Reading Assignment 3: Political Globalization——ZHENGYAYUAN

 1. Summary

Specifically, political globalization involves an approach to the social world that emphasizes post-national and transnational processes and an awareness of the compressed nature of space and time. Political globalization has been widely discussed in the globalization literature, where the focus is on the decline of the nation-state under the influence of global forces, which has created different types of politics, on the one hand the development of transnational networks and flows, and on the other the processes of de-territorialization and re-territorialization. For some, the process of political globalization has opened up new possibilities of emancipation, while for others, globalization has led to a loss of autonomy and the fragmentation of the social world. The approach to political globalization adopted in this report, the one adopted in this chapter, emphasizes the multifaceted nature of globalization, which is best seen as a relational dynamic rather than a new reality. We argue that political globalization can be understood as a tension between three processes that interact to produce a complex global political field: global geopolitics, global normative culture, and polycentric networks.

The article discusses three dynamics of political globalization around four cases of social change, in the sense that the globalization of civil society follows the same pattern as democracy, the nation-state, and citizenship. Globalization has led to the universalization of territorial norms and practices. The universalization of national norms has been accompanied by the growing transnational connectivity of social movements and activist networks, which, together with the globalization of environment, personality, and identity politics, has removed national boundaries from the activities of civil society. And new interest groups and new communities of destiny have been created. In short, the development of global civil society is the result of the following factors The development of global civil society is the result of increased opportunities for interaction between domestic and international politics.

2. Interesting point

I think the interesting points are the image of a ‘borderless world’ has long been associated with thinking about globalization. The power of global processes to transcend national borders, annihilate distance and unite through global catastrophe has provided the globalization literature with a range of powerful metaphors: the ‘global village’; ‘world polity’; ‘fragile earth’. It has also led to an interesting paradox. We are increasingly conscious of the shrinking dimensions or compression of an increasingly interconnected world and the way in which this renders the globe meaningful and brings it within the grasp of all individuals. At the same time the frictionless flows and untrammelled mobilities constitutive of globalization are commonly held to represent a threat to the nation-state, as a result of which economic and political processes are taken beyond the reach of democratically elected polities, and the individuals that constitute them.

3.Discussion point

What is the solution to the ethical problems that exist in the context of political globalization? Will the globalization of politics at the same time have an impact on the relations between countries?