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EPISTEMOLOGICAL CHALLENGES OF GLOBALIZATION TO THE WESTPHALIAN

THINKING WITHIN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

Boryana Aleksandrova

borjana_alexandrova@hotmail.com

PhD (University of Münster). Senior Assistant-Professor in International Relations, Sofia

University “St. Kliment Ohridski” (Bulgaria). Current research interests: historical transformations

of state and international structures, globalization, transnationalization, theories of international

relations, international conflicts. Teaching: university course “Globalization and International

Relations”; seminars on Theory of International Relations, Theory of Foreign Policy, Theory of

International Negotiations; introductory seminar on International Relations for students of law.

Abstract

From the critical perspective of the concept of “human emancipation” globalization

represents an important historical challenge to realism, liberalism and Marxism.

Nevertheless, they are not to be ignored in any theoretical debate about globalization in IR.

Without neglecting the nuances in each of the three schools of thought we can say that they

tend to view the globalizing world through the lenses of the Westphalian order. To the

contrary, we are witnessing the (re)emergence of a spatial, power and functional

heterogeneity beyond, between and within nation-states today.

We can particularly attribute the epistemological gaps of the three IR subdivisions in terms

of globalization to their handling of five main issues: territory, actors, interrelation between

public and private sphere, predictability, interdisciplinarity. In this sense, a critical

globalization debate cannot and should not be restricted to issues conceptualized explicitly

under the banner of “national democracy”, “national security” or “national welfare” but must

be urgently engaged with the different spatial manifestations as well as state and non-state,

public and private instruments for the proliferation of transnational interconnectedness and

“unpredictability”. It is on this basis that eventual fruitful synergies between the three

conventional theories, and between them and the reflectivist and constructivist streams of

the 1980s and 1990s are to be sought.

Keywords

Emancipation, globalization, heterogeneity, IR, Westphalian, realism, liberalism, Marxism

How to cite this article

Aleksandrova, Boryana (2018). "Epistemological challenges ofglobalization to the

Westphalian thinking within international relations". JANUS.NET e-journal of International

Relations, Vol. 9, Nº. 1, May-October 2018. Consulted [online] on the date of last

consultation, DOI: https://doi.org/10.26619/1647-7251.9.1.1

Article received on August 18, 2017 and accepted for publication on January 11, 2018

JANUS.NET, e-journal of International Relations

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Epistemological challenges of globalization to the Westphalian thinking within international relations

Boryana Aleksandrova

EPISTEMOLOGICAL CHALLENGES OF GLOBALIZATION TO THE WESTPHALIAN

THINKING WITHIN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

Boryana Aleksandrova

Introduction

For the last 35 years globalization has been occupying a solid place within International

Relations (IR) (e.g. Bigo, 2006; Buzan & Hansen, 2010; Cohen & Rai, 2000; Czempiel,

2002; Etzioni, 2002; Hardt & Negri, 2000; Held, 2004; Held et al., 1999; Held &

McGrew, 2008; Scholte, 2001; Shaw, 2000; Varwick, 2000). In this framework, it

represents a serious historical challenge to realism, liberalism and Marxism.

Simultaneously, these three conventional schools of thought bare the potential to

stimulate self-reflection on our understanding of global orders through their longtime

theoretical systematizations of international affairs.

Without neglecting the nuances in each of them it is to say that for the most part they

tend to view the world through the lenses of the Westphalian paradigm while avoiding

“a big picture of the changing contours of the international and/or global realm” (Roach

cit. in Roach, 2008: xvii). Be it through the “hard and ‘scientific’ look at power politics”

(Friedman, Oskanian and Pardo, 2013: 1) of realism, the examination of the peaceful

settlement of disputes among capitals in the realm of liberalism (Dunne, 2001: 164) or

the perception of a “totality within which the states forming the centre dominate the

periphery” (Bidet, 2007: 16) of Marxism the international system appears

predominantly as a multiplicity of compact nation-states being in charge of a single

territory. Thus, an ahistorical dichotomy between the domestic and the international

has been reasserted within IR for many years.

