|
March 27, 2005
A well known effect of globalisation on a sovereign nation-state is the tendency to restrict and undermine Commonwealth's power. The Commonwealth becomes party to international agreements and standard setting and enforcement, and in doing so it restricts the Commonwealth's own independence and autonomy. This can be clearly seen in the economic area with the deregulation of markets, including currency markets and the winding back of tariff protection during the 1980s.
This reduction in the Commonwealth's effective power has been reinforced by the signing of free trade agreements, especially with the US. Australia has been obligated to align its laws with those of the US. The classic example is intellectual property rights regime.
This is certainly a placing of limits on the Commonwealth Parliament dominance that developed during the postwar decades of centralisation.
However, that is not the full picture.Though globalisation is antithetical to the fundamental idea of a sovereign nation-state, it may work differently when the nation-state has a federal system of political governance. As Professor Brian Galligan's parliamentary research paper points out:
"Federalism is essentially a system of multiple governments, divided sovereignty, overlapping and shared jurisdictions, and dual citizenship within domestic governance."
So how does globalization impact on federalism? Galligan suggests that:
"These aspects of federalism make it congenial with an emerging international/national order in which transnational associations and international centres of policy-making and rule setting overlie and intrude into aspects of domestic governance. Likewise, a diffusion of power centres and a variety of institutional systems, each of which has jurisdiction over some matters but none of which is absolute over all the others, are characteristic of both federalism and the emerging international order....In addition there is potential for greater State activity within the umbrella of transnational associations and constrained national government."
Galligan concludes that a likely outcome from increased globalisation might well be a reduced role for the Commonwealth Parliament, compared with its dominance in the postwar decades of centralisation.
He adds that much will depend on the complex politics of this new tripartite system, and the ways in which the Commonwealth Parliament mediates globalisation, or is simply bypassed in direct global/local interactions.
|
