Liberalism and Globalisation

5 Key excerpts on "Liberalism and Globalisation"

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  eBook - ePub

  International Relations: The Basics

  • Peter Sutch, Juanita Elias(Authors)
  • 2007(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Chapter 8 ). A grasp of the basics of liberalism therefore requires both an understanding of the history of liberal institutionalism and an understanding of liberal ethics.

  THE INTELLECTUAL HISTORY OF LIBERALISM

  Because normative liberalism was sidelined for so long in IR, students are often not fully introduced to the intellectual history of liberalism. The study of ethics and morality is often ignored or thought of as properly the subject of a different class such as political theory which is rarely mandatory for students of IR. This is partly because realism rejected morality as irrelevant to the study of the proper subject of IR – power. However, the claim that IR is solely, or even primarily, the study of power is itself a contentious argument. Liberalism, in very broad terms, is a series of arguments about why we should study other aspects of world politics such as international law, human rights, economic cooperation or justice. Liberalism describes the very rich and diverse traditions of thought that ascribe real value to internationalism in political and international thought. For the canonical thinkers in this tradition morality has a key place in our political thinking as ultimately it is individuals, rather than states, that are important in international relations (as in all life). Theories that fall in to this broad tradition have very different reasons for their internationalism and see very different consequences flowing from their positions. Some liberals argue for the progressive development of international law, others for a reordering of the institutions of world politics on democratic or cosmopolitan lines, some urge a greater respect for human rights and global economic justice, others for a free market. To dismiss all liberal arguments as utopian is to dismiss a complex range of arguments that appear throughout the history of ideas in political and international thought.

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  Globalisation and Ideology in Britain

  Neoliberalism, free trade and the global economy

  • Craig Berry(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Manchester University Press

    (Publisher)

  ‘Freedoms’ are declared international (that is, universal), but the specific rationale given for political action beyond the nation-state is that ‘problems’ are international. And obviously even the rationale for international problem-solving, as explicated here, is the beneficial effect on Britain domestically. For a genuinely internationalist party, which believes in promoting social, political and economic freedom worldwide, it may be that policies such as free trade and European integration are a priori positive. But as we shall see, these policies were rarely articulated without reference to globalisation. There is obviously no straightforward formula by which the extent of the Liberal Democrats’ internationalism can be determined. Clearly, differences of emphasis exist. Some Liberal Democrats are comfortable articulating their values as universalist. Some policy areas – such as eradicating poverty, as we shall see – were replete with references to the universalism of individual rights. Yet some leading members, and some of the party’s publications, showed little genuine commitment to an internationalist agenda unless processes such as globalisation created an imperative to do so. These issues will be returned to throughout the chapter, in relation to the globalisation concept, and specific policies on trade, international development and the EU.

  Globalisation

  This section will begin by assessing definitions of globalisation within the Liberal Democrats’ discourse on foreign economic policy, noting in particular the importance of the concept of free trade, and whether globalisation was deemed positive. It will then consider the potential role of political change within the Liberal Democrats’ view of globalisation. It will then reflect in more detail on the relationship between globality and universalism.

  Globalisation and free trade

  The Liberal Democrats were consistent in the opinion that globalisation is real and significant, and requires novel forms of political action. Their perspective on what globalisation is, in the first instance, was fairly straightforward. It was essentially seen as the deepening and complexification of interdependence between countries, on the basis of transnational activity, resulting in identifiably ‘global’ social, political and economic phenomena and processes. The main feature is a single global economy, characterised as an expanded marketplace – it is mainly through this system that countries have become interdependent. There was more ambiguity, however, concerning what the main driving force, or cause, of globalisation is. There were two prevailing explanations within the Liberal Democrats’ discourse. The most important was probably that globalisation is the result of technological change. The second explanation was more economistic, focusing upon the free market’s global impulse: increases in transnational trade and investment flows have accumulated to the extent that the economic infrastructure has been transformed, that is, globalised. In fact, both explanations intermingle: this is seen in the Liberal Democrats’ policy documents and was replicated in the interviews. The economic explanation was probably the dominant perspective among the Orange Book brigade. It is interesting to note that the Liberal Democrats seemed not to associate globalisation with the rise of a global financial system, contra New Labour and IFSL.

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  Power and Politics in Globalization

  The Indispensable State

  • Howard H. Lentner(Author)
  • 2004(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  1

  Globalization and Politics

  Introduction

  The politics of globalization includes two dimensions. The first embodies the practical distribution of power and the constraints imposed by existing arrangements. Those constraints flow from choices that have established and now manage existing structures and processes. The second dimension embraces a more visionary quest for alternative arrangements in the future.