To the contrary, in the last four decades we are witnessing the (re)emergence of a

spatial, power and functional heterogeneity beyond, between and within nation-states

(Acuto & Curtis, 2014; Castells, 2004; Eisenstadt, 2012; Rosenau, 2003; Sassen,

2006). Both their external and internal milieus have been transforming in the course of

intensifying migration flows, climate change, transnationally grounded political

convergence or divergence, emergence of global public opinion, a burgeoning

perception of insecurity among broader populations, etc. A global society (Shaw, 2000)

has been in formation between and within states’ spaces due to a complex interweaving

of various social forces. Impediments and chances for equal and fulfilling, individual

and community realization nowadays remain therefore underresearched or undervalued

by the three IR theories.

Against this background, the current exposé proposes a critical evaluation of the

discourse of the nation-state in IR. It is the view of the author that we cannot delineate

globalization in all its complexity and asymmetry without addressing this particular

discourse. The concept of “human emancipation” serves as a leading normative

baseline for this undertaking. Following Ken Booth, it signifies “the freeing of people (as

individuals and groups) from those physical and human constraints which stop them

carrying out what they would freely choose to do” (Booth cit. in Buzan and Hansen,

2010: 206). In light of globalization it is meant to imply three things. First, individual

self-realization is deeply related to the peaceful and sustainable global cohabitation

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Epistemological challenges of globalization to the Westphalian thinking within international relations

Boryana Aleksandrova

(Albrow, 2007; Friedman, 2006). Second, human emancipation presupposes historically

evolving (political) communities that have innovated, reinvented or even replaced the

states (Booth and McSweeney cit. in Buzan and Hansen, 2010: 206-207). Third, the

coexistence of human communities is to be rooted in equal and fulfilling, structural and

institutional conditions in the world (Booth, 1995; Linklater, 1999). So, how do global

orders fit into the Westphalian tradition of the three theoretical branches of IR in

respect of human emancipation?

The article represents first and foremost a theoretical undertaking. An inductive

approach is being applied to the topic starting with depicting appearances of

globalization – unlike used deductive ones which project exiting theoretical frameworks

over globalizing realities. Commensurately, general deficits as well as inputs of realism,

liberalism and Marxism with regard to the global realm are elucidated together with five

concrete epistemological points of critique. The thesis is being presented that the social

and space heterogeneity of globalizing life necessarily leads us beyond the Westphalian

assumptions in IR without making them redundant. Elements from sociology (Albrow,

2007; Bauman, 1998; Beck, 2013; Castells, 2004; Sassen, 2006; 2011) and human

geography (Agnew, 2015; Bialasiewicz, 2011; Strandsbjerg, 2013) are being included

with regard to comprehending globalization.

The text consists of three parts. At the outset, a definition and a brief outline of the

chief characteristics of globalization will be given based on academic literature and own

observations. Then the fundamental Westphalian features of each of the three IR

subdivisions will be summarized in light of globalization. Third, five specific

epistemological challenges to the three IR schools will be synthesized as a way to

substantiate future discussions on the subject and provoke further empirical research.

Globalization and Its Characteristics

Leaning on Ulrich Menzel (2001: 226) and Jan Aart Scholte (2001: 14-15), globalization

equals an aggregation of multifaceted processes of deepening, intensification and

spatial enlargement of transborder interconnections in different spheres of human

existence (politics, economy, culture, ecology, military affairs, etc.) which transform

the function and meaning of nation-state’s borders and domains (Aleksandrova 2016:

47). In this interpretation, globalization does not mean that all people in the world

encounter the same experiences simultaneously (Scholte, 2001: 17). It results in that

many events or influences nowadays occur unlinked, although not irrespective of

politico-territorial distances. In this fashion, international relations make their way into

all other groups of relations much more intensively than before and vice versa

(Stefanov, 2004: 228).

