Globalization, in short, can be thought of as the widening, intensifying, speeding up, and growing impact of world-wide interconnectedness (Held and McGrew) linking the local to the global, and the East to the West. It’s bourgeoning globality where economics, politics, culture and the environment are becoming so interconnected that borders and boundaries are becoming more and more irrelevant.
This is the result of technological advances especially with the rise of the internet, which has proven to be pivotal in facilitating globalisation through the world wide web, and connecting billions of people from all over the world. In Thomas Friedman’s book, “The World is Flat” he discusses the idea of a shrinking world as a result of technological
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Callinicos 2), it is these same factors that also aid in reducing the likelihood of war among nations.
Going back to Friedman, what he calls the phase of ‘Globalisation 3.0’ started at the end of the Cold War, this phase spurred by the communication revolution where technological advances allowed for firms and investors to disregard political boundaries (Mosley) as well as the neoliberal economic policies governments under Thatcher and Reagan had pushed for in the 1980s. These policies encouraged free trade, open markets, privatisation and deregulations that encouraged capitalism and the privatisation of markets.
This is in addition to the liberal economic policies established earlier during the Bretton Woods conferences that were established 40 years prior, which encouraged nations to cooperate and expand international trade in order to create a more stabilised system to exchange money across the different economies. It was also during this time that non-state institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, and the General Agreement on Tariff and Trade (GATT) — which would later become the World Trade Organisation. It was these institutions that helped to rebuild post war economies and promote international economic cooperation