The Globalization Debate—A Mid-Decade Perspective
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Description
For some time now, this author has argued that there is no longer a meaningful or important debate in favour of or against globalization, because the anti-globalizers have themselves gone global. In various sites of global law and policy-making, including those at the interstices of the global and the local (as will be explained below), these anti-globalizers have actually identified processes and institutions in which, unlike in the ‘state’ in many instances, they can air their criticisms of policies and express their values as global values. Despite the continuing rhetoric and polemics regarding the promotion of globalization, there is no longer an anti-globalization ‘side’ in the debate to coherently represent the position that the territorial nation state is and should remain the locus of control over economic activity, and should retain a monopoly on legitimate governance. Today, the protesters who march against ‘globalization’ are not marching in support of the ‘state’. Instead, they are (mostly) advocating for a set of values and causes that transcend state boundaries and that require global action. At the beginning of this century, Anthony Giddens anticipated that the debate would re-focus as a debate about globalization, rather than on whether globalization should take place. In an interview in the year 2000, he suggested that the second globalization debate would be “about what globalization is, what its consequences are, and what kind of framework we can develop for the world to accommodate it. It’s plainly had a lot of positive developments in producing a more interdependent world. We have to learn to harness those things, and we have to shift away from the kinds of political positions that were dominant for the last few years, and we have to produce a politics which allows us to create an inclusive society locally, nationally, and globally, and to harness these processes for the betterment of human beings.”
Source Publication
Research Handbook on Global Administrative Law
Source Editors/Authors
Sabino Cassese
Publication Date
2016
Recommended Citation
Howse, Robert L., "The Globalization Debate—A Mid-Decade Perspective" (2016). Faculty Chapters. 841.
https://gretchen.law.nyu.edu/fac-chapt/841