This is how the ongoing situation enables us to (re)discover practically and conceptually

the inherent globality (Albrow, 2007: 12-13) of local, regional and international life. In

the words of Jeremy Waldron:

“… to organize analysis around national phenomena is to give voice

to ‘the same old myth – that the default position has been

independent societies following their own course on their own

respective territories... historically the default position has been

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Epistemological challenges of globalization to the Westphalian thinking within international relations

Boryana Aleksandrova

more or less exactly the contrary: intense interaction, and the

existence of traditions, cultures and institutions of interaction,

among all societies whenever interaction is a possibility. Societies

that can interact do (cit. in Rosenau, 2003: 84-85)’”.

Put into such analytical perspective, states’ spaces and structures are currently

(re)confirming their place in the global climate, investment, taxation, migration,

information, cultural and political flows – to use the phraseology of Manuel Castells

(2004). However, the effects produced thereof for the Westphalian thinking within IR

from the point of view of human emancipation cannot be stipulated one-sidedly. That is

why an overview of the main characteristics of globalization is needed.

They can be subsumed under four key headings – interconnectedness,

deterritorialization, unevenness and ambiguity. The interconnectedness and

deterritorialization indicate two major trends. On the one hand, bonds between various

societies have been thickening, so that “all politics is now glocal” (Lamy, 2001: 193).

Accordingly, the broader social world, including the individual, has become intrinsically

interconnected with the world of states. To quote James N. Rosenau:

“As the density of the global stage has increased…, the structures

of world politics have undergone a profound and pronounced

bifurcation in which a multi-centric macro world composed of a

wide variety of nongovernmental, transnational, and sub-national

actors … has evolved to cooperate, compete, or otherwise interact

with a state-centric world that consists of collectivities increasingly

active on local stages (2003: 62)”.

In economy this kind of state and non-state convergence plays role in the process of

designing or opposing cross-border regimes for trade, investment and financial

operations. In ecology it comes into sight as mixed political reactions to the

dissemination of environmental risks and the occurrence of global ecological

knowledge. In media it materializes through the transcontinental spread of information

and social claims. In the field of culture perceptions for hybrid identities and/or

cosmopolitism are emerging, in politics – for elements of global governance.

Correspondingly, national societies experience the circulation of global elites of mobility

(Bauman, 1998: 19) as well as low-paid migrants and conflict and climate refugees.

On the other hand, a plurality of problems has been dispersed on a transborder scale.

Dietrich Thränhardt (2000: 131-132) and Ulrich Beck (2013: 56; 77; 310) ascribe this

tendency to a large extent to the character of modern industrial development,

established international political and economic relations and patterns of global

consumption. Examples thereof are the corollaries ensuing from the stockpiling of

nuclear weapons, chemical and biotechnical accidents, the climate change, the violation

of biodiversity, the disproportionate access of world populations to some industrial

achievements, the global value chains, the unsustainable energy consumption and

handling of waste and resources (water, farmland, manufacture resources) and the

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Boryana Aleksandrova

transport pollution. A significant part of these complications cannot be reduced to a

particular area, and neither can they be rehabilitated on a particularistic basis.

The unevenness, on its part, means that the impact of globalization cannot be

determined one-dimensionally for all regions as well as social strata and groups, even

single individuals, on our planet (Bauman, 1998: 103-127; Sassen, 2011: 340-439;

Steans, 2008). Respectively, the unevenness also has multiple expressions. Thus,

competing taxation policies (tax heavens) and corporativization of international trade

are producing discrepancies in the global economic development. The labor relations

worldwide, in turn, are characterized by a rising demand for highly qualified, specialized

and well paid professionals in the context of transnational restructuring of production,

trade and banking (business managers, IT specialists, financial and legal consultants,

experts in insurance and marketing, scientists in the same areas of research, etc.) and

a precariat in the informal sector and personal services (Taran & Geronimi, 2013).

Other spheres of glocal living are undergoing similar disparities via corporativization of

media landscapes, transnationalization of border and security industries, activation of

power ambitions by trans-spatial terrorist structures, maintaining elite education and

information networks, etc.

