Has Globalization Negatively impacted State Sovereignty?

Throughout the years it has been argued that globalization has a significant effect on state sovereignty. That ongoing debate between scholars and social scientists is trying to determine whether or not state can still maintain its own sovereignty. Weiss (1998) suggests that there are certain factors such as investments in international economy, multinational corporations and non-governmental organizations which undermine the state sovereignty.

Being a global political student, I have been learning about sovereignty and how it impacts a state. Taking a debatable statement “Globalization has Negatively impacted State Sovereignty”

Sovereignty is a very broad term which Barkin, a professor of global governance and human security simply defines as the power of the state to make and amend any law within its own state boundaries. Moreover, sovereignty is defined as the “absolute supremacy over internal affairs within its territory, absolute right to govern its people, and freedom from any external interference in the above matters”. The state is the supreme political authority within its territory and therefore it does not recognize any higher political authority outside it. With this definition, it would be easier for my team to show how globalization has negatively impacted certain aspects of state sovereignty.

Barkins also illustrates globalization as the “world-wide interconnectedness between nation states supplemented by globalization as a process in which basic social arrangements (such as power, culture, markets, politics, rights, values, norms, ideology, identity, citizenship, and solidarity) become disembedded from their spatial context (mainly, the nation-state) because of the acceleration, massification, flexibilization, diffusion, and expansion of transnational flows of people, products, finance, images, and information.”

Many argue that globalization has increased the powers of multinational corporations making the state sovereignty weaker. Furthermore, the advancements in technology, wider communications, international trade, and transportation are parts of the globalization process which is also seen as an impact on state sovereignty. For instance, states do not have full authority over individual businesses which operate in the free market economy. As a result of globalization, there is increased competition between international businesses and therefore, state sovereignty is undermined because it questions the power of the state over its internal affairs.