Marxism, Realism and Liberalism Approaches to GPE

This report is designed for developing understanding about different concepts related to global political economy. It is helpful to understand the approaches to global political economy. Further the report emphasizes on discussion over reasons of globalization. Different concepts being included in this report for discussion are perquisites of development, assessment of tensions between national political structure and international economy, the relationship between regions and borders etc. In addition to this, the report provides ways that can be used to mitigate the tensions between economic growth and environmentalism. Final section of this report facilitates knowledge about causes of economic and political resource curse, and the relevance of a hegemon for the attainment of a stable international financial system.

In Australia, Global Political and Economy (GPE) is characterised by level of growth, innovation and transformation. The three basic approaches to Australian GPE in the current era are Marxism, Realism and Liberalism, which assist the government in national integration and cooperation. According to Marxism approach, class struggles take place at the global level and include competition for colonial territories (Hodge, 2018). It considers the relationships with capitalists being exploitative. It sees transitional corporations as the way of exploiting the working class due to the concentration and centralization of power and capital. It becomes the main feature of monarchy in Australia.

Another GPE approach used in Australia is Realism which considers world polity as a ‘scuffle between states for self-interest and power’. Under this approach of global revolution, the government rules out the territories and the public. Realism makes the achievement of economic power as a source to dominate the political area or region and to set the roles of international institutions.

Third approach to GPE is Liberalism which is associated with different economic and political actors in Australia from an individual to specific interest groups, enterprises and corporations. This approach is applied in Australia to incorporate individual needs and ideas for the benefit of all. Hence, through liberalism, the Australian government evaluates the states’ actions and design economic policies accordingly. It becomes different from Marxism and Realism by increasing the value of the global relations and autonomous bodies within the international framework.

Globalization refers to the process of growing interaction among people and organizations across the globe as a result of technological advancement and resource sharing. In Australia, globalization has taken place rapidly due to following reasons:

• Improved transportation: Increased cargo ships in Australia have led to the increased cost of transporting of goods across the national boundaries (Beck, 2018).  The increasing Economies of scale also caused rise in the movement of merchandise more frequently demanding for quick transportation. It resulted in globalisation.
• Free Trade: Australia being a part of World Trade Organization, designed various schemes to develop free trade with other nations so as to eliminate barriers, ultimately giving rise to globalization.  
• Improvements of communications:The emergence of mobile applications and internet across the Australia has also improved communication pace between people residing overseas thus welcoming globalization.
• Labour employment and advanced skills: Many countries like India has reduced its labour cost while providing highly talented and capable people. The labour-intensive industries of Australia like clothing took benefit of inexpensive and easily available labour force, leading to globalisation.  
• Financial System: In the past years, Australia had undergone huge loss because of sub-prime mortgage disaster. It affected a number of banks in the country bringing monetary issues demanding global solutions.
• Multinational Companies: Rapid growth of MNCs in many cities of Australia resulted in their international presence and sharing of wide resources.
• Containerisation: Since 1970s, the demand for steel container has been increased in Australia which decreased the cost of inters modal transport, making business more efficient and cost effective.

Australia has been a sincere international citizen by being committed to support people and cooperating with each other in all situations and times. The government of Australia motivate people to reach the great heights of generosity during domestic crisis as well as global crisis. The key requirements of Australia’s development are as below:

• Developing policies towards the national development goals
• Designing long term solutions to eliminate or reduce poverty, and advance economic growth and deliver stable and honest results to the society
• A sound focus on the disadvantaged section of community and raising their living standard
• Increasing awareness for education and imparting necessary training
• Improve trade policies and promote autonomous operations in the sector of services to deliver best quality

Reasons for Globalization

The above perquisites would guide the Australian government in producing sustainable development gains (Breheny, and McQUAID, 2018). Also, generating more jobs in every city of the country is essential requirement for the standard development. Investments should be made in increasing the real income of people, specifically in infrastructure, land reform, rural development and financing at local as well as national level. Individuals should be motivated to take initiatives to enhance their performance in private sector. It would develop the nation by bringing rewards in the labour market.

Moreover, during adverse times, the government is required to hold long term opportunities and make sure that every citizen of Australia gets equal access to the opportunities.

