Globalisation and Europeanisation: Challenging Each Other

Dr. Siarhei Piashkun Polotsk State University
Abstract

Globalisation and Europeanisation are two parallel processes that despite some similarities in the modalities are two different phenomena. Some scholars consider the both complementary, partly overlapping, mutually reinforcing, but also competing processes (Snyder 1999). On the one hand, Globalisation refers to developments in the world economy where national economies become interconnected and interdependent, as much as Europeanisation does (Rosamond 2000). On the other hand, Globalisation presupposes loss of national identities by economic and political actors, whilst Europeanisation emphasises the domestic as opposed to the global (Radaelli 2004). Moreover, the former initially understood as widening, deepening and speeding up of worldwide interconnectedness in all spheres of contemporary social life, nowadays is thought of mainly in negative connotations due to the after-effects it has brought in to national or regional communities. Thus, it is seen as a process that presupposes hostile competition, repulsion, division, loosening ties, and finally segregation of individual advancements and efforts. Globalisation is at least a two-fold process which spreads the interest of huge transnational incorporations worldwide, and at the same time sharpens regional integration in different economic parts of the world – North America, South America, Europe, South-Eastern Asia, and the Pacific region, still leaving some parts of the world not touched by any integration for some reasons that are listed in the article. Europeanisation is a process of regionalisation, that is, despite any interconnectedness in politics and economy, opposite to Globalisation. Rather, it is often regarded by scholars as a response to Globalisation (Hay 2002).
My argument is that Globalisation is a challenge to the regions of the world, whilst Europeanisation is a response of the wider community on the continent driven or summoned by internal (the EU) and external integration (the neighbouring countries in Eastern and South-Eastern Europe) to the challenge. I claim that Europeanisation is not simply about formal policy rules but about less tangible beliefs and values (Bulmer 2004). This is a matter of simplification when the phenomenon is considered solely from the point of view of political and economic studies. I argue that strengthening national identities (“unity in diversity”) by emphasising the importance of national languages, cultures, and intercultural communication, Europeanisation goes far beyond by making an attempt to create a European identity by defining the European through the potential “other”.