Jan Aart Scholte - Globalization Chapter 4
Chapter 4 – Explaining Globalization
Scholte briefly examines six differing theoretical approaches to explaining globalization – what are they? What is the central theme of each?
Liberalisms Liberalist position globalization is, at the most elementary level, a result of ‘natural’ human desires for economic welfare and political liberty. As such, increased transplanetary connectivity is ultimately derived from human drives to maximize material well-being (through markets) and to exercise basic freedoms (as guaranteed by publicly accountable government). For liberalists globalization is an outcome of people’s strivings to escape poverty as well as to achieve civil and political rights. On a liberalist account it is inherent in market dynamics and modern democratization that these forces should eventually interlink humanity across the planet (Scholte, 2015). Political realisms Political realists assume that territorial sovereign states are the principal actors in world politics. Proponents of this approach further presume that states are inherently acquisitive and self-serving, making for inevitable competition as their insatiable appetites for power clash. To manage this unavoidable interstate conflict, some political realists have advocated the use of a balance of power, where any attempt by one state to achieve world dominance is countered by collective resistance from other states. Other political realists have suggested that a dominant state can bring stability to world order if this so-called ‘hegemon’ maintains international rules and institutions that both advance its own interests and at the same time contain conflicts between other states. In the vein of hegemonic stability theory, globalization can be explained as a way that the dominant state of the day – in the case of recent history the USA – has asserted its primacy and concurrently created an environment of controlled competition among states. On this account large-scale contemporary growth
Scholte briefly examines six differing theoretical approaches to explaining globalization – what are they? What is the central theme of each?
Liberalisms Liberalist position globalization is, at the most elementary level, a result of ‘natural’ human desires for economic welfare and political liberty. As such, increased transplanetary connectivity is ultimately derived from human drives to maximize material well-being (through markets) and to exercise basic freedoms (as guaranteed by publicly accountable government). For liberalists globalization is an outcome of people’s strivings to escape poverty as well as to achieve civil and political rights. On a liberalist account it is inherent in market dynamics and modern democratization that these forces should eventually interlink humanity across the planet (Scholte, 2015). Political realisms Political realists assume that territorial sovereign states are the principal actors in world politics. Proponents of this approach further presume that states are inherently acquisitive and self-serving, making for inevitable competition as their insatiable appetites for power clash. To manage this unavoidable interstate conflict, some political realists have advocated the use of a balance of power, where any attempt by one state to achieve world dominance is countered by collective resistance from other states. Other political realists have suggested that a dominant state can bring stability to world order if this so-called ‘hegemon’ maintains international rules and institutions that both advance its own interests and at the same time contain conflicts between other states. In the vein of hegemonic stability theory, globalization can be explained as a way that the dominant state of the day – in the case of recent history the USA – has asserted its primacy and concurrently created an environment of controlled competition among states. On this account large-scale contemporary growth