Development & States and Governments & Globalization

Globalization (Steger)

Globalization refers to the multidimensional and uneven expansion of social relations and consciousness across world-space and world-time. It takes four forms: embodied (people moving), disembodied (ideas/data), objectified (goods), and institutional (organizations like the UN or corporations), and operates across economic, political, cultural, and environmental dimensions.

Embodied globalization

Embodied globalization is the form involving the physical movement of people across the planet, including refugees, migrants, tourists, temporary workers, and business travelers. For example, Central American migrants traveling to the United States or African refugees crossing the Mediterranean Sea represent embodied globalization in the 21st century.

Disembodied globalization

Disembodied globalization refers to the worldwide interconnectedness and mobility of ideas, data, information, and encoded capital such as cryptocurrencies. This form has taken an enormous qualitative leap with the digital revolution and accelerated further during the COVID-19 pandemic as work and communication moved online.

Objectified globalization

Objectified globalization involves the worldwide movement of physical objects and commodities, ranging from tiny particles like greenhouse gases and COVID-19 viruses to large goods in shipping containers. Examples include an iPhone assembled via global value chains, traded jeans moving across continents, or treasures sold at international internet auctions.

Institutional globalization

Institutional globalization refers to the worldwide spread and interconnectedness of social and political institutions such as empires, states, transnational corporations (TNCs), NGOs, churches, clubs, and fan organizations. Examples include China's "One Belt One Road" initiative, global franchises like KFC, or worldwide fan clubs of football teams like Manchester United.

Glocalization

Glocalization describes the complex interplay between global and local forces, where global processes manifest differently in and adapt to local contexts. Rather than the global erasing the local, they become entangled together, as seen in major cities like Shanghai or Sydney that combine their local urban environments with global standards for high-rise buildings and shopping malls.

Global imaginary

Global imaginary refers to people's growing consciousness of the planet as a single whole, which destabilizes and unsettles the older nation-state framework within which people traditionally imagined their communal existence. While nations and localities still provide identity, people increasingly think and act with the entire world as a reference frame for their actions.

Methodological globalism

Methodological globalism is an approach to studying world affairs that treats transnational interconnections, mobilities, and imaginations as the basic units of analysis. Unlike methodological nationalism (which focuses on nation-states as the main actors), globalism emphasizes non-state actors such as NGOs, TNCs, churches, educational institutions, and civil society organizations.

State (McCormick)

A state is a territory marked by borders that contains a population and is overseen by a government whose authority, legitimacy, and sovereignty are recognized by citizens and by other states. States are often called countries, but this term has geographical connotations while state is a legal and political concept.

Sovereignty (McCormick)

Sovereignty is the principle that a state answers to no higher political or legal authority and is legally independent to make all its own decisions. In practice, however, states are so heavily interconnected in so many ways that true independence is a myth, as their decisions are constantly impacted by other states and global pressures.

Legitimacy (McCormick)

Legitimacy is recognition of the legal existence of a state and its right to wield authority within its borders, accepted by the people who live there and by the governments of other states. Disputed territories like Kosovo have only partial legitimacy because as of 2020 barely 60 percent of UN member states recognized its independence.

Authority (McCormick)

Authority is the acknowledged right of a state or government to act or rule, existing when subordinates accept the capacity of superiors to give legitimate orders. Unlike raw power (a gunman threatening you has power but not authority), a police officer using a gun in legal duties has authority because it is backed by law and social acceptance.

Government (McCormick)

Government is the system of institutions, processes, and laws responsible for administering and addressing the needs of residents of a community. Government is different from the state in that it acts for the state, is more concrete than the abstract idea of the state, and is temporary in contrast to the permanent idea of the state.

Citizenship (McCormick)

Citizenship gives individuals the full right to live in and participate in the public life of their home state, including voting, running for office, holding a passport, and receiving protection when traveling abroad. Responsibilities include obeying laws, jury service, and military service if required, though about 250 million people (3% of the world) are legal residents of a state other than their home state.

Nation (McCormick)

A nation is a group of people that share a common history, common ancestry, usually a common language, and often a common religion and traditions. Nations are cultural and historical concepts, unlike states which are legal and political concepts, and the UN should actually be called the United States because its members are states, not nations.

Nation-state

A nation-state is a state whose citizens share a common national identity based on shared language and culture, where national and state boundaries largely coincide. Few true nation-states exist, but examples include Japan (over 98% Japanese), Iceland (330,000 people of shared descent), Lesotho, and Eswatini (almost entirely ethnic Basotho and Swazi).

