Search

Begin New Search Topic Political Theory

231. A Structural Theory of Imperialism - Part II

Author:
Johan Galtung
Publication Date:
09-2004
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Uluslararasi Iliskiler
Institution:
Uluslararasi Iliskiler
Abstract:
Galtung develops a theory of imperialism to account for inequality within and between nations and the resistance of this inequality to change. He distinguishes between Centre and Periphery and argues that those in power in the former have a community of interest with those in power in the latter. The result is a relationship which operates at the expense of the majority of the people in the Peripheral countries, but which is largely in the interest of the majority of the people in Centre countries. Two mechanisms of imperialism are defined. One is the pattern of vertical interaction whereby the dominating nation enriches itself as a result of the interaction process. The second mechanism is the feudal interaction structure whereby the dominated nations in the periphery are kept apart.
Topic:
Imperialism and Political Theory

232. Power and Systemic Dependence from Liberalism to Neoliberalism

Author:
Yücel Bozdaglioglu and Çinar Özen
Publication Date:
12-2004
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Uluslararasi Iliskiler
Institution:
Uluslararasi Iliskiler
Abstract:
This paper analyzes and compares the concept of power as defined both in liberalism/neolibaeralism and realism. As a result of this analysis, it is presented that there is not a big difference between the definitions of liberal/neoliberal and realist approaches in terms of the goals and both schools converge in that aspect. While realism emphasizes the importance of military power, liberalism/neoliberalism points out the importance of power arising from economic relations. Under this analytical framework, a definition of systemic power is presented. Systemic power is not the capacity of a state to have a direct influence on others' behaviors but power that arises from a state's ability to change the political and economic structure of the system. In this context, systemic power is crucial in creating and maintaining hegemony.
Topic:
International Political Economy and Political Theory

233. Content Providers of the World Unite! A Critical Canadian Analysis and Agenda

Publication Date:
02-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition, McMaster University
Abstract:
The theme of the McMaster conference, “Content Providers of the World Unite!,” was a wonderfully provocative re-writing of the slogan on the title page of The Communist Manifesto. This slogan was rewritten as modish media lingo, that pseudo-lingua-franca that bears such a freight of treacherous reassurance under the banner of global culture, the communications revolution, trickle-down prosperity, and endlessly expanding consumer 'choice.' The combination of allusion and revision in the conference title evinces both continuity and change. Indeed, such rewriting is an effective combination of solidarity and resistance. But rewriting alone, while crucial as we will see, will not of itself do the job necessary in the current conjuncture.
Topic:
Globalization and Political Theory
Political Geography:
Canada

234. The Globalization of Property Rights: An Anglo and American Frontier Land Paradigm, 1700-1900

Author:
John Weaver
Publication Date:
02-2000
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition, McMaster University
Abstract:
Old-world ideas accompanied European migrants, and a few changed the globe. An English obsession with landed property was implanted in settlement colonies, so that, between the late 1600s and late 1800s, private initiatives and official planning on British colonial and American frontiers interacted to frame property rights to extensive regions. This paper dwells on that interaction and the tensions between private goals and state sovereignty. The state was essential for framing property rights when these were associated with land and in situ resources. In very recent times, property rights have fostered entirely new industries, for example in software and genetically modified biota. Property rights have changed traditional activities such as art and entertainment. Do new forms of property - "less constrained by physical location" - leave the state with a reduced role in the realm of property rights? Does the paradigm of evolving property rights seen in previous centuries suggest any parallels with struggles over more recent property rights? These are questions for members of the institute to consider. We will offer several concluding thoughts.
Topic:
Globalization, Government, and Political Theory
Political Geography:
America and Europe

235. Globalization as the End and the Beginning of History: The Contradictory Implications of a New Paradigm

Author:
Arif Dirlik
Publication Date:
03-2000
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition, McMaster University
Abstract:
This paper seeks to understand globalization as a new paradigm. It recognizes that there is much about the discourse of globalization that is ideological, that seeks to cover up the detrimental consequences of globalization for the majority of the world's population. It suggests nevertheless that there may be much to be gained from viewing it as a new paradigm, albeit a contradictory one, that has replaced an earlier paradigm of modernization. It makes an analytical distinction between globalization as historical process, which is at least as old as the history of capitalism, if not older, and globalization as a new way of looking at the world and its past, which is quite novel. To illustrate its argument, the paper contrasts present-day political and intellectual consequences of globalization with the late nineteenth-century, where several observers have identified a level of economic globalization greater than that of the present. It argues that whereas earlier globalization produced nationalism, colonialism and epistemological universalism, globalization presently is postcolonial, challenges the nation-state, and is marked by a break-down of universalism. It follows that globalization needs to be understood not just as global integration, as suggested by its ideologues and in economistic interpretations, but equally importantly as a new mode of fragmentation. An analytical distinction between globalization as process and paradigm is necessary to grasping globalization as a new mode of comprehending the world, but it is nevertheless necessary from a critical perspective to keep in mind the historical relationship between the two; globalization may be viewed as a new beginning in breaking down old hegemonies, but globalization may be viewed also as the ultimate victory of capitalist modernity. The contradictoriness may be perceived in the epistemologies of postmodernism and postcolonialism. The paper suggests that these epistemologies are best grasped as symptoms of globalization, that seek to break with modern and colonial ways of knowing, and yet are stamped by those very legacies. The discussion turns, by way of conclusion, to the relationship between globalization and history. While globalization is best understood historically, it also has produced new ways of looking at history. Three modes are selected here as products of globalization: world history writing, which is consciously motivated at the present by the idea of globalization, and seeks to understand the past in nonEurocentric ways, but may be understood also as a mode of containing the break-down of universalism; and two different perspectives on the "end of history" as we have known it. First, a EuroAmerican perspective that sees in the end of universalism(and the crowding of the past with incompatible and incommensurate cultural claims) also the end of history. Second, a conscious challenge to history as a modern way of knowing in the name of "alternatives to history." The paper concludes that these conflicts over history, too, point to the present as both an end, and a possible new beginning-but only as a possibility.
Topic:
Globalization, Political Theory, and History

236. Coming to Terms with Globalisation: Non State Actors and Agenda for Justice and Governance in the Next Century

Author:
Richard Higgott
Publication Date:
02-1999
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition, McMaster University
Abstract:
Globalisation is now a near ubiquitous phenomenon. Indeed, it is the most over used and under specified term in the international policy sciences since the passing of the Cold War. However, as most actors in the international policy domain recognise, it is a term that is not going to go away. Policy responses--of state and non state actors alike--are increasingly coming to terms with globalisation, however defined.
Topic:
Democratization, Globalization, Government, Non-Governmental Organization, and Political Theory
Political Geography:
Europe

237. 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