Is

Globalization undermining State Sovereignty?

There has been much debate about whether globalization is undermining state

sovereignty in the study of world politics today. This is due to the fact that the term

globalization itself is rather subjective and broad. There are two rather distinct

arguments used in this debate. Hyperglobalists, such as Ohmae1 and Scholte2, hold a

pessimistic view and argues that globalization brings about the demise of the

sovereign nation state: global forces undermine the ability of governments to control

their own economics and societies. In contrast, the sceptics reject the idea of

globalization as so much globaloney3: by emphasizing the continuing importance of

states in world politics, academics such as Krasner4 and Gilpin5 argue that states and

geopolitics remain the principal agents and forces shaping world order today. In this

essay, we will firstly define the terms globalization and state sovereignty. Looking at

the impact of globalisation domestically and internationally of a state, we will pin point

which aspects of state sovereignty are being undermined before looking at the

arguments proposed by the sceptics. Then we will conclude whether or not, or to

what extent is globalization undermining state sovereignty.

1
Ohmae, K. (1995), The End of the Nation State, New York: Free Press.

2
Scholte, J.A. (2000), Globalization: A critical Introduction, London: Macmillan.

3
McGrew, A. (2011), Globalization and Global Politics in Baylis, J., Smith, S. and Owens, P.
(eds), The Globalization of World Politics, Oxford, Oxford University Press. p.16

4
Krasner, S.D. (1999), Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy, Princeton: Princeton University Press.

5
Gilpin, R. (2001), Global Political Economy, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.


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 Firstly we need to define state sovereignty. To do so, I will be using the

Westphalian6 notion of it. Westphalian sovereignty located supreme legal and political

authority within territorially delimited states.7 The emphasis here is on territory

borders and the concept of legitimate sovereign rule. Rulers have complete authority

over their subjects and it is understood that no ruler had the right to intervene in

sovereign affairs of other nations. In addition, not only is the state said to be free from

external intervention, but also from external influence. Furthermore there is to be no

legal or political authority beyond the state. We will be using these characteristics of

Westphalian sovereignty as a sort of checklist in order to see which aspects of them

are being affected by globalization, and how. This approach to state sovereignty will

help us answer whether globalization is undermining state sovereignty.

One view of globalization is that it is simply the widening, deepening, and speeding up

of worldwide interconnectedness.8 The process can be described as growing

extensively, intensively and quickly, creating a more deepening impact worldwide. This

interconnectedness is evident in every sphere, from economics to the cultural. Using

this definition, hyperglobalist Rosenau9 argues that the cumulative scale, scope,

velocity, and depth of contemporary interconnectedness is dissolving the significance

6
The Peace Treaties of Westphalia and Osnabruck 1648 had established the legal basis of
modern statehood.

7
McGrew, A. (2011), Globalization and Global Politics in Baylis, J., Smith, S. and Owens, P.
(eds), The Globalization of World Politics, Oxford, Oxford University Press. p.24

8
McGrew, A. (2011), Globalization and Global Politics in Baylis, J., Smith, S. and Owens, P.
(eds), The Globalization of World Politics, Oxford, Oxford University Press. p.16

9
Rosenau, J. (1997), Along the Domestic- Foreign Frontier, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.


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of the borders and boundaries that separate the world into it many constituent states

or national economic and political spaces. It then follows that this is undermining the

territorial notion of the sovereign state, and thus agrees that globalization is

undermining state sovereignty internationally.

The term interconnectedness itself is rather broad. To be more specific in relations to

state sovereignty, states have been interconnected more politically, economically and

socially on a national scale. Politically, one aspect of globalization is the evolving and

expanding of global governance. Although there isnt a world government to officially

strip state sovereignty of its prevention of external intervention, global governance in

effect does that job. This form of international system embraces states, international

institutions and transnational networks together. By doing so, its scopes and impact

have expanded dramatically. In result, its activities have become significantly

politicized, as the G20 London Summit and recent Copenhagen Summit on Climate

Change attest.10 With this global governance complex, private and non-governmental

agencies have become increasingly influential in the formation and implementation of

global policy. For example, major credit-ratings agencies, such as Moodys and

Standard and Poors, determine the credit statues of governments and corporation

around the globe. Therefore in that sense, political authority at home having sole

influence on its people has decreased. In addition, the state is not shielded from

external influences. Thus the state domestically has to conform to the norms of this

international system in order to participate. Whether this is a choice or being forced to

10
McGrew, A. (2011), Globalization and Global Politics in Baylis, J., Smith, S. and Owens, P.
(eds), The Globalization of World Politics, Oxford, Oxford University Press. p.25


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is irrelevant because at the end of the day, globalization in this sense undermines state

sovereignty by exerting external influences and impacts on the State.

