LAW

Law

Law

Introduction

The quest for human well-being is a primary concern of states and the international community. Well-being is increasingly recognized as essential for long-run economic development, which is arguably the most important goal of nation-states. The researcher known as Sen in 1999 goes further, arguing that well-being is the sine qua non of development, given that economic growth has little value unless it is translated into falling child mortality and greater life expectancies. Indeed, human well-being is significant because it refers to the physical well-being of everyday people, and is hence a central goal of citizens everywhere. While most of the political science literature analyzes domestic determinants of human wellbeing, people argue that globalization deserves attention. Globalization refers to diverse processes, including greater mobility of capital, goods, and services as well as the diffusion of ideas, norms, and faster and easier modes of communication and transport. Thus, globalization is a multi-dimensional concept that has economic, social, cultural, political, and environmental dimensions, among others. Therefore, all the issues related to globalization will be discussed in detail.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Globalization

Whether globalization is a positive or negative force in the world has long been a major point of contention among scholars. Critics argue that globalization leads to long-run economic stagnation, greater vulnerability to economic shocks, diminished sovereignty and higher income inequality. Critics further argue that globalization is a threat to social identity. Moreover, institutions propagating greater openness, such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, are criticized for magnifying the debt problems of the developing world and exacerbating internationally induced recessions. Optimists, on the other hand, argue that despite its many flaws globalization nonetheless leads to long-run prosperity as well as a more equitable income distribution between countries. Globalization has also led to the emergence of transnational networks, such as the Third World Network, which draw attention to the concerns of developing countries in international forums. From an information perspective, the transmission of medical knowledge across national boundaries creates awareness about ways and means to enhance health conditions. Finally, international organizations such as the WHO, UNDP, and UNICEF are important global actors seeking to enhance human well-being of citizens across the globe. The own position is that while globalization has many negative effects, as discussed below, on balance the powerful positive effects predominate and that human well-being is enhanced as countries become more and more deeply incorporated into the global system. In this sense our position is closest to that of prominent skeptics such as Stiglitz, who may be extremely critical of globalization, but ultimately concludes that 'because of globalization, many people in the world now live longer than before and their standard of living is far better'(Appadurai, 1996, 58).

Globalization has long been at the centre of major intellectual movements in social science. Dependency theory provided a powerful critique of globalization in the 1970s, arguing that international trade and foreign direct investment were impoverishing the developing world, causing substantial inequality and undermining democratic ...