Political Globalization Is Global Political Evolution
* Article: POLITICAL GLOBALIZATION IS GLOBAL POLITICAL EVOLUTION. By GEORGE MODELSKI and TESSALENO DEVEZAS. World Futures, 63: 308–323, 2007 (DOI: 10.1080/02604020701402707)
URL = http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/gwof20
Contextual Quotes
1.
Globalization is “the process of “emergence of organizations of planetary scope. ... In this discussion globalization is seen as a process that is historical, transformational, and also multidimensional, as well as one facet of world system evolution. … The collective organization of the human species (is the result of) the operation of the Darwinian learning algorithm of search and selection in the context of humankind as a learning system. ”
2.
“Earlier … political interaction was either local or regional. It is only about the year 1000 AD that interactors (conquerors, traders, explorers) began to emerge at the planetary level and they set in motion a process of global political evolution. … At the beginning of the 21st century … we have now entered the third period of political globalization. … That third period is one of “global organization”. ”
- George Modelski & Tessaleno Devezas [1]
Abstract
"Political globalization is one dimension of a process that is multidimensional (not just economic), historical (in millennial proportions), and transformative (in changing planetary institutional structures). Conceiving of political globalization in evolutionary terms (as one centered on innovative sequences of search-andselection) makes it possible to construct a time-table for global politics, and to derive from it an agenda of priority global problems. The following questions will be addressed on that basis: Where in that process are we situated at the present time? (a time that is one of palpable uncertainty); What global problems does this analysis point to, and what does it tell us about where we are heading? These are not forecasts but rather elements of an “institutional” framework of orientation for the discussion of the next several decades of global organization."
History
Globalization as a Historical Process
George Modelski & Tessaleno Devezas:
“Globalization is a process in time, and therefore it also is a historical process in that its understanding requires tracing it back to its beginnings. These beginnings may arguably be traced i.a. to the Silk Roads across Eurasia, and the projects of World Empire, most prominently pursued by Genghis Khan and his Mongol successors in the 13th century, but more clearly seen in ocean-based enterprises of succeeding centuries. Similarly we cannot expect it to assume final form for possibly another millennium. It also is a historical project in that there is only one instance of it in the experience of the humankind. We cannot generalize about it (in the sense of summing up a number of instances) except by trying to trace that one instance of it that we know, but also by reducing it to a set of constituent processes and elements.
Globalization is transformational-institutional because it traces successive steps in what we might call the development of a planetary constitutional design. Where one millennium ago, the human species was recognizably organized in some four or five regional ensembles, with basically minimal mutual contact, and no organization, common rules, or knowledge, today information is abundant and low-cost, contacts have multiplied, and organization and rules dealing with collective problems are no longer exceptional. The institutions whereby human relate to each other have been undergoing a transformation at the planetary, but also at local, national, and regional levels.”
(http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/gwof20)
Discussion
Connectivist, Transformational vs Institutional Globalization
George Modelski & Tessaleno Devezas:
"The conception of globalization advanced here may best be described as institutional because it seeks to explain the rise of great planetary institutions that include free trade regimes and transnational enterprises, global leadership, and global governance, world social movements, and world opinion.
An institutional approach might best be contrasted with a “connectivist” approach. In that latter view, globalization is defined, to give one example from a recent report, as the “growing interconnectedness reflected in the extended flows of information, technology, capital, goods, services, and people throughout the world” (National Intelligence Council, 2004, p. 27).
Viewing “certain aspects” of these developments as “irreversible,” the report raises globalization to the status of a “mega-trend” (we describe it as “process”): “a force so ubiquitous that it will substantially reshape all of the other major trends in the world of 2020.” Such a global mega-trend can be visualized with the aid of aggregate data on world flows (National Research Council, 2004, p. 27).
That is the pure “connectivist” position. Another facet of globalization viewed as connectivity is “openness.” To operate freely connections require open societies because connections thrive most in the absence of barriers—barriers to trade, to capital movements, to migrants, or to the diffusion of ideas and practices. That is why another set of indices of globalization is country indices of openness—the degree to which nations are accommodative to the world system. Openness is a property of national systems, and nations can be ranked according to the degree to which they are acceptant of world flows.
The measurement and analysis of global interactions yields much of the substance of the phenomenon of globalization. Trade flows, capital movements, travel and migrations do indeed make the world more—and at times less— interdependent. Scholars judge the progress of that process on the basic of empirical observations. The mapping of connectivity frequently uncovers variety of networks—trade, financial, social—which are structural features of the world system. Yet these developments also fluctuate, and sometimes even collapse utterly.
