Politics and Globalisation : Knowledge, Ethics and Agency

The central aim of this book is to analyse whether [or not] the global constitutes a fundamental challenge to the social-scientific study of politics, including the structure of disciplines and the division of labour between them.

Globalisation is widely understood as a set of processes driven by technological, economic and cultural change. Few have successfully defined the changing character and role of politics in global change. Political institutions such as the nation-state have been seen as undermined by globalisation, or needing to respond to it. This book clarifies the tensions which global change has provoked in our understanding of politics. Politics and Globalisation suggests that globalisation is a process which is politically contested and even politically constituted. The volume presents five key intellectual and political contests in globalisation:
· the extent and political significance of globalising changes in economy and society · how and how far the relations and forms of nation-state organisation are transformed
· whether the given concepts and methods of political science as a discipline can be applied to global and regional politics, and whether they require radical reformulation;
· the role and significance of ethical questions in global change
· whether global change is constituted by, or denies, radical political agency