  As is true of all politics, both cooperation and struggle are involved, domination and resistance are evident, and contestation abounds. This book deals with present realities and future visions, with both cooperative and conflictive aspects of globalization, and with issues of power and domination in the contemporary world. Certainly, substantial changes have occurred and continue to occur in the modern world. Nevertheless, in my opinion, both the realities and the visions express a good deal of continuity with the past.

  Globalization is most commonly presented as an inexorable process that involves bringing the world together through technology. Although the fundamental processes bringing human beings into contact with one another have been at work for millennia, high-speed transport and especially the computer have speeded up the process in the last quarter century or so. Travel, trade, and financial flows now characteristically flow across the globe in voluminous amounts at rapid rates.

  These developments are commonly regarded as transforming the world in which we live, but there are four basic assertions about globalization that either restate or modify received ideas about liberal thought. Foremost among the claims is that the state is losing power to the market and has been or will be modified in fundamental ways. This contention restates the Lockean position that society and market relations precede the state. Another claim holds that communities are breaking down and that individuals are becoming increasingly isolated. Traditional liberalism is founded on the notion that rational individuals formed contracts and constituted civil society, which Locke equated with the state. With the increase of the market and other contractual relations, traditional communities and societies faded before free thought in which different ideas of morality and reason emerged, and individuals were no longer constrained by social conventions and traditions.

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  Thinking Theory Thoroughly

  Coherent Approaches To An Incoherent World

  • James Rosenau, Mary Durfee(Authors)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  This is especially the case for those liberals who believe that markets work better and yield greater benefits the less governments intervene in their functioning. Those liberals who hesitate to accord a central role to states on economic issues tend either to remain silent in the face of economic crises or to record agreement with other liberals who recognize that distortions can and do occur in the global economy and that some remedial actions are therefore desirable. Their solution to this need is to emphasize the cooperative efforts of trade, investment, environmental, and other specialized IGOs to address the problems and restrain excessive responses on the part of national governments. Unlike liberals, postinternationalists do not resist the idea of governments playing key roles in coping with global economic problems. But for them the challenge of such issues is viewed as best met through collaboration between the relevant actors in the state- and multi-centric worlds. They regard multinational corporations, labor unions, groups of private experts (often labeled "epistemic communities"), and other affected organizations in the multi-centric world as no less relevant to remedial actions than IGOs. Accordingly, postin ternationalists point to global economic crises as prime stimuli to cooperation between the two worlds of world politics. States' Role in Protecting Individuals from Globalization As the Asian financial crisis that began in 1997 poignantly demonstrates (see Chapter 6), the processes of globalization can harm as well as benefit the well-being of people. Adherents of the three paradigms argue along very different lines as to how the negative consequences of globalizing dynamics for individuals can and should be offset. Realists highlight the role states should play by stressing that governments need to exercise control over foreign trade and investments to protect workers and their jobs

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  The Return of the Political

  • Chantal Mouffe(Author)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Verso

    (Publisher)

  And I am also committed – although in a way that differs from them – to elucidating the political dimension of liberalism. I want to scrutinize its contribution to the emergence of modern democracy as a new regime. But this requires recognition that the liberal democratic regime is not exhausted by its liberal component. For it consists in the articulation of two elements, the liberal one constituted by the institutions of the liberal state (rule of law, separation of powers, defence of individual rights) and the democratic one of popular sovereignty and majority rule. Moreover, liberty and equality, which constitute the political principles of the liberal democratic regime, can be interpreted in many different ways and ranked according to different priorities. This accounts for the multiple possible forms of liberal democracy. The ‘liberals’ privilege the values of liberty and individual rights, while the ‘democrats’ insist on equality and participation. But as long as neither side attempts to suppress the other, we are witnessing a struggle inside liberal democracy, over its priorities, and not one between alternative regimes. To state, as Larmore does, that ‘Liberalism and democracy are separate values whose relation … consists largely in democratic self-government being the best means for protecting the principles of a liberal political order’, 38 is typically a liberal interpretation and is open to challenge. To be sure, the relation between liberalism and democracy has long been a controversial issue and will probably never be settled. A pluralist democracy is constantly pulled in opposite directions: towards exacerbation of differences and disintegration on one side; towards homogenization and strong forms of unity on the other

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