Globalisation & Identity (Leaving Cert Politics and Society): Revision Notes
📚Revision Notes
Globalisation & Political Power
The relationship between globalisation and political power examines how international organisations influence domestic policies, particularly those affecting young people. This dynamic involves both intergovernmental organisations that require state cooperation and supranational bodies that can create binding rules above national law.
Note
Key Definitions
Intergovernmental Organisation (IGO): A body where states work together through agreements, with decisions typically requiring member state approval. Examples include the IMF, World Bank, WTO, and UNDP.
Supranational Organisation: An entity where states combine their sovereignty, allowing some rules to override national law. The European Union exemplifies this through its regulations and Court of Justice rulings.
Major global organisations and youth impact
International Monetary Fund (IMF)
The IMF provides financial assistance to countries experiencing economic crises. Its primary function involves stabilising troubled economies through loans that come with conditionality - requirements for countries to reform their budgets, taxation systems, and public services.
For young people, IMF policies create mixed effects. Austerity measures can reduce education funding, limit youth services, and freeze public sector recruitment, directly affecting graduate job prospects. However, successful economic stabilisation can create long-term employment opportunities and economic recovery.
World Bank (IBRD/IDA)
The World Bank focuses on financing development initiatives including schools, healthcare systems, and digital infrastructure while providing policy guidance to governments. Project funding depends on feasibility assessments and often includes conditions related to governance reforms.
Youth benefit through school construction projects, teacher training programmes, broadband expansion for educational institutions, and skills development initiatives. These capacity-building programmes aim to enhance employment prospects and educational access.
World Trade Organisation (WTO)
The WTO establishes global trade regulations and manages dispute resolution between member states. Trade agreements require consensus among members, while disputes are resolved through panel decisions and appeals processes.
Trade policies significantly influence youth employment patterns. Liberalisation can create opportunities in manufacturing, technology, and service sectors while potentially reducing consumer costs. However, economic adjustments may disrupt traditional local employment, requiring young people to adapt to changing job markets.
United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)
The UNDP supports human development and the Sustainable Development Goals through policy advice, data collection (including Human Development Reports), and targeted programmes. It collaborates with national governments to align country programmes with both global SDGs and local priorities.
Youth-focused initiatives include civic engagement projects, climate action programmes, digital inclusion efforts, and local entrepreneurship support, promoting participatory development approaches.
European Union (supranational example)
The EU demonstrates supranational power through binding legislation, programme funding, and legal enforcement via the Court of Justice. Policy development follows a structured process from Commission proposals through Parliamentary and Council agreement to national implementation.
Key youth initiatives include:
- Youth Guarantee: Member states must offer work, training, or education to all under-25s
- Erasmus+: Educational and training mobility programmes
- GDPR: Enhanced digital privacy protections
- Climate and digital regulations shaping future employment opportunities
Policy areas directly affecting young people
Employment and training
Multiple organisations coordinate youth employment strategies. The EU's Youth Guarantee programme, World Bank skills development projects, and UNDP entrepreneurship initiatives create overlapping support systems for young job seekers.
Education access and quality
Educational policy involves complex interactions between organisations. While the World Bank invests in school infrastructure, IMF austerity programmes can simultaneously restrict educational budgets. The UNDP supports inclusive education aligned with SDG 4 (Quality Education).
Digital rights and safety
EU regulations like GDPR influence how young people experience online privacy and platform design globally. These standards often become regulatory templates adopted beyond EU borders.
Living costs and employment through trade
WTO trade rules affect various economic sectors including agriculture, technology, and services, directly influencing youth employment patterns and consumer prices.
Case studies
Example
Case Study: Ireland and the Troika programme (IMF-EU-ECB)
During Ireland's sovereign debt crisis, the country entered a programme requiring significant fiscal consolidation and economic restructuring. The conditionality attached to this assistance demonstrates how IGOs can substantially influence domestic policy choices.
The youth impact was severe initially, with austerity measures coinciding with high unemployment and emigration among young people. Public sector recruitment freezes particularly affected graduates seeking career entry points. While economic stabilisation eventually supported recovery, the distributional effects remained contentious, highlighting how crisis interventions can disproportionately affect particular demographic groups.
