World Politics

International Relations and Globalisation in the 21st Century

Jeffrey Haynes, Peter Hough, Shahin Malik, Lloyd Pettiford

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781317862963
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

From the war on terror to the global financial crisis, traditional concepts of world politics are being challenged on a daily basis. In these uncertain times, the study of international relations and the forces that shape them have never been more important.

Written specifically for students who are approaching this subject for the first time, World Politics is the most accessible, coherent and up-to-date account of the field available. It covers the historical backdrop to today's political situations, the complex interactions of states and non-state actors, the role of political economy, human security in all its forms, and the ways in which culture, religion and identity influence events.

World Politics takes a new approach that challenges traditional interpretations, and will equip students with the knowledge and the confidence needed to tackle the big issues.

Part 1

International Relations and Globalisation

1 International Relations and Globalisation in the Twenty-First Century

2 International Order, International Society and Globalisation

The opening part of the book provides a focus on globalisation, enabling us to understand and use the concept in relation to current international relations. First, we examine several key terms: What is meant by International Relations and how it differs from international relations, and where globalisation fits in in our understanding of these terms. We also find out how globalisation has affected our understanding of international relations over time, why events since the 1980s have fundamentally affected how we understand international relations and, finally, how various theoretical approaches seek to incorporate globalisation into their worldviews.

Of course, we are now very accustomed to the idea of globalisation. It may come as a surprise to learn that ‘globalisation’ only entered common usage in international relations quite recently, in the 1980s. It was used a few years earlier by some economists, trying to understand what was happening in what they thought of as an emerging global economy. Now, however, at the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century, the contemporary significance of globalisation is both wideranging and immense. This encourages us to think of it in various ways in relation to many outcomes in international relations.

Not least, globalisation focuses our attention on the fact that international relations is experiencing a period of profound change — some might even say, transformation. This suggests various far-reaching processes of change, for example, the upheaval in the global economy (2008–2010), which saw even the most powerful countries, such as the United States, lose ability to influence international economic outcomes.

Chapter 1 examines current international relations and how globalisation affects it. The purpose of this is, first, to introduce readers to the overall subject matter of current international relations. Second, we want to equip our readers with basic conceptual knowledge and the awareness necessary to undertake more advanced study in international relations. The overall objective of this first part of the book is to facilitate readers’ understanding of recent developments in international relations, and to prepare them intellectually to evaluate future changes.

In Chapter 2, we turn to an evaluation of the complexity of current international relations. Not least, the subject matter of international relations has expanded from the study of what states do to an awareness that there are also a great number of ‘non-state actors’, such as the United Nations, the European Union and al-Qaeda. This has occurred in the context of rapid technological change, political transformations, industrialisation, the emergence from colonial domination of the ‘developing world’ after the Second World War, the rise and fall of ideological conflict between the USA and the (now defunct) Soviet Union during the Cold War which followed the Second World War and, most recently, the impact of the multifaceted processes of globalisation.

In order to understand how international relations has developed over time and what factors have played a key role in its development, Chapter 2 examines the relationship between international order, international society and globalisation. Its overall purpose is fourfold, to explain: (1) Fundamental aspects of international relations after the Peace of Westphalia in 1648; (2) Conceptions of international order; (3) Conceptions of international society; and (4) the impact of globalisation on international order and international society.

Source: Getty Images

Chapter 1

International Relations and Globalisation in the Twenty-First Century

International Relations and globalisation

Why is globalisation important for understanding International Relations?

Technological, political, economic and cultural globalisation

Important post-Cold War changes affecting International Relations

Understanding globalisation

Conclusion

In this chapter you will gain understanding of the following:

• What is meant by International Relations (IR), international relations and globalisation

• How globalisation has affected our understanding of IR over time

• What has occurred over the last two decades to affect how we understand IR

• Rival theoretical approaches to understanding globalisation

Source: Getty Images

Introductory box: International Relations and economic crisis

2008 was a year of crises. First, we had a food crisis, particularly threatening to poor consumers, especially in Africa. Along with that came a record increase in oil prices, threatening all oil-importing countries. Finally, rather suddenly in the Fall, came a global economic downturn, and it is now gathering speed at a frightening rate. The year 2009 seems likely to offer a sharp intensification of the downturn, and many economists are anticipating a full-scale depression, perhaps even one as large as the 1930s. While substantial fortunes have suffered steep declines, the people most affected are those who were already worst off.

(Sen 2009)

Here, Amartya Sen, winner of the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1998, emphasizes the highly interdependent nature of the global economy, while also drawing our attention to the fact that while the losses suffered in the finance and banking sectors of the ‘developed’ world may have made the most headlines in Europe, the banking crisis was prefigured by crises that hit developing nations first. The economic crisis of 2008–2010 is just one example of the way globalisation has made the world increasingly interdependent, so that no one part of the world can remain unaffected by the knock-on effects of a crisis somewhere else.

