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Begin New Search Topic International Political Economy Publishing Institution Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition, McMaster University

1. Strangers as Enemies: Further Reflections on the Aporias of Transnational Citizenship

Author:
Étienne Balibar
Publication Date:
05-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition, McMaster University
Abstract:
These new reflections on the issue of "transnational citizenship" and its aporias, which I have the possibility to submit for discussion owing to the generous invitation of the Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition at McMaster University, will be presented from a European point of view, as I have done in previous essays on the same subject. But I will try to do so also in the perspective of a comparison, or better said, a confrontation, with North America, of which you are part, and where I have been working now regularly for years, albeit across the border. I do not believe in the possibility of speaking about "the global" from a point of view itself "global" -- that is, from nowhere or everywhere. But I believe in the (relative) possibility of dis-locating one's point of view, one's place of enunciation, and above all of exposing oneself to the dis-location that comes from others.
Topic:
Civil Society, Globalization, Government, International Political Economy, and Nationalism
Political Geography:
America and North America

2. Autonomy and Domination within the Global Trade System: Developing Countries in the Quest for a Democratic WTO

Author:
Anna Lanoszka
Publication Date:
10-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition, McMaster University
Abstract:
Power relations shape the world economy. The system of international economic transactions has been persistently asymmetrical as it consists of highly industrialized states as well as of many poorer countries at different levels of economic development. The dominant position of the rich developed countries cannot be simply assumed away, even in the rules-based World Trade Organization (WTO) guided by the principles of international law.
Topic:
International Relations, International Political Economy, International Trade and Finance, Treaties and Agreements, and World Trade Organization

3. The Origins of Global Civil Society and Non-Territorial Governance: Some Empirical Reflections

Author:
William D. Coleman and Sarah Wayland
Publication Date:
02-2005
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition, McMaster University
Abstract:
In contemporary discussions of global governance, many scholars have posited the possibility that networks of new social movements, publicly-oriented non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and other non-state actors have the potential to create pressures for increased transparency and accountability. A more legitimate democratic global politics would follow. Such networks are often seen to be the base of “global civil society”. Understanding the origins of global civil society is important if we are to assess well its possible contribution to addressing the challenge of global democratic governance in an era of globalization. In this paper, we evaluate two different views about the origins of global civil society. The first suggests that global civil society has been developing rationally over a long period of time, continuous with the development of domestic civil society in democracies. The second postulates global civil society to be a relatively new phenomenon, one that has emerged to respond to unprecedented challenges to democracy as a result of globalization.
Topic:
International Relations, Agriculture, Civil Society, Globalization, International Political Economy, Non-Governmental Organization, and Science and Technology

4. The Elusive Basis of Legitimacy in Global Governance: Three Conceptions

Author:
Steven Bernstein
Publication Date:
05-2004
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition, McMaster University
Abstract:
The Elusive Basis of Legitimacy in Global Governance: Three Conceptions How to create and maintain legitimacy is arguably the greatest contemporary challenge to global governance and international order. To address this challenge, International Relations scholars, accustomed to a clear distinction between international and domestic legitimacy, have had to borrow extensively from the fields of political philosophy, comparative politics, law, and sociology, which have long investigated the legitimate basis of political authority. These traditions inform three distinct conceptions of legitimacy in this new wave of scholarship: 1) principled legitimacy rooted in democratic politics; 2) legitimacy as law or legalization; and 3) a sociological conception of legitimacy rooted in intersubjective beliefs about appropriateness. Each conception provides only partial insight into the core puzzle animating this literature: what does political authority beyond the state require? The answer can only be found through an examination of the relationship of power, legitimacy, and community, which together constitute political authority.
Topic:
International Relations, Globalization, Government, and International Political Economy

5. Obligations of a Global Neighbor

Author:
Joyce E. Bellous
Publication Date:
11-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition, McMaster University
Abstract:
Globalizing processes increase the importance of developing civility both within societies and between societies. More broadly, they point to the need for global civility. Building global civility requires the development of a sense of neighborliness. Civility will result from a strong sense of neighborliness.
Topic:
International Relations, Gender Issues, Globalization, Human Welfare, and International Political Economy

6. "What Is Globalization? The Definitional Issue – Again"

Author:
Jan Aart Scholte
Publication Date:
12-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition, McMaster University
Abstract:
Knowledge of globalization is substantially a function of how the concept is defined. After tracing the history of 'global' vocabulary, this paper suggests several principles that should inform the way globality (the condition) and globalization (the trend) are defined. On this basis four common conceptions of the term are rejected in favour of a fifth that identifies globalization as the spread of transplanetary – and in recent times more particularly supraterritorial – connections between people. Half a dozen qualifications are incorporated into this definition to distinguish it from globalist exaggerations.
Topic:
Globalization and International Political Economy

7. Globalization and Democracy

Author:
Michael Hardt
Publication Date:
10-2001
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition, McMaster University
Abstract:
The discourse of globalization has become dominant in recent years in an extraordinarily wide variety of contexts, equally on the left and on the right – from journalism to public policy discussions, from business strategy to labor organizing, and within the university across the social sciences and humanities. It is something like the discourse on postmodernism that blossomed about a decade earlier but seems to me even more extensive. This paper is an attempt to sort out some of the political positions taken within the discourse on globalization to help clarify the stakes in the globalization debates and the political consequences of the various theoretical and empirical claims. My assumption, in fact, is that political positions or desires dictate to a large extent the various analytical characterizations of globalization. What I will attempt, then, is to construct a typology of positions on globalization using the question of democracy as the first line of division. In other words, I will first divide theories in two groups: those who claim that globalization fosters democracy and those who maintain that globalization hinders or obstructs democracy. I will further divide these positions into arguments on the right and those on the left because this is a context in which I believe there remain very clear divisions between right and left, and it would be incoherent to group them together.
Topic:
Globalization, International Political Economy, and Political Economy

8. International Institutions, Globalisation and Democray: Assessing the Challenges

Author:
Tony Porter and William D. Coleman
Publication Date:
07-1999
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition, McMaster University
Abstract:
The advance of globalization has involved additional governance capacity at supranational levels and thereby raised concerns about democracy, which has traditionally been based on the nationstate. For the most part, these governance arrangements take the form of intergovernmental fora, where nation-states are the principal players. In some policy areas where globalization is more pronounced, such as international finance, governance appears to feature some autonomous institutional development. Autonomy may come in the form of a relatively strong international organization with a mandate anchored in international law such as the World Trade Organization (WTO), or of the institutionalization of norms and values that give the intergovernmental forum an autonomous and distinct global perspective. As Held (1995) has observed, democratic theory has assumed that the nation-state is the relevant decision-making unit. The migration of political authority to supranational levels thus has the potential to undermine long-standing democratic arrangements.
Topic:
Globalization, Government, International Law, International Organization, International Political Economy, and Political Theory