Rosenberg: Globalizaiton Theory: A Post Mortem

Rosenberg, J., 2005. Globalization Theory: A Post Mortem. International Politics, 42, 2-74.

Globalization was the catch phrase of the 90’s. It does not seem to be as applicable in the early 21st century. Why is this the case? “This article argues that ‘Globalization Theory’ always suffered from basic flaws: as a general social theory; as a historical sociological argument about the nature of modern international relations; and as a guide to the interpretations of empirical events…it also offers an alternative, ‘conjunctural analysis’ of the 1990’s, in order both to explain the rise and fall of ‘globalization’ itself, and to illustrate the enduring potential for International Relations of those classical approaches which Globalization Theory had sought to displace” (2).

While it appeared as if the liberalization and interconnection experienced in the 90’s would continue, the stagnation of a variety of international agreements, for example, highlight the lack of continuity in globalization’s spread.

“How then are these tasks taken up in the pages that follow?...The movement of the argument traces a line from social theory through historical sociology and into the historical analysis of the 1990s. At each level, in successive sections of the article, a different aspect of Globalization Theory is subjected to critique: first its methodological foregrounding of space and time; then its substantive belief in the signi8ficance of transnational relations for the transformation of sovereignty; and finally, its particular reading of the 1990s in the light of that belief. This three part movement from the abstract to the concrete is also designed to facilitate a cumulative refinement of the diagnosis: from an initial, general designation of ‘globalization’ as a Zeitgeist (rather than a plausible social scientific concept); through the identification of its symptomatic affinities with the experience of capitalist development; and into the pin-pointing of its concrete production and dissolution in the unique international conjuncture of the 1990s” (9).

“The ‘double post mortem’ proposed near the start of this article has turned out in fact to have three parts, corresponding to three interdependent levels of abstraction at which social enquiry may be pursued: general social theory, historical sociological identification of social structures and tendencies and empirically orientated, conjunctural analysis of dynamic sequences of historical events…The first level gave us the most general formula of the problem. To posit ‘globalization’ as an explanatory category must, the further it is pushed, lead to a conceptual inflation of space; the reificatory consequences of this can be avoided only be explicit qualification, to the point of implicit retraction…At the second level, the historical sociological, we found the intellectual ambition of Globalization Theory translated into an empirical expectation…of a fundamental transformation in the nature of international relations…Finally, at the conjunctural historical level we reconsidered some of the main empirical events and processes that provided the historical context for the rise and fall of Globalization Theory. We found that during the 1990s a longer-term decomposition of the postwar settlement, domestic and international, intersected with the collapse of the Soviet Union to trigger a major and rapid restructuring of the international system” (63-4).