Globalization & Welfare State

Globalization & Welfare State

Globalization & Welfare State

Introduction

Globalization is an essentially contested concept. It has many definitions, and there is little agreement as to its existence, its magnitude, and its operation. For the purposes of this entry, globalization can best be understood as the extension and deepening of flows, rules, and practices associated with capitalism. In this respect, globalization is not a new phenomenon, inasmuch as capitalism has been globally expansive since at least 1500 CE. The relevant question is, therefore, what is new or different about contemporary globalization.

Analytical Approaches to Globalization

Standard arguments about globalization tend to focus on flows—of goods, capital, labor, travel, technology, and information—as measures of the rate, degree, and extent of economic and social change since roughly 1970. Such indicators are relatively easy to quantify, are taken as significant in themselves, and most important, are routinely collected by governments and other authoritative institutions. International trade and capital flows have, for example, grown by orders of magnitude over the past half century, and the information revolution has, as many put it, resulted in an unprecedented “compression of time and space.” Response times to events and crises have diminished greatly, and if a currency collapses in Asia, the ramifications are soon felt in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere. But these are hardly new phenomena: Although the speed with which things happen has increased, as has the size of flows, they have all been characteristic of the global economy for centuries.

A second, minority view argues that globalization is not happening or, if it is, the magnitude of the phenomenon is little greater than that seen in Europe prior to World War I. Advocates of this perspective focus largely on volumes of cross-border trade and capital flows, along with levels of foreign direct investment. Proportionally, these are less than was the case in 1914, although the absolute magnitude of the international economy is greater, even taking into account inflation rates of more than 1,000% since then. Such a narrow view of globalization rests on a very limited conceptualization of the phenomenon and, consequently, defines it out of existence.

A third approach focuses not on the flows or stocks of things but, rather, the global diffusion of rules, processes, and practices. In this light, globalization has two important features: First, it involves the expansion, extension, and deepening of capitalist social relations, “trickling down” even into those countries and places that are regarded as only marginally integrated into the global economy. Second, there are “knock-off effects” on existing social relations that transform established patterns of employment, wealth, power, status, hierarchy, expectations, and politics, destabilizing customary patterns of production and reproduction, challenging naturalized social hierarchies, and triggering political and social change and upheaval. Globalization thus offers numerous opportunities for the emergence of social movements and other forms of political organization and action, even as it disrupts existing beliefs, values, behaviors, and social relations. At times, these disruptions may generate social violence and even ...