Globalization and ideology: Challenging the case for realignment.

This thesis engages with the ideological implications of the concept of globalization. Working with a neutral, inclusive definition of ideology, it takes ideologies to be constellations of mutually defining political concepts. The analysis centres on the question of whether longstanding ideological currents have been capable of absorbing the idea of globalization in ways that do not undermine their integrity or whether, as some scholars have argued, they have been disrupted by the force of a new entrant to the extent that they no longer make sense. On the basis of conceptual analysis applied in five chapters to six ideologies or ideological families: classical liberalism, socialism (in three variants), national populism and fascism (as two members of the so-called 'extreme right'), and anarchism and ecologism (comparatively), I conclude that no such ideological rapture has occurred. While conceptual shifts are to a greater or lesser extent identifiable in each of the cases analyzed, the changes have occurred within existing ideological configurations and according to their logical or functional requirements. The idea of globalization has not destabilized any of those conventional clusters sufficiently to render them incoherent. On the contrary, they remain meaningful as distinct sets of political beliefs and as such play an important part in the debate on globalization