Australia has been one of the beneficiaries in the open rule based international trading system that arose after the II World War. The global trade policies have contributed significantly in the building of Australia’s commodity-intensive economic relationship with many countries especially China. These policies also supported state-owned enterprises in foreign markets while sponsoring commercial intellectual property (Nelson et al., 2018). The Global trade policies in Australia have also opened blocked access to the internet and other business opportunities along with removing investment restrictions.

Global trade policies ultimately led to decrease in tensions between Australia and other countries like China and USA and transformed the economy into efficient service providing and production sector. As a consequence, China shifted to liberal business rules to serve the interests of Australia. During the harder times, the global trade policies enable the government to go for big challenges and protect the trade practices based on global rules while pursuing high-quality bilateral and regional free trade settlements.

Being a small-sized economy, Australia’s policies transmit limited power in Beijing and Washington, for that matter. However, it has a great history of strong advocacy and coalition-development within the World Trade Organization and its best strategy aims at shaping the governing rules of future trade. The country is at the track of developing more effective and meaningful actions to work with like-minded countries.

As defined in geography, region is defined as an area which is basically divided by physical characteristics, interaction of people, external environment and human impact features. The main regions and sub-regions are primarily symbolised by their features only while in some cases by transitory boundaries where jurisdiction zones like country borders are confined by law.

Being separated from international continental regions, there exist some atmospheric and hydrosphere regions which cover the discrete climates and oceans above the water and land masses of the earth (Hu et al., 2018). The land and water regions internationally are categorised into sub-regions geographically limited by a hugeenvironmental features influencing large-scale ecosystemlikeplains and mountains.

Important Prerequisites for Development

The concept of regions is significant and widely used among many divisions of geography as a way of defining spatial areas each of which can confineit in regional contexts. For instance, eco-region is a term appled in environmental geography, cultural region is used in cultural geography, bio-region in biogeography, etc. The zone of geography that analyses regions themselves is known as regional geography.

Borders are geographic areas of political enterprises or legal jurisdictions like sovereign states, governments, federated states, and several subnational bodies. Borders are made through treatiesamong social and political bodies that have jurisdiction over those areas.Theformation of these agreements is known as boundary delimitation.

Many borders such as an internal administrative border of states, or inter-state borders existingwithin Schengen Areaare considered open and entirelyimprudent. On the other hand, some borders are moderately or wholly controlled, and may be crossed legally only at entitled border checkpoints and border zones.

Gender inequality can be defined as the situation, in which there is no presence of equal rights to male and females in different aspects. The gender based discrimination or gender biasness is example of the gender inequality in an organization or in a country. Different efforts have been taken into account for overcoming gender gaps by government of different countries. Equality Act 2010 of UK is example of legislative initiatives that is taken into account for overcoming different types of discriminations including the gender based discrimination (Razzu, 2014). The legislative bodies and private organizations also impose the monetary penalties and fines over person involved in gender based discriminations. The private organizations also design and implement policies for overcoming the gender based inequalities.

There are various causes of the existence of problem of gender inequality. Example of these causes involves bad mentality, cultural factors, lack of education level, religion and the lack of empowerment. The cultural barriers and region factors create problems for the government and international organizations while designing/ implementing effective initiatives for overcoming the gender inequality issues. It is also very difficult for the government and human welfare organization to interfere in the religious and cultural values and beliefs (WU, 2018). These factors impose restrictions over the rights and actions of representatives of these bodies. Due to lack of education in the females and girls in many geographical regions, it becomes difficult to get support from society and social members in actions of overcoming gender inequality.

Yes, it is true that we can reconcile tensions between environmentalism and economic growth. In general, the environmentalism or sustainability can be defined as the systematic and controlled consumption of the natural resources so that availability of these resources will not be get hampered for the future generations. The continuous economic growth has a negative impact over the environmentalism or environmental sustainability (Opp and Osgood, 2013). The tensions between economic growth and environmentalism can only be overcome through active participation of the business organizations. The government and regulatory bodies can also take different actions for reconciliation of such tensions. Example of these actions involves specifying minimum height for the industrial chimneys, mandating the waste recycle operations, mandating environmental and ecological practices etc. These practices will help to overcome tensions related to environmentalism arising from economic growth.

