What is Globalisation and What is Not?: A Political Economy Perspective

Despite the widespread use of the concept there is neither a consistent theoretical construction nor a clear definition of globalisation. Although the debate between pro and anti globalisation scholars and activists is interesting, it largely fails to address globalisation as a fundamental structural transformation of modern capitalism from a historical perspective and tends to reduce it to a re-articulation of the old debate on states versus markets. The first aim of this paper is to provide a clearer definition of globalisation which will be helpful in assessing the validity of various arguments surrounding the concept of globalisation, including whether such a process exists. Then an alternative interpretation of globalisation viewed from a political economy perspective will be introduced. It will be argued that internationalisation in the form of increased trade and foreign direct investment is the nature of capitalist accumulation process, thus, cannot be impeded. This accumulation process necessarily creates its own ideological climate to facilitate acceptance of the doctrine and to justify the economic and social problems it creates. Finally it will argue that there is a globalisation tendency since increased internationalisation inevitably weakens the role of nation states by transferring some of their functions to newly created supranational states that are created by the dynamics of this internationalisation process.