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Globalization and Public Goods: Too Big to Tackle?



Author(s)

Ekkart Zimmermann

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DOI:10.17265/2328-2134/2022.04.004

Technical University, Dresden, Germany

The massive Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 will have unforeseeable effects on the themes addressed here, from international regime change to infra-structural re-orientation to value changes. Here we concentrate on the positive cycle of effects globalization has brought about before the new war in Europe, mainly economic growth and (some) pressures for democratic development, as well as the negative cycle that originates in (relative) economic decline, elite dissent, even failed states and regime change, often in the direction of counter-democracy. The causal links between 13 independent and intervening variables and public goods as the dependent variable are specified in this explanatory sketch. There is need for broadening the view in explaining causal paths between globalization factors and the production of public goods. In doing that we focus in particular on variables like elite dissent, immigration, and new minorities, all three weakening the capacities of states to respond. Further we state that all four: ecological challenges, economic and social inequality and polarization, regime change, and international terrorism can be viewed as to their joint effects on the production of public goods. Selectorate theory is crucial. It explains political regimes on the base of the size of the selectorate with large (s)electorates producing public goods, as in democracies, and small ones only private ones, as in sultanist regimes and dictatorships.

globalization, regime types and changes, selectorate theory, public goods

Ekkart Zimmermann. (2022). Globalization and Public Goods: Too Big to Tackle? International Relations and Diplomacy, July-Aug. 2022, Vol. 10, No. 4, 190-195.