There are few social science concepts quite as popular in the media at the beginning of the 21st century than that of globalization. While popular concepts are often hollow, this one, however, is undoubtedly vitally important. At its core the idea of globalization refers to the way in which economic relations now transcend national boundaries. Large corporations exist in several different countries, making components in several others, selling in many, raising finance in still others. This, of course, has long been known, and the problem of the so-called ‘multinationals’ has concerned both politicians and political scientists for nearly a generation. Globalization, however, refers to a much more fundamental interconnectedness. Whole national economies are now intimately linked; a slow-down in a manufacturing industry in one area can have very rapid and often very ‘logically distant’ impacts thousands of miles away in several quite different sectors. In some ways it is rather like the phenomenon physicists and mathematicians have noted about the instability of supposedly deterministic systems. Proverbially it is said that a butterfly flapping its wings in India can cause a rain storm in Delaware. Globalization can, and has, meant that the collapse of a Japanese bank that over-lent on the basis of over-priced land values in Tokyo can cause the unemployment of carfactory workers in Wales.
Were globalization to mean only this, it would be important, but no more than a shift in scale with what we have experienced before.
There is more, however; the very nature of the modern economy, dependent above all on information production and dissemination, has made national boundaries largely irrelevant. This has its mirrors in institutional and legal frameworks. The near impossibility of states controlling pornography on the World Wide Web, for example, is a distasteful example of globalization. Globalization would still be merely a description of economic interdependence were it not for two further factors. One is the rapid development of transnational institutions. There are now over 25,000 non-governmental organizations of an international character, when a century ago there were only a handful. Doctrines of national sovereignty are breaking down and even long-derided political institutions like the UN are beginning to have real authority. Parallel to this is a breakdown of national identity amongst the educated professional élite who run the international economic and political institutions. A new stage in world history seems to be developing. We tend to forget that the nation state is relatively new and that not long ago people felt themselves to be members of much wider communities; similarly the only difference between the international economy of the past, unregulated by states, was the impact of distance. Now that communications and distribution technology have largely made distance irrelevant, states again become unimportant as regulators, and less obviously the focus of identity or ambition.
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