Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
degradation of the Delta environment, although to varying degrees, for
different reasons, and in dissimilar ways. Their roles have been shaped
in part by internal national pressures and in part by domestic and inter-
national interdependencies. Together these forces have created a tragedy
of global signifi cance.
Globalization and the Changing Contours of International Politics
Beck (2005) examined the character of international politics resulting
from the ongoing globalization of trade and other economic and cultural
forms. He suggested that the meaning of state sovereignty, as a conse-
quence of globalization, is now in fl ux and the roles of internationalizing
capitalist and civil society institutions are similarly undergoing rapid
change: “How might we conceptualize a world and a set of global dynam-
ics in which the problematic consequences of radicalized modernization
effectively eliminate the cornerstones of action—certain historically pro-
duced fundamental distinctions and basic institutions—of its nation-state
order?” (p. xi).
The power game in this new global order is neither clear nor ordained
by any one of its member actors alone. What is apparent is that states,
even militarily and economically powerful ones, no longer possess the
same measure of authority or power over the economic and political
fortunes of their territories they once may have enjoyed. Instead, their
purview and scope for discretionary action is challenged not only by
other states as states or via international organizations, but also by the
political-economic pressures and power of corporations that may be
able to locate their operations virtually anywhere in the world and that
command vast resources of their own. The essential characteristics of
international politics and the role of states within it have changed, with
nations becoming more susceptible to global capital fl ows and to the
role(s) multinational corporations play in determining those capital
fl ows. States are also increasingly subject to the claims of supralevel
international organizations when these are supported by coalitions of
other state actors willing to resource and enforce them.
Nonetheless, while ongoing globalization and the continued growth,
however uneven, of transnational governance institutions have thus
rendered states less determinative actors than they once were, they
remain a vital organizing force in global politics. The primary result of
a less-state-centered international politics is, as Beck (2005, xi) observes,
“[a] game in which boundaries, basic rules and basic distinctions are
