ABSTRACT
Like climate change, globalization is a very broad category for a set of changes whose particular impact at any site cannot be predicted from the global average. In fact, many of the developments that over the past 20 years or so have been attributed to globalization look quite different from each other. The rhetoric of globalization seems to point towards homogenization driven by global capital flows, integration of economic policies, and constriction of policy choices (‘there is no alternative’). Global optimists see the coupling of liberal economic policies with a convergence on liberal democracy, while pessimists see the enrichment of a few and a race to the bottom for everyone else. Still others point to a parallel process of globalization in coalitions developing among civil society associations. These groups may promote sets of global norms and codes of conduct as checks on the behaviour of states and/or corporations (a positive outcome of globalization), or collaborate to resist its impact on particular groups or places. But like the notion of globalization itself, these general characterizations of its dynamics and characteristics do not help us much to evaluate shifts in the opportunities for political action in any given setting or issue area.