It is widely noted, for instance, that the hopes for world peace aroused by the expansion of world trade in the latter part of the 19th century were to be rudely dashed in 1914, and what followed was a substantial reduction, if not derailment, of an apparent trend toward globalization. And yet we are not entitled to say that the process as such had then come to a complete halt, only a pause. Most of all, the mere ascertainment of trends is no answer to the question: Why do we globalize in the first place?
The approach developed by David Held and his collaborators (1999, p. 14ff) that has been described as “transformationalist” goes beyond the “connectivist” view and treats globalization as a historical process that brings about connectivity and openness but one that also has an institutional grounding, and can therefore be depicted in two dimensions, spatio-temporal, and organizational, respectively. That model of globalization combines an interest in the intensity, extensity, velocity, and impact propensity of the flows that animate the world system, with an analysis of the organizational dimension that describes the infrastructure, and the institutionalization, of global interdependence (“a new architecture of world order”).
The view advanced here leans strongly toward this second dimension as one more suited to an evolutionary analysis even while recognizing the importance of having good reliable measurements of the multitude of interactions that are of interest. Notice that both connectivity and openness are the product of a set of organizational and institutional arrangements. They derive from the organizations that originate and manage these flows, the regimes that facilitate and govern them, the matrices of mutual trust that sustain them, and the systems of knowledge that guide them. In particular, and briefly stated, political globalization tracks the evolution of world order architecture, from the classical imperial form, through global leadership, to global organization.
The institutional approach not only focuses on the facts of transformation (and is therefore also “transformationalist”), but also reaches out for explanation of these vast changes. And it sees such explanation basically in a learning process, in the humans’ stubborn search for a better world, a journey with many detours and false promises, but one that has so far taken us quite far. A learning process can also be modeled, simulated, and projected into the future."
(http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/gwof20)
Defining Globalization as Multidimensional
“Globalization, finally, is also multidimensional. That is, it has no simple recipe for identifying “stages of world history,” such as slavery or capitalism. As generally recognized, it comprises not just the spectacular expansion, under the banner of free trade, of world commerce and of capital movements, with the large array of transnational enterprises, and the elaborate body of rules and regulations governi ng all of these. Globalization also concerns the rise of global social movements, and worldwide cultural trends, and the emergence of world opinion as conception of common interest, but most particularly in the context of this article it has a political dimension.”
(http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/gwof20)
Globalization as a Institutional and Political Process
Political Globalization as Process: Global Political Evolution
“Process. This is the central term of an analysis that privileges change over stasis, and “flux” over structure. It is a distinct way of perceiving reality, in that it “connects the dots” to create event sequences. More than a mere trend (a drift, tendency, or general movement), it is defined as “series of connected developments unfolding in programmatic coordination.” Four (self-similar, relatively autonomous) global (institutional) processes—economic, political, social, cultural—arrayed in a cybernetic hierarchy, make up globalization. Political globalization, or global political evolution, is at the heart of this inquiry and belongs to the (nested) family of political processes (that also includes the actor-level-long cycles of global politics, and the species level, evolution of world politics).”
Political Globalization as the result of Programmatic Coordination
“Program. “Programmatic coordination” inheres by definition in the notion of process. Global processes such as political globalization are evolutionary sequences and are conjectured to be programmed accordingly by a Darwinian algorithm of search and selection. A program is implied in the conception of self-organization. Search and selection respond to priority problems, and these are responded to by means of innovations.”
Political Globalization (930 AD–2300 AD)
930—Imperial experiments
1200—Mongol empire (Failed world empire)
1430—Global leadership
1640—Britain I, II (Global nucleus )
1850—Global organization
2080—Democratic comm (Global governance)
2300—Consolidation
Sixteen Generations (500 Years) as Periods in World System Time
“Period. The unit of a process is a period. World system time is not continuous or flowing but discrete or grainy, reckoned in generations, and unfolding in distinct periods. Political globalization (evolution of global politics has a characteristic period of some 16 generations (about 500 years). Each period is defined by a set of priority global problems, and by the launching and diffusion of institutional innovation.”
Globalization as a Phased, Evolutionary, Learning Process
“Phase. Each period is a phased, evolutionary, learning process and has a programmed time-structure: an event sequence that consists of four phases whose generic are variation, coalition, selection, and amplification3 (the first two phases might also be called “preparatory,” and the other two, “decisive”). That also means that all processes are self-similar (have the same time-structure, but at different periodicities). One period of political globalization consists of four phases, each of which is one long cycle that acquires part of its problem-focus from that position.
…
Each period has a characteristic duration, reckoned in generations. In the cascade that makes up world system evolution, global processes synchronize, and they also stand in a fixed relationship that is expressed by a power law. “Bigger” processes (those higher in the cybernetic hierarchy, of higher information content) have longer duration, hence presumably greater importance. That is why political processes (such as political globalization) can be shown to have twice the length of the evolution of the global economy.”
(http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/gwof20)