The globalization of political processes. The geographical view
Authors: Dermendzhiev Atanas , Doykov Martin 
Published: June 2023

At the beginning of the 21st century, when distances have become shorter because of the development of communication networks, the world has undergone political, economic and cultural integration or, in other words, globalization. These processes raise many questions about the way geography influences global policy. Historians think of globalization as one of the stages in the development of capitalism. Political scientists put the emphasis on the diffusion of democratic organizations. Economists note the process of trans-nationalization of financial markets. Cultural scholars connect globalization with the worldwide distribution of Western culture and way of living (Westernization). There are also informational-technological approaches to explain globalization – the appearance of global means of telecommunications. In politics, globalization leads to weakening of the nation state and contributes to decreasing its sovereignty. A transformation of the nation state can be observed, but its indispensability does not decrease (despite increasing criticism). The contemporary state delegates more and more powers to influential international organizations such as the UN, NATO, IMF and the World Bank. That is why authors like T. Friedman and R. Keohan consider globalization a radically new phenomenon, leading to the gradual loss of the significance of nation states. Very important are the different concepts connected with global conflicts. Samuel Huntington writes about the “clash of civilizations” whose theory opposes that of Francis Fukuyama about “the end of history”. The role of the Western world in this conflict is also of great significance. From the position of globalization, regionalism is a type of localism on a large territorial scale. Often, it has been described as a struggle between history and geography. The geographical approach to the problems is connected with the understanding that regional structures, together with global corporations, nation states and international economic organizations are the most important subjects of globalization. This makes the interrelations between globalization and regionalism an interesting field for research. Each one of these competing and opposing globalizations ideologically and scientifically reflects particular dimensions of the ongoing processes at global level, which, by default, makes them objects of research in socio-cultural geography. The main objective of the present research is to reveal the nature of globalization and its relations with world policy and geography on the base of existing scientific literature on the topic. Different research methods have been used, among which conceptual analysis, situation analysis, spatial analysis based on the civilizational approach and others. The ideas of main existing studies on the topic have been synthesized, analyzed and discussed. The results of the research show that there are different points of view on the problems, some of which fundamental, others not so well known, and some even peculiar ones. Another result of the research is the explanation of two opposing processes – globalization and regionalization. An attempt has been made to include all these different points of view in the revealing of the nature of global processes and their relation to geography as one of their fundaments.