Globalisation and its effects on australian national identity and democracy

Essay by germanicusUniversity, Bachelor's March 2005

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Globalisation is an economic, political and cultural phenomenon, involving the increasing interaction, or integration of national economic systems through the growth in international trade, investment and capital flows. It is a cross border social, cultural and technological exchange. It's the process in which geographic distance becomes a factor of diminishing importance in the establishment and maintenance of cross border economic, political, technological, and socio cultural relations under the conditions of capitalism. Alexander Downer has said that "you're either a globa-phobe or a globa-phile" and that's the reality of the situation, that we embrace globalisation to keep up with millions of capital flying about or be left behind and become the "poor white trash of Asia" which was a popular catch phrase of the 80's. Yet no economic, cultural and political phenomenon lacks implications upon the country. One of the issues faced with the countries is loss of cultural identity, the threatening of national sovereignty and democracy, democratic ideals.

The role and nature of the nation and its identity is constantly changing as globalisation questions traditional understandings of state sovereignty, international relations and global governance. Australia is in a unique situation of being a western civilisation in the east, or as Paul Keating put it; "at the arse end of the world" "the nexus between nation state and national identity is breaking down under the pressures of economic and cultural globalisation." As Alan Asher of the ACCC put it "if you look at the huge proportion of our lives, that is inherently trans-border, whether its culture, the economy, the environment, law enforcement, even the weather and so for people who want to cling to a notion of national sovereignty that's built on lines of geography on a map, its my perception that that's something that is just no longer a tenable...