Multinational state

A multinational state is a state consisting of multiple different national groups living under a single government. Examples include Belgium (60% Dutch-speaking Flemings, 30% French-speaking Walloons, plus German-speakers and Italians) and India (16 major languages, three racial strains, and dozens of ethnic groups).

Diaspora

Diaspora is the scattering or movement of a population beyond its geographical or native homeland, or the population that lives over an extended area outside its homeland. The largest modern diaspora is the African example (descendants of slaves taken to the Americas), while others include Jewish, Irish, Indian, and Kurdish diasporas.

Democracy (McCormick)

Democracy is a political system in which government is based on a fair and open mandate from all qualified citizens of a state and is based on the rule of law, featuring representative government, free elections, respect for the rule of law, and protection of individual rights. Winston Churchill famously said democracy is "the worst form of government except for all the others," acknowledging its imperfections.

Authoritarianism (McCormick)

Authoritarianism is a political system in which power is concentrated in the hands of a ruling elite that manipulates society to remain in power, featuring manipulated elections, failure to protect individual rights, no independent judiciary, and suppression of opposition. Examples include China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia, and about 57 states are considered full authoritarian regimes by the Democracy Index.

Populism

Populism is a political program or movement based on championing the rights and interests of "the people" in the face of a ruling elite, often criticizing political and economic elites and appealing to nationalism. Populism is often based partly on opposition to immigration and globalization, as seen in leaders like Donald Trump (US), Jair Bolsonaro (Brazil), and Viktor Orbán (Hungary).

Failing state

A failing state (also called weak, fragile, or failed state) is a state with deep structural problems, often major internal divisions, weak governing institutions, failed or failing economies, and loss of control over territory. Examples include Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq, South Sudan, and Syria according to the Fragile States Index.

Development (Hite & Seitz)

Development is the ways in which economies progress through their societies to improve well-being, though cultures define progress differently. The UN defines human development as enlarging human capabilities and choices, measured by income, educational attainment, and life expectancy, while Bhutan famously uses a national happiness indicator alongside GDP.

Human Development Index (HDI)

The Human Development Index is a composite measure published annually by the UN Development Programme ranking nations by life expectancy, education (mean and expected years of schooling), and gross national income per capita. Unlike GDP alone, HDI captures human well-being, making it a broader measure of development than purely economic indicators.

Washington Consensus (Hite & Seitz)

The Washington Consensus was a market-based development strategy encouraged by the World Bank and IMF in the 1980s-90s emphasizing deregulation, privatization, liberalization of trade and finance, and fiscal discipline. While it led to GDP growth in many countries, it also led to cuts in social spending on healthcare and education, making some of the poorest people even worse off.

Modernization theory

Modernization theory is the 20th-century approach to development assuming that economic growth through industrialization and transition from subsistence to consumption economies would lift countries out of poverty. This model was based on the path taken by the United States and other wealthy nations but ignored social and environmental costs and assumed benefits would "trickle down" to the poor.

Sustainable development (Brundtland Commission)

Sustainable development is defined by the 1987 Brundtland Commission report "Our Common Future" as development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. It ties together economic growth, environmental protection, and social development, recognizing that future growth depends on healthy ecosystems.

Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)

The MDGs were eight UN goals adopted in 2000 and pursued until 2015, refocusing development on basic needs including halving poverty and hunger, universal primary education, gender equality, reducing child and maternal mortality, combating HIV/AIDS and malaria, and environmental protection. By 2014 they had halved extreme poverty (700 million fewer people living on less than $1.25/day) and saved 25.3 million lives from malaria and tuberculosis.

Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

The SDGs are 17 goals with 169 targets unanimously adopted by 193 nations in September 2015 as a "blueprint for development" to be achieved by 2030. They go beyond the MDGs by fully integrating environmental sustainability, addressing inequality within and among countries, climate action (SDG 13), peace and justice (SDG 16), and partnerships (SDG 17).

Official Development Assistance (ODA)

ODA is foreign aid given by wealthy countries to developing countries, with the UN setting a target of 0.7% of donor GNP. As of 2017, $135 billion flowed through ODA channels, with more than two thirds ($98 billion) flowing bilaterally (directly from donor to recipient) and the rest multilaterally through institutions like the World Bank.

Yanomami case study

The Yanomami are an indigenous people in the Brazilian Amazon (approximately 9,000 people) who follow hunter-gatherer methods. After gold was discovered in the late 1980s, thousands of miners invaded their lands, bringing diseases (malaria, measles, swine flu, COVID-19), mercury poisoning from gold mining, and armed attacks, killing an estimated 1,500 between 1988-1990.