Another political aspect of globalization, as defined by Brown11, is the focus on the

global structures and processes of rule making, problem solving, the maintenance of

security and order in the world system. This clearly undermines the characteristic of

state sovereignty in relation to having supreme legitimacy over politics within its state.

Although these global structures acknowledge the continuing centrality of states and

geopolitics, it does not give them the authority to decline laws that are employed on

them. Under condition of political globalization, states are increasingly embedded in

worldwide webs of: multilateral institutions and multilateral politics from NATO (North

Atlantic Treaty Organization) and the World Bank to the G20; transnational

associations and networks like the International Chamber of Commerce. The

definitions of globalization given by Rosenau and Brown can be summed up with that

of Scholtes12: it is the de-territorialization-or ... the growth of supraterritorial

relations between people.

Economically, globalization is described by Gilpin13 as the integration of world

economy whilst Hirst14 describes it as the continued development of the international

11
Brown, S. (1992), International Relations in a Changing Global System, Boulder, CO:
Westview.

12
Scholte, J.A. (2000), Globalization: A critical Introduction, London: Macmillan. p.46

13
Gilpin, R. (2001), Global Political Economy, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. p.364

14
Hirst, P. (2002) Globalization and the Nation State, Review of International Political
Economy 4 (3): 472-496.

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system of commercial liberalism. Worldwide economic integration has intensified due

to the expansion of global commerce, finance, and production binding together the

economic fortunes of nations and communities across the world, thanks to the

emerging global market economy. The effect of this integration is that no national

economy, in theory, is able to insulate itself from the contagion effect of turmoil in the

worlds financial market. The credit crunch of 2008, initiated within the USA yet

effected by many counties worldwide like Germany and Japan, illustrates this

perfectly. This undermines state sovereignty in that there is external influence on the

individual state. In addition, it also creates a sort of dependency on other states,

thus undermining states potential to rule its territory as a self-sufficient unit.

Furthermore, they are compelled to adapt to the new global economic situation or

have been pressured to do so, as emphasized by Sassen15.

The political and economical aspects of globalization leads us to the perception that

globalization is watering down the popular fiction of the great divide. This is where

political life is separated into two distinctive separate spheres of action, the domestic

and international. As Jayasuriya 16 had pointed out, the erosion of the internal

sovereignty of the State is perhaps the first noticeable manifestation of the

transformation of sovereignty. This has been the case when we looked at the political

and economical aspects of globalization and its affects (as discussed already) on state

sovereignty domestically and internationally.

15
Sassen, S. (1996) Losing Control? Sovereignty in an Age of Globalization, New York: Columbia
University Press.

16
Jayasuriya (1999), Globalization, Law, and the Transformation of Sovereignty: The
Emergence of Global Regulatory Governance, Indiana Journal of Global legal Studies 6 (2):
454

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Having talked about the internal sovereignty of a state, we need to go back to the

territorial aspect of state sovereignty. This brings our attention to Harveys17

description of globalization as time-space compression. It can best be described as a

shrinking world, for example: the source of local developments, from unemployment

to ethnic conflict, may be traced to distance conditions or decisions. This encourages

deterritorialization as social, political, and economic activities are increasingly

stretched across the globe so that they are no longer organized solely within a state

territory. With this feature of globalization, it is undermining state sovereignty in

accordance to its territorial characteristic.

We have been looking at the effects of globalization and how it has impacted state

sovereignty in terms of authority and territory. However it is important to look at the

impact of globalization in relation to the ethos of the population. Socially, globalization

has allowed global communication and organizations between like-minded people

across the globe through advanced technology. This had lead to the transnational

spread of ideas, cultures and information amongst not only those like-minded people,

but also between different culture groups. These ideas may include ideologies such as

democracy or the debate of universal human rights. One could argue that this had

lead to events which are beyond state control; people have been influenced in such a

way that they act against the ethos of the state, which was the case with the Arab

Spring.

17
Harvey, D. (1989), The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Conditions of Cultural
Change, Oxford: Oxford University Press.


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Globalization undermines state sovereignty by exerting external influences, in the form

of ideas, into the state. In result this can lead to the population questioning the

legitimacy of the government to exert absolute power over the state. Again, the Arab

Spring is an example. These external forces give communities and culture groups the

confidence to fight against their current regime, because they feel united and

supported to do so by other fellow international members after communicating with

them through the advanced technology and increased communication present in

globalization. This is a good example of how globalization undermines state

sovereignty domestically in a state.

However, there are counterarguments to hyperglobalist theories. Hirst18 argues that

although there are changes in supra-national organization (such as the World Trade

Organization) and governance, the sovereign territorial state is not being undermined

even if its role is changing. The new standardized rules, reached by agreement

between states, can only work if there are territorial agencies that enforce them

locally and have the power to do so. Those agencies can only be, and are, states.

