The Blackwell Companion to Globalization

Chapter 21

Political Globalization

GERARD DELANTY AND CHRIS RUMFORD

INTRODUCTION

The concept of globalization as used in this chapter refers to the multidimensional, accelerated and interconnected organization of space and time across national borders. Specifically with respect to political globalization it concerns an approach to the social world that stresses postnational and transnational processes as well as a consciousness of the compressed nature of space and time. Political globalization has been much discussed in the globalization literature where the emphasis has been on the decline of the nation-state under the impact of global forces, which have created different kinds of politics arising from, on the one hand, the development of transnational networks and flows, and, on the other, processes of de- and reterritorialization. For some, processes of political globalization open up new emancipatory possibilities, while for others globalization leads to a loss of autonomy and the fragmentation of the social world. The approach to political globalization adopted in this chapter highlights the multifaced nature of globalization, which is best seen as a relational dynamic rather than a new kind of reality. Political globalization, we argue, can be understood as a tension between three processes which interact to produce the complex field of global politics: global geopolitics, global normative culture and polycentric networks.

There can be little doubt that one of the most pervasive ...