University of Calgary PRISM: University of Calgary's Digital Repository Innovations: A Journal of Politics Volume 3, 2000 2000 Introductory Essay: 'Globalization 2000' - From Planning to Fruition Hülsemeyer, Axel http://hdl.handle.net/1880/112848 editorial © Innovations: A Journal of Politics 1998-2011 Downloaded from PRISM: https://prism.ucalgary.ca INTRODUCTORY ESSAY ‘Globalization 2000’ – From Planning to Fruition In September 1999, an international conference took place at the University of Calgary, entitled Globalization 2000: Convergence or Divergence? The articles contained in this issue of Innovations are revised versions of some of the papers presented at the conference. In this introductory essay I wish to outline briefly the rationale underlying the G2000 conference. It seems to me that what made the project different from similar events can be cast in both substantive and organizational terms. I will reflect on both aspects in turn. The term ‘globalization’ has quickly become a catch phrase in both the academic and public debates, which are often conducted with ideological undertones. The questions asked and examined appear to fall into three groups. First, is globalization an old or a new phenomenon? The debate on this issue is largely academic, conducted between macro- sociologists and anthropologists on one side, and liberal economists on the other, with political scientists frequently caught in the middle.1 Second, is globalization ‘good’ or ‘bad,’ i.e., do its benefits outweigh its costs or vice versa? Clearly, it depends on whom one asks. The NAFTA debate in the United States, for instance, was conducted between the perceived ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ of freer trade, the latter by its proponents considered a necessity given the perceived pressures of the global economy. Third, and related, is the process of globalization inevitable or can it be channelled, and maybe even resisted? The recent protests at the WTO meeting in Seattle, as well as at the Spring meetings of the World Bank and the IMF in Washington (‘Seattle II’) suggest that some regard globalization – at least in its current guise – as ‘bad’ and feel obliged to resist it, regardless of the means. Answers to the above questions largely hinge on the definition of globalization used. It appeared that any meaningful discussion must start here, and we identified four aspects of the term. Economic globalization refers to the familiar technological advances in communications and 1 For an interesting review essay in this respect, see Leslie Sklair, “The Nature and Significance of Economic Sociology,” Review of International Political Economy 4:1 (1997): 239-47. 1 transportation, enabling the “easing of international trade.”2 Political globalization addresses the adjustment of nation-states to this new environment, primarily the extent to which these entities can still fulfil their function of providing public goods. Some have suggested that the traditional welfare state will ultimately be replaced with a “competition state,” with governments acting more as business brokers, rather than being concerned with redistributing income.3 However, political globalization is not only a more or less inevitable consequence of its economic component but also its cause. The free flow of financial transactions is not conceivable without states releasing capital controls; technological advance is a necessary but by no means sufficient condition for the advent of the ‘global economy.’ In this sense, the “paradox” of globalization is that national governments helped to unleash the forces to which they now see themselves having to adapt, potentially losing some legitimacy in the eyes of their citizens along the way.4 Social globalization traces the ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ of globalization within and across societies. We seem to be accustomed to images of a business elite being at home in every major city and spending much of its time commuting between them. Yet, the vast majority of the population may, in the best case, benefit from globalization through the collection of air miles, and, in the worst case, lose their jobs due to the imperatives of global competition. This divergence between winners and losers is particularly compounded at this point in the transition economies of Central and Eastern Europe. Finally, cultural globalization assesses whether and, if so, to what extent individuals might shift their loyalties from their home countries to some other sub- or supranational entity. On the one hand, the 2 Jeffry A. Frieden and Ronald Rogowski, “The Impact of the International Economy on National Policies: An Analytical Overview,” in Internationalization and Domestic Politics, eds. Robert O. Keohane and Helen V. Milner (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996). 3 Philip G. Cerny, “Globalization and the Changing Logic of Collective Action,” International Organization 49:4 (1995): 595-625; see also Axel Hülsemeyer, “Changing ‘Political Economies of Scale’ and Public Sector Adjustment: Insights from Fiscal Federalism,” Review of International Political Economy 7:1 (2000): 72-100. 4 Philip G. Cerny, “Paradoxes and the Competition State: The Dynamics of Political Globalization,” Government and Opposition 32:2 (1997): 251-74. 2 European Union, for instance, has its own flag and anthem - symbols of identification similar to those of nation-states. Are citizens beginning to view themselves less as Germans, Italians or French, and more as Europeans? On the other hand, we also observe increased nationalism, especially in the successor states of the Soviet Union. Under which conditions are similar patterns evolving in other countries? In addition, what role does environmental degradation, for example, play in individual responses to globalization.5 These four aspects of globalization are explored by different fields within the social sciences. The interplay of economic and political components, if not examined in isolation in their respective disciplines, is primarily the research area of International Political Economy.6 It explores the ‘state of the state;’ that is its capacity to provide continually the public goods that citizens of welfare states in the OECD world have grown accustomed to since the 1950s. Regional integration has been considered as one political-institutional response by states in reaction to economic globalization.7 While the social aspects are largely the field of Sociology, the impact on the potential value and identity changes of the individual are frequently the concern of political scientists of the behavioural persuasion. In this context, it can be observed that the globalization ‘discourse’ actually suffers from a two-fold isolation. First, scholars in the various disciplines involved exchange arguments mostly among themselves. If one studies the economic and political aspects of globalization, one is rarely in consultation with someone exploring the individual implications, and vice versa. Second, the debate is necessarily conducted by the established academics in their respective fields, while the next generation of social science scholars has little chance to interact 5 Ronald Inglehart, Modernization and Postmodernization: Cultural, Economic, and Political Change in 43 Societies (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997); Neil Nevitte, The Decline of Deference: Canadian Value Change in Cross-National Perspective (Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 1996); Mebs Kanji, “North American Environmentalism and Political Integration,” American Review of Canadian Studies 26:2 (1996): 183-204. 6 For a good introduction, see Herman Schwartz, States vs. Markets: Globalization and the International Economy (London: Macmillan, 2000). 7 William D. Coleman and Geoffrey R. D. Underhill, eds., Regionalism and Global Economic Integration: Europe, Asia and the Americas (London: Routledge, 1998). 3 with those that frame the debate. Both observations are by no means unique to the study of globalization, but are rather reflective of scholarship in the social sciences, if not of the research enterprise in general. Finally, studies on globalization can be distinguished between those concerned with the causes of this phenomenon and those focusing on its implications; the latter constituting the majority of examinations that have emerged so far. All of these categorizations are of course analytical tools, or Weberian ideal types, while in practice they necessarily overlap. Yet, the above considerations were the background for the Globalization 2000 conference. The intent of our conference was to organize globalization research in a systematic fashion and simultaneously to facilitate cross-fertilization both in terms of disciplines and research experience. The idea for the conference developed about 18 months prior to the event. Time was spent mostly developing and systematizing the conference topic and writing numerous grant applications, in order to secure funding for the project. We sent out the Call for Papers, asking for the submission of proposals that clearly identified the theoretical framework, empirical evidence, and implications of their research on the basis of the categorizations mentioned above. More than 70 proposals were submitted. The choice of selection had then to be determined on three criteria. First, the commonality of the above categorizations is that they lent themselves to organizing the conference according to the three levels of analysis typically used in the social sciences, namely the macro (or systemic), meso (or intermediate) and