Against the backdrop of the three features of globalization elaborated hitherto, its

ambiguity stands out even more. In this sense, globalization speaks for selective

intergovernmental coordination on global issues but augmented cross-border non-

governmental cooperation, for certain economic and technological ties but surfacing

social destabilizations and divergence, for specific cultural exchange or universalization

but reinforcement of essentialist national and sub-national identities, for ecological

connectivity but unilateral treatment of natural resources by state and non-state

actors, for free movement of capital and services but militarization of borders and

ethno-cultural and financial thresholds for granting citizenship. In times when Myspace

registers more than 110 million active users per month and Facebook 60 million already

in 2008 (Siwal, 2008) we are confronted with a lack of a fruitful official political

communication in respect of overcoming global fragmentation and marginalizion.

Returning to the topic of the present article, where do the three conventional theories

of IR stand in all this from the critical perspective of human emancipation? In other

words, how is their Westphalian orientation to be assessed in reference to the manifold,

state and non-state, material and virtual bounds of inclusion and exclusion drawn in the

course of globalization?

Westphalian contours of realism, liberalism and Marxism in light of

globalization

Before going into their general incompleteness as well as relevance in terms of

globalization, the basic Westphalian prerequisites of realism, liberalism and Marxism

will be sketched out. The theory of realism (Dunne & Schmidt, 2001; Grieco, 1997;

Kissinger, 1994; Morgenthau, 1993) considers the state as the leading actor and

pretender for legitimate power on the global scene. States are described as

homogenous social entities exercising control over an impermeable physical territory by

forceful means which, in turn, is articulated as a basis for the geopolitical divisions in

the world. The international relations are greatly reduced to a regular struggle for

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Boryana Aleksandrova

survival, power and access to resources in the name of and between the unitary states

(Caverley, 2013: 147-149).

Liberalism supports the idea of a coordinated interplay of states on the global

geopolitical map (Cerny, 2013; Dunne, 2001; Mingst, 1999: 90-92). Special importance

is ascribed to fostering of international legal and institutional mechanisms for a

peaceful interstate cooperation, economic exchange and deterrence of the use of force

(Axelrod & Keohane, 1993; Burley, 1993; Ikenberry, 2013). Although single

subdivisions of liberalism, e.g. the (neo)liberal institutionalism (Moravcsik, 1991; Lamy,

2001) pay attention to additional factors on the world scene like the transnational

corporations, NGOs, political elites, political parties, trade unions, lobby groups,

ideologies, etc., they still consider as key determinants for the international

communication “those relations that are maintained with the help of or in respect of the

public authority” (Stefanov, 2006: 14).

Marxism interprets the structure of the global politics as a stratification between highly

industrialized capitalist states and brought in dependence, low industrialized countries –

as a reflection of the socioeconomic formations in both of them (Bidet, 2007; Mingst,

1999: 102-104; Hobden & Jones, 2001). Thus, the ruling international geopolitical

order is subordinated to the fragmentation of the planetary geography in territorially

demarcated sovereign states competing on the world market (Teschke, 1999: 29;

Jessop, 1982).

“The form of the state may have changed, and it may have been

subject to a ‘tendential hollowing-out’ as many of its previous

functions and responsibilities have been displaced upwards,

downwards and outwards, but its distinctively national character

remains (Hay, 1999: 172).”

From the critical standpoint of human emancipation globalization raises serious

common questions for the Westphalian orientation of the three theoretical directions.

Parallel to this, their conceptual foundations are not to be utterly ignored in any

theoretical debate about globalizing realities.

In detail, we can say that the realist interpretation of world developments belittles the

multidimensional, qualitative and quantitative, changes in and across societies of the

last 30 to 40 years. Consequently, their asymmetrical effects are ignored – in reference

to men and women, citizens and non-citizens, shareholders and work force, political

and financial elites and populations, highly educated and non-educated, trained and

non-trained in high technologies, bureaucrats and non-bureaucrats, consultants and

non-consultants, brokers at the stock exchange and non-brokers, etc. In sight of the

growing glocality in the world identification with realism also strengthens states’

practical inability to reconsider their reductionist nation-centric ideological foundations.

Moreover, seen through the Westphalian perspective the interconnectedness and

deterritorialization are often being articulated as a manifestation of “unpredictability”.

The rigid realist notions of “state”, “foreign” and “domestic policy” seem more and

more incommensurate with broad-based concepts, such as “global society”, “global

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Boryana Aleksandrova

justice” and “global governance” or differentiated ones like “global elite”, “human

security” and “alter-globalization”.

