by Abdul Rahman S. Magba-Kamara

Created on: January 22, 2007   Last Updated: May 14, 2007

Political Scientist Robert Gilpin (1987: 389) defines globalization as the increasing interdependence of national economies in trade, finance and macroeconomic policies. Globalization is a process fueled by, and resulting in, increasing cross - border flows of goods, services, money, people, information, and culture. It, offers extensive opportunities for truly worldwide development but it is not progressing evenly. Some countries are becoming integrated into the global economy more quickly than others. Countries that have been able to integrate are seeing faster growth and reduced poverty. Outward oriented policies have brought dynamism and greater prosperity to much of East Asia, transforming it from one of the poorest areas of the world 40 years ago, into one of the most vibrant economies.

By contrast, when many countries in Latin America and Africa pursued inward oriented -policies in the 1970s and 1980s, their economies stagnated or declined, poverty increased and high inflation became the norm. In many cases, especially in Africa, adverse external developments made the problems even worse. The Fragmented, discontinuous, contradictory and contingent nature of globalization invites skeptics to make argument that it is not proceeding as fast as generally believed, that it is not spreading uniformly across the globe, or that it is not strong enough to erase cross-national differences. One of the key issues surrounding globalization is whether this process has outgrown the governance structures of the international system of states; and whether the process of globalization is undermining the authority of the nation state.

Economist Raymond Vernon (198: 249, 256-270) for example, has long argued that the spread of multinational corporations creates "destructive political tensions" and there is need to reestablish balance between political and economic institutions. Historian Paul Kennedy (1993: 53-64, 122-134) asserts that governments are losing control, and that globalization erodes the position of labor in developing countries, and degrades the environment. "Today's global society" he writes, "confronts the task of reconciling technological change and economic integration with traditional political structures, national consciousness, social needs, institutional arrangements, and habitual ways of doing things" (Kennedy 1993: 330).

In a similar vein, Kobrin (1997: 157, 159) argues that globalization challenges both autonomy and independent decision-making of the

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