The Globalization of International Relations

The Globalization of International Relations

Globalization, International Relations, and Daily Life

  • International Relations (IR) is narrowly defined as the relationships among the world’s governments.
  • Core principles of IR.
  • IR as a field of study.

Core Principles of IR

  • IR revolves around the problem of how groups (countries) serve collective interests when it requires members to forgo individual interests.
  • Collective goods problem: Providing something that benefits all members of a group regardless of individual contributions.
  • Three basic principles offer solutions:
    • Dominance
    • Reciprocity
    • Identity

IR as a Field of Study

  • IR affects lives in many ways.
  • Collective goods are provided to all members, regardless of contributions.
  • Collective goods are easier to provide in small groups.
  • The collective goods problem is acute in international affairs because each nation is sovereign.
  • Theories complement descriptive narratives in explaining international events and outcomes.
  • Three core principles shape solutions to collective goods problems in IR.
    • Dominance: Solves the collective-goods problem by establishing a power hierarchy where those at the top control those below.
    • Reciprocity: Solves the collective-goods problem by rewarding behavior that contributes to the group and punishing behavior that pursues self-interest at the cost of the group.
    • Identity: Identity principle does not rely on self-interest. In IR, identity communities play important roles in overcoming difficult collective-goods problems.
  • IR is about international politics.
    • The decisions of governments about foreign actors, especially other governments.
  • The field is interdisciplinary.
    • It relates international politics to economics, history, and sociology.
  • Mix of conflict and cooperation in relationships among countries
  • Subfields:
    • International security studies (Questions of war and peace).
    • International political economy (Trade and financial relations).
  • Practical discipline.

Actors and Influences

  • State Actors
    • Principal actors in IR are the world’s governments.
    • IR scholars traditionally study the decisions and actions of those governments in relation to other governments.
  • Nonstate Actors
    • Individual actors: Leaders and citizens, bureaucratic agencies in foreign ministries, multinational corporations, and terrorist groups.

Levels of Analysis

  • Globalization

State Actors

  • Territory
  • Government
  • Population
  • Sovereignty
  • International system: A set of relationships among the world’s states.
    • The modern International system exists for less than 500 years.
    • Before then - city-states, empires, feudal fiefs
    • The idea that nations should have their own states - nation-states.
    • Some political entities are not formally recognized as states Example: Taiwan and others.
  • The international system is based on the sovereignty of about 200 independent territorial states of varying size.
  • Nonstate actors such as intergovernmental organizations (IGOs), nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and multinational corporations (MNCs) exert a growing influence on international relations.
  • States are the most important actors in IR. A handful of states are considered great powers and one a “superpower.”
  • Transnational actors when they operate across international borders
    • Intergovernmental organizations (IGOs)
      • Organizations whose members are national governments
      • Example: OPEC, WTO, NATO, African Union
    • Nongovernmental Organizations (NGOs)
      • Private organizations
    • Multinational Corporations (MNCs)
      • Companies that span multiple countries
    • Substate actors
      • Exist within one country but either influence the country’s foreign policy or operate internationally, or both.
  • Nonstate actors participate in IR alongside states, although generally in less central roles.
  • Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are becoming increasingly active in IR.
    • Some of these groups have a political purpose, some a humanitarian one, some an economic or technical one.
  • National governments may be the most important actors in IR, but they are strongly influenced by a variety of actors.
  • These actors are also called transnational actors when they operate across international borders.
  • Nonstate actors such as intergovernmental organizations (IGOs), nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and multinational corporations (MNCs) exert a growing influence on international relations.

Levels of Analysis

  • Four levels of analysis in the study of IR:
    • Individual
    • Domestic
    • Interstate
    • Global
  • A level of analysis is a perspective on IR based on a set of similar actors or processes.
  • IR scholars have proposed various level-of-analysis schemes, most often with three main levels (and sometimes a few sublevels between).

Globalization

  • Expanded international trade, telecommunications, monetary coordination, multinational corporations, technical and scientific cooperation, cultural exchanges, migration and refugee flows, relations between the world’s rich and poor countries
  • Three conceptions of/schools of thought on this process compete, and the concept is changing both international security and IPE, but IPE more quickly and profoundly:
    • First view: Global marketplace - result of liberal economic principles
    • Second view: World’s major economies no more integrated today than before World War I, North-South gap increasing
    • Third view: Transformationalists - state sovereignty eroded by EU, WTO
  • As the world economy becomes more integrated, markets and production are becoming global in scope.
  • Some scholars view globalization as the fruition of liberal economic principles and perceive the global marketplace to have brought growth and prosperity (not to all countries but to those most integrated with the global market).
  • Alternatively, some scholars are skeptical of these claims about globalization, noting that the world’s major economies are no more integrated today than before World War I and noting that the North-South divide is no less relevant.

