Seminar on Political Globalization

The goal of this course is to introduce and critically discuss questions, processes, and ideas that are central to the study of political globalization, defined as the process or set of processes through which policy-making responsibilities have increasingly shifted from national governments to both sub-national and supranational institutions. Due to transnational movements of people, goods, capitals, information, and ideas, state borders have become increasingly permeable, and politics no longer takes place simply in and through the state but beyond its confines and through new political actors. In this course, we will introduce the concepts of global and multi-level governance, and examine the impact of intergovernmental organizations, international institutions, and non-governmental organizations both on state sovereignty and national policy-making. We will also analyze globalization in relation to political identity by discussing the idea of global citizenship and cosmopolitanism, and the resurgence of nationalism as a form of resistance to globalization.Finally, we will devote some time to the discussion of regional integration. Is regionalism an antidote against globalization or are the two processes interlinked and mutually reinforcing? In order to answer such a question, we will study the nature and the significance of the European Union as the most advanced case of regional integration.