At the same time, realism helps us comprehend that globalization cannot be decoded if

looked mainly through the paradigmatic lenses of a boundless universalism. On that

account, relationships between global, national and local matter. The role of states

must hence be studied carefully – their own economic, financial, trade, social, security

and military policies, selective categorizing of world populations, prioritizing of one type

of (inter)national legal regimes while refraining from others. In that regard, human

emancipation is innately linked up with present states. What realism seems to be

unaware of is the modification of states’ administrative, political, legal and social

structures which has decisively influenced their behavior on the global stage.

Globalization has been profoundly enhanced due to cross-cutting coordination of single

regulatory agencies within states’ bureaucracies with corresponding governmental and

nongovernmental counterparts – international financial institutions, consulting groups,

stock exchanges, UN, etc. (Jayasuriya, 1999: 426); likewise, the structural significance

of changing national populations and mutually reinforcing, state and non-state levels of

destructive force.

The liberal theorists, on their part, successfully bring to the fore the global meaning of

the spread of liberalization processes of various sorts all over the world in the last

decades. Respectively, a strong potential has been demonstrated to conceptualize the

international relations as intersocietal (Czempiel, 2003: 7) and not merely interstate.

Nevertheless, in order to overcome its penchant for the top-down Westphalian thinking

it would be necessary for liberalism to unravel the two-way connections between

transnational tendencies and discourses and domestic realities in a much more

penetrating way. In the same vein, the formation of attitudes, norms, institutions and

policies in and between societies today needs to be elucidated through existing glocal

structural disharmonies as well. Otherwise a liberal understanding of globalization

would continue to inspire distrust among individuals and communities on both sides of

state borders.

Another valuable contribution of liberalism to the globalization debate within IR is its

focus on the issue of cooperation. A fully-fledged global society enabling bottom-up

human emancipation is hardly to be accomplished without an adequate trans- and

international coordination bearing in mind the depleting environmental resources,

growing world population, transborder financial fluidity and aggravating social

injustices. This particularly applies to the construct of “global governance”, the reform

or abolishment of certain international institutions, hierarchies and rules. Here

liberalism still has not proposed a widely accepted stance.

The dialectical approach of Marxism, on the other hand, lays open a space for the

analytical investigation of global capitalist fragmentation. For example, pursuant to

some Marxist authors we are currently witnessing a “separation of the state from the

production process” and the “operation of capitalist enterprises internationally with

much greater autonomy from state control” (Justin Rosenberg cit. in Hobden & Jones,

2001: 218-219). Insufficiently recognized by the followers of this intellectual tradition

remain asymmetries of non-economic nature and their ramifications for disparate social

groups and individuals in nation-states. The plurality of alternatives to dominant

political, social, cultural, economic and ecological patterns in and beyond states that

have occurred in different parts of the world on a local and transnational level are

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Boryana Aleksandrova

accordingly left underrated. Furthermore, the fundamental question about the economic

organization of human existence posed by globalization has still not found its ultimate

answer within this theoretical subdivision – provided that human economy has been

rooted in complex chains of exchange for thousands of years “We need to question not

if but how to deal with large-scale management of global resources in an egalitarian,

peaceful and sustainable manner – beyond relying entirely on local solutions; human

history is one of great cities that brought different cultures together through trade;

human civilization is a history of large concentration of people (Asimakopoulos, 2014:

41).”

Epistemological points for discussion

We can particularly attribute the gaps of realism, liberalism and Marxism with regard to

human emancipation in a globalizing world to their handling of five key epistemological

points: territory, actors, interrelation between public and private sphere, predictability,

interdisciplinarity. Showing inclination to render these issues a Westphalian

interpretation the three theories of IR are squeezing altering social realities and

chances for human development into the monolithic categories of the nation-state.