Global Geography

  • North-South gap
    • The most important geographical element at the global level of analysis
    • North
      • West - North America, Western Europe, Japan/Pacific
      • Old East - Russia and Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS)
    • South
      • Latin America
      • Africa
      • Middle East
      • Much of Asia
    • World regions – geographical distinction/divisions of the world
    • Global North-South gap
      • Between the relatively rich industrialized countries of the North and the relatively poor countries of the South is the most important geographical
  • The regions have been drawn indicate demarcations between the relatively rich industrialized countries of the North and the relatively poor countries of the South, which is the most important geographical element at the global level of analysis.
  • Several criteria beyond income levels help distinguish major geographically contiguous regions, such as similar economic levels, cultures, and languages.
  • States with a history of interaction, including historical empires or trading zones, are also placed together in a region. Finally, countries that might possibly unify in the future—notably South Korea with North Korea, and China with Taiwan—are kept in the same region.
  • IR scholars have no single explanation of the huge North-South income gap.
  • Geography provides one context in which IR takes place; history provides another.
  • The North maintains control of roughly 4/5 of the world income, and about 90% of manufacturing industries are property of and located in the North.
  • Alternatively, the South has access to 1/5 of the world income.
  • As the table shows, income levels per capita are, overall, more than five times as high in the North as in the South.
  • The North contains only 20 percent of the world’s people but 60 percent of its goods and services.
  • The other 80 percent of the world’s people, in the South, have only 40 percent of the goods and services.

The Evolving International System

  • The Two World Wars, 1900-1950
    • World Wars I and II dominated the 20th century, yet they seem to offer contradictory lessons about the utility of hardline or conciliatory foreign policies.
  • The Cold War, 1945-1990
    • For nearly 50 years after World War II, world politics revolved around the East-West rivalry of the Cold War. This bipolar standoff created stability and avoided great power wars, including nuclear war, but turned states in the global South into proxy battlegrounds.
  • The Post–Cold War Era, 1990-2013
    • The post–Cold War era holds hope of growing peace and great power cooperation despite the appearance of new ethnic and regional conflicts.
  • World War I (1914–1918) and World War II (1939–1945) occupied only ten years of the 20th century.
  • But they shaped the character of the century.
  • Nothing like those wars has happened since, and they remain a key reference point for the world in which we live today.

The Two World Wars, 1900–1950

  • Cult of the offensive
  • Trench warfare
  • Treaty of Versailles, League of Nations
  • Munich Agreement
  • Pearl Harbor, Hiroshima, Negasaki

The Cold War, 1945–1990

  • Yalta, Marshall Plan
  • NATO and Warsaw Pact, containment
  • Sino-Soviet split
  • Korean War
  • Sputnik, U-2 spy plane, Bay of Pigs
  • Cuban Missile Crisis
  • Proxy Wars
  • Vietnam War
  • Tiananmen Square
  • Perestroika and glasnost - fall of Soviet Union
  • Despite the hostility of East-West relations during the Cold War, a relatively stable framework of relations emerged, and conflicts never escalated to all-out war between the largest states.
  • Although the Soviet bloc did not join Western economic institutions, all the world’s major states joined the United Nations (unlike the ill-fated League of Nations).
  • The central concern of the West during the Cold War was that the Soviet Union might gain control of Western Europe—either through outright invasion or through communists’ taking power in the war-weary and impoverished countries of Western Europe.
  • During the Cold War, the U.S. and Soviet sides sought spheres of influence.
  • Europe was divided, and Germany itself was split, with its capital, Berlin, also divided. In 1961 the communist side built the Berlin Wall to keep its population from leaving.
  • Alternatively, China remained a communist, authoritarian government but liberalized its economy and avoided military conflicts.

The Post–Cold War Era, 1990–2013

  • Peaceful trends mark the post–Cold War era, though war and terrorism continue.
  • The Arab Spring popular uprisings in 2011–13 brought the world’s latest wave of democracy to the Middle East.
  • They overthrew governments in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen; sparked civil war in Syria; and reshaped the region’s international dynamics.
  • The post–Cold War era holds hope of general power cooperation, despite the appearance of new ethnic and regional conflicts.
  • Gulf War - Iraq occupied Kuwait
  • Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS)
  • Breakup of Yugoslavia
  • Somalia and Rwanda
  • September 11, 2001; Afghanistan, Iraq
  • More peaceful than Cold War
  • Globalization in international economic relations
  • China more central to world politics.