Globalization since the 1940s - Global Politics

13 important questions on Globalization since the 1940s - Global Politics

What was included in political globalization since the 1940s?

Political globalization included both new institutions - including of course the United Nations and its various subgroups - and new pressures on individual nations to live up to various global norms, often framed in terms of the force of world opinion.

What are the constraining forces against the global political arsenal?

Nothing close to a world government emerged. The political side of globalization was a glass half empty - compared with the needs generated by the welter of world problems - or half full - compared with responses just a half-century before.

What gained international attention in the United Nations?

- Trade issues, obviously, were a recurring topic; so were labor conditions.
- Economic development and agriculture, women's issues, rights for children, treatment of refugees, labor conditions, and environmental concerns all got international attention.
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What remained a key topic in the United Nations?

The conduct of war remained a key topic: various international meetings sought to define and punish acts of genocide, others dealt with efforts to limit the spread of nuclear weapons, another urged a ban on landmines (US refused to sign), still others tried to ban the use of child soldiers.

What happened at the Organization of African Unity in 1975?

- In 1975 the Organization of African Unity recognized "international standard of application designed for the protection of rights of women."
- African courts in a number of countries began to rule in favor of women's property rights, highlighting the fact that governments had agreed to international conventions on equality.

Name an example where global norms significantly affected national policies on core issues.

- During the 1950s, wide public concern responded to above ground nuclear testing and its spread of certain cancer-causing pollutants in the atmosphere.
- Various groups in the West and Japan, in the Middle East (particularly against French testing in the Sahara), among Buddhists and other religious constituencies generated marches, petitions, and letters that finally caused major governments, including the United States, to agree to a test ban treaty.

What broad opinion movement in 1980 caused global pressure?

- Another broad opinion movement in the 1980s, particularly in Europe and the United States, pressed businesses to withdraw investments from South Africa in protest against the racist policy of apartheid and attendant police repression, and along with intense local agitation finally caused the changes in law that collapsed that system in favor of democracy and legal equality.
- Never before had this kind of global pressure played such a role in military or internal policy, implicitly trying to define types of health threats or racial inequalities that had simply become unacceptable according to.a potent if ill-defined global community.

When did the importance of global governance show up?

- The importance of global governance, even if informally organized, showed up interestingly in response to the economic crisis of 2008.
- Late in 2008, a new "group of 20" was convened to include economic powers in Asia and Latin America as well as the more familiar cluster of Western industrial nations plus Japan.

What did the creation of the "group of 20" demonstrate?

- Late in 2008, a new "group of 20" was convened to include economic powers in Asia and Latin America as well as the more familiar cluster of Western industrial nations plus Japan.
- While disagreements persisted, literally every major leader recognized that transnational coordination was essential and that the crisis also demonstrated the need for new global rules over the behavior of financial institutions.
- Globalism was no longer almost entirely Western, and it was seen as the only approach that could possibly master economic problems that were themselves worldwide in scope.

How did the global intervention prove to be inconsistent?

World opinion and the interests of several key states helped prompt action against civil strife in the former Yugoslavia or East Timor, but it largely held back from anything but ineffective laments in some of the bloody African clashes, like the genocide in Rwanda in the 1990s.

Which human rights gained increasing attention?

- Women were routinely included in human rights lists, both in general and in specific conventions designed to resolve problems such as child marriage.
- Children's rights themselves received new attention, including the 1989.

Why were human rights a vital conflict zone?

- Many though not all Middle Eastern countries held back a bit on equal rights for women.
- In the 1990s China and Singapore sought to galvanize an interest in issuing regional, rather than global, human rights definitions. They argued that existing human rights statements, even when approved by the United Nations, were largely Western in orientation, and gave too much priority to individual rights against the state, not enough attention to the rights of the community.
- For many countries, human rights pressures seemed to be a form of neocolonialism rather than a valid expression of global standards.

What continental trend raised another complication for political globalization?

- The formation of the European Union, designed to overcome the limits of national divisions and to make Europe more effective economically in the larger world, was a crucial innovation of the post-World War II decades.
- The move was no anti-global. But a focus on building greater European unity and identity could in fact distract from full support for larger global institutions. Europeans sometimes worked more on creation of their own identity than on global standards.

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