Globalization creates conditions for weakening of the top-down understanding of

“territory” as a homogeneous attribute for legitimizing state power. In fact, new

challenges and possibilities come up across and within states for the unfolding of

human power. Among them are: the rising transborder information exchange, the

mounting volatility of capital flows, the corporativization of a significant part of the

world trade (Varwick, 2000: 142), the advent of alternative projects for sustainable

development, trade or barter on a transnational and local scale, the global warming,

the formation of transnational political, administrative and media networks, the

evolution of the international law, transnationally organized campaigns against

impeding of the movement of certain categories of people, etc.

Leaning on John Agnew (2015), Luiza Bialasiewicz (2011) and Jeppe Strandsbjerg

(2013) a possible way out of the Westphalian “territorial trap” (Agnew, 2015: 43-46)

and an eventual way in to the “geography of globality” can be the replacement of the

notion of “territory” by the term “space”. Spaces are depicted by these authors as

multidimensional environments where human life is intertwined with a number of

global, transnational and local influences and/or forms of exercising state sovereignty.

Their social, economic, political and socio-cultural parameters endure constant

transformations due to historical events, imposing or turning down of hierarchies and

clash of manifold interests and discourses. Seen in this light, emancipative fulfillment of

glocal human existence will depend more and more on the complex operationalization

of concepts, such as “citizenship”, “state sovereignty”, “security”, “borders”,

“geopolitics”, “foreign policy mechanism”, “global governance/self-governance”,

“legitimacy”, “global trade”, etc.

In addition to evoking circumstantial conceptions of space, globalization reasserts the

necessity for expanding the definition of the actors and factors of international

relations. Nowadays institutions like the UN, WB or IMF are being consolidated,

together with a “multiplication of nonformalized or only partly formalized political

dynamics, actors and hierarchies” (Sassen, 2006: 147). In the meantime, “NGOs, first-

nation peoples, immigrants and refugees, including climate refugees, who become

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subjects of adjudication in human rights decisions are increasingly emerging as

subjects of international law and actors in international (and national) relations” (Ibid.,

340). Multinational corporations are in position to guide (inter)governmental and

supranational programs through lobby groups, platforms, such as the World Economic

Forum, or presence on the sidelines of international negotiations. The tone in the global

social and media space is being conspicuously set by reactions of financial capital and

credit rating agencies like Standard&Poor’s, Moody’s and Fitch to election outcomes or

other domestic affairs. Transnational social movements like Fair trade, Via Campesina

or the International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty have turned into an

irrevocable form of organized political participation outside the state-system. Since the

beginning of XXI century the global flows of information, technology, social interaction

and finances have been instrumentalized by terrorist groups as well. Overall, the

accumulation of normative agendas and institutionalizations on the world scene thrives

on multiple overlappings of local, national and global dynamics. This fact makes the

question of “democratic accountability, legitimacy and subsidiarity” (Held & McGrew,

2008: 10) all the more important.

A similar dilemma arises for realism, liberalism and Marxism in the context of ongoing

reconfigurations between public and private components in glocal life – especially in but

not limited to economy and finances. In the last 35 to 40 years the international politics

has been taking shape under the conditions of shrinking public and expanding private

elements between and within states. The networks of corporate production, trade,

banking and insurance, of stock exchanges and centers for technical and legal services,

of drug, arms and human trafficking, of global media images and others rest upon a

conflation of public prerogatives and private interests and regulatory regimes (Sassen,

2006: 184-203). The emergence of the “global city” (Sassen, 2011) as a distinctive

spatial node with a range of public and private commanding capacities for global

economic (dis)integration is another example. A variety of private actors show eminent

presence in the security landscape today – think thanks, mercenaries, logistics

companies and private contractors like Blackwater, Kellog, Brown&Root, Eyrinus and

DynCorp hiring their military personnel in different countries. Rita Abrahamsen and

Michael C. Williams summarize this development as follows:

“To be sure, there has been an increasing fragmentation of the

security field, in that a multiplicity of different actors – public and

private, global and local – are involved in the provision of security.

But rather than an erosion of state power, the result is the

emergence of new networks of security in which the authority of

the state and private actors is re-articulated through new

technologies of governance, coercion and control. This has

numerous political implications, in terms of how security is

provided, for whom, and by whom, and also theoretically for how

we think about the state and global security” (2005: 5).

