ABSTRACT
This chapter examines its main features, several perspectives on globalization, the debate over whether or not it is a positive or negative phenomenon, and the effort of right-wing populists to reverse it. It concludes with an evaluation of globalization’s impact on sovereign states. Globalization’s key features include the spread of communication and information technologies, the declining importance of territory and the porosity of state boundaries, the spread of knowledge and skills and the participation explosion, the spread of capitalism and emergence of global markets, privatization of public functions, the spread of global culture, the spread of democratic aspirations, the emergence of global civil society, the diffusion of global power, the changing nature of global violence, the changing nature of security, and the proliferation and deepening of nonstate identities and loyalties. Globalization has been accompanied by the spread of culture, featuring shared norms based on free-market capitalism, secularism, and consumerism.
