Globalization: What It Changed

In one line

Globalization moved production, capital, information and people across borders faster than the legal framework moved, so decisions that determine whether rights are enjoyed are increasingly taken by actors the framework does not bind, in places the affected person cannot reach.

What the word means here

Not a value judgement, and not a single process. For this paper, globalization is the increasing integration of economies and societies through trade, capital movement, production chains, communication and migration, accelerating from the 1970s and sharply after 1990.

Define it before arguing about it, because a question that asks about globalization and human rights is really asking about the fit between a set of structural changes and a legal framework designed before them.

The five changes that matter

One: production disaggregated across borders

What changed. A single product is now made through a chain of suppliers in several States, each contracting with the next, with the brand at the end owning none of the factories.

Why it matters for rights. The entity with the power to set conditions, the buyer, is in one State; the workers are in another; and the employer between them may be undercapitalised and unreachable. [Who Bears the Duty: the Non-State Actor] set out the four routes by which the framework reaches this, and their limits.

Two: capital became mobile and labour did not

What changed. Investment can leave a State in hours; a worker cannot.

Why it matters. It creates a structural pressure to compete on the cost of labour and regulation, which is the mechanism behind the phrase "race to the bottom", and it weakens the bargaining position on which the whole second generation was historically won, as [Historical Development of the Second Generation] showed.

State the mechanism, not the slogan. The claim is not that every State lowers standards; it is that the option of exit changes the terms on which standards are set.

Three: economic policy became partly external

What changed. Trade agreements, investment treaties, lending conditions and dispute settlement constrain what a State may do in areas that determine whether economic and social rights are realised: subsidies, procurement, patents, public services, capital controls.

Why it matters. Article 2(1) of the Economic, Social and Cultural Covenant requires a State to act to the maximum of its available resources, and its resources and its policy space are now shaped by instruments it negotiated in a different forum with different rules and stronger enforcement.

The asymmetry of enforcement is the point. An investor can usually bring a binding claim against a State; a person whose right to health is affected by the same measure usually cannot.

Four: information and communication became transnational

What changed. Publication, surveillance, organisation and coordination all cross borders instantly.