Socscie 1

• The nation-state has two basic components: nation and state.  
• Nation “refers to a social group that is linked through common descent, culture, language or territorial contiguity”.
• The state emerged as a new institutional form in the wake of the demise of the feudal system
• The philosopher G. W. F. Hegel played a key role in redefining civil society as that which exists between the family and the state
• Until the nineteenth century, civil society was not distinguished from a state dominated by laws
• John Keane traces what we know consider civil society to the appearance of the West on the global stage beginning around 1500
• The nation-state can therefore be seen as an integration of the subgroups that define themselves as a nation with the organizational structure that constitutes the state.  
• The distinction between the market and civil society is a twentieth-century innovation usually associated with the Italian Marxist thinker Antonio Gramsci.
• civil associations allowed people to interact with one another and to develop, renew and enlarge feelings, ideas, emotions and understandings.
• Tocqueville lauded the early American propensity to form a wide range of associations that were not political in nature and orientation.
• The major figure in social theory associated with the idea of civil society is Alexis de Tocqueville.
• A robust civil society was already in existence by the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but it was soon set back dramatically by two world wars.  
• Mary Kaldor accords central importance to the 1970s and 1980s, especially in Latin America and Eastern Europ
• historically civil society was a nation-state centered, that is, linked to groups and actions within states, in more recent years it has been associated with more global actions and therefore with a somewhat different set of organizations

  Including “social movements, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), transnational networks, religious organizations and community groups”.
• John Keane offers a definition of global civil society as: “dynamic nongovernmental systems of interconnected socio-economic institutions that straddle the whole earth and that have complex effects that are felt in its four corners.
• Global civil society is neither a static object nor a fait accompli. 
• characteristics of global civil society

  1. It is nongovernmental
  2. a form of society composed of interlinked social processes,
  3. oriented to civility,
  4. Pluralistic
  5. Global
• one of the things that set Keane’s view on civil society apart is his argument that the economic market is deeply implicated in civil society. While many see civil society as distinct from both the nation-state and the market, Keane puts forth the “no market, no civil society’ rule. 
• Civil society is not a reality that is ever, or could ever be, completed. Rather it is an ongoing and ever-present projec
• International Nongovernmental Organizations (INGOs) are international not-for-profit organizations that perform public functions but are not established or run by nation-states
• While many INGOs have grown highly influential, their power does not involve rational-legal authority such as having their leadership elected, but rather comes from rational-moral authority.
• INGO'S - As moral powers, they exist less a actors on the world stage, and more to advice states, firms, and individuals on how they ought to act on various issues and under an array of circumstances.
• One of the notable successes of INGOs was an international treaty spearheaded by the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL). The treaty was signed in 1997 by 122 nations 
• INGOs

  • They are seen as annoying busybodies that are forever putting their noses in the business of others.
  • they are not democratic, often keep their agendas secret and are not accountable to anyone other than their members.
  • INGOs are special interest groups and therefore they may not take into consideration wider sets of concerns and issues
• some INGOs have become formally involved in International Governmental Organizations (IGOs). INGOs stand to gain from such formal associations in various way 
• During the Cold War, the major split was between Soviet bloc countries and those allied with the West.
• during the WWII the major divide was between those nation-states associated with the Allies mainly the US, Great Britain, France, Russia and those linked to the Axis primarily Germany, Japan, Italy.  
• Parag Khanna offers one interesting perspective on this emerging new world. He bases his analysis on a distinction between globalization and geopolitics.
• Khanna argues that with the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991, US geopolitical hegemony was expected to last well into the future, but it failed to get past the end of the century. Instead, he sees the emergence in the twenty-first century of a new Big Three in the world. As Khanna puts it, the “web of globalization now has three spiders.”
• Russia is being depopulated and is reduced to being run by “Gazprom.gov”;
• India is far behind China and does not seem to have the same kind of global ambitions and appet
• New pipelines bring the flow of oil to EU countries from Libya, Algeria and Azerbaijan
• • London is replacing New York as the global financial capital and as a reflection of that China plans to locate the Western offices of its state investment fund in London, not New York
  • Europe is a leader in technological developments.
  • The EU is already the largest market in the world having surpassed the US.  
• Foreign students find it increasingly difficult to study in the US because of all sorts of barriers and impediments and in any case, many find European educational institutions more attractive.
• a recent financial crisis in Greece and looming financial crises in Spain and Portugal are causing some observers to question the strength of the EU.  
• China is drawing more and more nations in the region into its political orbit and there is a possibility that it could eventually stand at the center of an Eastern version of NATO.
• globalization is not synonymous with Americanization;
• The main battleground among the Big Three will be what Khanna calls the “Second World,” which is distinct from the core First World countries and the peripheral Third World countries
• globalism means “networks of connections spanning multi-continental distances, drawing them close together economically, socially, culturally and informationally”.
• Globalization in turn is generally conceived as the processes promoting and intensifying multi-continental interconnectedness, and thereby increasing the degree of globalism.