socsi midterms

• Political globalization


  Intensification and expansion of political interrelations across the globe
• Political globalization


  • It raises an important set of political issues pertaining to the principle of state sovereignty
  • Humans have organized political differences and this generated a sense of belonging to a particular nation-state
  • The sense of belonging created artificial division of planetary social space into domestic and foreign spheres
  • Common - us, unfamiliar - them
  • Modern nation-state system has rested on psychological foundations and cultural assumptions
  • Nurtured by demonizing images of the "Other", people's belief in the superiority of their own nation has supplied the mental energy required for large-scale warfare
• Partial permeation of the old territorial borders

  Softening of hard conceptual boundaries and cultural lines of demarcation
• Radical 'deterritorialization' of politics, rule, and governance


  Late 1960's
• 3 fundamental questions about Political Globalization

  • Is it really true that the power of the nation-state has been curtailed by massive flows of capital, people, and technology across territorial boundaries?
  • Are the primary causes of these flows to be found in politics or in economics?
  • Are we witnessing the emergence of global governance?
• Sovereignty


  A concept that was invented in the modern world-system, its prima facie meaning is totally autonomous state power
• Historians talk of the emergence of the "new monarchies" in England, France, and Spain at the end of the fifteenth century, at just the moment onset of the modern world-system
• Feudalism


  Emerged during the ninth century in the Carolingian Empire, based on an agricultural economy, distinct social classes were dependent on one another through a complex system of pledging loyalty in exchange for goods and services
• Social classes in feudalism

  • Kings (owned the land)
  • Lords (noblemen, granted tracts of land called fiefs by the king)
  • Vassals (knights, held smaller amounts of land awarded to them by lords)
  • Serfs (peasants, farmed the fiefs but were not given land of their own)
  • Clergymen (church officials, land occupied by churches, monasteries, and other religious establishments of the Roman)
• As France, England, and Spain kingdoms rose to power and prominence, the wealth, influence, and power of the Italian city states declined
• Feudalism had been replaced by a new economic system, social and political structures were still based on the fief
• The Renaissance began in the mid-fourteenth century in Italy
• Europe was divided into hundreds of independent states, each with its own laws and customs. The result was absolute chaos, as leaders of states vied for more power and larger territories
• In the south, the Italian peninsula was turned into a battleground. Wealthy city-states competed for trade rights around the Adriatic and Mediterranean Seas, and the Italian Wars (conflict between France and Spain for control in Italy) raged for sixty-four years
• As the Renaissance moved north of Italy in the fifteenth century, northern and central Europe was even more fragmented
• The priest and scholar Martin Luther approached the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany and nailed a piece of paper to it containing 95 theses


  October 31, 1517
• Monarchs (kings and queen with supreme rule) in France, England, and Spain

  • Responded to the chaotic situation in Europe by consolidating their power
  • Rise of nationalism, was the distinctive feature in the Renaissance period
• In France, the Capetians gained control of nearly all duchies (fiefs) by staging internal wars and defeating England in the Hundred Years' War
• Tudor monarchs began a new dynasty after emerging victorious from the War of the Roses, a struggle between two families for the throne of England
• The conflict started when the ruling Lancastrian King Henry VI became mentally ill and was blamed for losing the french lands gained during the 100 years war
• As for the interstate system, its ancestry is usually attributed to the development of Renaissance diplomacy on the " Italian peninsula, and its institutionalization is usually thought to be the Peace of Westphalia in 1648
• The 30 years' war ended with the signing of The Peace of Westphalia (1645)
• The new monarchies


  • Were centralizing structures
  • Sought to ensure regional power structures were effectively subordinated to the overall authority by strengthening a civil and military bureaucracy
  • Sought to give themselves strength by securing some significant taxing powers with enough personnel actually to collect the taxes
• Sovereignty


  • It is a claim, and claims have little meaning unless they are recognized by others
  • More than anything else a matter of legitimacy
  • Requires reciprocal recognition in the modern world-system
  • It is a hypothetical trade, in which two potentially (or really) conflicting sides, respecting de facto realities of power, exchange such recognitions as their least costly strategy
• Reciprocal recognition is a fundament of the interstate system. Without this the proclamation is relatively worthless
• A state is recognized by a significant number of other states but is also not recognized by a significant number. This situation may occur in the wake of secessions or revolutionary changes in regimes
• Reciprocity also operates internally, local authorities must "recognize" the sovereign authority of the central state, and in a sense the central authority must recognize the legitimate authority and define the sphere of the local authorities
• Civil war resulted in a serious breakdown, example: Breakdown of Yugoslavia
• Absolute Monarchs


  Common from 15th-18th century, Monarch ruled the entire government, Possessed unlimited power, Supported by the divine right of kings (King was divinely ordained, Responsible only to God, Even if that king chose to rule by cruel means), Helped unify and consolidate nation-states, Considered dictators today
• From the point of view of entrepreneurs operating in the capitalist world economy, the sovereign states assert authority in at least seven principal arenas of direct interest to them


  • States set the rules on whether and under what conditions commodities, capital, and labor may cross their borders
  • They create the rules concerning property rights within their states
  • They set rules concerning employment and the compensation of employees
  • They decide which costs firms must internalize
  • They decide what kinds of economic processes may be monopolized, and to what degree
  • They tax
  • They can use their power externally to affect the decisions of other states
• The relationship of states to firms is a key to understanding the functioning of the capitalist world-economy. The official ideology of most capitalists is laissez-faire, the doctrine that governments should not interfere with the working of entrepreneurs in the market
• Entrepreneurs assert this ideology loudly but do not really want it to be implemented
• Laissez-faire economy


  What to produce - determined by consumers' preferences, How to produce - determined by producers seeking profits, For whom to produce - determined by purchasing power
• Command economy


  Determined by the government