ABSTRACT
The theme of globalization has in the last three decades become the key topic of the social sciences. Political globalization has also been addressed by some influential studies of the consequences of globalization for democracy and civil society. Political globalization involves the study of the institutionalization of international political structures, and the evolution of the European interstate system has given rise to ‘both an increasingly consensual international normative order and a set of international political structures that regulate all sorts of interactions’. The foundations of a specifically sociological approach to globalization had been established by a series of influential articles by Roland Robertson, but these were finally published as a collection until 1992. Optimistic visions of hyper-globalization talked about mobility across borders, the porous nature of societies and the decline of the nation state as key features of the global world. The contemporary security crisis, by contrast, produced a renewed interest in state activities in controlling migration and patrolling borders.