Example
Case Study: EU Youth Guarantee and Erasmus+
Member states, including Ireland, implemented guarantee systems ensuring work, education, or training offers for young people, supplemented by mobility opportunities through Erasmus+.
These programmes helped reduce NEET rates (Not in Education, Employment, or Training) across many European regions. Erasmus+ particularly enhanced language skills, cultural competencies, and employability. This demonstrates how supranational coordination combined with funding can advance youth-focused reforms that individual states might deprioritise independently.
Key theoretical perspectives
André Gunder Frank: dependency and structural power
Frank's dependency theory explains how global institutions can lock developing or crisis-affected states into dependent relationships with core economies and creditors. This perspective helps analyse why IMF and World Bank conditionality can restrict government policy options, creating uneven impacts on vulnerable groups like young people.
When applying Frank's analysis, examine how international assistance programmes might perpetuate structural inequalities rather than addressing fundamental power imbalances.
Martha Nussbaum: capabilities and human development
Nussbaum's capabilities approach defines genuine development as expanding people's abilities and opportunities - in education, health, and political participation - rather than merely increasing economic indicators.
This framework evaluates international organisations by asking whether their policies genuinely expand young people's real freedoms, skills, dignity, and participation opportunities, not simply GDP growth or employment statistics.
Evaluating power shifts from national to supranational levels
Evidence supporting power transfer
Binding enforcement mechanisms demonstrate supranational authority - EU law can override national legislation, while WTO rulings constrain protectionist policies. Conditionality leverage allows the IMF and World Bank to set reform agendas during financial crises. Networked standards in areas like data privacy, climate policy, and financial regulation create global templates that states increasingly follow.
Evidence against simple power transfer
State consent and control remain fundamental - countries choose membership and can negotiate opt-outs or even exit (as Brexit demonstrates, albeit costly). Intergovernmental design means organisations like the IMF, WTO, and World Bank remain state-controlled institutions where major members exercise quota-based voting power - this represents collective state power rather than power loss.
Domestic political processes including national parliaments, courts, and elections continue shaping policy implementation, allowing governments to reinterpret or resist international pressures. Issue-by-issue variation shows supranational power strong in trade, competition, and data regulation, while national control predominates in taxation and education content.
Balanced assessment
Power has reconfigured rather than simply transferred. In crisis management, trade policy, data regulation, and climate action, supranational and IGO influence proves decisive. However, states retain core sovereignty, veto powers, and electoral mechanisms that can rebalance these relationships. The outcome represents shared and negotiated power rather than one-directional transfer.
Important
Critical Analysis Framework for Youth-Impact Policies
When examining any organisation's role in youth-affecting policies, consider:
- Mandate and legal authority: Distinguish between advisory roles (UNDP) and binding powers (EU regulations, WTO rulings)
- Funding and leverage: Identify financial sources and attached conditions
- Decision-making processes: Analyse member voting systems, quotas, and youth stakeholder consultation
- Distributional effects: Assess who benefits or loses (urban versus rural youth, apprentices versus graduates)
- Outcomes versus promises: Examine concrete indicators like NEET rates, completion statistics, and job placement data rather than policy announcements
- Alternative scenarios: Consider whether national policies alone could achieve similar results and what trade-offs exist
Note
Exam Guidance
Effective exam responses should name specific organisations and explain how their decisions create real impacts through conditionality, binding law, or funding mechanisms. Include one Irish/EU example (such as the Troika programme, Youth Guarantee, or GDPR) alongside one global example (World Bank education projects or WTO trade effects).
Incorporate both theoretical perspectives: use Frank to critique structural power relationships and dependency, while applying Nussbaum to evaluate whether policies genuinely expand capabilities for young people. Conclude with balanced judgement recognising that power is shared and pooled, varying by policy area and context rather than representing simple transfer.
Summary
Key Points to Remember:
- IMF, World Bank, WTO, UNDP, and EU influence youth-relevant policies through money, rules, and policy advice
- Conditionality can narrow government budget options short-term, while development funding supports education and inclusion
- Case studies demonstrate both constraining effects (Ireland's Troika programme) and enabling coordination (EU Youth Guarantee/Erasmus+)
- Frank's dependency theory highlights structural constraints, while Nussbaum's capabilities approach judges policies by real freedoms gained
- Power is pooled and negotiated rather than simply transferred - supranational influence strong in some domains, but states retain and exercise sovereignty