminism and power

disparities that make it difficult to explore globalization without taking into account the

previous centuries of oppression and subjugation of various peoples of the world that

have been, more often, victims of globalization and global economies more than

beneficiaries. Ling frames the issue as a struggle in her article on “Global Passions.” She

writes, “like their colonial predecessors, globalists today view globalisation from above:

that is as a macro-structural, border-crossing, knowledge-intensive juggernaut of big

capital, technology, trade and/or finance integrating with one another to serve up even

bigger, more profitable market shares.” (243) To begin with, Ling tends to frame

globalization as an intensively international, land, power, money grab that is intended to

unseat indigenous people, cannibalize local resources, and foist pollution from

multinational profits onto local backwaters. Still, Ling finds some avenues and

researchers that see a globalized world as offering some new, if confusing, options. She

writes that, “globalization in short, blurs the boundaries not only between states and

markets, but also Self and Other.” (254) for Ling one of the fears of globalization is the

erosion of local, and cultural customs. That is big capital tends to drive out local and

provincial ways of doing business and demands conformity to a uniform system. In a

strange way, she may share some ground with Gilpin, in that he suggests that if some

larger entity would fail there could be a, “delinking of national economies.” (389). Ling

points to the fact that globalism can make it more difficult to see states as separate from

markets. To some degree the two scholars may have shared a state-centric view of

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economies. In Gilpin’s mind the states are the strongest player in the field. In Ling’s

mind, local state entities may be a bulwark against globalism’s corporatism of the world.

Ling links the corporatism of globalism with “the need to redress the underlying colonial

power relations that still permeate our thinking and theorizing about the global political

economy.” (254)

Underlying Ling’s fear of resurgent colonial ideologies, is an interest in guarding

human rights. There are serious issues and concerns about human rights in any globalized

economic system. Professor Ling produced an alternative vision of globalism in a

concept she defined as ‘worldism’ something similar to globalism, but subtly more

inclusive. Ling rejected the strict labels of realism and other paradigms in IR research,

but her strongly feminist and post-colonial research engaged with ideas of liberalism in

understanding international relations. She argued not just for an awareness of

interconnectedness on the basis of a realist vision of other cultures being financially

valuable to us, that is, that we are all entwined in a mutual supply chain of products

whether it be Friedman’s Dell computers of MacDonald’s burgers. Rather she sees these

ideas as being tied to fundamental conceptions of our humanity and connectedness as

people. She writes that, “these ‘multiple worlds,’ of gender, class, and nationality are

filtered through who and what we are (ontology), and why we relate to others the way we

do (epistemology).” (“Globalizing Globalization,” 245) Ling’s vision of a global

economy embraces many issues that other scholars might choose to over look, like the

post-colonial condition. Ling adds that to the equation saying that, “the colonial

encounter ultimately engenders processes of change that elude prediction or control.”

(“GG,” 246) Thus according to Ling many of the effects of a postcolonial global world

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will have outcomes that extend beyond the control or the prediction of pundits. That is,

entities like nation states or other actors may react very differently in a postcolonial world

than traditional theories of realism, constructivism or liberalism might lead us to theorize.

Other forces might come into play such as a history of repression or antagonism against a

colonial power. Thus Ling elucidates eight criteria that transform the way societies and

economies relate to each other. Rather than participate in strict realist views that might be

governed by fear of force or issues of self-interest, Ling adds new parameters to the

equation of globalism in an IPE. She suggests that issues of multiplicity, playing two

roles at once, complicity, everyone has a part in another’s exploitation and

intersubjectivity, experiencing the world from the ‘other’s’ perspective could radically

alter outcomes and actions. Would anyone have guessed that an anti-colonial radical

liberationist like bin Laden would have turned his ire from anger at Soviet occupiers to

the United States in the space of a decade? Anti-colonial rationales are much more multi-

various than other depictions of economic and political activity.

In fact, a notable issue in the globalization debate is that new emerging ways of

seeing IR that are intersecting with traditional ideas of realism, liberalism,

constructivism. As Armstrong-Williams and Harris postulated, globalization is a “meta-

theory,”(15) and as such encompasses so many facets we might need new scholarship and

new perspectives to better understand its ramifications and multiple far-reaching effects.

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 Works Cited

Armstrong-Williams, Dlynn and Cristian Harris. “Globalization in the Post-Trump

World.” Georgia Political Science Association Annual Meeting. Savannah GA.

November 8-10, 2018.

Eco, Umberto. Adventures in Hyperreality. Ny: Harvest, 1986.

Friedman, Thomas. The World is Flat. NY: Picador, 2007.

Gilpin, Robert. Global Political Economy. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2001.

Gilpin, Robert. The Political Economy of International Relations. Princeton: Princeton

UP, 11987.

Ling, L. H. M. “Globalizing Globalization. A Worldist Intervention.” In Global Political

Economy. (ed. Ronen Palan) London: Routledge, 2013, pp. 244-256.

Ling, L. H. M. “Global Passions Within Global Interests: Race , Gender, and Culture in

our Postcolonial Order.” In Global Political Economy. (ed. Ronen Palan) London:

Routledge, 2013, pp. 244-256.

OECD. “The Knowledge-Based Economy.” The Organization for Economic Co-

operation and Development. Paris, 1996.

Palan, Ronen. Global Political Economy, Contemporary Theories. London: Routledge,

2000.

Reich, Simon. “What is globalization?” Kellogg Institute. Working Paper #261,

December, 1998.

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