Moreover, in order for international treaties to be implemented, they have to be

deliberated, signed and delivered domestically and internationally by the states. Hirst

emphasizes the significant importance of the state as a key actor in globalization in

relations to global governance and economics.

He then goes on to discuss how the anti-globalization movements already see

18
Hirst, P. (2002) Globalization and the Nation State, Review of International Political
Economy 4 (3): 473

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institutions like the WTO as a supra-national tyranny. In response, the states play a

vital role in resisting them and their influence.19 Due to their territory and legitimacy,

states still hold the authority to speak on behalf of their populations on global issues.

One could say that they are better at sustaining the global order than these trans-

territorial and apparently more global bodies. For example, globalization

economically such as free trade and financial flows do not remove the need for

international action by states, rather they reinforce it20.

Hirsts ideas of state sovereignty in relations to globalization are, in my opinion,

strongly based on the assumption that it is the Westphalian Sate Sovereignty which

can perform the responsibilities of keeping the international system stable and

cooperative. Because of this I believe that these assumption had made the claims of

Hirsts rather invalid since we can see that Westphalian State Sovereignty has indeed,

to a large extent, been undermined by globalization as discussed earlier. Globalization

had transformed the nature of politics, from state-centric geopolitics to geocentric

global politics. It has definitely changed the processes of governance and

accountability in the modern state21. Although, like Hirst, Cohen22 argues that rather

19
Hirst, P. (2002) Globalization and the Nation State, Review of International Political
Economy 4 (3): 474

20
Hirst, P. (2002) Globalization and the Nation State, Review of International Political
Economy 4 (3): 474

21
Sassen, S. (1996) Losing Control? Sovereignty in an Age of Globalization, New York: Columbia
University Press, p.xi

22
Cohen, E.S. (2001), Globalization and the Boundaries of the State: A Framework for
Analyzing the Changing Practice of Sovereignty, Governance 14 (1): 75-97.

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than undermining the state, globalization is a product of a rearrangement of the

purposes, boundaries, and sovereign authority of the state, I emphasize that the

Westphalian State sovereignty is undermined since globalization had forced these

rearrangements of the state. Domestically, the sovereignty of the state, seen with

quite a realist view and as a self-sufficient unit with exclusive political power, is

undermined by globalization in the sense that external influence seeps into the minds

of the population. Thus the people within the state are more aware of contemporary

issues and ideas other than the ethos and norms exerted to them by the current

regime in the state. This leads to the diminishing authority of the political actors/elites

in the state. Internationally, state sovereignty defined by its territorial borders is

wearing aware because of the increasing impact of global governance and the

international global community.

Having looked at the impact of many aspects of globalization domestically and

internationally on a state, we can conclude that yes, globalization undermines state

sovereignty and to a rather large extent. In theory, this undermining will increase as

the impact of globalization politically, socially and economically continues to

accelerate in the modern age, particularly in the wake of advancing technology.

(Word count: 1983)

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Bibliography

Books

Baylis, J., Smith, S. and Owens, P. (eds) (2011), The Globalization of World Politics, Oxford,
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Biersteker, T.J and Weber, C. (eds) (1996), State Sovereignty as Social Construct, Cambridge,
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Brown, S. (1992), International Relations in a Changing Global System, Boulder, CO: Westview.

Gilpin, R. (2001), Global Political Economy, Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Harvey, D. (1989), The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Conditions of Cultural
Change, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Krasner, S.D. (1999), Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy, Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Mansbach, R. W., Ferguson, Y.H., et al. (1976), The Web of World Politics: Nonstate Actors in
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Ohmae, K. (1995), The End of the Nation State, New York: Free Press.

Rosenau, J. (1997), Along the Domestic- Foreign Frontier, Cambridge: Cambridge University
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Sassen, S. (1996), Losing Control? Sovereignty in an Age of Globalization, New York: Columbia
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Scholte, J.A. (2000), Globalization: A critical Introduction, London: Macmillan.

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Aman, A.C. Jr., (1995), A Global Perspective on Current Regulatory Reform: Rejection,
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Cohen, E.S. (2001), Globalization and the Boundaries of the State: A Framework for Analyzing
the Changing Practice of Sovereignty, Governance 14 (1): 75-97.

Hirst, P. (2002), "Globalization and the Nation State" - paper presented at SEF Sympoium:
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Global Security, Birbeck College University of London

Jayasuriya (1999), Globalization, Law, and the Transformation of Sovereignty: The Emergence
of Global Regulatory Governance: Indiana Journal of Global legal Studies 6 (2): 425-455.

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