What is globalisation? Why is there an intense debate about globalisation and its consequences? (2021, 15 Marks)
Anthony Giddens defines globalisation as “the intensification of worldwide social relations” that bind distant localities, so that local happenings are shaped by events far away and vice versa (The Consequences of Modernity, 1990). The debate is intense because every element of that definition (its novelty, its drivers, its winners) is contested, and each answer carries a political programme.
What globalisation is
- David Held and Anthony McGrew describe the widening, deepening and speeding up of interconnectedness across economic, political, cultural and ecological life.
- Jan Aart Scholte separates the genuinely new, supraterritorial relations for which distance no longer matters, from older ideas such as liberalisation or westernisation.
- It is a cluster of processes driven by technology, the profit motive and deliberate state policy, from dismantled capital controls to the WTO.
Why the debate is so intense
1. The definition decides the conclusion. If globalisation is a policy of liberalisation, it can be reversed; if it is technological compression, it must be accommodated. The line between process and globalism, the ideology presenting it as inevitable, is itself disputed.
2. Is it new, and what does it do to the state? Hyperglobalists (Kenichi Ohmae, The Borderless World) see the state becoming obsolete; sceptics (Paul Hirst and Grahame Thompson) note that the pre-1914 economy was comparably open; transformationalists argue that state power is reconstituted, not ended.
3. Consequences are unevenly shared. Branko Milanovic’s elephant curve (1988–2008) shows large gains for Asia’s middle classes and the global top 1%, and stagnation for the Western lower-middle class. The gap persists: Oxfam (January 2026) finds the top 1% holding 43.8% of global wealth, while the World Bank’s March 2026 update counts 847 million people in extreme poverty. Value-chain industrialisers celebrate globalisation; deindustrialised regions resent it.
4. Sovereignty and democracy. Dani Rodrik’s political trilemma holds that deep integration, national sovereignty and democratic politics cannot all be maximised together. Susan Strange’s retreat of the state faces Linda Weiss’s reply that powerless states are a myth.
5. Culture and identity. Critics see homogenisation, George Ritzer’s McDonaldization or cultural imperialism; others see hybridity and Roland Robertson’s glocalisation. Bollywood’s global reach supports the second view.
6. Rival theoretical lenses. Liberals see benign interdependence; Marxists (Immanuel Wallerstein) see core-periphery hierarchy entrenched; feminists stress the gendered costs of export work and welfare cuts; greens see an unsustainable growth model.
7. It has become mass politics. Seattle (1999) and the alter-globalisation movement opposed it from the left; Brexit and the sweeping US tariffs of 2025 opposed it from the right. In India the 1991 reforms divided Jagdish Bhagwati and Arvind Panagariya, who credit openness with lifting incomes, from Prabhat Patnaik, who argues it shrank the state’s room for welfare and employment policy.
Conclusion
The argument is no longer about whether globalisation exists but about who governs it and who gains. Joseph E. Stiglitz’s verdict, that outcomes depend on how integration is managed, points to the right question: designing institutions, nationally and globally, that distribute the gains more fairly.