Globalization and foreign policy in Southern Europe: the role of a transatlantic (or western) global cluster

Globalization is one of the most important social phenomena in the contemporary world, shaping all dimensions of societal life. However, both among globalization theory as well as foreign policy (FP) studies (and FPA, in particular), the impact of globalization on the state, the effects of political globalization and the transformations it brings to FP have been understood as (not so relevant) contextual elements, described in a generic way or even completely excluded from those research fields and interests. Nevertheless, the particular characteristics in which FP activities are developed render essential, rather than ignoring the state and its external action, to strengthen its study seeking to assess the scope, nature and impact of globalization on its international activity. A critical issue in this regard has to do with the origins, history and the best way to capture these phenomena in a scientific study. Firstly, among those supporting both a transformationalist view of globalization as well as a mutually constitutive approach of FP and globalization, a central claim of such a worldview is that international politics carries a dialectical effect of contributing simultaneously to globalization and fragmentation. The Cold War is the main research focus of such scholars, considered both the source of contemporary globalization and as led, advanced, or pushed by specific political-military forces leading to a political, military, economic, and legal institutional framework, constituting a transatlantic (or western) global cluster – with a (volunteer) political force on the external sphere, makes that the issue of military force and the borders of violence to become central in the contemporary globalization process, to such scholars. This would be a critical moment in highlighting how international politics and globalization are interconnected, and also the shift from internationalization to globalization. Secondly, it is crucial to interrelate such thesis on globalization with the five identified specific understandings and approaches to study globalization: namely, as ‘hardwired’ (to the history of human beings); as a long-term cyclical process (subject to expansions, contractions, and even disappear); focusing on different times or waves of globalization (sequential and with different causes, actors and formats); focusing on specific events (either of remote or recent history); or that more recent (from the second half of the 20th century) and relatively generic changes shape contemporary globalization. This paper aims to assess the impacts of both these theses and approaches to any specific study on globalization and FP, focusing particularly on the transatlantic (or western) global cluster as a key driver in facilitating contemporary globalization. We are particularly interested in the characteristics and implications of this global cluster, the prerogatives it carries for the study, as well as the limitations and possible solutions to the challenges that studying the interaction between FP and globalization poses.