It Was My Paper on Globalization

Last week, we had a lecture on globalization. That particular lecture made me remember my own globalization course back in the Philippines with Ms. Acosta and the paper she assigned me to write about defending the side of the sceptics of globalization. So here I am, sharing my article to you all.

“Bipolar Inequality: Reinforcing the Side of the Sceptics”
John Patrick I. Allanegui

If we were to whip out a decent map of the world and examine how the different countries are situated across it, we might come to think that there is nothing really extraordinary about the world’s geography. However, political scientists have developed a rather intriguing model of the world economy called the North-South Divide which proposes that most of the developed countries are located in the north while majority of the developing countries are located in the south. This model has also evolved to an even broader scope to illustrate that there is a vast gap between the wealthy countries (North) and the poor ones (South). Somewhere along the illustrations of the states in the world map, lies a reality that has been plaguing the human race since time immemorial: inequality. Inequality, from my own understanding, is the disparity among classes when it comes to the realization of opportunities. It may encompass different aspects like race, social or economic status, education, etcetera. The North-South Divide also indicates the manner how the economic type of inequality, is distributed across the globe. Obviously, the world is not one. Sadly, the disparities of the North and South remain wide (Waltz, 1999).


In recent years, however, a very suspicious topic called globalization has gained popularity amongst social scientists and scholars. Believers of this so-called phenomenon (globalists) would insist that globalization is a world wide happening in which countries move beyond their borders to exchange culture, goods, service, and information with other countries as well. Globalists would even go further by saying that globalization continuously shapes our world through the interconnectedness that the nations share, thus it subsequently erases old hierarchies like the North-South Divide. They claim that inequality doesn’t anymore exist between huge blocks of regions but it only exists within societies because of the things brought about by globalization. Amidst this heated debate, a question still remains: Has globalization finally blurred the marginalization between the developed and underdeveloped countries to the point that inequality now exists only within societies? As a sceptic, I firmly say no for the reason that I believe that such gap is still present up to this very day. Here I shall present five main points why I say that inequality (economic inequality) is still rampant between the two blocks. In the course of doing so, I shall keep an eye of a Marxist while strengthening my stand about this issue.

To begin with, the gap is difficult to remove because of its historical context. As stated by author George Modelski, the wealth of the world has already been altered to the favor of Europeans groups since the beginning years of imperialism. Tracing back history, the 16th century was largely defined by the development of navy ships by European countries in order to transport people and colonize territories. Countries like Spain, Portugal, and Great Britain spearheaded expeditions to exploit lands and make use of the abundant resources for their own benefit. In my opinion, this greatly placed the colonies at a very disadvantageous spot since raw materials and man power were always utilized for the Westerners only. Development was almost mutually exclusive for the colonizers due to this exploitative behavior. Something this historical is clearly difficult to undo already.

Second point would be, according to Paul Hirst and Grahame Thompson, the mobilization of capital does not produce a shift of investment and employment from the advanced to the developing countries. According to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, the global outflows of foreign direct investment in 2006 amounted to $779 billion. Out of that amount, developed countries remained the leading sources of outflows such as the G3 (North America, Europe, and Japan). Moreover, the G3 controls much of the market forces in a global scale and they would even influence the creation of policies of different countries for the benefit of the industrial markets. From this alone, we can see that the flow of FDI is highly concentrated among the developed nations which puts developing countries in a more marginalized position.


From the orientation that much of the wealth is concentrated on the North, we now move on to a thought in international political economy called the depedencia theory. The depedencia theory posits that through the exploitive relationship shared by the two blocks, the South remains largely economically dependent on the North. Moreover, dependencia theorists would assert that multinational corporations of the North would dominate the institutions of the South through bribery of local elites while harmonizing a dependent relationship through investments and other industries (Pearson and Payaslian, 1999). A classic example of this would be Latin American countries like Ecuador, Bolivia and Chile which became very dependent on the USA and Canada as they struggled to achieve stable modernization during the time of the debt crisis of the 1980s. Theotonio dos Santos defines this dependence as a situation in which the development of a country’s economy is conditioned by the development of another economy to which the former is subjected (dos Santos, 1970). I firmly believe that this interdependence between the North and the South is destined to continue because much of the institutions and markets of the developing countries are not stable enough to stand on their own and they heavily rely on foreign investments and aid.

Next point would be informed by the False Paradigm model. Michael Todaro, an author, explains this as the inappropriate advice given by international advisers from the developed country assistance agencies. The model claims that these international experts would offer concepts, theories, and models that would often lead to incorrect policies. In addition, scholars would argue that civil servants, university intellectuals, and government officials would often get their training from foreign prestigious schools but they would be offered alien concepts and theories (Todaro, 2000). When the time would come to take action, the said concepts and strategies would be reckoned inapplicable because of different factors that are present in the developing society. For me, this exacerbates underdevelopment for the South because ineffective policies would often deem development projects as nothing.

Lastly, the point that I would like to raise as to why I believe that the North-South Divide is still evident up to this day is simply because the industrialized North doesn’t really give much attention to the development of the South (Pearson and Payaslian, 1999). Yes, multilateral institutions that are being led by developed countries have emerged to somehow aid the development of the poor ones but in the long run, it is the former that will still greatly benefit from it. Overall, the interrelations of the North and South does little or nothing to pull up the inferior element, let alone to trickle down to it (Todaro, 2000). From a Marxist’s point of view, I can say that the first world countries are doing everything that they can to stay as superior as possible to the rest of the world through capitalistic endeavors that are masked as development aid and projects.

If we were to whip out a decent map of the world and examine how the different countries are situated across it, we might come to think that there is nothing really extraordinary about the world’s geography. I beg to disagree. The geography itself provides a picture of how inequality is manifested across the globe - something that has been widely accepted for decades. It is true that globalists have come to argue that globalization erodes old hierarchies like the notion of the North South Divide or inequality between huge regional blocks. I beg to disagree even more, please. The growing North-South divide persistently features a great gap between two extreme groups in an international level that is somehow determined by geography. Also, what keeps this gap open is the steadfast conflict of interests between the North and the South which is something that is almost impossible to reconcile because of the social elements (history, culture, etc.) that the different countries have undergone separately (Shively, 2001). Ultimately, as long as the world economy operates under a very exploitative and apathetic manner when it comes to development, nothing - not even a myth called globalization - can ever eradicate the void that exceedingly divides the rich and the poor, the developed and the underdeveloped, the superior and the inferior - the North and the South.