What is Globalisation?

Globalization 4.0: Evolution or Revolution?

General definition

The essence of globalization has been defined by Kevin Rudd, former Prime Minister of
Australia (2007–2010), as “the contraction of time and space in international transactions through the platform of new technologies”. Globalization depends on (infra-)structure (roads, trains, shipping, flight routes, cables, ports), geo-climatic factors (global warming), technological innovations (digitalization; green energy, logistics, ITC) and, last but not least, a framework transnational norms. It rests on the twin logic of the acceleration and increase of the volume of exchanges of goods, capital, services, people and ideas, as well as the steady densification of geographic connectedness.

Academic definition

Roland Robertson, professor of sociology at University of Aberdeen, defines globalization as: “the compression of the world and the intensification of the consciousness of the world as a whole.”

Sociologists Martin Albrow and Elizabeth King define globalization as: “all those processes by which the peoples of the world are incorporated into a single world society.”

In The Consequences of Modernity, Anthony Giddens defines globalisation as: “the intensification of worldwide social relations which link distant localities in such a way that local happenings are shaped by events occurring many miles away and vice versa”

The International Monetary Fund

The IMF identifies four basic aspects of globalization: trade and transactions, capital and investment movements, migration and movement of people and the dissemination of knowledge. Further, environmental challenges such as climate change, cross-boundary water, air pollution, and over-fishing of the ocean are linked with globalization. Globalizing processes affect and are affected by business and work organization, economics, socio-cultural resources, and the natural environment.

Controversial views

Proponents of globalization argue that it allows poor countries and their citizens to develop economically and raise their standards of living, while opponents of globalization claim that the creation of an unfettered international free market has benefited multinational corporations in the Western world at the expense of local enterprises, local cultures, and common people. Resistance to globalization has therefore taken shape both at a popular and at a governmental level as people and governments try to manage the flow of capital, labor, goods, and ideas that constitute the current wave of globalization.

Other Issues

Issue no. 12 | November 2022

The Weaponisation of Economics

Global Challenges

Issue no. 12 | November 2022

The Weaponisation of Economics

The multipolar world succeeding US hegemony in the early 21st century, the financial crisis of 2007 and the corollary decline of liberalism seem to have ushered in an era of economic nationalism. States are increasingly left to fend for themselves as multilateral mechanisms lose traction and international economic relations gain in toxicity. The sanctions, embargoes and retaliations arising from the war in Ukraine, but also an accelerating struggle for dwindling natural resources, have pushed these logics to new heights. This Dossier assesses ongoing geoeconomic transformations and their potentially devastating consequences.

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Issue no. 7 | April 2020

Global Governance in Peril?

Global Challenges

Issue no. 7 | April 2020

Global Governance in Peril?

The present Dossier takes stock of the current state of the multilateral system and its future prospects. It aims to explore to what extent global governance is in crisis as the global geopolitical order is undergoing fundamental shifts and liberal universalism is losing traction. It assesses potential of reform in extant institutions as well as emerging trends, tools and forums that are reshaping multilateral practice on a daily basis.
Note – The dossier was drafted before the Covid-19 world crisis.

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Issue no. 5 | April 2019

New Grammars of War:
Conflict and Violence in the 21st Century

Global Challenges

Issue no. 5 | April 2019

New Grammars of War: Conflict and Violence in the 21st Century

The Dossier aims to explore new trends and expressions of violence in armed conflict in the 21st century. Taking as a starting point the changing paradigm of armed conflict – from conventional wars with clear contours towards more non-linear, fragmented and protracted types of civil and international conflict — it adopts a broad approach to portray changing forms of violence across different types of armed conflicts (including terrorism, international/civil wars or urban warfare). In the context of a fragmenting international order, with increasingly blurred lines between state and non-state, combatant and civilian, domestic and international, the number of actors involved in conflicts and concurrent strategies of violence have multiplied. In face of the ubiquity of violent conflict — despite an overall decline in interstate conflict and global number of casualties — the Dossier aims to shed light on new or changing forms of violence, their contexts, actors and victims. It explores the novelty, heterogeneity, scales and vectors of violent practices in contemporary conflicts by investigating the impact of a series of factors such as new military technologies (drones, robots), new communication tools (social media), gender, migration, or the subcontracting of security to private actors.

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Globalization 4.0: Evolution or Revolution?

What is Globalisation?

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