The Global Ideology: Rethinking the Politics of the ‘Global Turn’ in IR

Many commentators appear to take for granted the fact that the sphere of political power and contestation has shifted from the national level to the global level. This article seeks to question the assumptions made about politics at the global level, highlighting the elision of ‘global politics’ with the globalisation of the political. It will be suggested that major changes have taken place in terms of political subjectivity and how we view political community, blurring the lines of distinction between the domestic and international realms. The understanding of these changes in primarily spatial terms — from the level of the nation state to the global — mystifies the qualitative shift in political consciousness, political engagement and political instrumentality involved. In fact, the relationship between political subjectivity and the external world is inversed. The Global Ideology posits material changes at the global level as the explanatory factor for the breakdown of state-based forms of political identification and collective engagement, understanding these changes as marking the birth of global politics. In relocating this shift in consciousness in the attenuation of political engagement and collective identification it is possible to explain the shift in political subjectivity in terms of the globalisation of the political — as the result of our more individuated relationship to our external world.