An increasing amount of development work has been conducted through corporate

involvement since the 1980s as well.

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Another epistemological problem of the three mainstream IR subdivisions with regard

to detecting chances for human fulfillment in global times is their view of the issue of

predictability. Generally speaking, each of them confines predictability to a certain

configuration of (inter)dependency among states. Realism anchors interdependency in

the anarchic structure of the world affairs. The anarchy which by definition urges states

to rely on their self-help is thought to induce a pursuit of non-alignment and

strengthening of the own means of survival and control. Liberalism sees

interdependency as emanating from the common interests of states, the expanding

capitalist production, the crystallization of global norms and legal culture, the

liberalization of trade, the ecology. Here states are seen as actors that can work

together. Marxism stresses the meaning of dependency between the mighty capitalist

states in the center and the dominated ones in the periphery and semi-periphery.

Within the constraints of the capitalist system states in the periphery and semi-

periphery are expected to strive to get closer to the production and market standards

of the center.

However, these approaches to predictability neglect (in)congruencies possibly

overshadowing the establishment of an emancipative global society embedded beyond

and beneath state politics. This often results in an inability to capture critically the

ambiguous conduct of governments with respect to global challenges – the hardening

of their national reflex as to some spheres of politics and social groups and the

propensity to adapt in others. Nowadays much political activism is generated beyond

electoral attendance both on the Left and on the Right (e.g. citizens’ action committees,

lobby groups, global social movements, neighborhood vigilante patrols etc.)

(Eisenstadt, 2012). Analogously, the rising global inequality cannot be measured

exclusively by classical economic categories, such as the GNP or GDP. For example,

while $134 billion flow into Africa each year, predominantly in loans, foreign investment

and aid, $192 billion is taken out – in profits made by foreign companies, tax evasion

and costs of adapting to climate change (Jubilee, 2014: 1). In Nepal and Liberia,

another example, the diaspora’s remittances account for more than 30 percent of their

current GDP (DAAD-Alumniportal, 2017).

In order to tackle the issues of territory/space, actors, correlation of public and private

elements on the global scene and predictability in a critical manner, interdisciplinary

investigation methods should be reaffirmed in the field of IR even further. The research

results of disciplines, such as anthropology, political economy, sociology, geography,

development studies and regional studies can provide a valuable contribution for the

multi-layer account of the place of globalization in (inter)national life from the

perspective of both individual and collective well-being and equality.

Conclusion

In conclusion, a critical analysis of global economic, social, cultural, political and

ecological transformations in IR from the point of human emancipation presupposes

breaking, in one way or another, with the ahistorical Westphalian “standards” of

realism, liberalism and Marxism. As shown above, such globalization debate, including

the important inputs of these three schools of thought, cannot and should not be

restricted to issues conceptualized explicitly under the banner of “national democracy”,

“national security” or “national welfare”. Instead, it must be urgently engaged with the

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Epistemological challenges of globalization to the Westphalian thinking within international relations

Boryana Aleksandrova

different spatial manifestations as well as state and non-state, public and private

instruments for the proliferation of transnational interconnectedness and

“unpredictability”. Globalization and its fragmentations are not to be inquired as

something outside of the state apparatuses and the wholesale domestic life. The

practical formation of egalitarian emancipative communities in a globalizing world will

thus depend on modifications within, between and across states’ structures.

Against this backdrop, it would be necessary for the so called reflectivist and

constructivist theories that came into IR in the 1980s and 1990s to find a stronger

place in the discipline. Due to their willingness to examine the broader social reality in a

refined manner social constructivism, feminism, critical theory, historical sociology,

normative theory and post-modernism seem to be in a better position to reconstruct

globalization with its four characteristics outlined in this article. Here, the permanent

search for changing social configurations beyond and within states will bring us closer

to a complex reconstruction of glocal hierarchies and dynamics as well as the ethical

and structural conditions for the fulfillment of an emancipative global society. On this

basis, eventual fruitful synergies with the three conventional IR theories could be

sought. In order to build such bridges, even more empirical researches will be needed

which draw on interdisciplinary methodologies.

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