[Gains and Risk of Globalisation]

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Gains and Risk of Globalisation

This paper focuses on gains and risks of globalisation for a country called Blendia. Blendia is a poor country marred by the menace of globalisation. This paper will also discuss the aspects of economic globalisation and its theories.

Introduction

Although globalisation can and does entail a variety of dimensions, the term commonly refers to economic links and processes. Economic globalisation concerns the expansion of production, trade, consumption, savings, and investment to markets beyond national and regional ones. Although trade has always crossed national boundaries, from spice routes to the East, to trade in the Roman Empire, to international shipping between Europe, Africa, and the Americas, the level of international trade has skyrocketed since about 1980.

Theories of Globalisation

Four major theories have been advanced to explain globalisation. The world-system theory conceives of globalisation as a process that has completed the expansion of capitalism across the globe. The world-system theory, which is based on the work of U.S. sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein (b. 1930), has a hierarchy of power in the international system: core, periphery, and semiperiphery. This theory does not conceive of globalisation as a new process; instead, it conceives of globalisation as the extension of a long historical process that began with the creation of a capitalist world system in sixteenth-century Europe, when European traders established commercial operations across Asia, Africa, and the Americas. World-system theorists contend that the growth of TNCs is instrumental to globalisation; some advance the idea that a transnational class that benefits from and drives the process is behind globalisation.

Neoliberal institutionalism, the second theory advanced to explain globalisation, conceives of the world as still dominated by states, each of which pursues its own best self-interests—security and power—within the constraints created by the other states; but the rise of new international organisations and norms sets its own constraints on states and thus creates a complex interdependence. This theory, in contrast to the world-system theory, conceives of the world as multipolar, with many centers of power and no single hierarchy of power.

World-polity theory—the third theory—holds that the rise of an all-encompassing “world polity” and its associated world culture are crucial to globalisation because the world culture supplies norms and rules that determine the response of institutes to shared problems. There is no single hierarchy of power in this theory, but the legitimised ideas are central to the extension of globalisation.

The fourth theory is world-culture theory, which conceives of globalisation as a process of relativisation. Societies relate to a single system of societies and thus take their cues from this system; individuals also relate to a single sense of humanity and thus contribute to a global sense of humanity. The world society in this theory is not beholden to a single set of values; rather, it entails a mixture of hybrid and complex values holding sway over people.

Economic Globalisation

Many definitions locate globalisation as a phenomenon within the domain of the economy generally and more specifically within the circuits of production, trade, and ...