Globalisation is a term we use so frequently, it may come as a surprise to learn that it has only recently entered common usage. In international relations, the term came into use in the 1980s, having first been used by economists to describe what they characterised as the emergence of a global economy. The phenomenon of globalisation referred to an increased interdependency that was not only limited to the realm of economics, but which extended to technology, culture, and the way states and institutions related to one another. Now, in the early twenty-first century, it is difficult to think about international relations without considering the impact globalisation has had on the way power is shared in the world. The idea of globalisation focuses our attention on the fact that international relations is experiencing a period of profound change which saw even the most powerful countries, such as the United States, lose ability to influence international economic outcomes.

This introductory chapter examines current international relations and how globalization affects it. More generally, our book has two key aims. First we want to introduce readers to the overall subject matter of international relations. Second, we aim to equip our readers with basic conceptual knowledge and the awareness necessary to undertake more advanced study in International Relations. The overall objective is to encourage readers to understand recent developments in international relations, and to prepare them intellectually to evaluate future changes.

The first section of this chapter surveys how globalisation has transformed our understanding of international relations. The second section focuses on globalisation controversies and explains how they affect our understanding of international relations. Following your reading of this chapter, you should understand the nature of important recent changes in international relations, including the impact of globalisation.

International Relations and lobalisation

Box 1.1 The emergence of International Relations as an academic discipline

The academic discipline of International Relations has existed for nearly a hundred years, since soon after the end of the First World War. Over that time the world has changed in many ways, as have the ways in which we have theorised world politics. Globalisation represents one of the most profound changes to world political systems in the past century, and has had significant effects on how we understand power, identity, economics, and security, among other things.

The first thing to do is to introduce and explain the book’s key term: ‘international relations’. It is important to note that ‘international relations’ has two distinct, yet interrelated, meanings. First, when spelt with a capital ‘I’ and capital ‘R’ (International Relations), it refers to an academic discipline which evolved in recent decades from the subject area called ‘Politics’. Because it has its roots in the study of politics, the discipline of International Relations (or IR) is sometimes referred to as ‘International Politics’ or ‘World Politics’. Whatever term we use, we are referring to essentially the same discipline, the aim of which is to explain and predict the behaviour of important entities whose actions have a bearing on the lives of people all around the world. These entities might be individual states and governments, whose actions undoubtedly have a direct effect on their citizens and neighbouring states — but they may just as easily be groups of states, international organisations, or businesses that operate worldwide. The aim of International Relations is to examine how these various types of bodies interact with one another, for what purposes, and to what ends. In sum, as an academic discipline, International Relations studies: (1) how and why states engage with each other, and (2) the international activities of various important ‘non-state actors’.

Because of the nature of its area of enquiry, it will come as no surprise that the academic discipline of IR is multidisciplinary. This means it employs insights from various academic areas, including: politics, economics, history, law, and sociology. We can trace the start of the academic discipline of International Relations to a precise time. It started soon after the First World War ended in 1918, with the founding of a chair — that is, a professorship — at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, in 1919. The chair was established for an explicit and understandable reason: to try to discover the causes of international conflict and thereby improve the chances for global peace, lessening the likelihood of international war. Initially then, IR was concerned primarily with international conflict and its causes. Over time, when it became clear that the causes of conflict are wide-reaching and complex, the discipline’s subject matter expanded. Over time, it came to include:

• international political economy — often referred to as IPE — which studies the political effects of international economic interactions

• international organisation (how and why regional and international bodies form and interact)

• foreign policy-making (what governments do to try and achieve their goals beyond their domestic environments)

• Strategic (or Security) Studies (how governments seek to protect their citizens from external threats)

• peace research (how we can maintain peace and seek peaceful solutions to conflict).

All of these areas of concern fall under the general heading, and provide the subject matter, of the discipline of International Relations.

As already noted, when we refer to the academic discipline of International Relations we use a capital ‘I’ and capital ‘R’. When we use a small ‘i’ and a small ‘r’ (international relations) we are referring to the totality of significant international interactions involving states and important non-state actors. Because this is theoretically a limitless endeavour, in practice our emphasis is on states (or governments: the terms are often used interchangeably) and a range of important non-state actors, including: multinational corporations (MNCs) (such as Microsoft, Shell, and Starbucks), international non-governmental organisations (INGOs) (such as Amnesty International, Greenpeace, and Friends of the Earth), and inter governmental organisations (IGOs) (such as the United Nations, European Union and the Organisation of the Islamic Conference). All such non-state actors play important roles in international relations and we shall examine them in future chapters.

Turning to globalisation we can note that, although only recently in common usage, it is not a new concept. The origins of current globalisation can be seen in the work of various nineteenth- and early twentieth-century intellectuals, including the theoretician of communism, the German intellectual Karl Marx (1818–83). Along with another German, Fredrich Engels (1820–95), Marx i...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Brief Contents
• Contents
• List of boxes and case studies
• Tables
• Guided tour
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Maps
• Part 1 International Relations and Globalisation
• Part 2 The History of Globalisation and International Relations
• Part 3 International Relations Theories
• Part 4 International and Regional Cooperation
• Part 5 Current Global Issues
• Part 6 War and Peace
• Part 7 The Future
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• Index