Tensions between an International Economy and Political Structures

At the organizational level, the decisions related to use of sustainable energy sources like solar energy equipments, solar lights at premises of company, water restoration practices, rain water harvesting practices etc can help to overcome the tensions between economic growth and the environmentalism. It is reality that economic growth and the industrialization lead to adverse consequences for the ecosystem and environment. This is also caused due to increased carbon emission effects, and the contribution in different types of pollution including noise pollution, water pollution, land pollution, and the air pollution (Cavagnaro and Curiel, 2017). The active role of organizations in reducing the current level of contribution in these pollutions can also help to ease the tensions between economic growth and the environmental sustainability.

The resource curse, or paradox of plenty, is the situation that economies with a great amount natural resources such as fossil fuels and certain minerals. These tend to undergo low economic growth, low democracy, and adverse development outcomes than nations operating with limited natural resources. In Australia, both political and economic factors are responsible for resource curse. Australia is a rich first-world country primarilybecause of the mineral wealth. However,the wealth is not equallyallocated, and this has created economic, social and political issues that have become acute with time.

The disparity between various cities of Australia is increasing, which is driven by the mining boom. In some states, all the individuals who want to work have a job. While in other states,, only a few people have the skills and education to join the rapidly growing industries prospering the area. It is not just Aboriginal people or the residents of Australia who are not successful. Anyone who resides in a mining jurisdiction but does not work for a mining organization falls behind to large extent(Hefeker, 2018). Also, their income level is not much good, yet they are forced pay the same inflated, food and housing, and services tax. Not for the first time in Australian history, Indigenous people and disadvantaged immigrants are sharing the pain of the city-bush separation. Now, their common disadvantage is an impending economic and national social policy issue that lies across the conventional accounts of the ‘tyranny of distance’ and, in increasingly difficult ways.

The NGO/GSM’s that are operating at the international level are having the majority of the impact on the economies and they are responsible for the steps that are taken for the revival of the issues such as poverty, education and environmental issue in GPE. Australia’s overseas aid is the investment towards the better future of the world. It is identified that the aid provided to the international NGO will lead to significant difference in the communities and allocation of the funds to overcome the issues in the developing countries(Buck, 2017). it also leads to movement towards the goal of sustainable economic growth and poverty reduction as majority of the nations are facing the issues of poverty and it is not only the moral obligation to remove poverty but also to enhance a permanent solution for the same. The NGO operating at the international level is having grants from various nations which lead to tackling the issues in a significant manner. Australia is spending its16% federal budget to overseas countries which has lead to provide facilitation towards the 25% increase in the training midwives in Fiji. It also provides 87000 people to provide access to the safe and better sanitation facilities in Sri Lanka. 2.5 million Children’s were able to admission in the school in Afghanistan(World vision, 2015).

The Relationship between Borders and Regions

Hegemonic is the theory that is related with the international relations in the field of GPE this indicates that the international system will remain stable under the dominance of a single state acting as the world power. It is considered as good that the hegemon leads to stability in the IFS but there are very few areas where this theory applies so it leads to failure in some of the instances. While comparing the economy of china and USA it is identified that the USA is still at the top of the world along with the dominance of the US $ across the world(Hefeker, 2018). On the other side china is moving towards Hegemon with strong military strength and economic growth in the past few years. so the changing technology, power and economic growth will lead to erode the international hierarch that will leads to undermine the current positions of the dominant state and leads to instability in the international financial system. On the other side there are some findings that criticize the theory due to its impact on some specific areas and contemporary economic openness and decline in the hegemonic influence will leads to possibility of collective power.

Conclusion

It is concluded that global political economy leads to vast changes in the economies functioning in the global environment. This has resulted to the introduction of the globalisation and development in the economies that are competing in the global and political system. The discussion about the various factors  such globalisation, borders, regions and Gender biases leads to develop better understanding about global impact of the factors towards the development and need of the resource curse. The report also discusses the role of NGO’s and Hegemon towards the international financial stability in the global political economies

References

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Opp, S.M. and Osgood, J.L. (2013) Local Economic Development and the Environment: Finding Common Ground. USA: CRC Press.

Razzu, G. (2014) Gender Inequality in the Labour Market in the UK. UK: Oxford University Press.

WU (2018) Gender Inequality and its Causes.[Online]. Available at: https://www.womenunlimited.org/gender-inequality-and-its-causes/ (Accessed: 30 May 2018).

World vision (2015) Why does Australia give aid?.[Online]. Available at: https://www.worldvision.com.au/get-involved/advocacy/australian-aid (Accessed: 30 May 2018).

Buck, S. J. (2017) The global commons: an introduction. UK: Routledge.

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