Globalisation for Sale by Swardt-Kraus Cobus;

Author:Swardt-Kraus, Cobus; [de Swardt-Kraus, Cobus]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group
Published: 2022-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Pluralization of sovereignty

Whilst national governmental decisions still have a major potential impact on the daily lives of people the world over, the ability of governments to control the direct and indirect effects of decisions over which they have no authority has decreased substantially. Transnational forces and global processes are increasingly orbiting outside the organizational reach of all nation-states. Consequently, the organizational capacities of states are more restricted, forcing them to collaborate not only with one another, but also with a variety of other organizations and cultural constituencies. As a result, there is an interspersion of different categories of decision-making and a pluralization of organizational options. The developments in the actual and nascent global social realities undermine the relative sovereignty and independence of nation-state vis-à-vis other nation-states, transnational forces and global processes.8 The present disjunctive between particularistic and universalistic pressures seems to lead to a simultaneous increase in global integration and local disintegration.9

Within the interconnected global network, many of the traditional domains of state activity, as well as new domains of responsibility (e.g., ecological issues), can no longer be fulfilled without increased international and transnational collaboration.10 This global collaboration takes place through plural authority structures (e.g., the OAS, OAU, APEC, WTO, G7 and the D8), transnational security networks, and global media conglomerates. In order to counterbalance the destabilizing consequences of global compression, states are increasing their integration with other states, and nongovernmental organizations including public and private agencies and interest groups. Many areas of modernist state responsibility (e.g., defense, health, etc.) are currently coordinated on a supra-national basis as states surrender sovereignty to larger organizational units (e.g., the EU), multilateral treaties (e.g., OPEC), or international organizations (e.g., the UN). Consequently, sovereignty is today divided among a number of agencies — national, regional, international and supra-national — and limited by the very nature of this plurality of organizational options.11

The changes in the contemporary global social environment have led to a re-classification of the categories of global ‘political’ organization. Bretherton (1996) divides the issues constituting contemporary global ‘polities’ into three categories.12 The first category consists of national issues which were traditionally considered to be the responsibility of individual sovereign states. They involve transnational collective responsibility on a regional or global level in areas such as security and human rights. The second category comprises of issues which are transboundary or worldwide in scope or effect, including crime, control of infectious diseases, transport, communication and transborder pollution. The third category contains issues which are global in scope and require global co-operation if they are to be effectively addressed. They include areas associated with the global ‘economy,’ development, population movements, as well as the more specific problems of stratospheric ozone depletion and climatic changes. A fourth category, namely that of virtual or supra-geographical issues, can be added to Bretherton's typology. Virtual or supra-geographical issues encompass the emerging diasporization of space (i.e., supra-national spaces, cyberspace, social non-space, etc.), and the contemporary coalescence and fragmentation of real time, mobile and virtual geography.13

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