Scope Of Globalization

I believe that globalisation has changed the nature and scope of cultural and economic power more than it has the nature and scope of political power. Lukes defines power as having “three faces” – decision-making power, nondecision-making power and idealogical power over political agendas, and that if one party has power over another, they are able to influence that party to do something they would otherwise not do (Lukes, 2004.) Scholte defines globalisation as internationalization (a “growth of transactions and interdependence between countries”), liberalization (“a process of removing officially imposed restrictions on movements of resources between countries in order to form an ‘open’ and ‘borderless’ world economy”), universalization

Globalisation has made travelling around the world easier and cheaper, and workers from developing nations who migrate to developed nations send remittances back home to their families who then use that money to send children to school and purchase goods and services which increase their quality of life. Universalization has spread many goods and services around the world that would otherwise not be there or that would otherwise not be affordable, such as new foods, computers etc which improve people’s quality of life. People are now more connected than ever before in human history, which allows them to communicate instantaneously over the internet – they can spread their views and agendas over social media and influence other people’s points of view far more easily thanks to the spread of technology such as computers and smartphones and the spread of social

The existence of political and economic unions such as the European Union has diminished the power of the countries within these unions, as the EU can set policies on a broad range of areas, for example banning imports of ivory or introducing safety regulations on imported electronic goods. However, this impact is somewhat mitigated by the fact that these unions rarely have absolute power over countries within them and the individual nations still determine a significant amount of policies themselves without the intervention of the European Union. Furthermore, as evidenced by the recent “Brexit” of the United Kingdom, membership of these unions is not always absolute and the countries in them can elect to leave if they wish, so the power of the union is therefore not absolute. Increased globalisation has also culminated in a world where there are very few command economies left – outside of a few countries which operate at near-command economies such as Cuba or Venezuela, most countries are mixed economies where there is a level of government intervention in economies but consumers can still buy and sell most goods with a degree of freedom. Mixed economies naturally have less political power over the consumption habits of the citizens living within these economies than mixed economies, as consumers now attempt to consume to maximise their utility rather than relying on a central planner to